Last week I took my 10 y.o. son to the “Occupy Wall Street” hang out so he could see the democracy in action.
Since I have predicted these kind of protests in my “From Middle East to Middle of America” piece in February, I was particularly interested in witnessing this protest.
Although I consider myself one of the 99% unrepresented people in the US by either politicians or the media, and “The 99%” is the subtitle of this protest, I found that none of the tiny groups gathered in this tiny square represented me either. I am neither an anarchist, nor socialist nor Ron Paul fan.
The only guy who more-or-less spoke for me there was a little known scientist / politician Harry Braun of PhoenixProjectFoundation.us.. He was interesting to me not just because of the stories he told of scientific inventions ready to change the world but stalled because The Big Corporations were against them, but because he rightfully suggested that THE ONLY WAY TO CIRCUMVENT THE BIG BUSINESS LOBBYING IS BY CALLING CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTIONS.
I believe that Big Business Lobbying is a huge part of all the wrong things that have lead to the present economic and political crisis.
This lobbying by the way is exactly why the “Free enterprise” ideology is nothing but a promotion of a dangerous myth.
In order to separate the mythology of “Free Enterprise” ideology from facts, one needs to examine history from the economics perspective.
Skipping the stone age, let’s start from slave labor based economics of the ancient Greece, Rome and the rest of the world, really, of that time.
The government regulated that economy by protecting the rights of slave owners and undermining the rights of slaves. The ancient countries and towns also had trade tariffs. Most importantly, social customs created “casts” that largely prevented poor people even if free to move up the social ladder and participate in profitable enterprise. So the enterprise was not quite free then.The economy, by the way, was of strictly “trickle down” variety, and middle class was no larger than 10% of society, where 1% were the rich and powerful, and the rest 89% were poor and poorer.
Entering the Middle Ages:
The economy was now feudal. The laborers were no longer slaves, even though they too could be bought and sold, and had no real freedom of movement within the territory and societal ladder. The middle class was still negligible, and the economy was still regulated by
a) societal customs of “casts” (i.e. the children of a tailor would be tailors, and peasants could not become aristocracy)
b) Laws that protected aristocracy and the rich and undermined the rights of everyone else
c) trade tariffs
So enterprise was not free either.
Moving on to the Industrial Age:
Breakthroughs in scientific discoveries were closely followed by technological advances, birthing industries that were as labor intensive as agriculture and required promotion of societal and migrational movement within society.
Since industries also required large financial investments, and money historically concentrated within the 1% of the rich and powerful, the same rich and powerful instituted new laws that allowed poor enough freedom to move around and enslave themselves for substandard wages to industrialists.
The many revolutions of that time, including the American one, were lead by rich and powerful (who were also the only educated people) that were able to capitalize on always present anger of the poor.
The American civil war was based on the fact that industrialized North needed laborers and could not afford slaves (who, besides being expensive, needed housing away from cities (segregation requirement) + transportation, etc.), so it needed to change the laws that favored the slave-labor based agricultural South. Everything else is a myth.
The large industries also needed the educated middle class to manage the many laborers, so education and money began to trickle down through the society, allowing for middle class growth.
While tariffs were still being implemented, the enterprise was largely unregulated, so it was at its freest stage.
Small businesses were popping up, the middle class was about 25%, but most of the wealth still belonged to the 1% of the rich and powerful that were investing into all big industries of that time (railroads, automotive business, oil, etc.).
Whenever these “Rubber Barons” encountered competition from a small business, they were either buying the small guy out or starve him out by lowering prices below cost (they were rich and they could afford it). Monopolies were easily achievable. Those industries that could not be gobbled up by 1 rich entity, resorted to fixing prices to keep the small guy at the bottom feed.
But that irked other rich people as well as now they also had difficulty entering the established industries (which were already monopolized or “fixed”), so new “Anti-monopoly and anti-trust” laws were put in place (although I still remember AT&T as a telephone monopoly).
But business went largely unregulated until the Great Depression.
This, however, did not create a happy prosperous society anywhere.
The nature of any business is to make as much profit as possible at the lowest possible cost. By the way, slaves are more expensive then laborers working for low wages. Besides being expensive outright, slaves need to be fed, clothed and housed. A free laborer must worry about all that himself and costs the lowest possible wage to the business. A business that is not regulated would not provide any health / retirement benefits if laborers have to compete for jobs. So large unemployment is good for business.
Businesses don’t care much about the future either. Their task is to maximize profits in the short run. Businesses don’t get sick or retire, they have no social conscience – they are not people. The owners of businesses may have conscience and may do charity. They may even make their business to give $ to charity if that generates good will and helps profit.
But any business is a money-making venture, pure and simple. Monopolies are good for businesses that can make it there; price fixing is profitable (many businesses continue doing this despite the regulations); cheap labor is coveted.
