We as a human body are constantly evolving as are our brains. Instead of evolving towards a higher level of functioning and transcending our consciousness, we are using all methods available to perpetuate materialism, and the status quo of the industrial society we presently inhabit.

I was confounded to discover that Mindfulness, a technique borrowed and Westernized from Buddhism is now being studied as a tool for having better sex instead of how it can help us to evolve as a human race.

What a disservice to Buddhism to talk about mindful sex. It is just an excuse to perpetuate our Western overly-obsessed with sex culture, to spread the idea of a cleaner type of pornography.
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It is an usurpation of a two thousand and a half year old religion that was founded to help people live compassionate, healthy, spiritual and more refined lives, and not to find more meaning in titillation and sex, the development of our base attributes.

As a matter of fact if you live a descent, compassionate focussed life, great sex will be a side-effect, you don’t need to make it the focus of your world.

In the West sex has taken the place of love and human connection after being sold to people on the media as the elixir of happiness. This was due to the industrial revolution that perpetuated advertising as its medium. Sex sells. Love doesn't. People have been brain-washed into believing that after a hard day at the factory they should have spectacular sex as a reward. Sex and money have replaced God. The result is a wide spread culture of pornography and perverted sexuality, a dissatisfaction with your partner if they are having a bad day or gotten a little chubby after giving birth. In other words an act that was to enhance love, namely sex, has become a commodity for sale divorced from spirituality.

Now since sex is a bit worn out in the media, notice how love and spirituality is being used to sell tires for example by Canadian Tire, most recently. Children watching this will grow up being cynical about everything, even inner peace.
Nothing is sacred in our Industrial society and do we wonder why so much violence exists. PhDs in psychology grab onto the newest trends and write "scholarly" articles on how to use mindfulness to enhance your sex life. Again sex is divorced from human love and compassion in a responsible relationship.
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I am very saddened by this trend because Mindfulness could potentially be an inroad trigger to the higher evolution of mankind, instead of being usurped for our present material existence. Like Yoga that was meant to help people evolve into a higher state of existence, it is now in the West a way to stay trim and happily egocentric.

“We must give birth to our images. They are the future waiting to be born.” – poet Rainer Maria Rilke claims.

Creativity is the single most important aspect of the human mind, because it allows knowledge to grow and mature. It is curiosity, imagination, unpredictability.Creative expression, through symbols and metaphors is a means of communicating experiences, emotions and sensations. It is a process of dreaming into reality new possibilities. It produces wholistic thinkers, real renaissance men/women.

An example of a historical Renaissance man, was Leonardo Da Vinci, an anatomist, architect, stage and costume designer, chef, humanist, engineer, equestrian, inventor, geographer, geologist, mathematician, military scientist, musician, painter, philosopher and physicist. The contemporary renaissance person would combine a certain comfort level with both art and science, is computer and mentally literate a s well as globally aware.

Whole-brain thinking, includes a recognition of inter-relationships, cultivation of creativity, seeing behind phenomena and understanding how the highest aspirations, dreams, values and discoveries can be integrated into our everyday lives.

Creative minds are capable of conceiving projects and suggesting innovative solutions in all branches of knowledge.
Creativity can lead towards responsible social transformation.
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Art is the most sensitive and comprehensive expression of human thought.

“Visual artists should be leading the cultural revolutions for society instead of just reacting to them. In his book The End Of Art, Donald Kuspit promotes the idea that fear and ignorance of the unconscious have created a climate of creative superficiality in which artists are unwilling to break though the surface of their minds to the uncomfortable waters that lie beneath. Artists are scared of the inner truth about themselves, more particularly, about acknowledging psychic conflict and trauma as well as the primary creativity evidenced by fantasy (especially dreams). The End Of Art also covers the genealogy of the Post Art aesthetic, from Duchamp through Warhol’s commercialism to Hirst’s installations, drawing upon preoccupations with banal objects and everyday life situations. Whereas modern art consist of revolutionary experiments motivated by a desire to express aspects of the newly-discovered “unconscious mind,” Post Art, Kuspit argues, is shallow, unreflective and banality motivated by the desire to become institutionalized and famous.” -–Time Magazine -02 Jan 2011

