Sound Sans Sense
Speak not to me in "alien speak". Until your sound touches my senses and engages my mind, we will remain an alien in each other's world.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
“‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says”
Thursday, March 4, 2010
How The Ego Dominates And Hides Your True Self
By Saleem Rana
Original Art courtesy of The Topps Vault eBay Auctions
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Mind Mapping Basics
A creative alternative to an Outline is a Mind Map. Mind maps work the way the brain works, which is association driven not linear. When you think of an idea, your thoughts and feelings around that idea may be in the thousands. Each thought may be linked to images, words, or even smells. A mind map helps you explore those linkages and reinforce the relationships that are supportive to your goals. Also, your mind generally thinks in concepts and images not complete sentences.
Since a mind map is visual and shows the connections between key words and concepts, the information is stored in a way that makes it easier to recall later. Additionally, since a mind map starts from the center and works out, it opens avenue of thought that are closed off in an outline. You have freedom to consider more than the one previous thought written on the page. You will find that your mind guides the organization of the ideas rather than the structure of the outline; thereby, encouraging creativity.
MIND MAPPING TIPS
While mind mapping is very individual, here are some of tips that have been proven to work over time:
1. Use just key words, or phrases
2. Start from the center of the page and work out.
3. The center should be a general theme of the map. (I prefer to use a circle for the center theme).
4. Create other centers for sub themes. (I use squares for second level ideas).
5. Use Print rather script as it makes them more readable
6. If it stands out on the page, it will stand out in your mind.
7. Use arrows to show links between different elements.
8. Explore what’s hot in your mind, don’t force ideas.
9. Let your ideas flow. Don’t judge the thought, just capture it.
POPULAR USES OF MIND MAPS
Think Creatively. Whenever you want to think outside the box , mind maps can help. You will be amazed at how rapidly the new ideas flow. Every item on your mind map has the potential to generate another mind map.
Take Notes. Mind maps help organize your notes and puts the ideas into context easily. This allows the information to be incorporated into your brain more easily. Use them to take notes for books, lectures, meetings, interviews, or even phone calls.
Memorize. Mind maps are effective in storing new information in your brain in an optimum way for recall. The key words and concepts are appropriately organized into the proper context.
Solve Problems. Mind maps show the relationships between items. Often, the solution to problems lies in resolving the connections between parts. By sharing a mind map with a co worker or friend, you will be able to communicate issues the way you see them.
Plan. Whether it’s a complex project or a vacation, mind maps will enable you to put all of the relevant information down on paper. Then, it’s a matter of organizing and connecting all of the mini projects and assigning responsibility.
About the Author: Bill Tyler owns the Bubble Planner, writes articles and authored Daily Life Manager. He lives in Texas with his wife of 16 years and their lovable but not so smart dog. http://www.bubbleplanner.com
Friday, January 15, 2010
Explore Your Potential
Your potential is not quite a thing, yet more than an idea. It awaits in a twilight zone between idea and reality, where all things are possible but none are actual.
It took 15 billion years of evolution for you to be where you are now: a conscious being capable of self-consciousness. It is from the depths of this interior awareness that you can shape your destiny. With imagination alone, you can shape what has never been before. An act of imagination is the seeding of an idea that will bear fruit in a time that has not yet appeared.
This specific form of imagination is what you can call visionary thinking.
When your heart and mind can look into the past, into your reserve of memory, select its most choice ideas from it and project it into the future, then you have begun the journey of exploring your potential.
Will you be rich or poor, well-educated or ignorant, loved or abandoned, alive with a new intensity and purpose or merely drifting upon the tide of circumstances, depends not on the movement of the stars nor on the opinions of those who hold you dear, but on one thing alone: your inner clarity about who you are and what you want your life to mean, both to yourself and all those who will come to know you.
All men and women dream but only some have the courage of their convictions. Most through default float upon the sea of mediocrity, responding to biological and social needs but creating nothing new, ennobling, or in some measure liberating.
Many, unfortunately, are capable of going through their days without entertaining a single original idea, content with acquiescing to the propaganda of vested interests. A few, however, think about their potential and what they can do to explore and expand it. These are the ones who push the race forward, stretching the limits of consciousness further into the realm of new possibilities.
You cannot succeed in anything alone. Your success is a wave that carries others, inviting them to examine their own potentiality. You vibrate at a higher frequency when you choose excellence; you influence others with your presence alone.
