Shanmugam

You are the Truth - a poem about non-duality

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Here is my recent poem about non-duality or advaita, which has some pointers to contemplate for anyone who is seeking the truth:

 

You’re not your body and you’re not your mind;
Not knowing the timeless truth makes you blind;
You’re not your story and you’re not your thoughts;
You’re not those age old, buried mental knots.

 

You’re not that chattering voice in your head;
You’re not anything that you did or said;
You’re not anything that you have or know
You’re the truth that is watching all this show!

 

You’re not anything that can be perceived;
You’re not an object that can be observed;
You’re the screen where the world is being played;
You’re the emptiness where the form is made.

 

You’re the one witnessing the mind and breath;
You’re one without two, beyond birth and death;
Like the air trapped in a small round bubble,
You feel separate which brings all the trouble.

 

Inquire inside and wake up from this dream!
Let truth alone shine like a bright white beam!
By inquiry, your illusions will break;
You’ll stop mistaking the rope for a snake.

 

–  Shanmugam

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People get mad when I say I don't like poetry. haha. I am reading the excellent memoir "Wild Swans" about 3 generations of females in China - and the grandmother recites ancient poetry to her grandchildren. The mother complains that the poetry is too sophisticated and they can't understand the words. The grandmother replies that's fine since the language is tonal then rather it is the emotion brought forth from the changing in frequency.

 

So for example my understanding is Tamil is a tonal language - kind of like Somali is a tonal language. The older language is the most musical it is - the first language of the San Bushmen has the most complicated number of sounds and tones. So even though their culture is considered the most primitive in fact their language is the most sophisticated.

 

But there healing songs purposively use gibberish words. Whereas I had a friend from Ghana africa and she said she didn't trust the English language at all since it's use for deception. English has the largest vocabulary of any language. haha.

 

When I realized I was not my body nor my mind - I tore up my 600 page journal and threw out my Yan Xin meditation tape. haha.

 

thanks for sharing.

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I like it, that is a very nice poem.

Transcending body, mind, time  not identifying with the limited  things that defines us as who we are( in a  very narrow view.} The freedom allows us a perspective and a larger picture beyond a lifetime of conditioning.

 

The separation and definition creates borders and does define us but the boarders also brings us together because borders are shared.

 

The emptiness allows for all possibilities, undefined like an uncarved block full of potential and never limited. our boarders may be shared but who can live beyond all borders, not separate and truly see all things as one or as they really are.

Edited by Wu Ming Jen
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I expanded the above poem and made it as a part of a poetic story. The story is metaphoric and has a conversation between a seeker and an old man.. Read this and let me know your comments:

 

                              You are the Truth

Carrying the weight of past in my head
And dragging the scenes which were old and dead,
I ran to grab the bliss of the future;
The more I ran, the more was the torture..

 

The torture of the hedonic treadmill
Followed me as I continued uphill;
I was caught in the prison of craving
With tedious thoughts, my mind was raving.

 

I met an ugly old man on the way
who had a long thick beard with shades of grey.
His face was shining with heavenly bliss;
In his eyes I saw an endless abyss!

 

"What makes you so happy in this rat race?",
I asked him as he slowly turned his face.
He replied,"The answer is within you!
The grand kingdom of God is within you!"

 

"That's a joke", I said "Are you kidding me?".
"No!" He said, "Turn inward, you'll become free!
You've made your own boundaries inside your mind,
You've closed your eyes and think you've become blind".

 

I said, "How can I get out of this trap?
I want to find the way, give me the map"
He said, "You're the way, the truth and the life!
Be still and know you're that, and end this strife!

 

You’re not your body and you’re not your mind;
Not knowing the timeless truth makes you blind;
You’re not your story and you’re not your thoughts;
You’re not those age old, buried mental knots.

 

You’re not that chattering voice in your head;
You’re not anything that you did or said;
You’re not anything that you have or know
You’re the truth that is watching all this show!

