Kam's book notes 2008
Is it any wonder people have come to think commitment means ‘I’m here as long as I’m having fun, the sex is great & the living is easy?
A relationship has to be about what each person has to contribute to it, not what they can get out of it.
If you can’t stand your own company what makes you think it’s all right to inflict yourself on someone else?
Mike asked ‘what do you think of me?’
I answered, ‘You’re not going to like my answer, so I’m inviting you to take back your question.’
My observation is that people have two separate voices they listen to. The first is the voice of ‘should do, should be’. It’s the voice of judgement, point of view & opinion. It’s very loud because it’s a proving, impressing, in-need-of-agreement voice. The second is the voice of ‘the truth of you & it’s quiet.’
The hidden agenda with perfectionism is that only one person ever gets it right – them. Perfectionism is a high-falutin term for being judgmental & intolerant.
Guilt. Nice person’s disease. As a result, we’re slaves to other’s opinions of us, instead of being honest & getting our needs met.
From where I’m sitting, society looks like it got divided into the ‘users’ & the ‘used.’ The users figured out this ‘nice person’ phenomena a long time ago. It works perfectly for them. They have a radar ability to hone in on the used. They know they can employ them to their advantage any tine they like.
The used or ‘nice people,’ are the user’s easy mark, but the system works just as well for them. Approval is the used person’s principle motivation. The used need people for whom they can perform good deeds. The reward for these deeds is approval. Since they have a self-concept of being nice, the user’s endorsement reaffirms that they are right about their self-image. In this way, the used are getting their needs met as well. The one thing you have to be careful about around a used person is the resentment factor. Resentment is where you ask me to do something for you & I really don’t want to do it. but I don’t let you know that. If I do, you may think I’m not nice. So I do what you ask, but I’m secretly angry at you for asking me.
Can you do it gladly & stay true to yourself? Are you being honest? Is their opinion of you or getting your needs met more important? Are you willing to be disapproved of.
I pick the most disastrous relationships. The thing they have in common is that the men I choose are all like my father. Why do I do that? Fathers & daughters. Shakespeare wrote King Lear about them.
All the women I date remind me of my mother. Mothers & sons. Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex about them. Parents are the first people of the opposite sex who matter. How we get along with them sets the tone for how we’ll get on with the opposite sex in the future.
The search is on for someone who disapproves of us the same way dad did, or manipulates us like mum did, or presents the same conflict. We fantasise that when we’re able to get this rejecting or difficult partner to love us, the way we wanted to be loved by our parents, then the imbalance will be remedied.
Nothing is a bigger wet blanket to sexuality than being taken for granted.
Commitment is the most important aspect of relationship as long as there’s chemistry. Commitment is the spirit of the relationship. It’s the spirit of ‘only you,’ the spirit of ‘forever.’ Commitment is the glue, the cement that’s there when nothing else is.
Only a small percentage of the population is capable of commitment.
They’re women who are willing to take responsibility for the way they communicate with their men. They clearly state their needs. If that fails, they negotiate. If that fails, they set uncompromising limits. If that fails, they’re willing to get out, to walk away. What these women have in common is that they’re not judgmental.
If we don’t get our needs met, at worst, we emotionally starve to death. At best, we go around feeling resentful, negative, accusatory & ripped off.
Denial is the trickster that can allow us to fool ourselves into believing what suits us at the time.
It is my observation that on an unconscious level, everyone knows everything.
The only way to be in control of being hurt is to pick a partner who will most likely end up hurting them.
A survival issue has three parts:
1. It’s something that happens when we’re youngish
2. Which feels terrible
3. Over which we have no control
Truly, the most important thing to people is to be in control. What we think is unsurvivable is the loss of control.
How can we be in control of being in pain? There’s only one way. Cause it!
People with ‘only-child-itis’ are incredibly charismatic & pretty near irresistible. Sufferer’s of o.c. are often centre stage, have a million fiends & are life’s winners. They usually get a golden run at life & lead a charmed existence. That is, until they receive their first rejection. This usually arrives later than the kick in the teeth the rest of us mere mortals received years earlier because we weren’t so adorable. Two things happen to these people. First, they go into deep shock. Second, they are inconsolably shattered.
