Yes, in high seas or in low seas
I’m gonna be your friend
You know that I’m gonna be your friend
Any so in high tide or in low tide
I’ll be by your side
You know that I’ll be by your side

I heard her praying, praying, praying – mmh
I said I heard my mother
Her praying, praying, praying – mmh
She was praying in the night
And the words that she said, the words that she said
They still linger in my head, linger in my head
She said : “A child is born into this world
He needs protection” – yeah

God, guide and protect us
When we’re wrong, please correct us
When we’re wrong, correct us
And stand by me

In these high seas or in low seas
I’m gonna be your friend
You know that I’m gonna be your friend
Any so in high tide or in low tide
I’ll be by your side
You know that I’ll be by your side

I said I heard my mother
Her crying, crying, crying – mmh
She was crying in the night
And the tears that she shed, the tears that she shed
They still linger in my head, linger in my head
She said : “A child is born into this world
He needs protection” – yeah

God, guide and protect us
When we’re wrong, please correct us
When we’re wrong correct us
And stand by me

In these high seas or in low seas
I’m gonna be your friend
You know that I’m gonna be your friend
Any so in high tide or in low tide
I’ll be by your side
You know that I’ll be by your side

“John Berger wrote that advertising is always situated in the future. He was referring to the way in which the present is depicted in advertising as lacking in some way. It is helpful for us to return to the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. He suggested that desire and lack are central motivating forces in our lives. we all experience something missing from our lives that we seek, most often in the form of pursuing another person whom we desire. We try to fill this lack but are never satisfied, even when our basic needs are met. Our lives are structured by a sense of lack, Lacan suggests, from the moment that we recognise that we are a separate entities from our mothers. This separation, experienced as a splitting, marks the point at which we recognise ourselves as subjects apart from others. In Lacans terms, we are always searching to return to some state of wholeness that we believe we once had prior to this moment of recognition. We constantly strive, through relationships and activities such as consumerism [e.g. the acquisition of commodities] to fill that lack. It is this drive to fill our sense of lack that allows advertising to speak to our desires so compellingly. Advertisements often recreate for us fantasies of perfect ego-ideals, facilitating a regression to this childhood phase. This fundamental lack is always unfulfilled. There is never a moment, in psychoanalytic terms, when lack is replaced by full satisfaction, precisely because of desire’s origins in various stages of infantile and childhood development. This sense of lack is a crucial engine in our psyches, motivating us to keep searching for the things (relationships, material gooods, activities, things) that will help us feel whole, to acquire states of being that we experience as always just out of reach.”

To me the interesting bit is how this relates to interpersonal relationships. No doubt this mechansims has a profund effect on every individual living in a capitalist society, enslaving them in a prison of illusions, an unconscious striving taking the form of a career, a family, new acquisitions, experiences, relationships and so on.

It seems as if this process is especially dominating our romantic relationships. What is love? I think love can be divided into 3 levels.

1) Sexual attraction or lust. This attraction often has very little to do with the person itself, and does not go beyond the level of sexual attraction of body parts.

2) Love as in the commonly used sense of the word, which is a mechanism of addiction, where we -often subconsciously- attach a certain fantasy or idolized image to the loved one, hoping that a relationship with the person will fill the lack described by Lacan. Often we make the loved one out to be the illusory salvation, the “other half” which ends up “breaking our hearts in two” if we cannot posses the person to gain ownership or exlcusive rights to the person. This causes immense distress, because we “outsource” our happiness, we become dependent on the other person. Love in the conventional sense often ends up in marriage or similar circumstances guaranteeing the exlcusive right to the other half. But just like the advertising industry fills our strive for wholeness with illusory, temporary solutions, so is our personal strive for completeness, and therefore peace, not attainable with this strategy. Sooner or later the exciting emotional phase at the beginning relationship wears off, exposing a complicated mess of expectations and often a supressed realisation that this person did not fill the hole the way we were hoping it would.

3) Unconditional love is love for a person which is entirely independent of the persons actions. It comes from a place of wholeness. Only once a person feels whole in themselves they are able to love someone unconditionally, because only then there is no compensating mechanism at work. Unconditional love means the loved one can have any kind of relationship with any other person without hurting the loving one, because there is no dependence on the performance or non performance of certain things of the other person.

Unfortunately, we rarely realise this, often jumping from one relationship to another in a blind frenzy of disappointments. It is easy to mix up these types of love, mistaking love for unconditional love or simpe sexual attraction. Additonally, we are often unaware of how the person of desire is a substitute to fill our own sense of lack, a fantasy created to return ourselves to the state we were before the seperation, as described by Lacan.

