Written on 2010-03-31 03:51:30
I now have a new blog, www.22cplus.blogspot.com. It's a futures orientated blog, but will feature many of the themes seen here. You are welcome to come along, and even be a guest blogger if you have a good idea. See you there! Marcus
Written on 2010-03-02 23:40:11
LIFESTYLE. Give up your job and work the 4 hour week while traveling the world. Is it possible? Author Timothy Ferriss thinks so.
Written on 2010-02-25 20:31:10
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. Recent reports of the bashing of Indians in Australia have triggered a wave of ferocious condemnation across much of India. Yet what we focus upon expands, and much of the problem lies in human psychology. IMAGE: Indians burn an effigy of Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.
Written on 2010-02-22 20:50:48
SPIRITUAL. Every day I see dead people, and it is scary.
Written on 2010-02-15 06:54:43
SPIRITUALITY/PSYCHIC. Does the psychic realm really exist, and if so, why doesn't anyone mention it seriously in science, education and the media?
Written on 2010-02-14 07:13:16
SPIRITUALITY/PSYCHIC. My experience leads me to conclude that all people have the capacity to develop psychic awareness, to greater or lesser degree. Here I explain a little of how I developed my own intuitive mind, and how you can begin to develop your too.
Written on 2010-02-03 02:19:30
SPIRITUALITY/PSYCHIC. In mid 2004 I was riding a bus in China when I drifted off to sleep. As I slept a scene suddenly popped into my mind. I saw a setting sun, and the words "The End" appeared, as if it was the end of a movie. I was floating through the air, heading towards the sun. The dream proved to be tragically prophetic.
Written on 2010-01-28 08:21:00
POLITICAL. The West risks moral and political decay if it surrenders its conscience over human rights to woo Beijing, argues prominent Chinese novelist Ma Jian. What do you think? Do western countries have a duty, or a right to criticise China on human rights, especially given the betrayal of western liberal ideals during the Bush/Blair years?
Written on 2010-01-24 23:12:03
SPIRITUAL. Many people, perhaps most, live lives of quiet desperation, as Thoreau famously stated. They drift through life with an uneasy feeling that they are simply not doing what they are meant to be doing, not being who they are meant to be. There is nagging voice, just out of earshot, whispering, trying to tell them something. But the voice, and its mysterious message, is frustratingly difficult to hear. So they just move on, sleepwalking their way towards a future they hope will fulfill them, but never does. They miss their Bliss. Are you a bit like this?
Written on 2010-01-04 02:38:38
SPIRITUAL. In the video and book The Secret, we are told that we can manifest whatever we want, as long as we put out the right signal to the uni-verse. This secret has been suppressed. We are shown a scene from a cigarette filled room full of grey-haired men, presumably plotting to keep the secret out of the hands of the filthy masses. I hope those old fogies were fired, because they did a lousy job...
Written on 2009-12-30 23:47:24
SPIRITUAL. The Sage is that wiser part of us which can tap into what I call Integrated Intelligence, the infinite stream of wisdom which we all have, but all too rarely use. It is the Sage which can guide us on the journey to living our Bliss, if only we will listen. Sage of Synchronicity, which is now released, was written from two sources. One was the knowledge and experience accumulated from my twenty-year spiritual journey. The other was the wisdom which came spontaneously from my inner Sage. The words which follow in this blog post are taken directly from the text.
Written on 2009-12-16 22:22:48
POLITICAL. Is China destined to implode once again? George Friedman, in his book The Next 100 Years, dismisses China's rise. The chapter is entitled "Paper Tiger". He suggests that the historical issues which have plagued China in previous times will resurface yet again, once the economic growth begins to retract. Is he correct?
Written on 2009-12-06 21:35:32
INTELLIGENCE. It is one thing to say that computers are like brains, but are brains like computers? Much of modern cognitive science is dominated by the computer metaphor. Computers can calculate and simulate and modulate. But just how much like a human mind is a computer? Could a computer ever really be said to be intelligent in the way that a person is? And does it really matter if they are not?
Written on 2009-11-25 20:50:08
INTELLIGENCE. Charles Darwin never held an academic post. He inherited a good deal of money, and used that endowment to spend many years meticulously classifying the plants and animals of the world, and developing his theory of natural selection. This changed him. In old age Darwin intuitively knew that there was an imbalance in his mind. "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts..."