 

You’re not anything that can be perceived;
You’re not an object that can be observed;
You’re the screen where the world is being played;
You’re the emptiness where the form is made.

 

You’re the one witnessing the mind and breath;
You’re one without two, beyond birth and death;
Like the air trapped in a small round bubble,
You feel separate which brings all the trouble.

 

Inquire inside and wake up from this dream!
Let truth alone shine like a bright white beam!
By inquiry, your illusions will break;
You’ll stop mistaking the rope for a snake"

 

Hearing these words stopped my thoughts for a while.
Looking in, I slowly began to smile.
I watched my thoughts as they slowly passed by;
I observed my mind like a secret spy.

 

For years, I contemplated on his words;
I watched my thoughts fly like a bunch of birds.
One day, I woke up and realized the truth;
Since then my life has been peaceful and smooth!

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18 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

And he lived happily ever after.

 

Oh yes, obviously.. If a story doesn't end that way, it is not a story :D

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Just as [movie] pictures can be made visible by a reflected light, and only in darkness, so also the world pictures are perceptible only by the light of the Self reflected in the darkness of avidya (ignorance). The world can be seen neither in the utter darkness of ignorance, as in deep sleep, nor in the utter light of the Self, as in Self-realization or samadhi. (Ramana Maharshi, GR, 57.)

 

So the "screen" (external world, internal mind) can never be "seen" but only listened to.

 

This is why Ramana Maharshi said the highest samadhi is Mouna Samadhi or silence samadhi.

 

Listening as logical inference to the formless awareness - this is the

 

Quote

"The whole process is ruled by Spirit....It's movement in 'non-doing' is called Original Spirit."

Wang Mu, Foundations of Internal Alchemy.

 

The movement in non-doing is the ether of the flame of the Self - the moving in the Light turned around is the Yuan Qi of the Yuan Shen.

 

Quote

I feel that the past, and the present and the future is all in one state. They're operating at different frequency levels. It isn't the past here, the present here and the future here. We are all at one state. The past, present and future are all here. That's why some people have deja vu....

 

-- Qigong Grandmaster Effie P. Chow

 

Precognition means having dreams that are more real than being awake!

 

Quotes from Astrophysicist Professor Paul S. Wesson

Quote

a "wavicle" is two simultaneous realizations of flat space, one with waves and one without.

From the viewpoint of 5D field theory, waves of de Broglie type have to be considered real.

So in 5D all particles behave like photons and everything in the universe is in causal contact with everything else.

an oscillatory phase, which might (if a person is so inclined) be identified with... spiritual modes of existence...separation
between points is zero, so all of the events in the world are in (5D) causal contact. In other words, everything is occurring simultaneously.

There is no plausible way to avoid the conclusion that particles which can be seen moving at speeds less than c should be accompanied by waves which cannot be seen and are moving at speeds greater than c.

de Broglie waves are better understood in 5D

...characteristic of inflationary cosmology...its 5D complex generalization...as a model for de Broglie waves.

a null interval admits, in a formal sense, velocities in 3D which exceed lightspeed.

a particle not as a point but a tiny ball of trapped waves.

some of it verging on the mystical.

De Broglie waves follow automatically when the expressions for the energy of a particle [E=mc squared] and a wave [E=Planck's Constant multipled by frequency] are combined.

This, admittedly, sounds strange.

Whether one believes in a model like this that straddles physics and spirituality is up to the individual....However it is remarkable that such a model can even be formulated, bridging as it does realms of experience which traditionally have been viewed as immutably separate.

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Tamil Tirumantiram excerpts

 
Quote

 

They traverse the spheres of sun and moon, pingala and ida, and see visions of past, present, and future. And in that full moon day the nectar, amrita, ripens. Until lowering into the external mind from kundalini heights, time stands still. 875
It is the light of Shiva that beams jnana....It is the light born of constant awareness of the pure sound Aum. 2686


 

 
 

Abhinavagupta on Spanda vibration

Quote

...there always arises a spontaneous sound (dhvani) which is termed the supreme, the Heart. That self-consciousness in the Heart in which the entire universe without remainder is dissolved, present at the beginning and at the end of preception of objects, is called in the authoritative texts the vibration (spanda), and more precisely, the universal vibration (samanya-spanda), and its nature is an overflowing in the Self. For that vibration, which is a slight motion of a special kind, a unique vibration light, is the wave of the ocean of consciousness, without which there is no consciousness at all.

