a translated quote from a friend:
Vegetarian diet?
I won't take the food away from my food.
or perhaps
I won't eat up the food of my food.
;)

the change has to happen between your ears

every organism faces a decision space which includes the option of short term gain, long term pain = unsustainability.

Greece is an early look at how unsustainability of social benefits and public union contracts and a corrupt tax collection system plays out - this is the normal cycle of things, generation after generation of kicking difficult decisions down the road. It remains to be seen how far the other mediteranean countries are down this road.

The US itself has a big card to play, being the reserve currency, and they can always inflate or tax themselves out of the debt, which is mostly owned by its own government, 1% rs and retirement funds. The US is not having a profit recession...just a jobs recession - and professional thinkers in this regard look to the morass of disincentives to job creation.

absent an actual realistic/non-neurotic fear of poverty, getting up early, leaving work late, achieving the best possible eduction available within your decision space, obedience to your boss and job maker, taking odd jobs on the side, plus living on credit...absent these essential elements of this PMR simulation, your life will deteriorate toward walking in the woods and looking for berries, living under a tree. Everything above this level requires effort. One might be able to con the system into breaking this rule for a brief period, but it is unsustainable.

I am not talking about social benefits for the old or the disabled here, though I must say, wasteful spending on the able, reduces the share of the pie available to the unable.

One of the traps of the confused is ineffective attention on actual available decision space, spending valuable mental bandwidth on "the Fed" or other macro level problems. Half the battle is to focus on what is going on within 100 feet of your nose, and starting to analyse the opportunities, as well as the threats. Another trap is to not make an effort during a period of crisis.

Is there a busy neighbour who cannot keep up with his yard or garden or washing his windows, walking his dog, cleaning his house? Maybe he/she will pay you some cash to do these cores instead of you spending another evening watching television. This is the first step in engagement of capitalism, which is the system that naturally occurs when free citizens begin to exchange money for work.

If you can manage that first step, then maybe you buy a hot dog cart or sell Amway or otherwise move one notch up the food chain...keeping your day job. Through this you learn how difficult it is to extract a profit from the system, maybe you appreciate how difficult your boss's job is, maybe you start to get ideas on how your boss can improve the bottom line, you line yourself to become the boss. Never forget the higher ruleset at each decision of significance in order to leverage big/NPMR economics.

Watch Bloomberg and read the Wall Street Journal if you wish to start relating to reality, rather than filling your brain with delusional entertainment.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Randy, i have never worked for anybody, but myself 99% of my life, not working now, do not watch the news, and rarely ever watch TV, just the opposite not to long ago. Sold my last business, bought a Honda civic, invested in some solar, and now thinking about complete self sufficiency without any big business involvement. This has happened over a period of years with nearly complete abstinence of fear, like a system nudge. As far as making money to complete this task, well i guess i could actually get a real job, or maybe clean up for my neighbors. As you can tell i am uncertain about where my life is going, but the system sure seems to deliver positive outcomes as long as i stay positive. I guess NPMR economics has taken over as for now. Sabby

or if you have figured out self employment, take on the challenge of creating a small team and use the company as a conciousness training tool.

in every marketplace there is war going on between high entropy and lower entropy models. Part of your decision space includes picking up your sword and joining a lower entropy team...which usually pays less, and expose your ego to a worthy but demanding boss, as part of your personal development.

if you are very low entropy, once you have met your basic material needs, and more importantly, fulfilled your obligations of local duty (kids college fund? wife's new kitchen?), I believe the sweetest/deepest feedback you could exploit would be to invest in conciousness model propagation (CMP), in some way, according to your skillsets and decision space.

with the off grid stuff, take care that the wife/girlfriend can operate it or have a back up switch to get back on grid in case you are stuck in the hospital or get mushed by a bus.

keep in mind the core purpose of PMR is human interaction, so factor that into your next step.

Honda civic man myself - no flash is the way, except possibly during the theatre of courtship

travel, novels and film are a good way to shake things up if you are stuck in your decision tree.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

One thing that really sticks in my craw are these "Living Trusts" where able families with two parents, sometimes 4 (step) of developmentally disabled kids are encouraged to hide their actual assets in said trust so their kid can keep getting SSI/SSD. I went to a lecture on this at the local office for the disabled here and must say I didn't make any friends. They are cheating and hurting people who actually need SSI/SSD and I think they are criminal but it's all legal as goes the world for the well to do.
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

we will turn you into a Tea Party rebel yet!

this sort of naive and bad program design is what we are talking about - its all through the system, and no politician wants to be the guy taking money from parents with disabled kids, even if they are well off.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Bette is not likely to turn into a Tea Partier. She knows too much about reality. I know of and know personally a number of Tea Party members and they all can be classified as low information voters. Too easily led astray by a nice sounding, catchy phrase that is actually against their own best interests. Being against public service programs such as unemployment payments and extended benefits while at the same time needing the service desperately because they are unable to find work at their ages. Cheering for the politicians who are promising to destroy Social Security and Medicare at the very same time that they approach the age when they will desperately need those programs if they are to not end up living under a bridge and surviving by 'dumpster diving'. Bette is much smarter that that with an MS and heading towards Piled higher and Deeper.

