Charities

[Cameron]

What charities do you guys give to? I appreciate Sean putting up the link to Red Cross, from what I have heard it one of the best to give to. Any other causes TTB's feel strongly about giving to? Why?

 

Also, how much do you think is appropriate to give? Rosinke told me to pick a charity you care about and give 10% of your income to it without fail. I have heard of the very wealthy raising lots of money for people with fundraisers and this sounds like something very good to me. I am not very wealthy but people that I know who are seem to make this a natural part of there life. Giving back to the community. Thoughts?

[neimad]

What charities do you guys give to? I appreciate Sean putting up the link to Red Cross, from what I have heard it one of the best to give to. Any other causes TTB's feel strongly about giving to? Why?

 

Also, how much do you think is appropriate to give? Rosinke told me to pick a charity you care about and give 10% of your income to it without fail. I have heard of the very wealthy raising lots of money for people with fundraisers and this sounds like something very good to me. I am not very wealthy but people that I know who are seem to make this a natural part of there life. Giving back to the community. Thoughts?

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in all honesty i don't trust charities very much.

granted there are some good people out there and even good organisations doing fantastic work.... but these are likely to be the smaller organisations that you would have to search out rather than hear about easily.

 

i wouldn't trust red cross as far as i could throw one of their buildings! (no i'm not superman).

major charities, if you have a look into it.... are actually massive money making mechanisms for tax free $$$$$

a lot of them act in a really horrible manner and the money they do spend in a 'charitable' way is actually very ill spent and may even have alterior agendas behind them.

 

i know that it may be inconceivable to think that people could deceive others in such a heinous manner, but it happens all the time. and the very fact that it is inconceivable to everyday people, makes it exceptionally easy to get away with.

 

if you choose to give to a charity, i suggest thoroughly researching the charity and find out how they spend their money, how they go about getting it, etc.

 

an example.

world vision.

my thai ex-girlfriends second cousins were sponsered by world vision. coming from a buddhist family and upbringing, they were bought exercise books with christian messages all throughout. they were told they must attend church every week to receive the money. they were buddhist, not christian!

also the money or help they did receive (in terms of items given to them, etc) was actually a tiny tiny fraction of what the donator had been giving.

so where did the donators money go?

the kids certainly didn't see much of it!

the school didn't see much of it!

who did?

whose pocket really gets fatter from this tax-exempt transaction?

 

nevertheless there are some good ones out there.

but personally, i believe everyones life is there own.... and a definite feeling of compassion is fantastic, but if you empower yourself then you empower the entire vibration of the earth and this dimension, thus helping everyone in a very real manner (by providing the energetic or vibrational environment for them to take charge of their own destiny) rather than just a band-aid solution of 'lets fly some aeroplanes over and drop packages of food on them' or whatever.

[Cameron]

Good points. I was thinking maybe the best charity is to give your time and energy .Like helping some Special Olympics kids train for an event or feeding homeless people at a soup kitchen. More hands on stuff .I am pretty busy but might look into giving a day or 2 a month for something like this.

 

One of my customers is the Chairman of Special Olympics in Az so maybe I will see about that.

[Trunk]

in all honesty i don't trust charities very much...

 

to check up on charities:

Charity Navigator

www.charitynavigator.org

Probably there are several services like this on the web, that you could research & cross-check possible charities with.

[monucka]

Engineers Without Borders: check ewb-usa.org, find your local university chapter and get involved, no engineering skills necessary. If you like what they're doing, they can definitely use money. But then, I'm biased, cuz' I think that having well-trained humanitarian engineers is gonna do a lot of good in the world, and maybe it won't. <grin>. - j

 

More hands on stuff.

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[lezlie]

A timely piece of advice if you are considering giving to charity in regards to the hurricane. Before donating your amount, look around town and see if there are any businesses who will match your donation.

 

I know in the Bay Area, the music store Amoeba is matching 100% of all donations given to Red Cross inside one of their stores. So, your $50 donation would become $100.

 

There might be online businesses doing the same thing, I dunno.

Just an fyi to consider during the next few weeks...

[TwoTrees]

10% of my paycheck every week goes to Big Brothers, Big Sisters Inc.