 

The Triadic Heart of Siva pdf

 

 

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The Holy Science by Swami Sri Yukteswar, 1949

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(Meditation on) pranava, the divine sound of Aum, is the only way to Brahman (Spirit), salvation....This Holy Sound Pranava Sabda manifests spontaneously through culture of Sraddha, the energetic tendency of the heart's natural love; Virya, moral courage; Smiriti, true conception; and Samadhi, true concentration. pp 55-6.


Quote

When man direct all his organs of sense toward their common center.... and hears the peculiar "knocking" sound, Pranava Sabda, the Word of God. p. 75


Quote

and hears the holy Sound (Amen, Aum) like a stream or river; and being absorbed or baptized in it, begins to move back toward his Divinity....p. 80



 

Quote

By culture of regulation of the breath as directed by the Spiritual Preceptor (Sat-Guru), the holy Word (Pranava or Sabda) spontaneously appears and becomes audible. When this mantra (Word, Pranava) appears, the breath becomes regulated and checks the decay of the material body. This Pranava appears in different forms at different stages of advancement, according to the purification of the heart (Chitta). p. 88


 

Quote

 

"Sri Yukteswar seldom indulged in riddles; I was bewildered. He struck gently on my chest above the heart.

My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap.

 

 

Quote

The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Road, and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely approaching. When she reached the space in front of the open ashram gate, I observed her with my two physical eyes. As she passed by, behind the brick wall, I saw her clearly still.

 

Quote

All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master’s, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation."

 

"Cosmic Consciousness Explained" chapter 14, Autobiography of a Yogi, Swami Yogananda

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You might like a friend of mine who achieved this state of Yogananda.

 

He was hanging out on the deck of my house - I had him visit - we live by a forest.

 

He said that part of him was in the forest, as he was talking to me - and he could see the sap in the trees.

 

I don't think he ever read that SAME description from Yogananda. haha.

 

Hilarious. http://guidingqi.com is the person I am talking about.

 

 

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People want to see the Self as something. They desire to see it as a blazing light, etc. But how could that be? The [deep] Self is not light, not darkness, not any observed thing. The Self is ever the Witness. It is eternal and remains the same all along....Sages say that the state [or place] in which the thought ‘I’ [the ego] does not rise even in the least, alone is Silence [mouna] or Self [swarupa]. [That] silent Self alone is God; Self alone is the jiva; Self alone is this ancient world....Attending unceasingly and with a fully [concentrated] mind to Self, which is the non-dual perfect reality, alone is the pure supreme Silence;


—Ramana Maharshi
 

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1 hour ago, voidisyinyang said:

You might like a friend of mine who achieved this state of Yogananda.

 

He was hanging out on the deck of my house - I had him visit - we live by a forest.

 

He said that part of him was in the forest, as he was talking to me - and he could see the sap in the trees.

 

I don't think he ever read that SAME description from Yogananda. haha.

 

Hilarious. http://guidingqi.com is the person I am talking about.

Yea, I've been ranting a lot lately about how important FORESTS are and how disconnected "mad scientist" WEIRDos are from them.  Deforestation is sometimes distantly seen as a vague problem abroad, but never within our own borders.

 

Most WEIRDos are stuck on debating "carbon-based climate change"...because that's what the mass media has deemed our main problem as.  Domestic deforestation is not even on their radar, though.

 

Forests are simply not popularly appreciated or valued in this culture... 

 

When in fact, they are the climax ecosystems on land and should really be revered as natural, sacred, shamanic spaces, on top of all else (IMO).  Which is a whole topic in itself!