Ted

I wish if someone wants to discuss something other than the heading, they would start a new thread instead of high jacking an existing thread. This thread is about diet and most particularly about sugar.

Good point sweetie! Sabby

I've taken refined sugars out of my diet and both my physical and mental health have noticeably improved. Also changing to a "near-vegan" diet seems to have helped, the last 10% (the "near" part) is an interesting challenge :)

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I am change. No part of me stagnates - this is an illusion.

If you listen to the Boston "tape" you may pick up a distinct softening of Tom's guidance on food in his comments regarding Bob Monroe's diet. I suspect this is Tom's reaction to the dangers of being too white knuckle regarding food.

I believe the correct attitude to food is constant education and curiosity, and slowly evolving your intent and intake according to several filters, rather than taking a fundamentalist or militant attitude

- short term health impacts
- longevity (i.e. caloric reduction vs carcinogens, mercury in fish...)
- animal welfare and fair trade (and ... "animals don't come here to be eaten" - TC @ NC)
- Campbellian clarity (i.e. sugar)
- social contextual sensitivity (offending a host)

the Science of food seems consistently point to our DNA being optimized for the diet available around 50000 years ago, when human life became more predictable and natural selection distinctly slowed down...pointing to the Paleolithicism in diet and lifestyle, which includes lean organic meat in occasional feasts, fish, and no farmed food such as grains or dairy. This specifically pertains to self interest regarding PMR.

another distinct aspect are Tom's observations regarding clarity when in NPMR, and specific dietary suggestions which presumably are helpful when focused on the PMR datastream. This specifically pertains to self interest regarding NPMR.

overlay on this the ethical aspects of fair trade (included counter arguments to fair trade that Tom himself has laid out here) and the ethical debate of carnivorism. Weave into this the VR model, the role of belief and intent, and the trade off of your health (short term, long term, food safety risk), the welfare of the animal or farmer (which touches non-vegan vegetarianism), and your obligation to not offend the ego of host at a dinner party.

This specifically pertains to our purpose and the real game of intent and choosing between all the variables in play, according to our understanding. Sitting with a menu in a restaurant is a (profitable) torment for me.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

That's a great way of describing the dilemma :)

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I am change. No part of me stagnates - this is an illusion.

Tom has also said in other venues that there was only one Bob Monroe. So in the long run I do not believe that he has really softened his stance. If you want to improve your clarity of consciousness you need to clean up your diet. Also don't forget the health price Bob paid for the way he ate.

In one of the Rosalind A. McKnight books she recounts that after many sessions she and Bob and who ever else was there would all go out and eat. At the beginning of one session the entity they had been interfacing with complained that it was very hard to establish a good contact with them because of how they were eating. The entity wondered if they really wanted to carry on the work because he/she felt they were sabotaging the sessions with their poor diet choices.

excellently sourced and convincing information

one "natural" mystic I know of, actually and ironically a childhood friend of my wife's (my wife is not into this stuff at all), who I have only met once, ...the sort of person who goes and sits alone in a cabin in the desert for months on end in Bette's part of the world...

she told me she would use her diet to regulate her connection to physical reality, for example, eating red meat to reconnect with the world and lower her vibration, to re-sync with her life with her husband, and stop "floating around" as she would put it, which was her normal state when eating vegetarian.

where this can lean more toward science than ideology or faith, would be to focus on achieving NPMR capacities first, so that one could subsequently directly experiment with diet and monitor clarity feedback, reproducing the order and sequence that Tom followed....more of an asian style of linear logic oriented research

the other way to look at this is indeed take a leap of faith and wholistically adopt the whole MBTOE enchilada hook and sinker, ....diet, meditation, intent, PSI experimentation, and monitor the overall impact on your life and direction...more of a western "build a rough model and try to break it approach"

as far as Tom's first adult OBE, is my recollection correct that fasting played a role? Possibly more along the lines of being too engaged with the the work to eat, rather than a spiritual motivation?

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

Has anyone gotten feedback from Tom about Stevia?

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!@#$#@- -- - Don't Panic - -- - Don't believe everything you think