Consequently, we might spend years being as sexually promiscuous as we can, having sexual experiences with as many people as we can, wondering why we are not feeling as great as we should be. Or we might find the “perfect” person and the “perfect” relationship lasting for years if not a lifetime, only to realise that within we are still incomplete, and on top of that severely dependend on the other person.

What happens when we get into a situation where someone else is holding the key to our happiness? What happens when we no longer receive the attention we require to feel self assured, worthy, accepted, or whatever our personal manifestation of lack might be? In my experience, the results can be compared easily with a drug addiction, or any other addiction. Addiction is a physiological and psychological dependence, and humans are very capable of becoming rapidly addicted to other human beings. On a physical level, we get intoxicated by the powerful cocktail of hormones every person produces. What better smell is there than the hair of someone you love? In my experience this biochemical addiction is even more powerful than substances such as nictoine, because it can only take one exposure to become absolutely hooked. On a psychological level, the addiction to people is determined by our own complex parameters of our lack, but the central problem is always the same.

The withdrawal symptoms we experience when we are not with the person we love, if we get rejected or feel “unloved”, if we feel utterly alone, if the person we love seems to to behave in a non-exclusive way, if we divorce or break up with our partner, or if our love is not reciprocated,  can be absolutely terrible. Especially if we can not distract ourselves from the pain, and if we don’t immediately fill the gaping hole with something else, the pain can probably only be compared in intensity with the pain a small child feels when it is separated from its mother. Completely helpless, exposed to the merciless torrents  and influences of the environment, it feels unable to survive and must suffer through the terror of abandonmennt, until it either finds its mother again, finds a suitable substitute, or ideally, learns to love itself.

• Work from home
• Chance to make X amount of money per month
• Opportunity to make the world a better place

With no specifics regarding the type of work. It was not until recently when a friend of mine approached me with a similar prospect, that I started paying attention. He has had a rather troubled past and was struggling with life in general when he came across Herbalife, who promised him the above. Being a sceptical and highly intelligent person, he was very reserved at first, but a combination of his future partner being his point-of-contact to herbalife and having tried the products successfully himself, he got involved. 

His life changed radically, seemingly to the best. Herbalife’s positive, upbeat and admittedly pretty convincing representatives (called “Distributors”) poured oil into his already burning desire to do good in a world dominated by greed, oil, politics and evil Big Pharma. Full of enthusiasm and remarkable networking skills he went about spreading the word of Herbalife to his friends and everyone willing to listen to him (which are many), and reselling the products which he bought off his point of contact. Since months down the track he has about 40 people in his “downline” which in my understanding is quite an accomplishment in terms of workload.

He and his partner combined do earn enough to live comfortably with their new born, but they work pretty hard buying Herbalife products (which, by the way, are not manufactured or researched by Herbalife) and selling them at a markup. But the biggest change was not in his living conditions, his new family, or his secured income. What really shocked me and took me a while to digest was his change from an extremely free thinking individual with incredible potential to a propaganda regurgitating worker drone. “Network marketing, you see”, he told me, his face beaming out of every pore, “is the future of business. No more corporations enriching themselves on the shoulders of society. The days of Big Pharma making a people’s health a planned obsolesence are over. This is a new generation of business, where people work in networks, helping each other become more whole in their nutrition and health”.

He was literally bursting of enthusiasm. Proudly he filled me in on the secrets of nutrition, the problems caused by refined food, imbalanced diet, lack of this and that and the obsceneties we do to our bodies by eating the wrong foods. The problem to him was crystal clear, and I agreed with him on just about everything but the solution to this dilemma, which, of course, was Herbalife.

“Look, Herbalife got a team of the worlds leading doctors and scientists, what they are onto will not become generally accepted in mainstream medical science for another 10 years.  For god sakes, they’ve got a Nobel Laureate on their board of directors!” . Luckily I knew not to argue these things, and his conviction was almost intimidating. “Do you sometimes hear criticism of the sect-like company culture?” I carefully tested the waters. Yes he had. “But you have to look at the definition of a sect. What is a sect? Whenever there is a group of people with revolutionary knowledge, they are ridiculed. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then they join you. Right now they are laughing. You know what happened to Galileo? He got burned on the stake.” I was impressed by his smooth answer, but he didn’t seem to have thought about it. In fact, he regurgitated this sentence with a reflex only rivalled by an uneasy gutfeeling making a very unmistakable appereance.

So what is behind this company? How do they manage to sell their products through a chain of distributors several levels deep, each adding their own markup? How do they get people to associate so strongly with Herbalife? How do they get people to buy an overpriced product which has caused liver damage in many documented cases, and even death, has consistently received abysmal reviews, caused a host of lawsuits and scandals and has no proven measurable advantage over any other competing product? Is this really a revolutionary product taking the world by storm, or is it an army of brainwashed sales drones?