The more businesses are unregulated, the happier are the investors (the rich and powerful 1% of the society), and the harder it is on general population.
So during the early 20th century, the general population was living the tough life. In fact, the poor (70+%) were much, much angrier than even during the feudal times. They worked 80 hrs/ wk and barely made their ends meet for they were paid slave wages. They did not have the calming satisfaction of working the land and feeling one with nature. They felt used. So new revolutions were taking place all over: Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc.
Countries that did not have full-blown revolutions, had plenty of unrest that was met with new laws favoring more equality.
The U.S. was no exception. The government had to relent and give legitimacy to unions. The Great Depression necessitated financial regulations to be put in place.
Since unions had money and bargaining power, the Big Business has finally met its match.
It was forced to pay living wages and benefits to its workers, and the middle class began to grow exponentially.
With the growth of the middle class came prosperity and much greater degree of equality.
The Big Business could not give up, however.
So
a)It made lobbying into an institution in order to persuade the government to do what it needed the government to do. For example, the oil industry needed to
1) keep other sources of energy out
2) get free ride from taxes and, on pretenses of needing the money to keep exploring oil fields, get subsidies and tax loop-holes
3) influence the international politics to keep oil countries in its pocket through war or piece, etc.
In fact, the government of every industrialized nation became mainly the promoter of the Big Business agenda.
b) The Big Business began privately funding “Think Tanks” in order to create so-called experts and promoters of ideology that suited the Big Business, and the “Conservative Movement” was born
c) The Big Business created organizations like ALEC, where 19 major corporations, like AT&T, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, etc., meet with Republican politicians and give them the policies they would like to implement
d) The Big Business created the myth of “Liberal Left-leaning media” and began to promote its ideology via “alternative” conservative media.
I don’t remember who said at the advent of mass media that whoever controls the media he controls the world. Both, Hitler and Stalin knew and did that very well.
You would think that in the U.S. this would be difficult to implement. But people forget that media is also Big Business. So it was never liberal. Perhaps, it used to be more fair-handed by making profit through exposing popular opinion.
But since “liberal Media” myth was created, media has been scared to expose the polular opinion, and now is exposing the fringe opinion only, so the 99% of population feel left out.
Frankly, being part of this 99%, I never really cared much for either politics or economics, until it hit me in the pocket.
All uprisings begin when people feel unfairly impoverished.
Since the richer and better educated Big Business has been now winning its fight with unions through the subtle strategies outlined above, and the 99% of the population are feeling it, the uprising has began.
Like I’ve been saying, Pluto, the demolition ball of the universe, has entered Capricorn, the sign of societal law and order, government and corporations, in December of 2008, and that what it is going to transform in the next 14 years (it is there through 2023).
So the Arab Spring and “Occupy Wall Street” are the buds of bigger things to come.
And, unless we can establish the constitutional conventions or elect smart politicians in both houses + the White House (too far-fetched, right?), we are facing a really rough ride as a society.
By the way, like I said, I am not a socialist. I am an owner of small business, who is trying to hang on to my middle class status.
Archive for the ‘education’ Category
THE ENEMIES IN OUR MIDST OR HOW TO KILL THE WORLD’S LARGEST ECONOMY
Posted by Ella Moss on June 11, 2011
I just heard on the news that the 3rd Al Queda biggie was killed, giving the U.S. the edge on that murky shapeless war on terror we have been officially waging since 2001.
While I am happy to hear these news, I think that even we were to win the 4 wars (1.this “war on terror”; 2. in Afghanistan; 3. in Iraq; 4. in Lybia), we’ve been waging since the fateful 2001 (and I am not counting the “war on drugs”), we are heading to lose our way of life.
It’s not the democracy I am worried about here, but material comfort and relative peace on the streets (outside of occasional shootings and muggings).
It appears that there has been another war waging, and it is on American economy.
It’s beginnings are murky. But I would trace it as far back as Reagan’s Administration, that first began an unofficial war on unions. Unions make labor-intensive manufacturing very expensive and eat into profits of investors.
Well, nobody likes unions (except for unions’ bosses), so what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that everybody likes the middle class.
The middle class is as essential to any economy, as an engine to a car. Without it, economy is dead.
Even if we were to end up with a few thousands of super rich dudes, while the rest of us would struggle to survive (i.e. the middle class would disappear completely), all the many billions of these super rich would not create the job growth a multi-million population requires. They would invest into emerging markets, not the dying ones.
Why would they create a factory of any kind in the U.S., where people are struggling to stretch a dollar to pay rent, bills and buy groceries and their discretional income is so tight that all they can afford is cheap Chinese goods in Walmart, when these super rich investors can build a factory in Brazil, or India, or same China, where people are eager to spend their increasing earnings?
By the way, is not it one of the main reasons, that the numbers of unemployed right now stay where they are despite us giving continuous tax breaks to these super rich?