It is matched by my employer 100%, and for decades this foundation has helped children in a way that "daycare" for the financially challenged families could never do.

 

Sure. It's a good contribution...and if I see ANY that are worthwhile I ALWAYS consider them/check them out.

 

Our company (Abercrombie & Fitch) has also donated 400,000 directly to the state for the Hurricane effort. Pennies to the corporation, but pretty helpful to the families, I'd hope, not to mention they get a tax write off as well. Pretty good, I'd say!

[Trunk]

btw, I think there are numerous worthy charities to donate time and/or $ to.

 

For example, Here's a business-with-the-heart-of-a-charity started by a friend I met at a local coffee shop:

InfraSys.biz

Its not a charity, in that the investor's get their $ back (if all goes well) and the villages get to keep the resulting profitable business. Very impressive idea, project. Well principled.

[neimad]

might want to check this site out before clicking on the donate to red cross icon at the top......

 

as i said, i have no trust whatsoever for the red cross (with the nights templar symbol as their logo).

 

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cf...&contentid=2701

 

im sure you can find plenty more info out there on the red cross if you could be bothered looking.

[sean]

might want to check this site out before clicking on the donate to red cross icon at the top......

 

as i said, i have no trust whatsoever for the red cross (with the nights templar symbol as their logo).

 

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cf...&contentid=2701

 

im sure you can find plenty more info out there on the red cross if you could be bothered looking.

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OH MY GOD! Look what else I learned from that site!!! THE ANUNNAKI REMNANTS ARE STILL ON EARTH!!! What are we going to do!?! How could I have ignored credible sources of news like "Conspiracy Planet" for so long!!???!

 

Sean.

[Cameron]

Stop playing Sean you know vampires exist. Wasn't the movie Underword a documentary?

 

The Red Cross as the symbol of the Knights Templar(are they masons or something?) .

 

If I was the supreme ruler of the world I would disban all secret societies and force all nations to learn to get along with eachother. We would settle any disagreements with international grappling tournaments twice a year. Yup.

[neimad]

OH MY GOD! Look what else I learned from that site!!! THE ANUNNAKI REMNANTS ARE STILL ON EARTH!!! What are we going to do!?! How could I have ignored credible sources of news like "Conspiracy Planet"  for so long!!???! 

 

Sean.

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now now, no need to get totally sarcastic.

 

i always find it so amazing that people who can be practicing stuff that would seem so whacko to the general public out there (e.g. all taobums) and talking about it with most people would get you labelled as a loonie (although this is lessening with our spiritual uprising now well underway), that ask for 'credible' sources of info and discount or downright reject what may seem as alternative sources of news or information.

 

kind of a weird duality thing going on there isn't it?

 

what is credible? do you truly believe your local news service or newspaper are really credible sources of information and news??? do you really believe they tell the whole truth???

when you look at who owns these news services, the murdochs and packers, etc, it kinda makes you wonder what agenda is really behind it all.

 

for example, how many of you know that now in chigaco they have implicated Bush, Rice and Cheney in the september 11 bombings??? of course you don't know, cos it's not in the news? and why isn't it? cos friends of these nasty people are the owners of your much trusted and loved news. (i will find info about this later, but they are now attempting to try Bush, Rice and Cheney in court but unfortunately under some kind of act... they cannot try these guys as war criminals because the country is at war.... think america is gonna stop being at war any time soon? i doubt it! cos to do so means these people will be tried and will be found guilty. the evidence is insurmountable! it's just heavily suppressed, is all).

 

the truth is much more sinister than most people realise, and most people are blinded by the idea that no-one could be that downright nasty.... well that very thought lets these people get away with whatever the hell they want to!

 

for myself i neither accept nor reject such news, whether it be mainstream or alternative. i keep an open mind and mostly go on intuition.

 

being an energy cultivator and spiritualist, your intuition should be getting pretty good.....

 

so what is your honest intuitive feeling about the red cross?

 

me, i would never trust them. they are just another mass organised corporation as far as i am concerned. i believe they are even more sinister than that too, but i wont go there.

 

how can you be doing a 'micro-cosmic orbit' an 'inner smile', 'internal alchemy' and etc.... and then go ahead and consider that, even though you are participating in such weird practices to the majority of people, the world is really the same as the majority of people see it.