Written on 2009-11-22 20:27:58
INTELLIGENCE & EDUCATION. In recent centuries science and academia have very successfully brought forward a mass of information and applied it practically to create new technologies. And yet academia has regressed. One hundred years ago western academia held an average consciousness level of about five and a half percent. Now it is about four percent. Even as knowledge has progressed, consciousness has regressed. Another way of thinking about this is that we have masses of data and lots of cool machines, but the big picture has become increasingly obscured.
Written on 2009-11-15 20:24:37
POLITICS/SPIRITUAL. So Obama is in Asia, and the flashing cameras and media frenzy suggest that the masses have acquired the audacity of hope. For many in the Chinese world, this heralds the beginning of the great new era of international relations. Not only will US-Sino relations be born anew, but China will return to its rightful place as the leader of the world. The greatest hope is that Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, will publically acknowledge Taiwan and Tibet by as an integral part of China. The savior brings promise of wholeness. Yet why is anybody in China interested in what Obama thinks at all?
Written on 2009-11-05 22:47:22
SPIRITUAL. It was 1993, and I was wondering along the main street of Byron Bay, in northern New South Wales, Australia. On that sunny winter day, I spotted a little book shop, and wandered in. There, amidst the plentiful supply of spiritual literature, I spotted a little tome called Words from Silence, by Leonard Jacobson. Something about the book grabbed me, so I picked it up and began to flick through the pages. This was to be the beginning of a life-changing journey.
Written on 2009-11-03 03:47:36
SPIRITUAL/ SOCIAL ISSUES. It was Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. A man peeled a violin from his case, placed his hat before him, and proceeded to play six Bach pieces. During his sixty minutes in that place, some 3,000 people passed by, most on their way to work. But this was to be no ordinary performance, and the result tells us something about what has become of the money and machines society.
Written on 2009-11-01 02:45:42
You might notice things have changed a bit here. The whole site has been redone, including the blog.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:45:54
SPIRITUAL. There is a little tale I tell in my book Sage of Synchronicity, about the time I got kicked out of a spiritual group in New Zealand for being a spiritual twit. It was a particularly demanding programme that I was taking part in, and I failed to take the necessary levels of responsibility to stay with the group.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:44:26
INTELLIGENCE. I came across an interesting little audio clip of Ray Kurzweil on Andrew Cohen's blog, today. Kurzweil is the originator of the idea of "the singularity", the time in the near future when machines will surpass human intelligence. In the audio Kurweil describes how evolution and technology will come together to make a supremely loving human species.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:43:29
SPIRITUAL. In 2012 the world will end because the Mayan calendar says so. Not really, of course. But we shouldn't let that stop us having a few panic attacks between now and then. After all, what is the use of a good doomsday scenario if one can not get a little terror out of it?
Written on 2009-10-28 05:41:57
FUTURES.The USA has been the single superpower in this world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But will China soon usurp it as the dominant world power? Before I try my hand at answering this crucial question, let me sidetrack a little.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:40:17
SPIRITUALITY/INTELLIGENCE. The human mind is connected to a greater intelligence than most people realise. I call it integrated intelligence. This gives us the capacity to draw upon a kind of universal mind to make wise choices. Integrated intelligence can help us to sense which way to go when things get tough. The following little tale, taken from a time when a few thousand people died from a nasty little bug they called SARS, demonstartes the point. It was a time of widespread panic. But not for some.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:39:11
SPIRITUALITY. When I began to write the book Sage of Synchronicity, I was living on the fiftieth floor of a high-rise building in Hong Kong. The first weekend I started to write, two kites continuously circled around outside my window. Kites are very large birds which glide about in great circles, effortlessly sailing upon the waves of the air. Time and time again they glided within a few meters of my window. It was as if nature was sending me a message...
Written on 2009-10-28 05:38:06
POLITICAL/SPIRITUAL. Recently China's far-western Xinjiang province exploded in a wave of hate and violence. The ethnic Uigur Muslims and the Han Chinese majority clashed. The result was over two hundred deaths, as well as widespread vandalism, burning and looting. China has a state-controlled media which is notoriously propaganda-heavy and manipulative when dealing with issues of social instability. So finding out the truth of what actually happened is not easy. As with so many ethnic clashes across the world, both sides have blamed the other. One of my prime interests as both a futurist and an intuitive analyst is to get to the bottom of human conflict and drama, and to open a space for healing. My concern with the Han/Uigur conflict is no different. My question then is, how can the situation in Xinjiang be addressed peacefully, and how can the two parties move towards greater harmony and healing?
