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Nicholas Negroponte’s idea and work on one laptop per child program gives me more hope for the future than an other idea I have come across. It is literally a “game changing” idea for affecting the minds and consciousness of the planet.

Mr. Negroponte explains that “being a non-profit is absolutely fundamental” because of clarity of [moral] purpose… and access to pro bono work from the best people in the world.

Watch Nicholas on here.

My second favorite charity in the world is his OLPC give one get one charity.

Hopefully in the near future I will be able to tell you about my favorite charity in the world.

Changing A Continent

Neil Turok has a dream about the next Einstein comming from the continent of his youth. He also has been working to create that reality (in addition to his day job). He worked to create a successful model in the the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. That model can be scaled to cover the whole of Africa. Neil lectures about his wish here .

Last night I received a gift that gives me hope for the future of the human race on this planet. I met someone new at meditation group. Watching this person meditate and seeing how deeply affected she was buoyed, my spirit. I listened to her explain how she wanted to be angry after we were done, because other people started to talk about five minutes after we finished. She could feel the experience start to slip away from her. She wanted to hold on it to it.

This new member didn’t want to talk about it at first. It took a while before she opened up about what she saw and felt. I think it was the first time she had ever tried meditation. She described beautiful colors and emotions, different ones for each chakra. She said, “I didn’t know that was supposed to happen. You didn’t tell me that would happen.”

Of course experiences during meditation are different for everyone. They can be visual, auditory, and even taste oriented. They can be feelings or emotions. In fact, most meditations don’t lead to any experiences.

By me not telling this person something could happen, she had no expectation that something would happen. And by not having an expectation, the experience happened. Expecting something to happen during mediation is a sure way to prevent the experience from happening. Some people take months or years to reach the point where they start have experiences. For a lucky few, things happen right away. Some people actually have such strong expectations they literally have to give up, even though they continue to meditation, and come to expect that nothing will ever happen before they have a breakthrough and experience something.

The group was small and my wife was there as well, so the energy was flowing and very upbeat. Our new meditator later confided to my wife that she cried the whole time. She didn’t know why, because she wasn’t sad, but she did. I think on some level, she knew she had found something she was meant to do. During our discussion she asked, “What books can I read to learn more about this?” And “What will happen to me when I have to go back to school in the fall and can’t be part of this group?”

Learn More

More information about the meditation method I teach can be found at www.dimensional-meditation.com

New Jersey Mom Changes Yemin with Blog

The internet has the ability to profoundly affect the world in a positive way when a lot of people tune in. Thoughts affect the consciousness. And consciousness affects reality. See “A Living-Room Crusade via Blogging” By Robert Worth.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Jane Novak, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two in New Jersey, has never been to Yemen. She speaks no Arabic, and freely admits that until a few years ago, she knew nothing about that strife-torn south Arabian country.

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And yet Ms. Novak has become so well known in Yemen that newspaper editors say they sell more copies if her photograph — blond and smiling — is on the cover. Her blog, an outspoken news bulletin on Yemeni affairs, is banned there. The government’s allies routinely vilify her in print as an American agent, a Shiite monarchist, a member of Al Qaeda, or “the Zionist Novak.

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Also read or listen to the On the Media report about Jane Novak from June 15, 2008. On the Media called Jane “Erin Brokovitch meets Lawrence of Arabia.” Jane’s website is armiesofliberation.com and her blog is janenovak.wordpress.com (Check out the theme. Does it look familiar?)

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Another way to direct consciousness to affect the world is to use celebrity status. See “Jenny McCarthy uses her celebrity to promote autism awarness” from Heath Beat 2008. She has a son diagnosed with autism that is no longer considered autistic and has written a book and planning a march to raise awareness. Unfortunately there already is a pseudo-religious group getting jacked into celebrities and taking all the good ones to promote a different agenda.

Great Meditations Contain 7 Essential Elements

There are many great reasons for practicing meditation and many methods available to learn. Here is a clear and concise list you can use when shopping for a style to learn or to evaluate the mediation practice you already have.