Yes, the second attack on American economy began during the prosperous 1990s, when Clinton Administration signed away any kind of protection of American labor force, and internet was born (internet makes outsourcing a breeze).
Suddenly, American labor force had to compete with the labor force of other countries, and American people could no longer ask for wage increase, because the majority of the world’s labor force was so much cheaper and just as good.
It took about 10 years for Americans to notice that their incomes were stagnating while their bills grew. They kept waiting for their personal prosperity to come, while changing jobs, professions and investing into 401K and increasingly expensive real estate.
But Clinton Administration also approved the deregulation of financial markets.
Suddenly, the credit was so cheap and so available, that the American people have not noticed that their actual discretional income was dwindling to nothing.
Why worry, if one could still buy a McMansion, and buy even more stuff by turning the McMansion into an ATM machine?
Yes, 1990s were prosperous. The economy was booming as people were eager consumers. The problem was that everything was bought on credit rather then with actual money.
Everyone was expecting the actual income to catch up, as it used to.
But it did not, because so many jobs have either left the country or paid as much as in other (read CHEAPER) countries.
Eventually, the credit bubble had to burst, and it did in 2008.
If the federal government did not pump money into the banks that lost the money by lending it to population so indiscriminately, The economy would have simply collapse like it did in Argentina in 1990s.
Americans were saved, although suddenly they came face to face with their economic reality and realized they were so much poorer than a decade ago.
So many of them have lost their job, that those who did not no longer dared to ask for a wage increase or benefits or union perks. In fact, they started giving up their last benefits and perks just so they could keep a job.
And that is when the final attack on American economy began.
Since it was now the federal government that was pulling the economy down the road as its engine, the middle class, stalled, the enemies in our midst began to attack the federal government.
The ideas Obama put on the table were nothing short of brilliant: invest federal dollars into aging crumbling infrastructure and green economy – labor-intensive enterprises that must hire domestic labor force. Every created job would spur on 10s of other jobs, and the economy would begin humming again.
But the enemies in our midst thought otherwise. Suddenly, federal deficit began to be used as a panic-inspiring weapon of choice.
Of course, the surplus that Clinton Administration left the country with would have been a much better deal. But if credit is sparse everywhere else, how else would you come up with money needed to pump the economy?
The enemies in our midst said, “Let starve the federal government of tax income, let’s keep taxes low so the few super rich would invest their money into economy. The government is too big and lives beyond its means. Its deficit is going to bankrupt our children”.
Americans love their children, so anything threatening the kids works as a great scarecrow.
They are also badly educated (read my American Education Reform ).
So Obama’s proposals were decimated, the government began shedding its work force, unemployment came back to its pick numbers, and unions everywhere lost their power and benefits.
Now there is no one to pull our economy from the brink. Those who are employed, work at REDUCED wages, that are getting closer to the 3rd world range.
Meanwhile, every single life staple, like groceries, rent, cable bills, insurance, etc. doubled or more in price (as compared to 10 yrs ago or less). Even those who work at median salaries have less money to buy desirable but unnecessary things.
This means that businesses producing and selling anything that is not a life staple make less profit so they begin to shed their labor force.
The less there is labor force, the less income the government gets. Since deficit is now a dirty word, the government has no choice but shed its work force and cut services to the impoverished population.
Now the time came to put the final nails into the coffin of what used to be the largest world economy: refuse to raise the ceiling on federal credit.
Once the federal government loses its credit-worthiness, watch American economy collapse into THE GREATER THAN THE GREAT DEPRESSION ditch.
The idiot dream of labor-intensive manufacturers like Koch brothers would come true:
labor in America would become as cheap as in Africa.
Unfortunately, the American workers would no longer be able to afford using the toilet paper they manufacture for Koch brothers. Like their African brethren, they would have to use tree leaves to wipe their asses. So Koch brothers would eventually go broke too.
No, it is not the federal deficit that threatens the future of our children. It is our inability to discern the enemies in our midst.
As for the scary federal deficit, it was Reagan administration that first racked it up into the trillions. Then Bush administration turned the surplus into another multi-trillion dollar debt. No one screamed of deficit while republicans were in power. The congress did not attack neither of the republican presidents for taking us into expensive wars (Reagan’s Panama blitz, Nicaragua fiasco, etc.; Bush’s Afghanistan, Iraq and the amorphous war on terror).
No, I am not happy at all with Lybia war either. I just don’t think it matters much anymore.
Like I predicted in 2008, “FINANCIAL CRISIS – IT’S NOT OVER UNTIL IT’S OVER”
Posted in American economy, economy, education, education reform, FINANCES, global economy, labor market, opinion, personal finance, politics, predictions, Uncategorized | Tagged: Al Queda, Bush, deficit, economy, financial crisis, global economy, great depression, India, Iraq, money, news, Obama, outsourcing, politics, predictions, Reagan, recession, taxes, unemployment, war, worry | 4 Comments »
THE MOON
Posted by Ella Moss on March 20, 2011
Today, 3/19/11, the Moon comes closest to Earth in 18 years, and, as soon as it gets dark, I am heading across the street to the park to witness the most giant Moon of my life time.
