The Art of Living Consciously: The Power of Awareness to Transform Everyday Life

Nathaniel Branden wrote:

In my early forties, I decided I wanted to experience a form of body therapy known as structural integration (or, more popularly, “Rolfing,” after the originator of the method, Ida Rolf). This process involves deep massage and manipulation of the muscle fasciae to realign the body in more appropriate relation to gravity, to correct imbalances caused by entrenched muscular contractions, and to open areas of blocked feeling and energy. When treatment is successful, it leads to a general freeing up of the capacity to feel, greater awareness of and sensitivity to one’s own physical processes, improved overall coordination, superior balance, and increased energy. Not everyone gains these benefits to the same degree (or at all), but for me it was very much the right treatment at the right time in my development. I felt lighter than I had in years. I experienced a general deepening of self-awareness. I felt freer emotionally. I felt as if walls within myself had dissolved. And I had more energy. I was not surprised that I felt better. What did surprise me-what I was completely unprepared for was the change in my perceptiveness concerning other people.

During this period I was leading a number of psychotherapy groups, and my clients volunteered that they could notice changes in me week by week as the Rolfing progressed. I had had very little formal training in working with the body in psychotherapy, yet I found I was now able to “read” bodies to a new and astonishing degree. Slight changes in facial expression or eye movements, shifts of posture, subtle variations in ways of standing or sitting, changes of skin color, alterations in breathing patterns all suddenly seemed to convey volumes of information to me as clearly as articulate speech. It was as if, in becoming more transparent to myself, I had shifted to a space that allowed others to become more transparent to me.

Posted in Psychology | Comments Off on The Art of Living Consciously: The Power of Awareness to Transform Everyday Life

Decoding Christian Nationalism (8-28-23)

01:00 A Less Religious America Is a More Polarized America, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=150846
03:00 Here’s What The Left-Wing Doesn’t Understand About Race Relations
05:00 Your Hero System Is Your Morality And You Get It From Your Tribe, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=150319
10:00 Why are Americans so mean? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/
15:00 Dennis and Julie on LA’s tropical storm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaIuYOeogJw
48:30 Noam Chomsky: Lover of linguistics, the USA… not so much, https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/noam-chomsky
1:08:30 British TV presenter Phillip Schofield shamed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Schofield
1:12:00 Philosopher Agnes Callard, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Callard
1:21:30 Four Hundred Years of Quarantine, https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/four-hundred-years-of-quarantine
1:23:00 Geoffrey Miller, psychologist and polyamory practicioner, https://twitter.com/primalpoly
1:23:30 Geoffrey Miller’s wife, psychologist Diana S. Fleischman, https://twitter.com/sentientist
1:56:00 Column: COVID lockdowns saved millions of lives — so of course Ron DeSantis is angry about them, https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-08-29/no-gov-desantis-covid-lockdowns-saved-lives-and-your-policies-did-the-opposite
2:00:00 Was Closing Schools an Obvious and Colossal Mistake?, https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/was-closing-schools-a-mistake/
2:05:00 Ibram X. Kendi: Inside you are two wolves. One of them is racist., https://decoding-the-gurus.captivate.fm/episode/ibram-x-kendi-inside-you-are-two-wolves-one-of-them-is-racist
2:08:00 Ricardo joins to talk about getting hired after flaming out of the corporate world
2:09:00 Ricardo’s Adderall addiction destroyed his life
2:11:00 Road to recovery: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=130767
2:14:00 Ideas that give me energy: https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=130933
2:17:00 Our Problems Are Not Our Problems, They’re Just Symptoms Of Deeper Problems, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=136247
2:20:00 With or without you, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=133894
2:25:00 I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=133768
2:35:00 Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=132822
2:38:00 Bypass your self-destructive tendencies, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=132737
2:45:00 A life that works https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=130933

Posted in America | Comments Off on Decoding Christian Nationalism (8-28-23)

A Less Religious America Is a More Polarized America

Danielle K. Williams writes in The Atlantic 9-3-23:

Declines in church attendance have made the rural Republican regions of the country even more Republican and—perhaps most surprising—more stridently Christian nationalist. The wave of states banning gender-affirming care this year and the adoption of “proud Christian nationalist” as an identity by politicians such as Marjorie Taylor Greene (who even marketed T-shirts with the slogan) is not what many people might have expected at a time when church attendance is declining.

Still, what’s going on in the South and Midwest is consistent with what happened in the Northeast: People hold onto their politics when they stop attending church. Just as liberal Christians in Massachusetts and Connecticut stayed liberal when they dropped off their church’s membership roll, so conservative Christians in Alabama and Indiana stay conservative even when they’re no longer part of a congregation.

In fact, people become even more entrenched in their political views when they stop attending services. Though churches have a reputation in some circles as promoting hyper-politicization, they can be depolarizing institutions. Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.

It seems clear that Christian nationalism attracts a lot of adherents who rarely go to church themselves…

But without a church community, in many cases, the nation’s political system becomes their church—and the results are polarizing.

Posted in Christianity | Comments Off on A Less Religious America Is a More Polarized America

Decoding Justin Murphy (8-28-23)

01:00 My cliffs of Bondi Beach story, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=149244
05:00 The Art of Noticing | Steve Sailer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkL6G3xlCBo
08:00 Curious Gazelle hosts Justin Murphy, https://twitter.com/CuriousGazelle/status/1696326408161612171
10:00 Talking to friends about heavy issues
12:30 Justin Murphy is 37, he doesn’t go to church high , https://jmrphy.net/
13:30 Justin Murphy just wants to be normal, https://twitter.com/jmrphy
46:00 The dangerous powers of the e-personality, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=121464
1:11:00 The pain of losing friends for speaking out

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Decoding Justin Murphy (8-28-23)

Trump Fights Multiple Indictments As America Gets Mean (8-27-23)

01:00 Trump’s mug shot
04:30 Prigozhin post-mortem, https://nonzero.substack.com/p/prigozhin-post-mortem
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/
18:30 Hurriquake in LA last Sunday
21:00 Ode To The Moral Leader by Pascal Dupin, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=117781
23:45 The case for a pessimistic politics
28:45 Rich men north of Richmond
30:00 The dangers of white people going on welfare for the first time
39:00 Latest indictments of Trump
43:20 David Wallace-Wells: 95% of the world live in places where renewable energy is cheaper than dirty energy
1:01:00 Dooovid joins the show
1:02:00 It’s hard to be Jewish
1:07:00 Self-loathing
1:54:30 Dooovid’s cult – the Branch Dooovidians
1:57:00 Dooovid’s term with the Hare Krishnas
2:00:00 Claire Khaw joins, https://twitter.com/Book_of_Rules
2:02:00 Secular Koranism: a new moral and legal system for the West and the rest by Claire Khaw, https://www.amazon.com/Secular-Koranism-moral-legal-system/dp/B0C6W82CY5/
2:50:00 The Riverfront Brawl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Riverfront_brawl
2:56:00 Andrew Tate
3:01:00 Nick Fuentes
3:04:00 Tucker Carlson
3:15:00 Concluding Emotional Sobriety and Self-Esteem, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SMfjfX82CY

Optimizing your social life (8-23-23)

Controversial! (8-23-23)

Posted in America | Comments Off on Trump Fights Multiple Indictments As America Gets Mean (8-27-23)