33Nicolas's blog

Growing Up

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A society is a strange and fascinating entity. It is as alive as its occupants.

Along the lifespan of human beings, we begin as children well-adapted to voicing what we don't like. We instinctively know what we don't like and voice it loudly. But we don't always know what we want. We might be aware of what we like, but not necessarily what we want or need.

Growing up means interaction with adults and with those who have more experience. This is a crucial step to adulthood as we transition from childhood to the rough teenage years. The process from child to teenager is difficult and happens with adults coaching the child.

"I know you don't like that but what do you want?" This is a crucial question that helps a child dig deeper inside to find out what would be the solution to their predicament. Although we can't nor should negative events, that question leads to a personal quest leading to maturity.

Teenagers figure out what they don't like and what they like but still struggle with what they want. This is where our collective societies seem to be stuck. Somewhere along the lines of a transition from childhood: "We don't like that!" to adulthood: "We want this." The teenager is stuck in a: "I don't like that!" followed by kneejerk reactions. Teenagers jump to conclusions, don't dig deep enough, and reach for the low hanging fruits. It's a pretty dangerous situation and can be extremely volatile. They simply do not grasp the bigger picture. They cannot put the problems in perspective and isolate them.

It is sad to see that there is little talk about what led to our current situation. Racism is a problem, but it didn't evolve in a vacuum. It has its reasons and as long as we do not get to the root of it, we are agitated without results in sight. The aggravation builds after decades of many politicians "vowing" to right the wrongs without results.

Did You Know Human Performance Specialists Existed? Do You Know What It Means?

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What's a Human Performance Specialist? How about human factors consultant or a human factors practitioner?

Have you ever felt your heart pick up the pace, your mind race, your soul and body moved as you learn something new? How about when your "spidey" senses tell you this is big?

That's how it felt when I read Dr. Klein wrote on Psychology Today: A New Term: Human Performance Specialists. He writes: "According to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society website, it is a scientific discipline trying to understand how people interact with other elements of a system. It tries to create designs that optimize human well-being and overall system performance. Got it? That’s one of the official definitions, and frankly, it doesn’t seem particularly clear or compelling."

Except, it's clear to me.

Who thought of a door-knob when a door handle works better? You can use a foot, hip, or elbow to open a door handle when your hands are full, not a knob. He writes, how about when you "pull a door that needs to be pushed?" Or "... spend way too long trying to navigate a confusing website" I still don't understand why websites are so convoluted or why computer desktops are rectangular when my mind is round and organizes data in pie charts.

According to Dr. Klein, this discipline focuses on making things usable for people. The article is about how the professional title means little to most people. How about Coaching? A Coach is not someone who asks you to drop and do 30 pushups. A true coach is someone who raises your level of awareness. A Coach asks you questions so that you understand what it is you want to understand. But try explaining that to people. It is not easy.

Why Covid-19, Electric Aviation, and Living In Big Cities Is Pushinbg me to a Healthier Environment

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After years of searching, wanting to change the world, and by the same token change people around me, I started to heed the messages from the wise people I have read about, some I met. Don't strive to change others, be that change. OK, I got it!

It might sound trivial to say that but there is a sweet release when that notion goes from conceptualization to an inner core realization. Yes, like many, I intrinsically knew we could have a better time on this planet and were worth much more than what a few elites make the rest of the world go through for their short-lived benefits. And after all, changing others is a tricky downward spiraling path. You can't change people unless they want to change. However, you can stand clearly anchored within your higher Light and simply radiate Love. And that is what I'm learning right now.

COVID-19 put into action what I already knew. We live too close to one another. It is not healthy. It is not healthy for animals and that is why their close-proximity derived diseases resist even the harshest antibiotics today. We need more space. That is a problem for key politicians pushing the urban agenda and mega-cities. It doesn't work well. Now that too many people have tasted quality of life, there is a move to smaller cities and even villages.

I have been covering the field of electric mobility for 13 years. Along the way, I have noticed a few trends. Cars brought people closer. Today, they just pollute to be made, pollute to run, and make a handful very wealthy. That system is absurd and no longer serves our purpose.

Cars got bigger, heavier, plush, detached from driving. So be it, there is much better ahead.

Social Media, That Big Spiritual Cobweb, and The Way of Wyrd

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Years ago I read a great book called The Way of Wyrd. I highly recommend it for those of you enamored with Celtic lores.

