Books

Discover and worship the guru within! (Kumare)

BecHa — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:57:00 GMT

Kumare, Kumare, Kumaaaaareeee...

I just saw the most amazing documentary film ever (@ IDFA - thanks, Antony!) : Kumare ( www.kumaremovie.com)

It is a story about a guru who is trying to teach his followers that they do not need a guru. Paradox and contradiction - the basis of all the truth ;-) It is not a new idea, but the movie represents it in a original, powerful yet funny way. At the same time, it is controversial - how can he teach the truth through false methods - lies and deception? The irony of it makes it even more interesting.

The conclusions were: proven the initial premises that:

people do need to follow $guru (messiah / teacher / master)
people are gullible and naive
people are also strong and resourceful and indeed have a guru within that they can rely on for personal development and even enlightenment

I saw the director, Vikram Gandhi. He was answering questions. He is way cool! I do want him to be my guru ;-)

And another funny fact: he calls his most popular meditation "Bluelight meditation" -- just like the fictional/educational LIR that we invented 6 years ago :)

Life imitates art

The story of false or authentic "guru" has been described in many many forms already, and is one of my favorite topics (since I am a Natural Born Groupie).

Most of my examples are books; but I will start this list with the movie it reminds me the most of: Life of Brian:

BRIAN: I'm not the Messiah! Will you please listen? I am not the Messiah, do you understand?! Honestly!
GIRL: Only the true Messiah denies His divinity.
BRIAN: What?! Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right! I am the Messiah!
FOLLOWERS: He is! He is the Messiah!
BRIAN: Now, fuck off!

BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. 
You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we're all individuals!
BRIAN: You're all different!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS: I'm not.
ARTHUR: Shhhh.
FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.
BRIAN: You've all got to work it out for yourselves!
FOLLOWERS: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!
BRIAN: Exactly!
FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!

The books:

llusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is a novel by Richard Bach. One of my favorite books ever...
"S.", by John Updike, a novel about Sarah Worth as she leaves her husband and suburban life behind to join her guru, a Hindu religious leader known as Arhat, at his Arizona-based ashram. And it so happens that the guru is a "fake".. for some definition of "fake", if there is a "real" guru in each one of us...
If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him! The pilgrimage of psychotherapy patients
The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), written by Hanif Kureishi,

Stripping the Gurus Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment* by Geoffrey D. Falk
And, of course, the basis of them all: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
"experience is shown as the best way to approach understanding of reality and attain enlightenment"

Natural Born Groupie

I like this topic because I identify with this search for meaning in following another person, althou I may thank my strong constitution for not ending up in any real "cult" (yet). I do have a tendency to adore idols and follow examples: only in the last few months I have found two new (personal) "gurus" , and rekindled my follow-ship of three already established (let's not call them old) gurus. Luckily for me, they are all kind to their disciples, and do not try to brainwash me or abuse their power. They are maybe even not aware of having disciples ;-) Only unaware Messiah is the the true Messiah ;-)

(quote from the HHGTTG: "To summarize : it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.")

A movie that illustrates the groupie phenomenon: Almost Famous

And a real-life story of the corrupt guru, as heard from trusted friends from "Yoga in Daily Life", aka Swamiji. A warning: he is NOT as authentic and innocent as the Wikipedia article claims. There is a contraversy about him, which is not reflected in Wikipedia article. Yet another proof that it is healthy to maintain skepticism about the "truth" from any other source then *within*.

Conclusion: embrace the guru within! :)

(and go see the movie if you can; and read all the books mentioned above ;-)

Concensus & "kids"

BecHa — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:22:00 GMT

I am just back from CCC, where I got reminded of the cyber-libertarianism... And I bought a book, "Barefoot in Cyberspace". There's a quote there I find extremely relevant for me nowadays:

The youth caucus proposed taking the money to build another conference centre 
that could be run more sustainably. [...] But when the youth caucus submitted 
their proposal to the Grindstone Co-op adults, it was met with a cold scepticism 
Cory finds hard to bear even now.

“Grindstone had been started by Quakers who ran everything on a consensus basis,” says Cory, 
“But you can’t incorporate a consensus organisation. The by-laws had to have a basis 
for overcoming deadlocks. And so we had one – it was a majority vote of shares – but 
we had never really used it before.” It was this system that was used to decide the issue, 
and the youth caucus lost out. “It just flew in the face of the history of consensus,” Cory laments.