 

spiritualists should be the most open people to other sources of information and should be able to realise that truth is not as we have been led to believe, in more ways than one!

 

i would consider that this very close-mindedness will ultimately hold you back from whatever it is you are trying to achieve.

i would say this is so because you are trying to do something that your conditioning tells you is totally abnormal, to do so means you need to let go of your conditioning. in all areas of life.... accepting the normality of the world and what the media tells you is just clinging to that conditioning of everything is ok and there really is no such unusual things as aliens, entities, energy beings, devas, sylphs, elementals, etc.

well if you cannot accept that kind of stuff, how will you ever accept the idea that you are really a multi-dimensional being and how will you ever achieve that?

 

anyways i dont ask you to just believe whatever is given to you.... rather to not close yourself to the possibilities.

 

blindly rejecting one source of information is just as bad as blindly accepting it.

 

gullability and scepticism go hand in hand in terms of deterimental things to a persons consciousness, in my book.

 

apologies about the lecturing tone of this post, i don't mean to lecture... i just get quite annoyed by people who can be totally into 'weird stuff' but then reject other weird stuff cos it appears to be too nasty to them.

we live in a duality dimension.... here exists vast good, but also vast bad. ultimately they are one and the same yes, but doesn't mean we need to support the bad.

[monucka]

How could I have ignored credible sources of news like "Conspiracy Planet"  for so long!!???! 

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I'm am laughing out loud. Right now. That's awesome. <grin>.

 

BTW, one of my best friends works for the Red Cross and is currently giving disaster relief training for volunteers being flown to New Orleans. Whatever she is, she's not annunaki, and she ain't no templar, neither. Nor is she fabulously wealthy, although I dunno... the CPR lessons and choking rescue training she gives teenage babysitters could really be a front for... GOVERNMENT BRAINWASHING!!! - j

[Cameron]

One thing that really struck me when I met Ken Cohen last year was when he mentioned our government he said ' I beleive our government is presently being run by the worst terrorrists of all.' It kind of struck me because here is a guy probably known for being balanced, emotionally together etc. and he was very upset about our present leadership. He wasn't yelling or anything but just expressed a deep unhapiness of what 'these people' have done to 'our country'.

 

I try to stay neutral so that I can see issues clearly but I can't say my practice makes me beleive any of the far fetched things you are mentioning. it probably just boils down to greed. the root of suffering that Shakyamuni Buddha talked about 2500 years ago.

[monucka]

it probably just boils down to greed. the root of suffering that Shakyamuni Buddha talked about 2500 years ago.

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All discussion of the Red Cross and their purported links to the illuminati aside, I'm not sure that greed really was Buddha's 'root of suffering'- I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the root is 'attachment': craving, aversion, and ignorance. Craving in the buddhist sense is not the same as greed. Rather, greed is the symptom of both aversion and craving, which are mentally attaching unnecessary importance and self-interest to inherently valueless external stimuli. Eliminate attachment, and greed dies naturally without destroying one's ability to function in the world. Don't eliminate attachment, and attempts to supress greed ultimately fail. My two cents. - j

[Cameron]

True, perhaps you could say mental clingning and attachment is the disease and greed is a symptom of the disease. Either way, excessive greediness is and always has been an issue for men on planet Earth . Probably women to for that matter.

 

In his Taoism audio cassett course, Ken Cohen says the commandment 'Thou shalt not covet' is the most important of the 10 commandments. Perhaps that is the western equivelent to the eastern teachings. which I also find taught in Taoism.

[sean]

now now, no need to get totally sarcastic.

Sorry Neimad. I just couldn't resist kidding around with you. You make some good points in your post. I do think it's important to keep an open mind which is why I generally avoid conspiracy theories because, in my experience, they are usually presenting a very closed view of things with little or specious evidence.

 

Your point about how I can practice things that would seem strange to others and then simultaneously be skeptical of other elements of counter-culture is related to what I believe is one of the bigger dangers of getting involved with fringe practices. I'm not suggesting this is your case, but I think what can happen is that "fringe" becomes your identity. "I am involved with behavior/practices that the 'mainstream' doesn't understand and/or rejects. Therefore I am fringe and must reject back. Everything I do must be different and counter-culture." I see this all the time especially with younger practioners of magick. For some reason I'd thought Eastern systems were more immune to this sort of immaturity (it's memes are more antiviral IMO) but since coming into this community I've seen similar thinking (not so much on this board).