A quick look on the Herbalife page on Wikipedia and a read through this testimony on the german consumer protection agency has shed considerable light on this. The following translated excerpt gives a pretty good feeling of the experience of this guy which I am strongly inclined to believe is accurate and fairly typical based on what my friend told me.

“As I was walking to the [Wellbiz] workshop, I started hearing loud music. I stepped into the room, and what I wondered about what I saw there. Like in a sect, people were standing in front of their chairs and were clapping loudly to the music. They were all wearing a dress und a white pin saying “I love Herbalife”. They were advisors [Distributors]. “But what were they doing at a seminar where they teach how to be an advisor?” I wondered. Half of the about 45 people were already advisors. They were there to raise the mood. They would clap after every sentence of the speaker, who also was an advisor.”

Let me demonstrate this by blatantly comparing the business model of Herbalife with Nazi Germany, the Animal Farm described by George Orwerl and Scientology. Did I just hear your collar pop? Don’t worry, you’re reading this by choice, so feel free to move on, or send your hate mail to your local Hebralife representative who I’m sure would be more pleasant company if you happened to build your life on Herbalife. I do suggest you read the above mentioned articles before reading on.

The frightening common denominator I think lies in the way the audience is manipulated to slip into thought patterns which not only remove a persons ability to think critically of the subject, but also uses some of the most destructive human interests -power and the ego- to create a group which conforms and performs blindly in the name of the organisation. What becomes possible when such a group dynamic is established was demonstrated quite brutally with the Stanford Prison experiment - but the same rules apply for “soft” violence – conformity to party/organization line and doctrine leading to self-destructive behaviour and often a overly zealous drive to share the joy of having found a role in a firmly established social network – be it a “World Team Member” with Herbalife, a prison guard, a priest or a drill sergeant. 

To get back to Herbalife, I am shocked by the fact that this kind of manipulation is not recognised and counteracted e.g. by means of legislation requiring informing potential customers of the facts and processes behind a “business opportunity”, more effectively restricting pyramid scheme business models, or – one can dream – teaching the basics of mass manipulation and deception to every high school graduate, using books such as the excellent The Wave by Morton Rhue.

My friend recently got a sidejob at a building company, where within a few weeks he eased through the ranks and with a wink of a finger has achieved more than in his entire Herbalife episode in terms of getting fairly rewarded for his efforts. As far as I can tell, his health has not seen any of the amazing results Herbalife promises – quite the opposite in fact, the last time I remember seeing him he didn’t have a pot belly and was far from starting to lose hair. On the contrary, he has built a family on the empty promises, lies and wet farts of overpaid executives and douchebag marketing MBA’s using good old tried and tested means of mass manipulation.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. -Martin Luther King

And what are we doing? Celebrating the first black president in history? I will join the celebrations as soon as he shows the content of his character – which, I hope, will be reflected in his policies.

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I’m qute surprised by the amount of this kind of information there is on the web. Have a look at these two link lists which connect an abundance of like minded people and – as always when it comes to “spiritual” or “new age” related stuff – a whole bunch of quacks. Unfortunately with these things it is just like what Douglas R. Hofstadter said about Ray Kurzweil‘s futurism: 

“It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can’t possibly figure out what’s good or bad. It’s an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it’s very hard to disentangle the two.”

From the video:

• Mass and energy are both different manifestations of the same thing.
• Very small amounts of mass may be converted into very large amounts of energy and vice versa
• Mass and energy are equivalent: Matter = Energy

This is a pretty abstract idea, but I like to think it has the following implications:

• We are everything, and everything is us (that’s not exactly a new concept is it?)
• Therefore, what benefits us benefits others, and what hurts others hurts ourselves (“Be the change you want to see in the world”  and of course “Love Thy Neighbour”)
• The conversion of energy to matter corresponds the conversion of thought to reality.
• The universe is constantly transforming from energy into matter and back.

In other words, we are able to the control physical universe through thought, and control the energetic universe through action (think Qi Gong, Yoga, Taiji etc.). The more thought/consciousness (energy) there is, the more potential for conversion into matter; the more conscious we are the more we can create our own reality. We humans really are gods arent’t we!? But of course this is a metaphysical sort imagination of what Einsteins physics could represent. But, as he said himself,

Imagination is more important than knowledge…

Why don’t they teach imagination in school?

This is where trusty SomaFM comes in. 100% non-commercial, straight forward, hassle free and high quality music, for free. I am personally very taken by Groovesalad which plays very peaceful down tempo, slow and cozy tunes non-stop. There’s hardly ever a song I don’t enjoy, and if I really love a song, there’s a running list of the songs which are being, and have been played.