Rejection is terrible for all of us, but just picture what it would be like if you’d gone through life as a constant winner. Why wouldn’t you think it would go on forever?
Women know how to make men feel disgusting about themselves. This is truly our most powerful weapon.
If you lay down with a friend, you may wake up with an enemy.
Sexual attraction is inexpensive, common & effortless. Chemistry just is. Friendship is precious, takes time to develop, requires maintenance & care & is an investment.
Men do not give their hearts away as easily as their sperm.
Seventy-five percent of married men admit to extracurricular sex, while only forty per cent of women admit to having done likewise.
Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. They marry. They have children. Time passes. Husband has affair. Husband leaves wife. Wife is devastated. Husband wants to return to wife.
The wife suffers the stigma of female version of being a cuckold, ‘not being able to hold her man.’
I’ve come to believe that ‘male monogamy’ is a contradiction in terms. I’m not saying there are not monogamous men. I’m saying I’ve become convinced that monogamy for some men, like most males in the animal kingdom, is actually unnatural.
Why would any man in his right mind be willing to do something that involves sexual denial & discomfort when it’s not even for himself. And he wont get thanked for it. there’s only one reason. It’s got to be for her. It has to be that she’s so precious to him, she’s worth it.
Intimacy:
1. This is where either partner can say, ‘I feel safe to be my real self with you.’
2. Where I can tell you my innermost secrets & trust that they will never be used against me. And invite you to do the same.
3. Where I can share with you what I can’t share with friends or even family, & have you share those things with me.
4. Where I can tell you that you hurt me & not be afraid you will be angry at me, but will want to know why & I can invite you to share your feelings too.
5. Where you will be stronger than I am when I need you to be, where it feels safe for you to tell me something I don’t want to hear but need to know, & you wont judge me.
6. Where I can say that I feel scared, ashamed, angry, sad, humiliated & nothing bad will happen to me, & you can also say these things.
7. Where you make me feel you want to know the ‘me that lives inside me’ & when you know that me, you will protect, support & befriend that me. That you will be on my side.
Nothing is a greater turn-off than feeling as though your body is being used as the solution to someone’s sexual problem.
When there’s been a marriage breakdown, I try to track down the start of the unhappiness. More times than I’d like to count, it will turn out to be from the time of the birth of a child.
Children can be an excuse for not living one’s own life.
We grieve for the dream of what we think our relationships are, as opposed to what they actually turn out to be.
The greatest disappointment comes when the parent’s expectations & the child’s personality are in conflict.
The divorce statistics pay tribute to the fact that marriage is entered into by people filled with unrealistic expectations.
Toby Green, ‘If you really loved me’
When love warps into hate, there is nothing you wont do.
SVU
It’s been proven that the death penalty is no deterrent to murderers, US states with the death penalty have a higher murder rate than US states without it.
Nick Broomfield from DVD Aileen
Most corporations qualify in the World Health Organization’s manual of mental disorders under a diagnosis of psychopathic:
1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
2. Deceitfulness: repeated lying & conning of others for profit
3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
4. Incapacity to experience guilt
5. Reckless disregard for the safety of others
6. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour
Cancer rate in men 1:2
Cancer rate in women 1:3
(Cancer cases in Hunza-not one recorded case)
“A portion of proceeds from this garment will be donated to various children’s charities.” (This label was sewn onto a ‘Cathy lees Gifford’ shirt by a 13 yr old El Salvadorian sweat-shop worker.)
Nike has manufactured shirts in the Dominican Republic taking 6.6mins & costing 8 cents. ( Is this an example of ‘just do it’?)
Every living system of earth is in decline.
Declare independence from corporate rule!
www.thecorporation.com
DVD-The corporation
The part of the brain responsible for speech is connected to every nerve of the body
The stock-market is driven down by fear & up by greed.
Politician appeal to people’s fear (terrorists) or greed (tax cuts)
People’s whole lives can often be reduced to pursuit of pleasure & avoidance of pain.