This truth was never more evident than in this week’s elegant and elaborate and very upscale art opening of Sobey Art Awards 2012 at MOCCA and Edward Day Gallery.
As I made my way through the crowds which read like Who’s Who in the Canadian art world, brushing up against the leaders and decision makers of what art gets shown and who should be promoted, and looked at the famous winning art work pieces, I had to rub my eyes in disbelief. The art consisted of very badly done abstract photos, poured over with resin and mundane and down right meaningless and ugly installations that at first and last glance denoted …nothing; made up of banal kitchen sink objects slapped together. The whole show smacked of a desire to conceal anything artistic under a pile of “trash”. No good design, no excellent colour schemes, no meaning, no inner truths, no refection, no beauty, no feelings, allowed!

I can’t wait for Neo Post Art….or can I?

Maybe magical realism will make a comeback to transport us from this drab materialistic capitalistic existence that Post Art has catapulted us into. And hey, what would the taxpayers say if they learned that this kitchen sink piles of junk won $50,000 from our very esteemed colleagues and Art Foundations?
The cat is out of the bag, the emperor has no clothes….let’s see art that is promoted in Canada at the present, for what it is, dead.
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It is time to display the art of artists that talk about inner truths, fantasy, magic of life and emotions; for a revolution in Canadian art, who is up for the challenge?

A Zen Koan:

A student asked, “When times of great difficulty visit us, how should we meet them?”

The teacher said, “Welcome.”

That does not mean we love and embrace illness, financial stress, death of a loved one. It means we realize we are human, and life has a big chunk of suffering in store for everyone, and we treat it like another lesson to be learned and integrated in school. We learn about ourselves and grow from it. Life is constantly asking us to grow, to expand our souls until we are so large as a soul only light remains. We return to the source whatever it is. The lighter we become the lighter our entry will be to the light.

That does not mean we do not experience negative emotions, we can cry, yell, spit and shout. Until such time that we realize how useless all that expanded energy is and we start to laugh at ourselves. The trick is to let those emotions roar until they transform into something else on their own.
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Welcoming life as is, no matter what it is, helps us to deal with things that come up without getting stuck, attached. If you don't allow yourself to roar, you will live in constant fear trying to control all that life brings. It is like being a rock in a river, instead of letting go and going with the flow.

“In the Buddhist tradition,” the Dalai Lama writes, “compassion and love are seen as two aspects of same thing: compassion is the wish for another being to be free from suffering; love is wanting them to have happiness.”
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In the West we confuse love with sex and attachments to things like chocolate eclairs, in other words, what we think gives us pleasure or should do so. Our orientation is always me me me me...

When we say to someone we "love you" it usually means that the other person is making us feel wonderful in some way and fulfilling a need in our life that we had. It is no wonder that divorced people are in the majority in America.

What we don't appreciate or understand is that love, or even kindness and compassion, are experiences inside ourselves already. We are born with those feelings, we do not have to manufacture them. We have been bamboozled by Capitalistic strenuous advertising that we are living with constant lack and unhappiness and will only be happy if we posses external things. Companies selling stuff are the last to want us to know that happiness is already within our reach, all we need to do is an about turn, turn our back to the TV and close our eyes for 20 min a days and see what happens, what we might see. And we may find a well of good feelings welling up in us for no reason, without cause, because it was always there only we were too blind to see, focussed on keeping up with the Joneses.

Even the Dalai Lama and spiritual experiences are being bastardized and exploited by the advertisers. Sex has stopped selling so now if you buy the right car you will travel to nirvana.

Kindness is natural, fear and violence are not, they are products of our incessant thinking about what can make us happier, selfish narcissistic greed.

Alas it is in fact only the act of giving that can make us happy. So you can see how in a relationship if you do not see the other as special, a spiritual being and not just use them up for your own needs, then a give and take can start to occur, where you wake up in the morning and think about what your partner could use to be happy and proceed to do that. Instead we think it would make us "suckers" to behave that way. In school if you are a good student you are called a "browner". Everything in our society is geared for a me existence, and an abhorrence of any other way of relating. We live unhappily hiding our natural love and compassion, and stupidly pursuing money that will not stop us from dying anyway.

