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Over at the Sandorian Grove we can finally find an honest and real Xmas Greeting - the so-called Xmas Spam.

Refrehing to find that everybody in the grove is just fine, and I appreciate the deeply felt compassion for the fellow human beings receiving this xmas message.

(Click the start button and then advance to next screen by clicking anywhere on the frame.)

If you would hear somebody announcing that very exictedly “You can save a full hundred bucks on your new Ford F150 truck!” The only thing to do is drive all across town to the dealer Joe Cheapcars and pick it up, you would probably not share this enthusiasm much.

Hundred bucks on a car - that’s not much.

But now take that miter saw that you alwasy wanted to have for your weekend projects. So far, at $150 it was not quite justifyable considering the number of weekend projects you actually do. But now James Toolshack over in Othertown just 30 miles across the river has it for only 50 bucks!

So as soon as the weekend is here it off to the Toolshack to finally get that miter saw. We saved a full hundred bucks!

So, what’s the difference between the hundred bucks save on the car and on the miter saw? Nothing as far as the money in the wallet is concerned.

Let’s listen to Dan Gilbert who gives us some really good insight into this subject…

When my son was born there were some concern about his being OK. Especially his aunt had some concerns about the head being flat on the back and when that turned out to be no problem another possible problem was found in the possibility of too short legs.

That also turned out not be a problem, so neither does he have a flat head nor dwarf legs, but instead it soon became apparent that he was a very good looking boy. Soon the word was that he will be a heart breaker and that the girls once will follow him in hordes.

All that turned out to be true and I have seen several females of all ages fall head over heal for him. On top of his looks he also has that James Dean gene in him that can be another nail in the coffin for any female with the matching gene. Just look at him…

From the very beginning I held, contrary to pretty much every body else’s belief, the opinion that these good looks are a curse rather than a virtue.  Why would that be? Everybody will love him, even if only for his looks, right? True, but for how long?

And additional element is that he will not learn basics form of human interaction. He will not have the need to learn to put his best side forward - because it’s already there. Just as somebody blind will develop a much sharper sense of hearing, so does an urgly person learn the skills to be accepted and/or liked by others.

But just as a person with very good vision does not have the need to develop good hearing, so does the very good looking person never develop the need to show interest in others, feel compassion and become a ‘nice’ person.

Now enter another deadly ingredient into the mix - shyness. This will cause a fallback onto the safest methods of being accepted - the looks. This will become more and more important. On the heels of the looks follow other forms of status, money, being popular and other totally irrelevant subject if you are looking for a goal of happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

This is a mechanism very similar to the dead ends of the path to enlightenment as described in the article Bad Enlightenment. A prime example for this deadliness of this mechanism is the big number of dead or messed up movie stars from Hollywood. They could (and do) have it all but then, as in the case of Marilyn Monroe, they leave the current plane because they can not stand their superficial existence any more.

But what can be done about all that?

“Change” seems to be all the hype right now. Even the presidential campaign was won with this slogan. There seems to be so much people don’t like and want to change (or have changed for them) that simply using ‘change’ as a buzz word will get attention.

Now often change is not really what we want. Maybe we have something in mind that is so far beyond what we can imagine to be possible that simple an end of the current situation looks appealing. But, in my own experience, the universe has a strange kind of humor. It tries to comply but if the goal of the change is not clearly specified we will get a change but the new situation might not what we really had in mind - hidden back there in the crevices, afraid to verbalise.

Let’s take a look at politics right now - we will have a president that will implement change - he did not say what the change will be so this is a pretty smart move as now everybody has his own change he or she envisions in mind and thinks that’s what will come. And if that’s not what will get implemented then it becomes obvious why not - because it was never even promised. And something is always changed, so the promise is kept.

If we want a situation to be different we have to be specific in what we want the outcome of the change to be otherwise the change itself will be the outcome and this is certainly not what we want. It reminds me of the sign at the bar stating “Tomorrow free Beer” - obviously attractive so that patrons return, but of no consequence and cost for the proprietor - he is keeping his promise.

In other words - change is not what we want and we have to be honest with what we actually want, take away the attention from what is and see the outcome now. Remember Mahatma Gandhi’s quote “You must be the change you want to see in the world” with the stress on BE.

Change has become an emotionally loaded word and the following video is definitely a prime example. It made me cry (in a positive way, I might add)…

This is from Playing for Change, a project to ‘bring change’ through music. I can imagine that this project could benefit from clearly stating what the outcome will be after the change is accomplished.

Other videos on this foundation’s web site do show what the change will be - eduction, building, improving situations through music, etc, so the outcome is stated and the video with it’s emotion caused me to look, so I guess it all worked out OK.

Supposedly, governments were invented to make like easier and safer. But governments always end up enslaving humanity. That what we create to ’server us’ ends up ruling us.

The US government, for and by the people, now imprisons millions, takes half the national income by force, over-regulates, punishes, tortures, slaughter foreigners, invades countries, overtrows governments, imposes seven hundred imperialistic bases oversees, inflates currency and crushes future generations with massive debts.

That what we create to serve us, ends up ruling us.

This is a bit of a transcript of a video from freedomainradio.com,  a site well worth perusing. Here is the video that nicely shows that Abe L did not all do what history now tells us he did. Think about it - who writes the history books…

If you don’t buy into the benevolence of governments and have looked into how this all might actually work, you probably ran into terms like fractional banking and the fact that the Federal Reserve is just as Federal as Federal Express - in other words, it’s private and by no means an agency of the government.

Here is a great video presentation on how our monetary system works…

This is only the first part but I am sure that you will be able to find the other parts easily if this first part was intriguing for you as it was for me.

Kathie (thank you!) conveyed this story of grave importance to me and I thought I better share it with you…