(They come as a set, two sides of the same coin. Pursuit of pleasure leads to pain.)
Tobacco is known to be the probable cause of 25 diseases.
There were 10,000 breast implants in Australia this year. (2007)
22 % of men prefer breast implants. (2007)
Men use an average of 2000 words per day.
Women use an average of 7000 words per day.
25% of married women knew in the first week of marriage that they had made a mistake.
Men who work more than 60 hrs a week have 4 times the likelihood of getting a mental illness.
Women who work more than 60 hrs a week have 2 times the likelihood of getting a mental illness.
70-80% of local court appearances involve alcohol.
70% emergency admissions involve alcohol.
Unknown sources
By the end of that relationship I honestly don’t know who I hated more, her or me.
Scrubs
One of the worst blows to the human psyche is the relationship breakdown.
Jane Norris & Kym Ortenburg
Buddha is your mind & the Way goes nowhere.
Don’t look for anything but this.
If you point you cart north when you want to go south how will you arrive?
Ryokan
Compelling scientific evidence links breast cancer with some of the 85,000 synthetic chemicals in use. The worst chemicals are plastics, pesticides, petroleum combustion, manufacturing solvents, & also personal use products such as nail polish, sunscreen & other cosmetics.
American Breast Cancer Fund report 2004
The average American tests positive for at least 116 chemicals, many of which were banned over two decades ago. Over 250 toxic substances have been identified in human breast milk, including perfumes, suntan oil, pesticides & heavy metals.
It is estimated that infants ingest 42 times above what is regarded as the safe limit for dioxins.
American centre for disease control & prevention
Dioxin is 300, 000 times more carcinogenic than DDT.
US Environmental Protection Agency
Hidden toxins, which contribute to breast cancer, in common house hold products:
1. Xeno-estrogens (1000 times stronger than oestrogen)
2. Drinking water (pesticides, chlorine, etc)
3. Bleached products
4. Bleached tampons
5. Plastics
6. Styrofoam cups
7. Cosmetics
8. Sunscreen ingredients
9. Cleaning products
10. Dry-cleaned clothes & carpets
11. Computers, furniture & vinyl flooring
12. Pesticides
13. Fly sprays
14. Beef growth hormones
15. Hormone Replacement therapy
16. Birth control pill
17. Cigarette smoke
Other risk factors: Some pain killers, Margarine Alcohol, Chronic stress,
Radiation-Mammograms, plane travel, computers, TV
Lara Grinevitch-Nature & health Dec 2005/Jan 2006
In his meditation position, with his back straight, he stared at the patterns of the twinkling lights, letting them blur as tears filled his eyes. His emotions, which he had kept locked in the deep, dark swamp of his unconscious, had broken free. Everything was hopeless. He was nothing, a nobody, a pariah. The self he had constructed by years of effort had crumbled now that Chantel had left him. ‘I can’t go on like this forever’, he thought. If I do, I’ll be destroyed.’ He had always avoided thinking of his past. Now this shock of betrayal had reopened the wounds of his childhood, when love & security had turned into abandonment & rejection. It had happened again, this time to little Madhu. His own child had been wrenched from him. The cycle of suffering went on.
The life & crimes of Charles Sobhraj
Vivisection (painful experiments of live animals) is carried out on:
19,000 animals per minute
400,000 animals per day
10 billion per day
The systematic torture of sentient beings whatever the pretext & in whatever form cannot achieve anything more than it already has, to show us what is the lowest point of debasement man can reach.
Earthlings, DVD
Forget your dreams, your goals, your ambitions, your future, your past. These are all illusions.
Instead the wise man thinks, I have nowhere to go & I have nothing to do.
You are not what you think you are.
As long as you believe you’re a body , it is virtually impossible to have this peace & have this happiness. You cannot, for a body is part of the world conditioning. Therefore, you have to search for peace. You have to search for happiness. You believe that if you do this, you’ll be happy. How long will it last? For a short while. Things change. Environments change. Conditions change. Your family changes. Everything changes.
