Macrobiotic Life

If one book about a cob (clay, sand, hay) houses, I would definitely pick this one:

The book is full of philosophical content about the broad self-sustainability topic. This is exactly for me, because I need these higher-thoughts in the book, I am not only materialistic person looking for a technical manual about cob buildings (many books are providing this). This book is full of theories about house being the sacred place for your Soul, the building process being the process of understanding to yourself and getting embedded into the Nature and similar. I highly recommend this book.

Here are some reviews:

I paid full price for this book at a retail Book store (I wish I had bought it here!). I have 2 other books on cob building also (Becky Bee’s “The Cob Builders Handbook” – Which I highly recommend also & Michael Smith’s “Cobbers Companion”, I also recommend but Becky’s, I feel is the better of the two.) However, THIS book stands out considerably. It is the MOST awesome book on cob building. It has wonderful photographs & drawings including additional privacy courtyard/outside ideas etc. There is nothing out there that can compare to this book to spark ideas and show the beauty, versatility & many options & benefits one has in cob building. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has even a slight interest in earth homes/cob building. If you are very interested in this or a related subject(straw bale etc.) you will LOVE this book!

For your inspiration, edification, and step by step hands-on & how-to, this book just can’t be improved upon. Long checklists to help you choose the perfect piece of land and how to situate the location of your home. A tutorial in using passive solar to heat your house. How to design its interior to embrace you, find your materials as inexpensively as possible, gather your tool kit (what’s essential, what’s not), test the soil you have, make cob samples and evaluate them. Starter projects such as walls, benches, and stoves. Mixing techniques, building techniques, finishing techniques. The history of cob, the durability of cob, a trouble-shooting guide. How to make your own paint, make your own floor, insulate, remodel the house if you want to, where to put the wiring, every practical detail is included as well as the philosophical… you will find inspiration on every page. Countless examples and real life stories are included, as well as color photographs of cob structures all over the world. This book doesn’t just critique the current system, it shows you a way out!

You like thought provoking books, don’t you? Drinking from another cup of someone’s illusionary perspective. Here’s a tip for a good drink

Years ago de Ropp wrote a useful and clarifying book on the subject of life paths called The Master Game. This is a very good book for youths who wish to examine their motivations and the deep desires and goals that influence their creation of lives that conform to (hopefully) their greatest ideals. Power, fame, wealth, family life, wisdom, experiences and freedom (jivanmukti) are all legitimate aims. If we make our choices from the handbook we are given by society, and usually our families, we have very limited choices. We do what has already been done, what is always done. This is what makes the world go round, perhaps. The salt of the earth, the propagators of life, the growers of food and new software, inventors, lovers and soldiers make this planet function as it must. These are the salt and the pillars, the men and women of the world.

We all ask, at one time or another, “What do I want to do with my life?”

On the one hand, we all want to do something that matters in some way, that makes a difference, that is meaningful, that is fulfilling. Something that’s worthwhile, something real.

On the other hand, when we phrase the question “what do I want to do with my life?” – and sit with it – it often seems like such a huge, vague, looming, slippery, cloud of fog, like trying to catch a cloud in a milk carton – a frustrating experience.

But one chap, Robert S De Ropp, has offered a few pointers, which might help us get a more sturdy handle on the matter. What follows is a brief sketch of a portion of his message.

The Master Game – Review by LiveReal

De Ropp was involved with the early years of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky teachings.

What life game do you want to play ? This book suggests that there are deeper and more fulfilling options available than the default ones based on money, power or hedonism that education and social conditioning can sometimes provide us with. The master game is a life course involving a systematic attempt to develop self knowledge. Its hazards are not wisely ignored but its rewards are beyond the ordinary also…

I have found De Ropp’s idea of “Inner Theatre” a great help. Our minds seem to set up miniature virtual ego-work laboratories – one imagines oneself in situations and plays out scenes. To him this is an aid to knowing oneself. I still remember the feeling of grand adventure through seeking deeper awareness this book wafted my way.