Although the youth wing received some of the grant money, which kept them going 
for a few more years, they eventually petered out. Cory is less than circumspect. 
“We might have petered out anyway but that was a real kind of angry activist split 
in my life where I felt like these people, who had said to us: ‘Our mission is 
to turn you into our successors and we recognise that young people have the capacity
 to do anything in the world,’ had then said: ‘Actually, that was just bullshit. 
Young people can’t really do anything, you know. Young people are just kids. 
You guys are just kids.’”

http://barefootintocyberspace.com/book/hypertext/

IPv6 in the popular literature (part 2)

BecHa — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:39:00 GMT

There is a new data-analysis toy called Google Books Ngram Viewer. "When you enter 2 or 3 phrases, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years."
I played with it, and compared mentions of IPv4 and IPv6. Surprisingly (?!), phrase IPv6 is mentioned more!!

Conclusions? People talk about IPv6, since it needs pushing and promoting; people take IPv4 for granted, since it is already everywhere, but underlying and therefore not noticed.

IPv6 in the popular literature (part 1)

BecHa — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:44:00 GMT

While reading the one of the "legal thriller" books during vacation, I came across the mention of IPv6!! It was listed as one of the features of the "smartphone" that the main character was using... ("Ankyo 850 PC Pocket Smartphone" with "IPv4 and IPv6 dual stack support"). And it was published in 2005!
The book is "The Broker" by John Grisham.
Here is the picture of the pages, with the IPv6 highlighted...

So, I guess this is the proof that IPv6 as a technology is already deployed... oh, wait, did I mention that this is a work of fiction? ;-)
Stay tuned...

Remebering Olivia: Two years are gone...

BecHa — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:14:00 GMT

It was Olivia's second "birthday" on the 17th January. For me, the whole time around the new-year's eve is full of very painful memories... in retrospect.

(link to the long story on her site - not for the overly sensitive readers!)

So I was supposed to do something for her anniversary. But, apart from being painful, it was also getting complicated! By now it was becoming a formality -- but for me it was something very personal! My parents stayed in Amsterdam longer specially for this occasion (and other reasons, but hey...). They were expecting me to do something. I could not even talk to them -- I hate to always have to act tough and in control and responsible, even when I am falling apart and need support. And of course, they could not talk to me. Nana tried, but it was a wrong moment, and too late anyway. I did not arrange anything with Camiel in advance -- it is still difficult for me to make agreements with him. I was not ready to make a final decision about what to do with Olivia's ashes. And the only person I could talk with was Angel (and my therapist). But even with him was getting more complicated, so I decided to not decide.

I asked Alisa: what shall we do for Olivia's second birthday? And she said: "We can go to Artis, she would like that. She would be just able to walk, and talk a little..". Wow! The fact Alisa knows that babies of two are able to walk and talk is amazing in itself! So, that's what we did: Alisa, Charlie, Angel and me, we went to Artis. And Olivia, in our hearts and minds. We went to the Japanese restaurant for dinner. It was a very nice day after all.

When I was looking at the butterflies in the zoo, I was thinking of her as one of them - such a short time on this earth, and still so beautiful and powerfully influencing so many lives...

Several people remembered, and sent me their thoughts and support. Thank you! And Bogdan brought flowers.

Another thing I did in her memory was to bring about 150 books for the library in the Lucas-Andreas hospital -- the one I associate with Olivia. I've called many times to arrange it; Alisa and me have put the stamp of the letter "O" in all the books; I took them there in 3 boxes, loaded in my "bakfiets"; and cried all the way there and all the way back. My idea was -- create a mini-memorial-library, and also help patients there by giving them books to read. // Unfortunately, two weeks later they called me to come and take the books back: the letters were too small for sick people to read. Ah well. It was a good intention. Now I have to wait for the Book Crossing event in April in Amsterdam.

Parenting training: Theory

BecHa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:03:00 GMT

I am following parenting training for few months now: "Gordon Method" Parent Effectiveness Training (here is the main web site ).

I love it! It is in Dutch, so my Dutch is improving, and it is the exact way of learning "positive Dutch" that I have wished to do some years ago, but could not find a way; it is with a group of parents, and it helps to compare my own situation & "problems" with the problems of others, and to see that it is "normal" to have those, that everyone has the same (going to sleep // getting to school in time // getting dressed // eating together // fighting...).

The main benefits I got from the course by now are -- to be more relaxed and less demanding from children (and myself); to enjoy my time with children more; and to re-evaluate many many things about myself.

Another good thing is that I already learned a lot about it from other similar techniques:

"7 habits..." - of highly effective people (my interpretation) & - of highly effective families.
"How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk"
Optimistic Child
Parenting for Everyone
Buddhism for Mothers
.. and here is their own comparison to other techniques .