To be sure, I’ve witnessed enormous moons in Catskills during summers of 2004 – 2006. The Moon was not anywhere near its perigee at that time, so I have no idea what has caused that phenomena.
The last time the Moon was at its perigee was in 1993 – the year my eldest nephew was born. He has conjunction of the Sun, the Moon, Venus and Mercury in Cancer. Since the Moon rules Cancer, he has got a truly powerful Moon in his chart!
He is a very bright young man. He aced through the best specialized public schools in NYC and now is studying in Hunter on full scholarship.
Everyone I’ve met with Sun / Moon conjuction in Cancer has impressed me with their powerful mind. When I was teaching at Manhattan Astrology School, I came across a few students with this combination. Without fail, they all were the brightest students of mine. They seemed to soak up my teachings so immediately and fully, as if they’ve read my mind and soak up my experience in addition to my spoken words.
Both, Cancer and Moon are ruled by water, which certainly adds psychic sensitivity to these people.
But Pisces, ruled by Neptune, is by far the most psychic of all zodiac signs. Yet my Pisces students and students with the Moon and / or ascendant in Pisces were much more ordinary. Also, regular Cancer students, or the students with the Moon or ascendant in Cancer did not impress me as much.
So it is the Sun/ Moon conjuction in Cancer that produces such agile minds.
In fact, people with Sun/ Moon conjunction in any sign tend to have a much greater IQ than average. Interestingly, many years ago, there was a lengthy article in one of the astrology magazines, where the author studied charts of members of some genius club in England. All members had to have 140+ IQ to be admitted.
The author produced 13 charts for that article, while studying Mercury positions there. What struck me though, that all of them contained Sun/ Moon conjunctions in various signs.
So to me, it is the Sun/ Moon conjunction that enhances our intellect, and, in my experience, this conjunction in Cancer trumps them all.
I should quickly add, that not having such conjunction does not lower your chances for brightness.
The mother of this nephew of mine has also been the brightest in my family for many years. She has no such conjuction, and her only planet in Cancer is Jupiter. Moreover, she was born in 1967 – an unremarkable year in terms of the Moon.
Now there is an even brighter person in our family: my other nephew, Anish Giri (born June 28, 1994), who is a chess prodigy. He met his final grandmaster norm at the age of 14 years, 7 months and 2 days when he beat Venezuelan GM Eduardo. He also became the youngest chess champion of Netherlands. On top of it, he is an excellent student and speaks 5 languages.
Yes, he is a Cancer, but with the Moon in Pisces. Like Cancer Sun/ Moon conjunction, this combination calls for extreme psychic impressionability, but it does not guarantee an exceptional IQ.
Interestingly, Vedic astrology favors full Moon charts when it comes to scoring higher intellect.
My own chart is such, and, although I never measured my IQ until a few years ago, I know that it must have been in 150+ range. I had photographic memory, was incredibly intuitive (my Moon is in Sagittarius – the sign of intuition) and managed to learn 4 years worth of middle and high-school physics in 3.5 days, scoring respectable B on the exam.
Unfortunately, the loss of almost all of my blood in 1998 robbed me of photographic memory, and then consistent lack of sleep for 3.5 yrs after giving birth to my son has taken another 20 points of my IQ. I am still bright enough to notice that I am not as smart as I used to be:)
But the point is, the Moon has a lot to do with how smart we are, much more so than Mercury – which represents the faculty of mind that is more akin to a computer. As we know, the most powerful computer would not be much of help to an idiot.
In traditional Western astrology, the quickness of the mind is measured by how fast the Moon was moving on the day of birth. Yet the Moon represents our feelings and emotions.
In Vedic astrology, the Moon represents the mind, period.
Yes, these 2 branches of astrology differ in much more ways than the what type of zodiac they use.
In Western astrology, the Moon invokes what we consider to be the soul: feelings, emotions, subconscious mind, while the Sun represents our self-identity (ego + super-ego). In Vedic, the Sun invokes the soul.
But those could be just cultural differences as in what the soul or mind/ consciousness mean to us.
What’s more interesting, that in Vedic astrology, the whole zodiac is dedicated to the Moon. Vedic astrology uses Siderial zodiac, which is based upon actual constellations of the ecliptic belt. These constellations are subdivided into 27 Moon mansions, and these 27 subdivisions represent the heart of Vedic astrology. Moreover, Vedic astrologers also like to read a chart from the position of the natal Moon.
This is so, perhaps, because emotional quotient of our lives is much more important to us then the events causing the emotions. In other words, we measure our lives not by how many breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
But it also could be that by ruling our subconscious mind, the Moon truly rules our lives.