 

So...what to do?  Well, we can't turn back the clock, but any awareness and efforts will at least help...

For example, this is a cool little story about a small group of (mostly volunteer) stewards that has worked for 40 years steadily clearing invasive brush and repropagating native plants to help restore the Somme Prairie in Illinois.  They've actually helped bring a few plants back from the brink of extinction, while knocking back the invasives invasion a few notches in their area too. 

 

Now, if these community efforts were replicated across the country in every town - things could improve even more.  Because as parcels of wild land keep getting divvied up into suburban lots, WE are each becoming the new stewards of our land - whether we know it or not!

 

But as of right now, the only practices that are being replicated municipally are all those that cut down, poison, and pave over Nature... :(

Edited by gendao

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14 minutes ago, gendao said:

Yea, I've been ranting a lot lately about how important FORESTS are and how disconnected "mad scientist" WEIRDos are from them.  Deforestation is sometimes distantly seen as a vague problem abroad, but never within our own borders.

 

Most WEIRDos are stuck on debating "carbon-based climate change"...because that's what the mass media has deemed our main problem as.  Domestic deforestation is not even on their radar, though.

 

Forests are simply not popularly appreciated or valued in this culture... 

 

When in fact, they are the climax ecosystems on land and should really be revered as natural, sacred, shamanic spaces, on top of all else (IMO).  Which is a whole topic in itself!

 

So...what to do?  Well, we can't turn back the clock, but any awareness and efforts will at least help...

For example, this is a cool little story about a small group of (mostly volunteer) stewards that has worked for 40 years steadily clearing invasive brush and repropagating native plants to help restore the Somme Prairie in Illinois.  They've actually helped bring a few plants back from the brink of extinction, while knocking back the invasives invasion a few notches in their area too. 

 

Now, if these community efforts were replicated across the country in every town - things could improve even more.  Because as parcels of wild land keep getting divvied up into suburban lots, WE are each becoming the new stewards of our land - whether we know it or not!

 

But as of right now, the only practices that are being replicated municipally are all those that cut down, poison, and pave over Nature... :(

 

Awesome - I have done very similar work in our 10 acres of forest (part of a larger contiguous tract of forest).

 

So I cleared out the buck thorn - like they have in Illinois. At first I thought - this won't be worth much - but the first patch I cleared out then the ferns had an amazing come-back and this beautiful fern area grew - and then more wild flowers came back - and fruit berries - like wild raspberries. So the deer kept eating most of them - there's too many deer and because of global warming the oaks have not produced nuts. It is creepy that no one is noticing this - but our forest has not produced acorns in at least 5 years. The deer starve to death every winter - at least one deer starves to death, some more. Anyway - so I noticed the deer don't eat pagoda dogwood that much so it started coming back since it didn't have to compete with the buckthorn. Then I fenced off some native plants that I bought from a nearby restorative ecology prairie business - and some of these native plants, bearing fruit, are propagating - and not totally killed off by the deer. then we have some aggressive species that replaced the buckthorn. They are not "exotics" - and produce flowers that are nice compared to buckthorn - and the bees like the flowers plus they are very beautiful.  So then the deer really appreciate not just having buckthorn since they don't eat buckthorn - also since it is cleared out in the forest, then it is nice to lay down in the shade with no buckthorn. Then we get grouse now since they like to have some opening in the forest, etc.

 

So some say removing buckthorn is a total waste of time - I disagree but removing it all at once then is hard on the birds who like the understory growth. But the secondary trees come back like dogwood, and boxelder, and black cherry, and maple.

 

But on the other hand - all this restorative ecology is nothing compared to the arctic melting probably this summer or fall - first time in 3 million years and 50 gigatons of methane will kick out, raising global temps another 1.5 Celsius average, so that food at scale will not be growing.  https://guymcpherson.com/2017/02/faster-than-expected/

 

I read about 20 years ago how forest means "mind" in many nonwestern cultures.