The urge to be more than you are right now, to express a nobler speech, a finer mind, a more uplifting outlook, a larger reach of resources is the urge of life itself to explore its dimensions.
The idea of entelechy, a motivation for self-determination and directing inner strength for more life, growth, and capacity is an idea that arises from Aristotelian philosophy.
A human being is in a perpetual dynamic tension between potentia and actus. In other words, a quest to translate a potentiality into an actuality. Potentia is determinable. Actus is determined. These terms should not be confused with the ideas of physics which refer to the capacity for change through work from one state to another. With a human being, the urge to translate potentiality into actuality is intrinsic. With material objects, an external force is extrinsic, some outer force is making the conversion from one state to the next.
The ultimate goal of self-determination is happiness. For as a sentient creature evolves, it increases its power, secures its survival, and experiences the happiness of a broader and fuller expression of itself.
Another way of looking at it is to say that all human misery is due to some level of frustrated potential. At times, this frustration is felt so acutely as to result in self-destruction, either through suicide or self-degradation.
A human being is rooted in teleology. The human psyche hungers for design, and it will do almost anything to satisfy the quest for meaning.
The best and most satisfying lives are those where meaning is found and where a conscious and deliberate movement is made from potentiality into actuality. Ultimately, the conversion is one through the medium of intelligence, from the creative intelligence of envisioning to the practical intelligence of bringing about and maintaining a higher order of adaptation. As intelligence and adaptation increases, so, too, does happiness, which is a symptom of increasing power as the means of survival are ensured. As Spinoza once said, "Happiness is power increasing."
Happiness, like life itself, is never a final state, but an evolving one. You can be happy now and as you increase your power in the world, converting more potential into actuality, your happiness will also correspondingly increase. The highest state of happiness, of course, is self-realization, when you transcend the limitation of the idea of a singular ego battling a hostile world intent on its destruction and embrace the idea of being unified with all sentient life everywhere. Mystics have reported this state of oceanic consciousness as blissful.
As the cosmic conspiracy unfolds, life becomes more complex, more engaging, and ultimately more fulfilling. Our task is to engage the great game of life and ride the beam of evolutionary advancement of consciousness itself.
By Saleem Rana
Monday, January 4, 2010
Friday, November 20, 2009
Let Your Inner Freedom Ring
The practice of meditation makes it possible for us to have a glimpse of inner freedom, our own true nature. Meditation makes us see things in ways we have not done so before. We become more keen about the ways and reasons which makes it difficult for us to live our lives in a manner that is fulfilling. It spells to us the difference between inner and outer freedom.
Meditation is the most radical kind of political action. It challenges us to step outside the conventional value system and view things from a different standpoint. We are not likely to remain uncritical supporters of the status quo.
Meditation is not the kind of activism as we are familiar of, but it fits the definition perfectly. It is an action that fundamentally aims to make you be more critical of your view of the world.
Meditation brings out the best in us, our own intelligence and insights. It challenges our own individuality to emerge, our sense of compassion, and our sense of outrage as we gradually reveal our own true nature.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Nope! It Doesn't Degrade Women At All
A good rule of thumb would be whether women are displayed solely as sex objects under the control of men. Clearly, if a woman uses her beauty or sexiness to sell a products where she is a willing participant and is not presented or treated as powerless and obedient to men, she cannot be deemed degraded. If she is voluntarily participating in a portrayal of a women who is in control of her body and not presented as inferior to men, the question of degradation doesn't really exist.
Another factor would be the intended effect of the ad on the viewer. Does that ad promote disdain, disrespect or domination of a woman? If it does, then the ad demeans or degrades the woman, whether or not that was the intended effect. But what about a beer commercial during a football games that features big-breasted, curvaceous women promoting drinking as a cool and sexy in a flirtatious manner. Again, there is nothing degrading about women promoting beer to male sports fanatics unless the ads correlate beer and woman as a recipe for men having sex with women.
Perhaps the most iconic use of women as sex objects is the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Obviously, men buy that issue to look at scantily clad women. While the pictures are extremely sexy and almost completely reveal a woman's body, the photos are taken in an artistic and respectful way. Sure, the idea is to capture some of the most beautiful women in the world in provocative swimsuits and poses, but there is no hint that the woman are being subjugated in any way to participate in the photo shoot, nor are they shown in photos being controlled or subservient to men.
In sum, the use of sex in ads to sell products does not degrade women so long as they are not presented as objectified beings under the control or domination of men.