 

Believe me though, I am not sitting on my couch watching Fox News and soaking in the Bill O'Reilly But I also don't frequent David Icke's website.

 

Actually I'm not all that political. Don't really have the temperament for it, or the interest I guess. But when I have time I do try to read up on current events from as many honest viewpoints as I can. An example of one source of alternative news I read frequently and find credible is Z Magazine.

 

In any case, I was just playing around. I don't claim to know what the Red Cross really is. I barely trust my own senses about things in my direct experience. My intuition, though, tells me that the Red Cross is probably like any other large organization. Filled with individual human beings of various intentions. It just so happens they are one of the largest organizations in the business of "helping people" and (IMO) are therefore also likely under the most public scrutiny to at least pretend that's what they are doing. And in their massive public pretending they will probably end up (perhaps accidentally) helping the most people. For instance, I have a friend that just left for New Orleans with the Red Cross and I can guarantee you he will help people and possibly save lives and he wouldn't have been able to do it without Red Cross.

 

Anyway, what charity would you recommend over Red Cross. Maybe I'll make a banner for it.

 

 

Cheers!

Sean.

[neimad]

sean,

 

i really like your reply. it would have been so easy to react back to me in an aggressive or nasty manner, and in truth i was preparing for that.

 

but the fact that you reply in such a positive and constructive manner tells me much that you are a well progressed and progressing individual.

 

 

anyways i can't help by reply back hahaha thats just my nature.

you make some great points about fringe identies. yes i can see how this kind of attitude might happen and how people can reject back like that.

what we seek is to remove all identity huh?

 

personally, im not political either. i like reading about conspiracy theories because they challenge me. they challenge my world views and the more alternative opinions i read about, the more i realise that all views are actually irrelevant. that the reality is so much greater and more complex than any one person or even group of people could even come close to documenting. i find we get caught up in science these days and believe the science we have now accurately describes the universe. but it doesn't. it is one tiny little litte little fraction of understanding even for the actual scientists themselves.

 

as for some of these theories, they are really not so far fetched. oh the reptilian and alien parts get a bit strange and who can really know for sure about that. but as for the other part, as for the nasty world leaders plotting to control the masses.... sounds straight of a comic book yet it is pretty damn obviously true if you take the time to look.

if you ever read one of david icke's books you would see that his evidence and documentation is overwhelming. his resource pool is massive and all the information backing up most of his statements is there. most of it actually on public record!!!

groups like the tri-lateral comission and others, when they form come up with ummmm what's it called? a mission statement or something? anyways it's there on paper their exact agenda, and let me tell ya it aint nice.

the second iraq war was planned long ago, it was planned even before the first time usa went to iraq.

also if you did some reading about the war in iraq and about the depleted plutonium they added to the munitions and what this does to people you would realise that iraq is now a dead country. they used so much radiated material in that country this time that in about 5-10 years there will be hardly any people left there.

the photos of what happened last time the usa went to iraq and used depleted plutonium is horrible. mutated babies being born and iraq shot up to be by far the highest country with childhood leukeumia.

this time they used several hundred times more plutonium than before.

 

even worse is then the company Halleburton (dick cheney's company) got the contract first for supplying these munitions to the usa to bomb the shit out of iraq, then following the war they also got the billion dollar country to go in and help remidiate the country.

the total war package! "we'll blow em up and then fix em up".

 

i don't believe, though, that i have to push too hard in telling people this stuff because in due time it will all become public knowledge.

9-11 was a fraud, there was no terrorists other than our world leaders. everyone will know this eventually as truth, because as far as i am concerned, it is truth. how much more will eventually be revealed, who knows. but it will and is happening.