1. Only 20-25 minutes long.

If some is good, more must be better, right? Wrong. It is much better to have short focused effective sessions that leave us both relaxed and energized. If we invest too much time, excuses to skip this time become more likely. And in the long run, we eventually stop meditating. It is okay for the advanced meditator to have longer sessions, but only if the entire session is productive.

2. Begin with relaxation and deep breathing.

During your meditation you will eventually forget about your breathing and it will become slow and shallow as your become more relaxed. Beginning the meditation with imaging blowing out the stresses of the day combined with deep breaths out is a great way to relieve tension. Both the imagination and the deep breaths send the signal to our subconscious to slow down.

3. Music without words.

Some teachers advocate silence or using mantras to reach a sort of trance state. In truth you can reach a much deeper and much more clear place by not having any words in your brain. With some practice, it is much easier to achieve this state if you have headphones on and are listening to music. The music provides a sort of “mental bubble gum” for your brain. It keeps your brain occupied so it doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence with words. Also to prevent feeding the need of your brain to have words present, the music can’t have any words. At least any words in a language you understand. Also the type of music; the beat, the style, etc, can create an emotional response in you making your meditation much more effective. Upbeat music can leave you energized. Slower relaxing music can take you to deeper states of relaxation.

4. Binaural audio and headphones.

Listening to music on headphones with embedded binaural beats of the proper frequency enhances meditation. The binaural beats will naturally start to slow your brainwaves down and cause the hemisphere of your brain to start to synchronize. Unfortunately this is only an advantage for the beginning meditator. These audio tracks are not recommend for advanced practitioners and will actually keep them from reaching more profound states of consciousness.

5. Touch and focus on chakras.

Focusing on the bodies chakra points is an ancient and important part of meditation. Older system of meditation often required focus on each of the seven main chakra points in sequence. More and more often, modern styles have reduced this to three specific chakra points; Chi chakra, heart chakra and mind chakra. Nearby chakras are affected nearly as much as the chakra of focus and a lot of time is saved. Creating a more repeatable and focused experience. Missing from most teachings is the fact that you actually need to touch the chakra point with your hand; specifically the tips of two fingers. The high nerve density in your hand serves to increase your focus and keep your mind from wandering.

6. Both guided and unguided versions of the music.

The best meditation music tracks also need to have two versions. The first version includes voice instructions over the music for learning proper technique. The guided version should be used by the advanced student once per week to make sure their form stays sharp. The second version has no instructions and is for daily use. The unguided version is where really deep states of mind are reached.

7. Twice per day.

I hate to say it but improvement takes effort, just mastering at any other skill. If you want to be a great author, you have to write, write, write. If you want to get in better shape, you have to consistently go the gym and work out. If you want to become a great surgeon, you have to continually practice your skills by performing surgeries. One meditation per day is good and you will improve if you only meditate once per day. But the optimum number is twice per day. This still is a small investment of time, but reaching this state of mind twice per day for day 20 minutes each works much better than one 40 minute meditation. And the more often you reach these deeper states of mind during meditation, the more likely the skills you learn from meditation will bleed over into the rest of your day.

I have been contemplating about the conflict between conservative and liberal values… related to many different arenas of thought… including politics. For the last 10 years or so, the world of open source software has been in conflict with profit producing companies in the areas such as software, internet content, internet searches, and telecommunications. Many things affect the future of this conflict, including laws, judicial rulings and governmental agency policies.

I recommend you watch the TED talk from Yochai Benkler on Open Source Economics for an introduction.

Then checkout:

• The recent developments between Apache web server vs. Microsoft web server.
• Yahoo vs. the open directory project.
• skype vs. the telecoms
• wikipedia vs. encarta

Imagine how open source might explode if the $200 laptop project became a reality and every child in the world was connected to the internet. I hope that fear is not the thing that keeps us from embracing new economic ideas. I think fear is the motivation that makes many people embrace conservative values.