I watch Bachelor from time to time, and I found this last season to be particularly fascinating for this reason. The Bachelor, Brad Womack, seriously fell for a single mom, who lost the father of her child to a plane crush 6 years ago. Even though she declared falling in love with Brad, she kept saying that the dead man IS the love of her life. She also admitted to sabotaging all her consequent relationships. Now we know she did the same to Brad.
I believe, consciously she may have been ready for a new man in her life. She said, she dreamt of a wedding, and she did go on The Bachelor despite being intensely private and reserved.
But subconsciously she does not want a relationship for a few reasons:
a) She is terrified of the pain of a possible heart-break (she is aware of that)
b) She is afraid to diminish the memories of her first love or even to cheat on them, perhaps, by replacing them by an actual relationship
I doubt she is aware of this second reason, but it is most likely the main reason why she sabotages her relationships.
There is possibly the 3rd reason:
c) Her great love for the dead man makes her special, and she is afraid to lose that “specialness”.
In other words, as much as she appears to be altogether, incredibly poised and coiffed, subconsciously she is a total mess, and without years of therapy, she is likely to remain single forever.
There was one scene in The Bachelor, that was especially telling to me:
Brad comes over and tries to declare his palpable love for her by saying that he is ready to be the real father to her daughter. But instead of accepting this declaration for what it was, she is grilling him on what does he know about being a father.
So no matter how she may want a relationship consciously, she is most likely to go without it for subconscious reasons.
In fact, every time we fail at something we consciously desire, we should take a good look at our subconscious needs.
As another example of subconsciousness being truly in charge of our lives, I may give you my observations of the homeless men I’ve got to know while volunteering for Coalition For The Homeless some years ago: they all thought badly of money. They called it “The devil’s issue”, “the evil”, “the plague”, etc. I realized then that they all were homeless not because of mental illness, alcoholism, or drug addiction most of them suffered from – as there are plenty of rich crazies, alcoholics and drug-addicts. These ones were poor because subconsciously they were afraid of money.
When we come out of the womb, we are already equipped with our subconscious mind, as oppose to all other mental faculties that take some time to develop.
That’s why the Moon in a natal chart is also associated with the mother (the first person we get to know), and with nurturing (the first activity we are exposed to). As we begin to grow, these psychological roots expand to include home, family, country and all we know we belong to. And all these psychological roots are ruled by the Moon.
Memories, both conscious and subconscious, are how our psychological roots grow, and, of course, the Moon rules our memories.
People like me, with Mercury in Cancer (the sign ruled by the Moon) are famous for our excellent memories.
I am, maybe, more so than others, since I remember 27 of my many past lives.
Of course, not all of these memories occurred to me naturally. While only 2 have appeared to me consciously unprompted, the rest came via deep meditation, past lives regressions, recapitulation and other techniques.
This brings me to what I think the Moon really represents: our astral bodies.
When we die, we leave only physical body behind. But our souls have other bodies: astral, casual, etc. When we re-incarnate, the astral body keeps the imprints of all our previous lives. Those memories don’t disappear. They are simply relegated to the subconscious realm, and so are relatively easy to be accessed.
But like the real Moon that is visible to us only when the Sun sets, we can see our subconsciousness when the conscious mind is temporarily shut off. This is called hypnosis. After all, as a certified hypnotherapist, I should know this. And as such, I’ve been privileged to glimpse the incredible subconscious realm.
There, our calendar age easily coexist with our babyhood, and feelings generated by a past life centuries ago are as strong as if time did not exist.
In fact, to our subconsciousness TIME DOES NOT EXIST. It only knows the present, and it cannot differentiate between events of a life long past and the present.
It is also easily malleable – just like a baby. Yet our conscious mind -the grown up in us, represented by the Sun astrologically – is powerless before it. As long anyway, as it does not venture into the vast darkness of the subconsciousness.
Until then, we may only think we know why we relate to the world the way we do. The true reasons – the memories, the feelings – are buried in the Moon’s realm.
There are many good reasons for why the luminaries, the Sun and the Moon, are given rulership to the day (conscioness / the Sun) and the night (subconsciousness / the Moon) of our being. If you were, say, a serial killer in a previous life, you would not want these memories to surface now. You might not be able to live with yourself in this life.
Each life is given to us as an opportunity to redeem ourselves, and each new identity we develop when reincarnating is, in a sense, a clean slate that allows us to start anew. While our subconsciousness keeps track of all our karmic debts, not knowing them consciously helps finding new solutions to old problems.
Interestingly, this all powerful satellite of ours, the Moon, has been slowly moving away from us. While this is totally unnoticeable in one life time, 100,000 years ago the Moon would have seem as huge at its apogee as it does now at its perigee. I can only imagine what the slow disappearance of the Moon may mean for humanity. Does it mean that in a million years from now, humans will remember all their past lives? Does it mean that our descendants then would no longer be slaves to the misconceptions of their subconsciousness? Would they lose emotions completely or simply be able to control them perfectly?