Written by Brian Bates, The Way of Wyrd retraces the steps of a monk sent to scout the heathen lands of England with its Celtic druids and strange religions. I won't spoil the story but browsing social media and seeing the latest waves of looting reminded me of an ancient concept shared in The Way of Wyrd and by many ancient societies. That of the inter-relatedness of things or that big cosmic spiritual cobweb we are part of.

Growing up through my twenties, thirties, and even forties, all of these spiritual concepts felt real, normal, and de facto. But concepts they were and as much as I held them to be real, I had little proof. I didn't own them in a deep guttural level. It's not until life takes you through many experiences and their accumulation brings you to a stall point. Then, and only then can you stop and take scope, let go, and really get things deep within. That is what has been happening to me the past year or so.

Something happened with this last wave of Covid-19 pandemic scare immediately followed by the tragic death of George Floyd and the looting that took place. I found a deep peace and an interrelatedness that makes me feel how we are more alike than different. Of course, I knew it, but now I feel it, I even sense it. I see the face of people around me wanting to connect despite how different each and everyone is. Put in other words, we are looking in the same direction but wearing different clothes with different tastes.

At The Verge of a Society Meltdown Keeping The Light Radiating

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It's June 1st and the US is being torn with a wave of demonstrations, mostly peaceful, turned into looting acts. The fear is palpable, if not for the uncertainty. We might be paranoid but we removed the furniture on the front porch because residential areas would be next after looters pillage businesses.

Yesterday's looting was abysmal. It feels like society at its end. I feel I am witnessing yet again Athens at the end of its heyday, a feeling I've had for so long -- anticipation. Looters were driving their own cars and making off with boxes on items. We can blame them for their actions but they certainly did not happen in a vacuum. We all hold a part of the responsibility but not the act itself.

The night was spent with helicopter hovering, fireworks mixed with gunshots. The African American man who past away at the end of three -- I can't think of the right words to describe these men -- police officers stirred a country ready to explode, if not implode. The elite is hunkering down in their mansions hoping the weather the storm. Good luck with that one!

Yesterday we had a 6 pm county lockdown but our city said at 8 pm. It makes you wonder who's in charge of what sometimes? Today, we had a curfew of 4 pm, which turned into 5 pm. I just saw a young lady walking her dog at 5:30 pm. Go figure!

With all this, I feel strangely calm. I feel a feeling of peace coming over me as if I had been previously trained to handle tough times. I feel I've lived through much worse and I intuitively know what we can and need to do. But the one thing I feel we are doing differently is to hold the space of the result which is glowingly positive when it gets there.

So I'm thinking of all my sisters and brothers of the Light as we hold that Light and let it spread, one connection to the next.

So What If This Is Just A Big Simulation?

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I love the idea of what if the world and the Universe is just a simulation?

Indeed, what if it is? What does it change? If the illusion feels real, then the feeling is just as real as what we perceive to be real, whether or not.

Someone asked me what would I do if I walk in a place and saw a fight. Do I go in and punch everything that moves or do I take a step back and see how I can help bring the situation back to a middle ground? Obviously, no one wants to make a situation worse.

That question was asked in the greater context of those who do not believe human activity has impact environmental changes. Today's COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of traffic has shown that human behavior has negatively impacted our environment. It also shows that whether we believe it or not, why add to what is a mess and getting worse for us?

So what if it is just a big simulation? I'd still rather do my best and not add anything unneeded to a situation. But that opens up a can of worms as to those who feel they have been told to act by less than angelic beings. And this brings us to another monkey wrench.

"Everything is dual; everything has poles; everything
 has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same;
 opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
 extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes
 may be reconciled."--The Kybalion.

As Above, So Below. As Below, So Above.

Reaching Out To The Critical Mass

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I've been wondering how to reach out to the critical mass and keep expectations in line with the Univers' desires? And spoiler alert, I don't have the answer.

We mostly all want what's best for ourselves and others. We should also want what's best for Mother Earth. After all, she sustains us. After going to Facebook to gauge what is happening out there, I find that locally, people are doing well, but online, it's another story. Facebook is shaping up to be a cesspool of negativity throughout COVID-19. If locally, people have done well, at least around me, Facebook is showing a different grim picture. Many are all too eager to believe whatever mass media news spews and disregarding scientists and doctors. The latest wave of anti-hydroxychloroquine propaganda is a testament to how powerful the pharmaceutical industry has gotten and it's not slowing down at all.