As "democratic" parenting, this is already a big step for me, coming from the "autocratic" background, but there is the next step - respectful or reciprocal parenting, as in my favorite book "Your Competent Child" by Jesper Juul

It is also translated to: Hrvatski / Srpski (Vase kompetentno d(ij)ete), Dutch, and Spanish ( Los valores para la familia hoy & Su hijo, una persona competente. Hacia los nuevos valores basicos de la familia).

Juul proposes that relationships are [based] "... on dignity and reciprocity between parent and child. Children are competent to express their feelings from birth, and they are eager to cooperate. It is parents who must work to listen to and learn from their children. When our children's behavior makes us feel less than valuable, then it is almost always because we are. That is, prior to a conflict, we were unable to convert our loving feelings into loving behavior, our good intentions into fruitful interaction."

Even the mainstream media pick up something from Gordon-like teaching: article

The most recent lesson we had was about "conflict resolution", and here is the funny video from TEDxAMS (You Tube), and here is the view of the book: GRRR by Aernoud Boudrez.

Still, this wise saying is true:
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is."

My next post will be more about practice (I hope).

Happy Parenting

BecHa — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Is "Happy Parenting" an oxymoron (a contradiction-in-terms)?? Is it a good final goal, un-achievable but worth striving to? Or can it be day-to-day reality?

I am reading, re-reading and sweating over these books recently: "Liberated Parents / Liberated Children" (Your Guide to a Happier Family) by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish & "How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk" (You can stop fighting with your children! ) by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

This is their promise:

"Find out how the mood in your home can change when you respond:

To feelings
- + "A scratch can hurt."
- - Instead of, "Stop crying. It's only a scratch"

To mishaps
- + "The milk spilled. We need a sponge."
- - Instead of, " Now look what you did!"

To misbehavior
- + "Walls are not for writing on. Paper is for writing on."
- - Instead of, "Bad boy! No more crayons for you!

The Mom Song

BecHa — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:17:00 GMT

"The Mum Song" is so brilliant, I was laughing so much that I had to cry! But it is also quite sick, it's enough to make me cry anyway -- to think that this is what I hated to hear from my mother, and now I am telling it all to my children!! Is there a way out of that vicious cycle?!
Yes, there is a way to break the circle! There must be! And I am studying it, very very hard, but it goes very very slow...
The steps along the way include "Positive Psychology", NLP, "How to talk to kids", Byron Katie and "Loving What Is", how to stop being "The Emotional Hostage", "When Love is Love and Food is Food", "LEarned Optimism", "& habits of highly effective families"... Links to all these you can find yourself -- for now, just laugh - and/or cry - to the opposite:

The Mom Song Lyrics

Get up now
Get up now
Get up out of bed
Wash your face
Brush your teeth
Comb your sleepy head
Here’s your clothes
And your shoes
Hear the words I said
Get up now
Get up and make your bed
Are you hot?
Are you cold?
Are you wearing that?
Where’s your books and your lunch and your homework at?
Grab your coat and your gloves and your scarf and hat
Don’t forget you got to feed the cat
Eat your breakfast
The experts tell us it’s the most important meal of all
Take your vitamins so you will grow up one day to be big and tall
Please remember the orthodontist will be seeing you at three today?
Don’t forget your piano lesson is this afternoon

So you must play
Don’t shovel
Chew slowly
But hurry
The bus is here
Be careful
Come back here
Did you wash behind your ears?
Play outside
Don’t play rough
Would you just play fair?
Be polite
Make a friend
Don’t forget to share
Work it out
Wait your turn
Never take a dare
Get along
Don’t make me come down there
Clean your room
Fold your clothes
Put your stuff away
Make your bed
Do it now
Do we have all day?
Were you born in a barn?
Would you like some hay
Can you even hear a word I say?
Answer the phone
Get Off the phone
Don’t sit so close
Turn it down
No texting at the table
No more computer time tonight
Your iPod’s my iPod if you don’t listen up