The Master Game – Amazon shop

It’s interesting for me to read Ropp’s connection to Grudjieff, who’s personality I presented few days ago. Synchronicities are such a fun

This is very interesting text for me. The whole new modern science has already made so many connections with the spiritual world described thousand years before in all the ancient scripts. It’s so illuminative to read this:

There is evidence of a physical dimension to our connection to the Source. At the very centre of our brain is a tiny, pea sized organ with powers way beyond its physical size. It is the pineal gland. Mechanically, this light-sensitive gland controls the release of melatonin, which controls our biorhythms, especially the sleep/wake function. It may be responsible for the depressed feeling many experience during long periods of overcast skies, and short days.

Its true function has been contemplated for centuries by spiritual adepts, and mystical traditions speak of the pineal as the link between the physical and the spiritual worlds. It is connected to, and has many similarities with the eyes in that it has similar cells and a direct connection to the brain. It has long been regarded by many philosophers as an organ of higher vision which can see beyond the physical realm.

Dissection reveals that the front of the pineal gland matches the structure of the retina: the very same rods and cones found within the eyes can also be found within the composition of the pineal gland. It is a simple, logical step to understand that this similar type of physiology allows us to visualize or imagine scenarios, fantasies, memories, dreams or any other visual constructs. The expression, “in the mind’s eye,” starts to make sense.

The pineal responds to light and this enables it to control the secretion of two extremely vital hormones. These are melatonin and serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical that, among other functions helps us maintain a happy, balanced mental state. Melatonin induces sleep, which is when we dream or, as many believe, see beyond the veil of physical consciousness.

Dr Rick Strassman37 suggests the pineal also is responsible for the manufacture of DMT, a substance which can provide psychedelic experiences ranging from ‘hallucinatory’ to ‘positive mystical’. Under the pineal’s sensitive control, is it the release of this natural psychedelic ‘drug’ which creates the dream experience?

To return to the earlier analogy of the brain as a ‘receiver’, it appears DMT fine-tunes the brain to allow the consciousness to see higher realms. Is then the ‘third eye’ our physical connection to the divine?

Mankind has bumbled about like a sleepwalker in the sort of psychedelic dream where random fragments of events are jumbled together, confusing ownership as power, material possessions as wealth, might as right, physical prowess as the symbol of success. Deep down though, our inner consciousness has longed to quell our unrequited fulfilment, and the clash of this reality with our delusion, is the root cause of our unhappiness.

The point is, the pineal gland is physically very similar to the eye!
From the article: Harmony

I am going to read this wonderful online book – Souls of Distortion (I have scanned quickly through it so far).
The topics are: connection of spirituality and since, pyramids, fractals, vibrations, basic law of nature expressed by mathematic, spirals, consciousnes, dna, sound and word vibrations, symbols, ancient texts (bible, vedas) – everything is connected in this world and everything has the same simply perfect logic coded inside, we are just one part of the whole, we are expression of the same force that created everything around us. That’s why we need to copy Nature laws in eating and everyday doing if we want superious life, full of love, joy, harmony, consciousness, health and happiness. Simple as that, learn the rules and you’ll be enlightened, transformed!
This should be teached at the schools and we would be all living in the Nirvana here&now. Amen

The transformation on Earth is supposedly to have started somewhere in the eighties of the previous age and should culminate around 2012.

When I first heard of such claims I dismissed them out of first hand, you will probably too if this book is the first one you read about the subject!

After reading and studying a lot of material that supports these claims, I’ve lost a lot of my scepticism and have come to believe that we live in a very special lifetime indeed. The topic itself vibrates with my core being. For as long as I can remember I have felt that things could be so much different in our world and it has finally brought me to write this book. It’s my little contribution to a better world by sharing this information with you in a world that needs it so badly in these troubled times.

This book is not about ‘the end of the world’, the ‘Apocalypse’; on the contrary, it’s about the end of the old world that you and I know today and the birth of a brighter new one.

As the author writes – I wasn’t believing many months/years, but slowly, the more informations I collect about this topic, I can’t believe how stupid and sceptical I was – this is the system’s influence by the way, this is normal that you are sceptical to these things, because the system has domesticated you – you need to see through this manipulation and try to get informations about these topics and connect the dots.

Here’s the book – Souls of Distortion (click the Next buttons at the bottom for reading it whole).