Just when I thought I had all the Cafe Del Mar-oid music worth listening too, Groovesalad comes along with a vast collection of excellent artists I’ve never heard of. I have no idea why you guys are doing this, but your efforts are appreciated.

I’m currently listening to “Baked Beans – The unbearable lightness of Beans”. Crazy name, but damn what a song!

Qi Gong is an ancient Chinese practice dating back as far as 5000 years, and its principles underlie most eastern martial arts, in particular the internal or “nèijiā” based arts such as Tai Chi, Judo or Aikido. But even though Qi Gong underlies many martial arts, it has nothing to do with fighting. Qi Gong is a method and a philosophy. The philosophy is based on the view that everything is essentially energy or Qi of some form, quality and density.

The Qi of the general universe is called Hunyuan Qi. Hunyan Qi  has three aspects: energy, information and material, the latter of which is is the only one most of us can objectively see and measure.

But Qi varies depending on what matter it corresponds to. In Traditional Chinese Medicine and Qi Gong, the Qi of Humans consists of physical Hunyuan Qi, or the material body, organ Hunyan Qi and Yiyuanti Hunyan Qi, which is Qi of the mind. Each type of Qi has specific properties and is stored at specific points in the body, loosely corresponding to the chakras.

Qi goes wherever our mind goes – usually our attention is on the outwards world, so for most people, Qi is constantly flowing outwards. By focusing the mind we can concentrate our Qi to do things such as break through bricks with bare hands, regulate Qi flow, intensity and quality in our own body and blocking and unblocking Qi in other people.

Manipulating energy flow in the self  and other people and using the opponents energy towards himself is the essence on which the astonshing feats of eastern Martial Arts are based on. Qi Gong is essentially the cultivation of this energy without the aggressive aspect; it focusses solely on bettering the quality of life.

I could say a lot more on the nature of Qi and the amazing things that can be done with it, such as the manipulation of matter, its role in paranormal phenomena, direct knowing and so on. But let me instead give you an idea why Zhineng Qi Gong is different from “normal” Qi Gong. I will also go into some more depth about the foundation of Zinheng Qi Gong another time.

There are many different schools of Qi Gong, some dating back thousands of years. Zhineng Qi Gong is relatively young and a highly potent mix of various disciplines. It was created by Professor Pang Ming in the 1980′s and is well recognised in China, being practised in various institutes and endorsed by the government to a certain degree.

• Zhineng Qigong is an open school of Qi Gong, where the Qi in the body is not isolated from external Qi like in a closed system, and is integrated with the Qi of the environment and strenghtened using the Qi of the universe and Qi fields. The focus is on replenishing, not on preserving Qi.
• Zhineng Qi Gong also uses Qi to create Qi fields, essentially and energy field with particularly pure and strong Qi. Qi fields can be created by one or many practitioners and infused with information. People who enter the Qi feld – whether they practise Qi Gong or not – can then benefit from the Qi field and often show reactions to the field such as pain in problematic areas in the body or some other form of discomfort as the Qi of the body is getting cleared and strengthened.
• Zhineng Qi Gong places equal emphasis on the methods and the philosophy. Qi Gong practice without a Qi Gong consciousness is empty exercise at best and a quick way to inflict damage on the self or others at worst. Zhineng Qi Gong, unlike some styles of Yoga and Qi Gong, is a way of life, not an exercise or a tool. Even though the methods are the most visible aspect, they are a means to an end – advanced practitioners may well practice little or no methods.
• Finally, Zhineng Qi Gong incorporates and borrows ideas from various disciplines, including western medicine, and seeks to foster understanding of the seemingly unscentific practises by exposing the practise to scientific rigor and providing transparency. This is important because Zhineng Qi Gong is used a lot with terminally ill people, an area voulnerable to exploitation and willing to try anything – a predisposition which is often taken advantage of by alternative healers and quacks.

I have created a Qi Gong category on this blog corresponding to the growing significance of this topic in my own life. Look forward to many Qi Gong tutorials and eassays to come! Yay!

For now, check out these links for further reading. I can’t vouch for their correctness or integrity, but they are a good starting point.

Summary of some of the principles of Zhineng Qi Gong by Wudang Internal
Hexianju Centre in Hainan, China
Wikipedia article on the difference between internal and external martial arts
Abundant Zhineng Qi Gong is a website with some good info
Zhineng Qi Gong Trust of New Zealand
Yuan Tze Human Life Science Centre in New Zealand with which I practice
Wikipedia article on Qi Gong in general
Singapore Zhineng Qi Gong Society

Source

Great to see not quite everyone gets sucked into all the fear mongering about the “collapse of our economy” and sees these bailouts happening all over the place for what they’re really are: misappropriation of taxes, used to interfere in a supposedly free market and its ability to regulate and rid itself of badly managed businesses.