Where you going and with whom and what time do you think you’re coming home?
Saying thank you, please, excuse me
Makes you welcome everywhere you roam
You’ll appreciate my wisdom
Someday when you’re older and you’re grown
Can’t wait ’til you have a couple little children of your own
You’ll thank me for the counsel I gave you so willingly
But right now
I thank you NOT to roll your eyes at me
Close your mouth when you chew
Would appreciate
Take a bite
Maybe two
Of the stuff you hate
Use your fork
Do not you burp
Or I’ll set you straight
Eat the food I put upon your plate
Get an egg A, Get the door
Don’t get smart with me
Get a Grip
Get in here I’ll count to 3
Get a job
Get a life
Get a PhD
Get a dose of reality
I don’t care who started it
You’re grounded until your 36
Get your story straight
And tell the truth for once for heaven’s sake
And if all your friends jumped off a cliff
Would you jump too?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said at least a thousand times before that
You’re too old to act this way
It must be your father’s DNA
Look at me when I am talking
Stand up straight when you walk
A place for everything
And everything must be in place
Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about
Oh!
Brush your teeth
Wash your face
Get your PJs on
Get in bed
Get a hug
Say a prayer with Mom
Don’t forget
I love you
**KISS**
And tomorrow we will do this all again because a mom’s work never ends
You don’t need the reason why
Because
Because
Because
Because
I said so
I said so
I said so
I said so
I’m the Mom
The mom
The mom
The mom
The mom
Ta-da

Link to YouTube video

Still amazed by it all...and "Geeks" by Jon Katz

BecHa — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:52:00 GMT

I am so excited by the idea that I will make a pause on my journey, to spend some time on the Central Station in Amsterdam, before I move on to the camping in Bakkum - to post a blog entry! I will find a (KPN) HotSpot, connect to it with my XS4All username & password, and just post what I was writing on the train! And check my email, while I'm connected.

(it didn't work after all - there's that anoying side of the technology too, when it doesn't work)

(I will look for the links to include in this article later; and I will make a special category about Technology & Internet later (maybe even come up with a better name ;-) )

Before I went to Berlin, I looked up the second-hand English books bookshops, and found Another Country. (I collect books bought on my travels; sometimes Alice & Little Prince in the local language, and sometimes just books that I find and like.) It has been my mission to visit this bookshop, and I accomplished it: I went there just before the concert (another blog entry). It was everything that the guide promised! Cosy atmosphere (chaotic and untidy, but in the charming way), books are, on the other hand, sorted by genre and alphabetically, big collection, great choice, very friendly staff - perfect place!!

And I found a book, very appropriate for the spirit of my visit to Berlin: "Geeks" by Jon Katz.

Just reading the introduction to it (during (hotel) breakfast, mmm) gave me goose-bumps from the recognition and identification - YES, that is my world, YES, those are my friends, YES, to that sub-culture I proudly belong to (in my own way)!

I am also part of the "Rise of Geek-dom", I am part of the elite that is building the Internet: the new technological paradigm, the fastest-growing mass-medium, the next revolutionary communication means for the human race, and the hottest (or coolest ;-) social movement in our time. I work for one of the central places for the Internet development in Europe: RIPE NCC. Before this, I was working for the most important Internet phenomenon in Serbia in the '90s - Radio B92 & Opennet. And I am part of the most informal but very influential group of "hackers" (geeks?) in Amsterdam: Hippies From Hell. And by friendly association, somehow also of CCC in Berlin.

And the book didn't even start yet ;-)

Health Food Junkies & Orthorexia Nervosa

BecHa — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:03:00 GMT

Some time ago I read the book called "When Food is Love", by Geneen Roth.

(I bought the book in Vienna, and the title attracted me because I think that both my mother (and father?) and Camiel tried/try to give me food as an expression of their love... and probably I'm doing it to my kids, too...)

But the book was about "emotional eating", and our unfulfilled emotions, and our relationship with food, as an illustration / reflection of our relationships with all kinds of other things: people, love, money, work, energy...

After reading it, I decided that I will love myself, and eat what I love to eat, and love what I eat, and will not wait until someone else gives me love and/or food...

Anyway, following the links from the web site of the author, I found out something else: a condition called Orthorexia Nervosa !!! (wikipedia): an obsession with healthy or rightful or righteous eating.

I think I had that for many years, but that I got out of it. And I'm afraid Camiel is still having that condition (it happens a lot with raw-food people, vegan and macrobiotic people...). The problem with this "eating disorder" is that it can become dangerous for the physical health, apart from the influencing social life and emotional states... And what's even worse is when it's mixed with raising children... So, I am trying to do soemthing about it, but it's a slow and uncharted process...

The term itself (orthorexia)was introduced in 1997 by Steven Bratman, the author of the book "Health Food Junkies" (amazon). I bought it, and I'm reading it slowly.

There are also several good and interesting articles about orthorexia: here, here and here.

Just for the balance, I also bought "The China Study", too (amazon) -- a scientific proof of macrobiotic rules ;-)

I'll compare the two...

And as a Xmas treat & Xmas wish (I'd like to attend that workshop myself!), a link to the workshop called WHEN FOOD IS FOOD AND LOVE IS LOVE (Transforming the Heart and Soul of Emotional Eating).