I invite you to use your intuition as well when you absorb the material discussed within this book. Many of the things you’re about to read in this book are not easily accepted by our materialistic brainwashed minds. In the Western civilized world we’ve come to rely only on scientific facts (left brain male logic), whereas in the East it is said to be true if it is personally experienced (right brain female intuition). I invite you to use both and find out what’s true for you!

I can perfectly imagine you’re very sceptical about the subject of this book and the things you’re about to read. Scepticism is a sound mechanism while evaluating new concepts. However I’d like to give you also the suggestion that scepticism may be used as a defence mechanism by the ego to protect us from being wrong. By being a sceptic we accept the world as it is, it is a safe haven, a status quo. If we don’t let in any new beliefs, we cannot be affected in our core existence and can go about our business as usual. Sceptics are often in good company since they join the masses. However scepticism may also be a hindrance that stops us from learning. It takes courage to allow yourself to ponder the new concepts in this book. In this respect this book is not an easy read and it will require an open mind.

And here are other on topic websites:
Spiral
Return to the Whole (seems like another very interesting online book)
Integral Dynamics many interesting videos

“it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are looking at one of nature’s most basic pattern-forming processes . . . [and seeing] the hidden and harmonious order built into body and mind, as it is built into every flower and leaf, mirrored by the crafts, and echoed by music . . . .”

This picture is beautiful example of how to see the spirals in everything. They are not only connected to the visible things, but they are the core of everything, even of our spiritual development. Seemingly, you feel sometime you are going in the circles – you eat macrobioticly, then you stop and overeat for a while; you meditate intensively, or you do some sport and then you stop and these periods changes like a clockwork – if you think you are going in circles, you are wrong. These changes, these periods, your whole life advancement/declinment is one big spiral. You are still going up or down in this spiral, this is the point. It’s up to you if you are making your spiral rolling up or down. Eat healthy, meditate, be physicaly active, learn new things and you can be sure that your spiral is going up

Ken connects yin/yang perfectly for me. He is great Taoist thinker. It will enhance your knowledge about the (non)dualistic world how the macrobiotic also perceives it.

Ken Wilber is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, and is the first philosopher-psychologist to have his Collected Works published while still alive. Wilber is an internationally acknowledged leader and the preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development, which continues to gather momentum around the world. His many books, all of which are still in print, can be found at Amazon.com. Some of his more popular books include Integral Spirituality; No Boundary; Grace and Grit; Sex, Ecology, Spirituality; and the “everything” books: A Brief History of Everything (one of his largest selling books) and A Theory of Everything (probably the shortest introduction to his work). Ken Wilber is the founder of Integral Institute, Inc., the co-founder of Integral Life, Inc., and the Senior Fellow of Integral Life Spiritual Center.

Read many of his awesome articles here (if they have FREE icon, you can read them without subscribing).
Check out his personal website too.

And I would suggest, to get better know his style, start reading this article – Always Already: The Brilliant Clarity of Ever-Present Awareness.

On another topic, if you have serious illness (cancer), we you are faced with death (and who isn’t), definitely check out this book of him!! It’s completely life changing book and it will leave you fearless and accepting all the life can offer, even the death.

Many interviews with Ken and his deep knowledge at Shambala.com.

If you are good in english, I strongly suggest to watch this video lecture about “Consciousness”.

Messages are spread across many spiritual (new age) books about what we really are, what consciounsess really is. But I bet you have quite mess how to understand it

This video lecture can give you great explanation, based on our racional/western/material/scientific/objective thinking.
It will change your view over the Consciousness – I promise you

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-primacy-of-consciousness/

After watching, you won’t be so much surprised by wild experiments of some people with the subjective reality. And you will appreciate the ideas of Kant much more, if you are into the philosophy.

And I would also like to suggest you to watch another video.
More scientific. Actually, a little bit opposite, because the speaker is strong atheist (from what I understand), but don’t be turned away from this masterpiece talk.

Who cares about the Bing bang, but where the matter that precedes the bing did arise?
Who created the Creator?
You’ll get very interesting answers, logical, mathematical.
How could the Universe start from nothing? Is it possible? They say, it is.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/a-universe-from-nothing-lecture/