 

one last little comment. i get a bit carried away and write too much most of the time.

you tell me you avoid conspiracy theories because they present a closed view of things.

this tells me that you have actually had very little experience reading up on this kind of material. sure there are a lot of crackpot sites out there like that, but if you were ever to pick up a copy of 'nexus' or 'new dawn' magazine you will actually find quite the opposite.

these two (australian, yet they are published world wide) magazines are very interesting in that they are a conspiracy theory/alternative health and lifestyle magazine.

it's actually quite amazing to read a magazine that talks on one page about HAARP (weather control program) or something similar, and then on the next talks about the benefits of meditation or eating healthy food, healthy water, etc.

in my experience, the people who i have met who have subscribed to this 'conspiracy theory nonsense' are actually the most open, gentle, loving people around. i have met plenty of them, people with years of reading about this stuff and they are not crazy, they are not quivering paranoid wrecks. they are usually healthy, happy and light people.

 

meeting these people and reading about these 'theories' (many of which are fact rather than fiction) has transformed my life in such a positive way. yet the common view of anyone interested in 'alternative' views is that they must be a paranoid nutter.

so not true.

 

you do make a good point about the people within the organisation helping anyways. however the bigger picture sometimes is not so nice.

 

example: the tsunami.... we have all this aid going to thailand and other places to help reconstruct after the tsunami. but what are they really doing?

well what they have now done is cleared up all the towns that were destroyed, pushed all the people to leave and go somewhere else and are now building massive tourist resorts. thousands of homeless people with nowhere to go, no town to live in any more as they watch their homes being transformed into tourist resorts for rich westerners.

sound helpful to you?

 

i don't know what charity to reccomend. i don't deal with charities.

i believe, as i said before, the greatest thing you can do to help another being is to help yourself. we are all connected to the same universal force anyways and if you increase your vibration, all the others around you will also be increased and thus the whole world and universe increases in vibration.

 

sorry about the long post. congragulations if you got all the way through it! haha.

[sean]

I was doing more research on charities this morning and found these articles I found helpful: http://www.smartmoney.com/mag/index.cfm?story=charitychart

http://www.smartmoney.com/theagenda/index....0031111-charity

 

Great post by the way neimad. I think there is a lot of merit to what you are doing -- which I see as seeking out and seriously weighing many alternative worldviews. Stepping in their frame and looking at the world through them. Stepping out and looking at the world through another. It's Robert Anton Wilson's main spiritual practice. I used to be as aggressive as you with it years ago but I think at some point I decided it's all so completely relative that it's just about finding what works; what works for keeping you sane and on a path toward your goals and what works in retaining your ability to communicate effectively with others. In my case this has led to beliefs more simple and boring than spectacular, but again just my case.

 

Sean.

[sean]

Other charities I bookmarked in my research today:

 

Heifer International

Buddhist Peace Fellowship

Doctors Without Borders

Humana People to People

 

That first link is cool as hell. You can just straight up buy an animal for someone from a catalog.

 

Sean.

[Yoda]

I've given to Heifer International. It's totally cool... you can give your Mom a flock of chickens or a share in a bull or something--they'll send her a card. Makes a fun gift. It's neat to know that there's a pig you have sponsored out there somewhere.

 

Take charities with a pinch of salt, to view another person as a 'charity case' is a disservice to your own vibration. Nobody needs your help. As the Sufis say, everyone is an accomplished master from well before the creation of this universe... everything, including painful death, is a precious growth experience. In my view, we aren't a pack of losers stuck on this rock due to bad karma, original sin, or by random chance.

 

One of these days, I'll practice what I preach and see only the devine in people. Suzuki Roshi said that the way to attain enlightenment is to train yourself to see people as perfect gods and this world as a perfect heaven. Then my energy will freely flow.

 

-Yoda

[sean]

Nice concept Yoda. Maybe a way to reconcile the two views is to believe that sometimes even god's need other god's help in certain areas. Like maybe a great poet god is starving somewhere and needs a goat to eat and I am the goat god and buy him one. And then maybe one day we will all join forces and connect together to form one big Super God like in Voltron to battle a collective Super God from another planet.

[Yoda]

That's what Suzuki Roshi was trying to express.

[Cameron]

I always knew Sean was old school but he has really represented with the Voltron reference. Those things were worth more than gold when I was a little bastard.

 

Now you know and knowing is half the battle!(Will Sean spot this reference?)

[sean]

Now you know and knowing is half the battle!(Will Sean spot this reference?)

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GI JOE!

 

PS - You gotta watch those clips on the above link.