All this begins by quieting the mind. By not allowing the mind to react to conditions & situations.
What I’m trying to show you is, you cannot depend on anything in this world for your happiness or your peace.
Self-inquiry is like the university of spiritual life.
In the Bhagavad Gita it says, ‘Out of a million people, one searches for God. And out of a million people that search, one finds Him.’
Thoughts about the past & worries about the future. This is all the mind is.
What appears to be the mind will disappear of its own volition when you become silent, because it never existed.
The mind is trying to save itself from annihilation. It doesn’t want to be destroyed. Therefore it will scare you. It will cook up all kind of schemes so that you will forget about self-realisation. The mind wants to continue its nonsense.
What is this elusive ‘I’ that has been practicing all these things for all these years, trying to perfect my body, my self, my personal self. And you start to be quiet. You begin to enjoy the silence.
I am. I am not this & not that. I am. There’s nothing else, nothing else exists but the I am.
It makes no difference whether you possess a body or have no body. It’s all the same to you.
He partakes the world, but he doesn’t get fooled by the world. The world has no interest for him, for the identification is with the Self, with Consciousness.
You don’t understand that your social body is going through its karma and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You identify with the conditioning. That’s the first truth you have to admit to yourself.
Knowing truth intellectually does absolutely nothing for you.
When your mind begins to dissolve, so does your body & so does the universe.
If you’re afraid to make a change, life will come along & pull the rug from under you one day. And you’ll have to change.
Your first & main job is to awaken. And then you will see if you want to help the world.
Be by yourself all you can. Realise that this is your life. You exist here & now. What are you doing with it?
To awaken is simple. You just have to give up everything mentally.
No thing is as it appears. This includes yourself.
Robert Adams from ‘Silence of the heart’
The stages of death are as follows:
Dissolution of the elements
1. The element earth dissolves into water.
2. The vision declines.
3. The person feels that he or she is sinking & there is an impulse to pull oneself up.
4. The element water dissolves into fire. The mouth, nose & pores begin to become dry.
5. The element fire dissolves into air. The heat starts to concentrate in the centre of the body from the extremities.
6. The element air dissolves into space, that is, the consciousness space.
Dissolution of the senses
1. The power of the eye dissolves into the ear.
2. The power of the ear dissolves into the nose.
3. The power of the nose dissolves into the tongue or taste.
4. The power of the taste dissolves into the sense of touch.
5. The power of the perception declines, then disappears inside.
Dissolution of the sense objects
This happens just at the point when one is ceasing to breath.
1. External perception has disappeared & an internal perception takes place, which seems like moonlight.
2. An expansion state occurs – like sunlight radiating.
3. The state of attainment occurs – this feeling of luminosity which exhausts itself, then falls into a feeling of complete darkness or blankness. As the light radiants, then declines, it leaves a person with a feeling of space. This space becomes duller as the light fades & falls into darkness. Then the person becomes unconscious.
Dr Pema Dorjee
The pituitary secretes HGH episodically, every 90 minutes, more at night than during the day. The magnitude of these spikes peaks in the late teens & declines with age. The hypothalamus makes a well-known growth hormone-releasing factor (GHRF) that controls the cycle of pituitary secretion of HGH, but other releasing factors are known, one a hormone called ghrelin secreted by the stomach that helps regulate appetite.
Seymour Reichlin (neuroendocrinologist)
It’s now believed that a mere 3%, if that, of all females (animal) are monogamous.
It’s estimated that between 100 & 132 million girls & women have been forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) as a part of their cultural heritage & a further 2 million girls become at risk each year. (2003)
Research shows that the strength of a woman’s pelvic muscles ranges from 2 or 3 microvolts to 20 or 30 microvolts. On average, women can produce a 9-10 microvolt contraction; however, below the average, stress & urge incontinence are increasingly more likely. But above the average, women can look forward to an increasing likelihood of multiple orgasms in proportion to muscle strength.
Tests show that prostatic fluid (30% of semen) contains a rich mixture of molecules, including zinc, magnesium, citric acid, amino acids, enzymes & prostaglandins.