 

Anyone who takes the right shrooms knows this to be true - as we now know that shroom mycelium actually feeds nitrogen to the living trees - from the dead trees. So the shroom-tree interaction is very tightly woven and works through biophotons as well - this is documented.

 

So also - I watched that Pacific Ocean nature show tonight - and basically we have animals deep in the ocean, like the nautilus - that have survived the last 5 major extinctions. OUrs is faster than any of the previous ones - but it's nice to know that some complex organisms will probably survive still as they can go deep into the ocean.

 

 

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yeah I had this very amazing dream - when I was in the city doing lots of full lotus meditation - I had this dream of this white bear standing up against this old oak tree that was in the yard I grew up in, across from this lake in the city. Another dream around the same time was of another old oak tree in that same yard only the tree was surrounded with a rainbow aura. So with this 2nd dream of a white bear - I got very intrigued. So I went to that yard of my old house - i always played in this yard, throwing ball with a friend, and raking or on the tree swing or mowing, etc. So it turned out that old oak tree had been cut down since I had last seen the yard.

 

So then I wondered - why did I dream of this white bear? why a white bear? so I went to the U of MN library to study the significance of white bear - and it turns out the bear for circumpolar native indigenous cultures is considered to be a gateway to the spirit world.

 

Anyway so I was just thinking about this earlier today - how the spirit world is quite fascinating indeed. And of course I had this precognitive dream in 1995  that I wrote down - it was more real than being awake - of my activist friends with native indigenous activists, standing on the roof of a house, holding a banner to protect a forest. I wrote the dream down as soon as I woke up at 2:30 am in my journal. I said the dream was more real than being awake so I thought the dream would come true.

 

That was before I did any qigong training but I saw Effie P. Chow in 1995 so I think it was after I saw her and experienced the qi. Also I was vegan and exercising a lot and very focused on doing activism - and I was the local contact in the EArth First! journal. So then in 1998 I saw this photo - from the newspaper - and suddenly I got this uncanny sensation and I drove to my parents house where my journal was. I confirmed the photo was exactly the same as my dream - that I had forgotten about until I saw that photo again. And I had gotten arrested at that protest of a spiritual area of a sacred forest where the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers meet - the regional tribes would meet there annual, considering it the local origin of the Universe via a rainbow water spirit. So that encampment was at the time the front page news story for the EArth First! Journal in 1998 and I had written a paper on it for Winona LaDuke's class on environmental racism at the U of MN.

 

 

Edited by voidisyinyang
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43 minutes ago, voidisyinyang said:

So the deer kept eating most of them - there's too many deer and because of global warming the oaks have not produced nuts. It is creepy that no one is noticing this - but our forest has not produced acorns in at least 5 years. The deer starve to death every winter - at least one deer starves to death, some more.

 

But on the other hand - all this restorative ecology is nothing compared to the arctic melting probably this summer or fall - first time in 3 million years and 50 gigatons of methane will kick out, raising global temps another 1.5 Celsius average, so that food at scale will not be growing.  https://guymcpherson.com/2017/02/faster-than-expected/

 

So also - I watched that Pacific Ocean nature show tonight - and basically we have animals deep in the ocean, like the nautilus - that have survived the last 5 major extinctions. OUrs is faster than any of the previous ones - but it's nice to know that some complex organisms will probably survive still as they can go deep into the ocean.

 

Well according to The Hidden Life of Trees, deer have become forest pests because their natural habitats - grassland savannas - have been destroyed by human civilization.  Not to mention, many of their predators have also been depopulated by us.  And it also speculates that trees may halt production of nuts as a defensive measure to starve out deer that have become too virulent.

 

Well sadly, shellfish and coral are going to be dying off too as ocean acidification dissolves their shells (already happening NOW)...

2.1.jpg?itok=aacngqih

I mean, about HALF of the planet's wildlife has already been quietly depopulated by human encroachment in just the past 4 DECADES.  So, we are literally pushing all other life on this planet to the brink of EXTINCTION...and that is NO EXAGGERATION!