So how do you reach out to the mass? That part alludes to me. So far, COVID-19 has been more of an intellectual conundrum filled with tidbits that don't add up for the most part.

Take into consideration that last I checked, five companies own all US news. That means five for-profit companies own all newspapers, TV channels, and radio stations. What are the chances their advertising system could flaw the news? And no, there aren't any independent governing bodies making sure they are impartial. Even the once-venerable The Lancet is not exempt from controversies as it engaged in open criticism of the World Health Organization (WHO), rejecting its claims on how efficient homeopathy is, among a few are a fabricated article. See Wikipedia for more information just to start your simple research. Its latest attack on Hydroxychloroquine is a mishmash of big data based on terminal patients given the drug, a well-known fact it is useless at that stage.

Where Is That Big Spritual Community?

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For the past few years, I've been wondering where our spiritual community is.

With COVID-19 putting the brakes on our destructive ways, it's the perfect time to seek out like-minded folks and our elders who can teach us to move up the proverbial spiritual spiral case. But where are they? Where is that spiritual community?

The Galactic Free Press is an amazing place with many jewels I come to read every day. I look forward to The Creator Writing every day, as well as Trinity Esoterics. But I'd love to see much more and see what others feel, see and do, without convincing or try to sway others. I'd like to see how everyone is moving on without a teacher spin to it. Just simple human beings exchanging what they're witnessing, what they're going through, and what they are feeling.

I feel we're very close to being able to do that without pushing an agenda or letting our egos get the best of us. Does anyone want to try? We can build a room here and give it a spin. If we fail, too bad. If it works, we all benefit.

How The Industrial Revolution Failed to Bring Us Meaning and Well-Being.

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Can you guess where this one comes from?

Eric Fromm, the famous humanistic psychoanalysis rocked the world in the 1970s when he wrote The Art of Loving. It was part of a series of books that shed light on basic human foundations, love, well-being, etc. He also wrote To Have Or To Be? and later The Art of Being, both of which I haven't read yet. Both seems like the perfect read while in this COVID-19 forced rest.

BrainPicking writes on the topic of all humans want to live but don't necessarily think about how:

"That we want to live, that we like to live, are facts that require no explanation. But if we ask how we want to live — what we seek from life, what makes life meaningful for us — then indeed we deal with questions (and they are more or less identical) to which people will give many different answers. Some will say they want love, others will choose power, others security, others sensuous pleasure and comfort, others fame; but most would probably agree in the statement that what they want is happiness. This is also what most philosophers and theologians have declared to be the aim of human striving. However, if happiness covers such different, and mostly mutually exclusive, contents as the ones just mentioned, it becomes an abstraction and thus rather useless. What matters is to examine what the term “happiness” means…"

But from having our needs met and our wishes fulfilled leads to the question of what do we actually want?

Fromm goes on to say:

I Sneezed and I got Very Scared

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It's interesting to see the consequences of COVID-19. This little virus brought the world to a standstill. As much fear as it struck in the hearts of all, it also brought out the best and sometimes the worst in humans.

While the skies are clearer, animals venture back on the Earth, people engage more than ever with each other and taste that elusive quality of life, I sneezed and I got scared.

It's one thing to read the news and formulate an intellectual point of view. Although I pride myself on being somewhat neutral, I caught myself being complacent in intellectualizing the effects of COVID-19. I'm still not sure which is better, isolate, or brave the virus. Either way, I'd rather play it safe. But then I sneezed and that scared me.

I spent yesterday hunkered at home. Didn't step out once. I felt a little under the weather. My head felt like it does when I have a cold. I never can tell well the difference between a cold and the flu, or a virus and a bacteria. It all feels the same to me or perhaps, I'm not that in tune with the subtleties of my body messages. I crashed during the day. I slept like a baby. I drank plenty of fluids, took plenty of Vitamin C and Zinc, and put Ravintsara on my tongue. I didn't sleep well. What if I have COVID-19? Will I be rushed to the emergency room and live on 40% of my breathing capacity? And that could be the best-case scenario? What if I give it to my wife or my friends' daughter who came on a dog walk with me the day before?

It's a sobering thought away from formulas, theories, and intellectualization. It's a sober reminder that despite listening to political buffoons and their not so hidden agendas or other non-scientifically trained public talking heads when you sneeze you get very scared these days.

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