Are we going to lose the tides of the oceans and would our volcanoes go silent?
When eclipses disappear, would it mean that so would the reasons for these bad omens?
Talking about eclipses, I think I wrote The Meaning Of Solstice Eclipse too soon. Look what happened in Japan. Plus, we started THE THIRD WAR in the Middle East, and Republicans are using whatever power they have regained to kill our fledging economy completely.
Normally, such terrible powers emanate only from Solar eclipses, but this one was LUNAR. And with the Moon at its perigee, it now appears to be more sinister than ever. Not to mention, that it ties into the great grand cross of 2010, falling into 1st cardinal degree.
Perhaps, I’ve misread Mars as the trigger point of that Grand Cross. I am relatively new to mundane astrology, and so eclipses are hard for me to read yet. But, perhaps, the real trigger was this sinister lunar eclipse that fell on the darkest night of the year. Certainly, 2011 is shaping as the most unsettling year for humanity, and the solstice eclipse is the obvious harbinger of this swirling darkness all around. After all, the darkness is the realm of the Moon.
Posted in American economy, astrology, economy, education, enlightenment, FINANCES, global economy, politics, predictions, spirituality, Uncategorized | Tagged: Anish Giri, astral body, astrological predictions, astrology, astrology school, Brad Womack, Cancer, economy, global economy, Grand Cross, homeless, hypnosis, IQ, Japan, karmic debts, life, Lunar Mansions, middle east, mind, money, Moon, mother, night, Pisces, politics, power, predictions, relationships, republicans, school, soul, subconsciousness, The Bachelor, the Sun, Vedic astrology, war, worry | 5 Comments »
LIBERATION
Posted by Ella Moss on December 5, 2010
The buildings blocks of human life are not DNA (that is just software). The building blocks of our lives are concepts: the concept of oneself, the concept of surrounding reality; the concept of happiness, etc.
When our concepts are wrong, so is the life that we build for ourselves, and we end up unhappy.
We may mask our unhappiness with chocolate, sex, drugs and/ or shopping – buying a temporary fix of serotonin so we don’t notice our true emotional state.
But when we refuse to see that our concepts are wrong, we get sick. Chronic illnesses are the result of chronic unhappiness.
Since most of us barricade ourselves behind the wrong concepts, most of us end up ill, and so pharmaceutical and medical industries are the major industries of the modern world.
Most of our concepts are wrong, because most of us watch TV and read newspapers.
But it is not negative news that kills us, it is the advertisement.
We all are victims of relentless marketing, because advertisement slips in the suggestions to our subconsciousness on what concepts we should acquire.
The beloved American Dream is: a wife / husband + 2.5 kids + dog / cat in a spacious McMansion with formal dining room, family room on top of living room, more bedrooms and bathrooms then one can count; manicured front lawn and a large backyard with a swimming pool, 2+ cars garage; college education and successful careers.
The suburbs are full of such families, and most of them are uniquely unhappy.
I too had a concept of happiness similar to that, except that I hate suburbs and prefer to live in a city but would love a house in a country as well.
This dream fell apart 3 years ago when I found myself physically ill because I no longer could stomach my marriage. So we’ve separated.
In fact, my concept of happiness began to destruct 5 years ago, when my husband said, “Let’s make a girl you’ve always wanted”. It’s true: since I was a little girl, I always wanted to have 2 children: first, a boy, and then a girl.
When my son was born, I wanted to wait at least 5 years before another pregnancy as he was a difficult baby and I always favored a larger age separation between children.
The timing of my husband’s offer was perfect. Yet I felt physically nauseated at the thought and knew the minute he said it that I really don’t want another child.
I underlined “really”, because that is when I began to realize that my concept of happiness did not suit me in my reality.
My life got only tougher in 2007, when, 2 months after I separated from my husband, I lost my major client and The Great Financial Crisis walked into my door.
Three years later, I am a single mom working 60+ hours / wk and on the verge of losing $300/ month of my child support and the babysitter (who is my estranged husband), because his unemployment benefits are set to expire in January. The only job he may get at this point would only cover his rent and food, so he would not be able to spare a dollar for his son. Once working, he would also be unable to pick his son from school twice a week for guitar lessons and choir practice.
That means, life for my son and I is going to get so much tougher.
As I was contemplating this while doing my X-Mass shopping, suddenly my thoughts went into completely different direction:
I started thinking of what REALLY makes me happy, and here’s list:
1) Watching TV with my son, while laying next to him on the couch
2) Dancing with my friends at my annual New Year’s Eve party (the only time I get to dance lately)
3) Talking with my friends in the park, while we watch our kids play and enjoy the beauty of the park
4) doing yoga by the lake in the summer
And then I started thinking back, collecting the very best moments in my life in my memory:
1) I was about 13 y.o. in a summer camp, when I discovered laying in the boat watching the sky. The boat would lull softly under me to the swishing of light waves, and the ever changing beauty of the sky would engross me completely
2) I was about 14 y.o. when I looked out of the window and was caught by the beauty of the falling snow so much that I ran outside and was dancing in the night with the snowflakes
3) I was 17 y.o., laying in the sweetly smelling summer field and feeling THE ONENESS with the earth, the grass, the sky….