PopExtGraph.jpg

Edited by gendao

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17 minutes ago, gendao said:

 

Well according to The Hidden Life of Trees, deer have become forest pests because their natural habitats - grassland savannas - have been destroyed by human civilization.  Not to mention, many of their predators have also been depopulated by us.  And it is also speculated that trees may halt production of nuts as a way to starve out deer that have become too virulent.

 

Well sadly, shellfish and coral are going to be dying off too as ocean acidification dissolves their shells (already happening NOW)...

2.1.jpg?itok=aacngqih

I mean, about HALF of the planet's wildlife has already been quietly depopulated by human encroachment in just the past 4 DECADES.  So, we are literally pushing all other life on this planet to the brink of EXTINCTION...and that is NO EXAGGERATION!

PopExtGraph.jpg

oh thanks for reminding me - about the trees starving the deer!

 

Yes!!

 

I speed read that book before it was put into our local library as my mom is the volunteer who enters the new books into the data base.

 

Yeah that must it it as well - starving the deer. And... yeah it's amazing that just in my lifetime that half of the world's wildlife has been wiped out more or less.

 

I mean I knew by high school that something was really wrong and so my first full time job was as a door to door environmental fundraiser - for this great little nonprofit that forced 3m to pay the largest fine yet for polluting the Mississippi river.

 

That was 1989 back when environmental nonprofits were not controlled by Rockefeller money, etc. haha.

 

Now what amazes me is how everyone goes around as is there is no crisis - and I mean almost EVERYONE. It's barely mentioned on the news - and only in terms of whether global warming is real, blah blah corporate propaganda.

 

What a bunch of zombies. haha.

 

When my earth first! activist friends all got cell phones in 1998 - I new it was GAME OVER. Since those things just cause brain cancer and sure enough in 2004 for the RNC in St. Paul - a bunch of my activist friends got "pre-arrested" by the Feds tracking their cell phones.

 

And just now the water protectors were infiltrated as "insurgents" and "terrorists" - for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

 

I mean I know I have a big FBI file - and I was rated by this private investigation firms as one of 12 national ecoterrorist suspects.

 

My crime was that I actually practiced my constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, etc.

 

I was called a "multisector activist" - etc. haha.

 

I mean people don't even know we live in a democracy if they don't practice their rights but everyone self-censors themselves so they don't loose their jobs, etc.

 

My nephew - I said how come you didn't mention the CIA false flag operations in Europe - and he said well he didn't want to upset his professor and his professor would not let his say that in his college senior thesis paper.

 

So even college now is just sycophant brown-nosing "prestige" get me a nice job hopefully so I can pay off my slave-debt - slave wage existence.

 

Seriously a bunch of thumb pressing cell phone zombies out there betting brain damage. My cousin has a big real estate company with billions in assets - like Drumpf - except he got brain cancer. Oops too many cell phone business deals? It's tragic really. He's same age as me.

 

 

Quote

 

The 2014 Living Planet Report gives an index that tracks the numbers of animals in selected populations of vertebrates—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish—across the globe.

This "Living Planet Index" declined by 52 percent between 1970 and 2010, "a much bigger decrease than has been reported previously," according to the report.

The 52 percent figure refers to a general trend of vertebrate species populations shrinking, on average, to about half the size that they were 40 years ago, according to WWF spokesperson Molly Edmonds.

 

 

Yea this report is just stunning.

 

So anyway I knew it was game over in high school but I figure give it a go in terms of being a "normal" citizen, etc. and then I noticed my fellow activists were pissed that I was trying too hard. I mean really - activism is what you do to look cool while hanging out at the bar. haha.

 

Professor Guy Mcpherson had the same problem - he was told he was just too self-centered and wanted all the attention on himself. I got this same accusation - was it my fault no one else was researching this stuff and speaking out against say Monsanto controlling research at U of MN just for profit, etc. haha.

 

 

 

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