The Dalai Lama knows this and so he is always seen laughing and smiling, he gets the cosmic joke.

i eat and sleep, sometimes,
no celebrity, i paint and write, sometimes,
while watching brown spots slowly
spread across my shriveling skin
my memory being selective
erased most of child years and teens
all humiliation and fear and joy
i remember here and there, a toy
but mostly i watched birds chirping
while climbing thick branches
until upside down i hung, caught by a shoe
seven brown spots sit on my left hand
i remember my last glass of white wine
drunk at dinner with my son and daughter
and Sasha’s smile on her third year of birth
they all left to forge their destinies elsewhere
leaving me to watch the ravens, cawing,
circling overhead, beckoning me
to look up, but i fear what i might see
and plod on, apparently free
to watch pink toes, peeking from shoes
needing mending, beyond hope
like those shoes, i can not be repaired
and listen to the ravens beckoning,
promising magic in the end
but is it real?

​Never again will I be bored. Waiting for Godot is anatomically unfeasible and puts my mind in ruins. I feel all the juicy bits oozing out the left side until there is nothing left for me to do at night, my time of freedom but pretend to be a zombie in front of re-runs of Law and Order. I know I should be grateful to be paid for doing nothing but hey it takes a toll on my soul to waste life essence. Each and every second is precious and I have to pretend to be doing something on the computer. Out of sheer desperation this word dribble is happening. I have a half hour to kill before the freedom of lunch. A writer I am not, but hey anything can happen under duress. There was a great song a long time ago when social action was not a phrase that caused one to be fired, about shooting those that keep us entrapped in boredom under the illusion they are doing us a favour. People need to have a soul and feel that their time and efforts are in some way meaningful, leave a mark after they are gone. No good for industry, could ignite a revolution if our soul was in intact. Only machines can function in boredom, not humans. But to earn a living we have all conspired to pretend that we are humans and not machines. After all making money allows buying things and having a two-week vacation every year. Wow, I’ve just killed fifteen minutes. I will check my email; Lynne sent an interesting tidbit about margarine being 7% away from being a plastic. This is what the Heart & Stroke Foundation pays millions to advertise as a cure for heart disease, which is the number one killer of women in Canada as it turns out. Probably because they all dutifully switched from butter to margarine. Same nice look and texture. Just like robots almost human-look-alikes, and no soul to contend with. Hurrah for Capitalism! Hey I just figured out I can kill the next five minutes in the loo. Be back dear rant right after lunch probably in a better mood.
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Lunch came and went. Sat chatting with a lovely young man from Japan who works as a Barista in T.A.N. Coffee Shop across from my work. Looks too self-confident to just be earning minimum wage, probably here from Japan to learn the ropes and open up a cafe there. Bull’s-eye! When I asked him about his plans they were just that, to open up a café close to Tokyo in Japan. Even though I brought some crossword puzzles to work on, I much rather spend time chatting. And, chat we did, about him, Japan, Buddhism, apparently still the number one religion in Japan. But most people he said are not religious at all. I just got an email saying I did not get the job of working with forensic clients. I guess the murderous hoards won’t have the benefit of my charming company. Still, the future looms uncertainly. Damn money! Without it there is no life in our world as witnessed by the homeless faces with their dead, blank expressions, devoid of all hope and humanity, walking around the grounds where I work. Another three and a half hours to kill. Then freedom for three days. It takes a half day to become myself again and renew my acquaintance with the part of me that still lives, breathes and paints.

Where is Godot when you need him?

I sent this off to friend just to see her reaction and here is what she responded with:
Why don't you become a blogger? Check out blog sites. It is easy to do and you can rant on them every day. I bet you would get a big following. Since I have NO NEED of a following I am attaching her experience with boredom:
Over the years I had the same boredom in my job and resented the government renting my brain from 9 - 5. Often I had nothing to do and my boss would say "a soldier in waiting is just as important as a soldier on the front lines". Was he nuts??? I was not in the flippin' army. The other secretary would bring in sex novels and come to work about half an hour early. She would zerox twenty pages or so and then pretend she was working by reading and highlighting all the juicy bits. Then she would pick up the phone and call her boyfriend and read the parts about what she was going to do to him when she got home. Another man ran a sporting goods store from the office and I became proficient at what was in the Yellow pages.