Women’s prostatic fluid, like men’s, it’s components include a large amount of the enzyme prostate-specific phosphatase (PSAP), plus other enzymes & some urea & creatinine. (female ejaculate from the urethra)
One explanation for why not all women visibly ejaculate hinges on the strength of a woman’s pelvic muscles. Women with strong pelvic muscles, it is suggested, experience more forceful contractions during sexual arousal & orgasm, & it is this muscular force that pressures the prostate glands to give up their fluid. Studies have backed this up, showing that the PC muscles contractions of female ejaculators were significantly stronger than (almost double) those who did not expel fluid forcefully. Those women with stronger pelvic muscles also experience significantly stronger voluntary uterine contractions. The strength of a man’s pelvic muscles may also play a role. Strong male pelvic muscles, so the theory goes, result in a penis which, when erect, angles right up against the man’s stomach, at an angle which is more effective for anterior wall stimulation.
Lack of stimulation of the anterior wall could certainly be a factor in suppressing female ejaculation; however, the length of stimulation time rather than an absence of stimulation due to position is likely to be the culprit with face-to-face sex.
Finally, a new & radical theory of female ejaculation is that most, if not all, women do ejaculate prostatic fluid, but that in many women this fluid, or part of it, is not expelled outside the body. Rather it is pushed back down the urethra the other way – into the bladder. In other words, it is ejaculated, but in a retrograde manner. This change in ejaculation direction, retrograde ejaculation, is not uncommon in men, & is directly related to lax or ineffective pelvic musculature. This results in a lack of closure of the internal bladder valve & ejected semen is forced backwards into the bladder.
Some women ejaculate before orgasm, some during & some after.
Even though that most men say they are not aware when a woman is ovulating, their bodies know, as they respond physiologically with increased testosterone levels.
The smell of a man’s armpit sweat appears to regulate & optimise ovarian function, as measured by the length of the menstrual cycle.
Menstrual synchrony is a common phenomenon in human females.
In an amazing coincidence 29.5 days, a woman’s optimal fertility cycle length, is the moon’s periodicity too. Women tend to bleed in concert with the full moon & ovulate with the new moon when enjoying the company of men. In contrast, celibacy being predominantly in the company of women, leaves menstruation tending to coincide with the new moon & ovulation, if it occurs at all, with the full.
It seems the more sex, the greater the likelihood of spontaneous ovulating.
Many unexpected pregnancies are thought to flow from the erroneous belief that it’s impossible to conceive a child late in a woman’s cycle. As these parents know, sexual intercourse can all too easily stimulate ovulation & result in conception.
The degree of male stimulation (the more thrusts) the more eggs are released. (voles & rats)
The smell of a sibling, offspring or the opposite sex – these are all odours that women & men can pick out.
Human body odours are also influenced by a person’s genetic make-up, & women are capable of smelling differences as small as one gene.
How a man smells is one of the most important factors in choosing whether to be sexual with him or not.
Women on the pill are more likely choose man with MHC genes similar to their own, rather than favouring the fertility-enhancing smell of a man with dissimilar MHC profile, effectively sabotaging what nature has spent millions of years setting up.
In the eighteenth, nineteenth & twentieth century the conclusion that female orgasms were necessary in order to maintain physical & mental health lead to the standard medical treatment, manipulation to orgasm by physicians & midwives.
From 1883 English doctor & inventor Joseph Granville provided much needed relief for physicians & their patients by inventing the electro-mechanical vibrator.
Aristotle adds that both women & men are tired after ejaculation.
In the laboratory, the record for the greatest number of orgasms in an hour goes to a woman who achieved an eye-watering 134.
In a study comparing the time to orgasm of women who are multiply orgasmic with singly orgasmic women, it was observed that, on average, multiply orgasmic women took eight minutes to reach orgasm, whereas singly orgasmic women to twenty-seven minutes. Interestingly, the average time to second orgasm for the multiply orgasmic women was only one or two minutes, as if the first orgasm had primed their bodies. After the second orgasmic event, subsequent orgasms tended to take even less time – thirty second intervals were not uncommon & a few fifteen second intervals were recorded.