4) I was 19 y.o., homeless, living in someone’s basement when THE LIGHT came over me and I SAW AND SPOKE TO GOD.
5) I was in my early twenties, galloping on the naked horse up the hill, when I suddenly thought, “This moment makes the whole life worth living”
6) The same thought occurred to me when in 1993 I was skiing down a sunny slope on Mount Snow, the day after I witnessed the first WTC bombing and quit my job.
7) In 1997, in the jungles of Nepal, I have encountered such a breath-taking peacefulness and beauty that, as I was sliding in the canoe next to man-eating crocodiles sunning by the shore, I could almost pet them, while Himalayan picks were hovering in the distance and the yellow flowers all around me went so well with the blue shades of the sky and the mountains….
8) The kiss I shared with my husband when our son was born
9) The first time my son was skiing the green slope
10) My son singing Santa Lucia at a concert, and strangers screaming “Bravo”, because he sang so beautifully…
Please, don’t get me wrong. I had many, many wonderful moments in my life, and many exciting adventures.
Still, if I die today, these 10 moments would be the crown glory of my life.
Meanwhile, I am killing myself making a buck so I could spend it on some thing I am told would make me or my son happy, worrying about his education, because he would need a good job in order to have his McMansion, 2.5 kids, a wife and a pet.
And no time to watch the sky, dance with the snow flakes, smell the roses…..
I was rich, and I was poor, I had 2 husbands and 3 weddings, and many, many interesting happenings in my life, but only 10 moments of pure and absolute joyful happiness.
Interestingly, most of these moments came to me when I’ve liberated myself from some concept of happiness so I could be one with naked reality.
So I am not going to stress myself of what is going to come in January once my ex’ unemployment benefits run out. I am going “to smell the roses”, making a point of noticing the beauty of each day around me, snuggling next to my son every evening and NOTICING MY HAPPINESS, instead of struggling to fit a concept of happiness and cry about what’s missing from it or MAY GO MISSING.
In fact, it is our fears of not getting something or losing something that make us miserable and cheap away at happiness that is our true Divine nature and so is always there, if only we could take time to notice… Everything else is but a concept.
I am liberating myself from concepts and fears created by them – that’s my New Year resolution.
Posted in American economy, economy, education, enlightenment, personal finance, spirituality | Tagged: advertisement, American dream, economy, fears, financial crisis, God, HAPPINESS, health care, Himalaya, illness, jobs, liberation, life, Love, marriage, money, mother, New Year resolution, parenthood, real estate, recession, relationships, smelling the roses, spirituality, unemployment, worry, X-Mass, X-Mass shopping | 3 Comments »
AMERICAN EDUCATION REFORM
Posted by Ella Moss on October 5, 2010
I went to a regular public school in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. Like all Russian kids, I started school at 7 years of age.
That is the good age to start school, because a typical child should already develop abstract thinking by that time, so learning math is easier.
Since I became an avid reader at the age of 4, I soon became bored at t school. Unlike me, most of the kids were still learning to read.
I found a way to while my time by reading books under the table. Once I was caught and got “F”.
But, by the second semester, studying has already caught my interest.
In the elementary school (Russian grades 1 – 3), the emphasis was on handwriting and arithmetic. Not even grown-ups had calculators, let alone computers, so we were learning to use our minds and had to develop good memory skills. AND NO ONE COULD WRITE USING PENCILS. We actually had to use liquid ink – remember that one:)?
We would spend only 4 hours in school (from 9am to 1pm), and typical homework time increased to 1 hour by the 3rd grade.
The rest of the time we spent being kids: playing, attending extra-curriculum activities (mine was ballet).
We did not need babysitters, even though our parents were at work for most of the day, because,
1) by 7 years of age we already knew how to warm up dinner
2) senior citizens sitting on a bench (and those were everywhere) SUPERVISED us. Raising kids was everybody’s job (IT DOES TAKE A VILLAGE TO RAISE A KID), and all those grannies were taking it seriously. Many a times I would be called to a bench by such a granny, and she would painfully pinch my ear while reprimanding me.
I can only imagine what would happen to such granny here:).
At school, however, there was no corporal punishment of any sort, even though an average class size was 40.
The teacher would reprimand us by making us stand in the corner in front of the class and writing a note in our diaries in red.