Written on 2009-10-28 05:36:56
SPIRITUAL. Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was perhaps the best known theorist of synchronicity. For Jung, the cosmos was not the great machine of the modern science, but more of an intelligent, organic entity. Here is my account of an amazing synchronicity, and how it changed me.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:35:39
POLITICAL/SPIRITUAL. There's something very, very important, very, very profound and very, very frightening happening in the world right now. It's the battle of light and darkness for the soul of the world. Even as I have worked with various levels of mind in the past month or two, this has become very clear to me. I am an intuitive by nature. I feel and read consciousness, and have regular visionary experiences. Human consciousness evolution is at a crucial point. A tipping point. Like a see-saw balanced perfectly in the middle position awaiting either party to shift ever so slightly. This is a pivotal moment in our history.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:34:04
SPIRITUALITY. (I seem to be writing a lot about both Superman and Michael Jackson lately, and this is no exception.) As a person who has worked with a deep connection to Spirit, it has become clear to me that we process not only our individual psychological issues, but the emotional energy of the groups that we are embedded within as a collective..
Written on 2009-10-28 05:32:34
SPIRITUAL/PARANORMAL. Here's a fascinating synchronicity told by Bono of U2, about an incident with Roy Orbision and how the song "She's a Mystery to Me" came to be written and recorded. The universe is not only stranager than we think, but stranger than we can think. I love this one because it suggests the unconscious but nonetheless intentional coming together of minds in an entangled universe.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:31:50
SPIRITUAL. It's interesting that I posted my previous post "The Death of a Superman" just a few hours before Michael Jackson's death. There are certainly some parallels. My "hero" also experienced a sex scandal, and fell from grace. I put him a on a pedestal, and found out that he was all too human.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:30:48
SPIRITUALITY. This post is from my old blog. But it has a certain message which I think is important, so I am re-posting it here. Marcus Recently while I was attending a Mind Body and Spirit Festival in Hong Kong, somebody gave me a book about prosperity consciousness, by a lesser-known author. To be honest I did not even notice the person who put it on my table, as I was talking to someone else at the time. But later I began to read the book, and was struck by the beautiful simplicity of its teachings. The writer has been teaching programmes based around his spiritual teachings for some years now.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:29:36
SOCIAL ISSUES/SPIRITUALITY. As a small child in Australia in the early 70s I recall being transfixed by the TV series Kung Fu. The stories featured a Chinese immigrant to the American Wild West. Each episode typically played upon the quiet, introverted power of Caine, a Kung Fu master, juxtaposed with the loud, violent, and barbarous chaos of the American frontier. There was never any doubt as to which culture was the superior. We saw regular flashbacks to Caine strict training as a monk in a Shaolin monastery. Until such time as he had passed almost inhuman tests of self-discipline, he was not permitted to leave.
Written on 2009-10-28 05:27:09
SPIRITUAL. Not long after completing my doctorate, while living in China, I was involved in a negotiation regarding a university job with one of Taiwan's best universities. Via email, the dean of the department was clarifying what subjects I would be able to teach. Something didn't feel right about the situation, so I did a Quick Check. I got out a bit of paper, and drew a horizontal line across the page. I put out a question to the universe: "What is the energy on my accepting a position to work at this university?"
Written on 2009-10-28 05:24:32
EDUCATION/SPIRITUALITY. About a year ago in Hong Kong I attended my school's annual picnic, held in a bushland area. Later in the day, I saw a line of boys sitting on a short concrete wall, heads down and brows furrowed, as they worked their Game Boys in furious style. They seemed oblivious to their presence in nature. Humankind's relationship with nature has always been intricately entwined with inner realms of the mind - the romantic, the spiritual and the mystical.
Written on 2009-10-28 04:37:23
SPIRITUALITY. Well over a decade ago I was going through a real bad patch. It was not long after I had been kicked out of a spiritual group in New Zealand for being a drama queen. I lost face big time, and it was all terribly embarrassing for my ego. Nonetheless, I started to think of how I could get my life back on track. After fiddling around for a few weeks, I decided that I wanted to run a workshop teaching people about intuition.
Written on 2009-10-26 08:27:35
PARANORMAL. Some people ask me how I got interested in knowledge that might be considered "alternative" in some circles. Here is a little story about an extraordinary experience that certainly helped me along my way! So here goes my story, and 100% true.