My job is just not as interesting as hers, or maybe my imagination is simply too dull to start a porno site that would double my income. But then I would have the titillation of getting caught at any time. Suspense battles boredom.
Of course there is ethics and morality to contend with, right livelihood.

Where is Godot?

Globalization and technology are forcing artists, curators and art directors to rethink the world of art.

The economic structure of the art world is also changing as a result of technology and globalization. International collectors are supporting the arts, and the Internet is allowing artists to showcase their work to a broader audience.

Both high (classical music, painting, opera) and mundane art (PopArt) co-exist together. Who will be defining their value? It will need to be a new breed of curators, aware of all that is happening in the world at large and art in particular. New sensibilities will be formed as we have access to new images and ideas. Art is being constantly re-evaluated, as concepts emerge that we are all privy to now that the Internet is globally available.

The Internet has also made photography easy for anyone, even a child can use the new digital cameras, does that mean it is all art? The art world will need to become more discerning. And as technology pushes forward they will need to constantly re-thinking it’s aesthetical criteria. These may differ according to diverse cultures, or not? Art critics will need to be more opened minded and work together to establish new lines between high art versus popular.
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Contemporary globalization and technology have changed the art world more rapidly than any individual artist has before. Its influence is felt at both the individual and cultural level, leaving artist and art critics confused about directions, trends or definitions of art itself. Hopefully we will emerge invigorated by this search through a glut of new images and forms and bring about new, original, concepts and values of what art really is…

The Dalai Lama, the Spiritual Leader of Tibet and Nobel Prize Winner for Peace suggested that the woes of the world, and "the need to promote a more altruistic society" mean that "we might be entering the "age of the woman".
"In his broken English, pausing occasionally to consult with his translator, he told me: "I think [it would be] good because you see, biologically, female[s] have more potential to develop affection or love to other. Some scientists, they tested two person, one male, one female looking at one sort of movie. Female [was] more sensitive: response is much stronger. So therefore…now we are 21st century…female have more potential so should take more active role regarding promotion of human compassion.""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10010928/Dalai-Lama-I-would-be-pleased-if-my-successor-was-female.html

​Psychology Today also seems to feel that we are entering the Age of Women.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201007/are-we-entering-the-age-women
They argue that because of paradigm shifts in the world, economic malfunctions, we need leaders that can foster cooperation, and not competition, have compassion, are altruistic and understand sustainability. The Marlboro Man is dead they say...."the Marlboro Man, "master of the wild beast and wild country," says Rosin, and the poor equivalent today is the overweight man in his "souped up" Dodge Charger."
Men are needing to redefine their masculinity and their roles in society, while women are now a part of military maneuvers , top corporate leader roles and active in politics.
Why we might even have a woman as president in the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/22/downs-syndrome-people-risk-extinction-at-the-hands-of-science-fe/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/07/brother-downs-syndrome-eradicate?CMP=fb_gu​

After reading these articles about eradicating down syndrome all I can say is we need to stop playing at being God and stop manipulating life and the world, for all we know our great inventions are causing children to be born with a variety of symptoms like autism, for example, that is presently on the rise.

Will those children be next? Einstein was borderline autistic as were a number of other geniuses.

For some reason our present day and age wants to clean up everything, make our journey through life squeaky clean and smooth, with no bumps, no aberrations, no challenges. Our goal is sterile perfection, void of emotion.
We pick and choose which life we revere and which is expendable. So cows are treated abusively on corporate farms, shackled in small enclosures their whole lives, and dogs get to lie on warm pillows in front of our warm chimneys at home.
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I believe we are put here on earth to overcome handicaps and challenges, and one of them may be to raise a down syndrome child, perhaps to teach you patience. No one really knows why we are born and die, but it is for a much greater reason I think than to simply coast through life comfortably.