One of the most startling resent discoveries about the characteristics of orgasm is that these muscle contractions are one of the first sensations humans ever experience.
The current observations seem to show not only that the excitement reflex be evoked in male & female foetuses at the third trimester of gestation but also that the orgasmic reflex can be elicited during intra-uterine life.
And if I was hell-bent on classifying, I’d say that the first orgasm location was clitoral, the second a G spot, the third cervical, the fourth vaginal & the fifth anal. Importantly, though, when it comes down to it, most women will experience a blend of the above.
Non-genital orgasms – orgasms resulting from erotic & rhythmic stimulation of the back of the neck, small of the back, bottom of the foot, palm of the hand, breasts, mouth, knees, ears, shoulder, chin & chest have all been recorded. Even fantasy without any physical stimulation can result in orgasm.
Studies show that women’s pain thresholds increase by over 100% as a result of orgasmic vaginal & cervical stimulation.
Catherine Blackledge, The story of V
A few statistics aptly illustrate the magnitude of today’s dilemmas:
1. Over 60% of the population-150 million Americans – live in areas where carbon monoxide levels & ozone pollution are considered unsafe.
2. Every year industry releases more than 2.4 billion pounds of hazardous chemicals into our atmosphere.
3. Air pollution is responsible for an estimated 50,000 premature deaths every year.
4. Up to 1,700 cancer deaths each year can be attributed to toxic air pollution.
5. Every year more than 250,000 children suffer from respiratory problems due to air pollution.
6. Our drinking water is polluted with more than 2,100 toxic chemicals.
7. In 1966 the average American ingested 3 pounds of chemical food additives every year. Today we consume an average of 9 pounds of chemical food additives every year.
8. More than 240 million prescriptions for antibiotics are written each year.
Jason Elias & Kathrine Katcham, Chinese Medicine...
He is a man without a past or future, stuck in a constantly changing, meaningless moment. (Korsakov’s syndrome)
The sense of body is given by three things: vision, balance organs & proprioception.
Her face bore no deeper expression whatever. Her world had been voided of feeling 7 meaning. Nothing any longer felt ‘real’ or ‘unreal.’ Everything was now ‘equivalent’ or ‘equal’ – the whole world reduced to a facetious insignificance. I found this somewhat shocking – her friends & family did too – but she herself, though not without insight, was uncaring, indifferent, even with a sort of funny-dreadful nonchalance or levity.
Oliver Sacks, from The man who mistook his wife for a hat
We are nothing but a bundle or collection of different sensations, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, & are in a perpetual flux & movement.
Hume
The ego is first & foremost a body-ego.
Freud
At times the conviction of my want of being myself was overwhelming & most painful. It was a deficiency in the egotistic sentiment of individuality.
George Dedlow
The first noble truth taught by the Buddha is the presence of suffering. Awareness of suffering generates the will to practice the way. When I returned to France after trying to help the boat people, life here seemed so strange. I had just seen refugees being robbed, raped, & killed at sea, while in Paris, the shops were filled with every kind of product & people were drinking coffee & wine under neon lights. It was like a dream. How could there be such discrepancies? Aware of the depth of suffering in the world, I vowed not to live superficially.
Thich Nhat Hanh
80% of Australians dream of making a radical change in their lives.
Readers Digest 2004
After 2-3 yrs we develop a tolerance for the oxytocin released from our romantic relationship.
Dr Michael J Bader from ‘Arousal’
DVD’s you MUST see:
1. An inconvenient truth (18 copies in GC library)
2. Blowin’ in the wind (1 copy in GC library)
3. The corporation (1 copy in GC library)
4. Fahrenheit 9/11 (6 copies in GC library)
5. Bowling for Columbine (6 copies in GC library)
6. The end of suburbia (4 copies in GC library)
7. Earthlings
8. Crude impact
9. Manufactured landscapes
10. Control room
11. Outfoxed
12. Loose change
13. The awful truth (two seasons)
14. Sicko
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