Every kid had such a diary, where each teacher would mark a grade for each lesson and a grade for behavior. It was up to the parent to check the diary each day and, if necessary, apply corporal punishment (although excessive corporal punishment would have consequences for the parent). I don’t remember any child coming to school with bruises left by an irate parent.
Each lesson in school (all the way through high-school) would be 45 minutes long, and then we would have 15 minutes recess, with a lunch recess lasting 20 minutes. Recess was our time to socialize, and we did it with vigor.
In middle school (Russian grades 4 – 8), the school day lasted 9am to 3 pm, and we had separate teachers for each subject.
My math teacher disliked me immensely as I was a rowdy kid, and would lower my grade no matter what, so I stopped paying attention to math, even though I showed promise before, even winning a city-wide competition in math in the 4th grade.
I continued to do well in the subjects taught by teachers who encouraged me or were able to arouse my interest.
Like everywhere, we had good and bad teachers.
BUT CURRICULUM WAS THE SAME IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY. So students transferring to different schools were basically on the same level.
Exceptions were specialized schools (mostly bilingual). But most people could not even dream of placing their child in such a school (one had to have connections).
High school (grades 9-10) was optional in Russia, and most of the kids who graduated middle school with mostly “C”s (like me) went straight to vocational schools.
I chose to go to high-school despite my failing grades. The vigorous curriculum there was even more difficult to deal with, because our minds were filled with girl-boy business. But I managed to graduate with “C” average nonetheless.
By that time I knew I was going to America, so I did not bother with trying to get into college in Russia. Besides, with grades like mine, my chances of higher education were virtually none.
But I managed to get into American college, even with practically no English.
My first semester there was tough: I had to translate virtually every word I read, so reading 1 page (and there would be 30 of those per subject) would take 30 minutes for me.
But by the second semester already I dropped ESL and began acing each subject, getting straight “A”s and being on the Dean’s list each semester.
College education in America was a breeze next to Russian school education! One semester I even took Calculus I, which was equivalent to the 5th grade algebra in Russian middle school, and got an easy “A”.
My last 2 years in college, I had a full-time job, a full-time boyfriend (we lived together), was taking 18 credits, having a major and a minor, and still was getting nothing but “A”s. BECAUSE IT WAS SO EASY!!!
I knew then that Russian (read European) education was by far more superior.
Now my kid is going to a public school in NYC, and it breaks my heart knowing that he is getting sub-par education – even though he is studying way too much and has started school way too early.
I did not know that I don’t have to send him to school the fall he turned 5. So he was still 4, when he started THE TORTURE.
He would say then, “Mommy, I don’t want to go to school. I want to play with cars”, and I would try hard not show him my tears as my heart was crying. He was so right! His childhood was cut short too early. And for what???
He is in the 5th grade now, still 9 years old. He is an “A” student, doing well in school and on state exams.
BUT HE STILL WRITES IN PENCIL, AND HIS HANDWRITING IS SO TERRIBLE THAT I DOUBT HIS TEACHER READS HIS HOMEWORK – I HAVE HARD TIME DOING THIS!
BUT THIS SUMMER I HAD TO GO OVER THE ARITHMETIC WITH HIM, BECAUSE THERE WERE SERIOUS HOLES IN HIS KNOWLEDGE.
Other kids in his school have either private math tutors or attend special math classes on Saturdays in nearby colleges.
Unfortunately, we have neither time nor money. He is in a professional
choir 3 times a week, and on weekends he has tennis, chess and piano lessons. Math he should be studying in school. Afterall, he is there 8Am – 3pm. What is he doing there these long 7 hours?
Plus, he has no less then 2.5 hours of homework every day.
That is 9.5 hours work day for a little 9 y.o. kid (and I am not even adding piano practice, as that is our choice).
Yet he knows much less than I did at that age.
Soon he is likely to be so tired from all this schooling that does not teach him much that I would have to count on his considerable ambition to carry him through the rest of his education.
But even if he gets into a choice IS public school (I cannot even afford a catholic school, let alone something else), I doubt his education would reach the level I’ve received in Soviet Russia.
So I am all for education reform in America.
But starting school at 2 y.o. or taking children’s summer (those short 2 months) away is not an answer.
By the way, in Russia, we had 3 months summer vacation and no extra tutoring of any sort. We rested. We had time for childhood.
And, as you can see from my story, we had huge class sizes and many bad teachers.
Yet, our education was by far more superior.
I credit the curriculum. That is what needs to be reformed. Afterall, it is not HOW our children learn, but WHAT they learn that ultimately determines WHAT THEY END UP KNOWING (which, in turn, determines the future of this country).
And NO ONE NEEDS TO INVENT SOMETHING NEW. Why not to borrow European curriculum and educational methods? Actually, Singapore curriculum is considered to be even better now. At least, many good Israely schools now teach that curriculum.
But, unfortunately for my kid and yours, that is just a wishful musing on my part….
Posted in education, education reform, Uncategorized | 17 Comments »
