I don’t have a daily schedule right now. One day I am up at 4:30 AM for yoga practice and the next I am staying up until 1 AM to work on projects with other people. It feels like juggling, but for me is a necessity, because of the things I want to be involved in. And I wonder, is it best, or even, is it working?

This article, over at io9.com, brought up some interesting studies done in the realms of sleep and performance. The idea is that we may not be serving ourselves by conforming to our society’s “early to rise” regimen. Certainly a number of my friends, who sleep until noon, will be happy to hear this. From the article:

Just because you sleep later than your early rising friends doesn’t mean you sleep longer than they do; nor does it make you lazier. And yet, the association between the time of day that a person wakes up and how proactive or driven they are is just one example of the many preconceptions that society upholds regarding sleep and productivity.

The focus of the inquiry is on students who are required to get up and perform at certain hours, and how this is leading to narcolepsy. Basically, something is out of whack here. It makes me think that our transition to digital schooling, which could allow for more leeway on an individual’s preferred schedule, is a good thing.

[photo: flickr creative commons]

In general, yoga has this image, here in the west anyway, of something soft, spiritual, and relaxing. That seems odd to me though, as both my direct experience of it and the historical narrative for it are something quite different.

Yoga, traditional yoga that is, is a very mixed bag of practices that cover anything from meditation, to physical health, to using your psychic powers to be a wizard. There are so many ways this one word is used to teach so many different things that it would be silly to say it is specifically any one of them. But the one thing that they all have in common is that they are methods that in one way or another are meant to “extract” you from your normal existence and deliver you to a different state.

Like I said, people here in the west like to think of yoga as a very calm, soft, stretching sort of thing. It can be used that way. But if you are studying a traditional form of yoga, you can expect quite a bit more upset to your reality once you begin. That’s what it is meant to do; it is meant to destroy you. All of the things that are holding you locked up inside your body, inside your mind and inside your spirit, must first be broken down and washed out.

I never thought differently of yoga. I entered into it knowing what it was. But even with that attitude it still is what it is, and it can be a very intense process. Being real about it, and keeping our humor, is all we have at our disposal, when we invite such things into our lives.

[photo: Flickr CC]

Venus is about to “cross” the sun. Right now it is visible at sunset, following the sun down, and once it crosses it will be visible at sunrise, rising just before the sun. This sort of passage was seen in days of old as Venus diving into the underworld and then being reborn. Though we will see such passages many time in our life, the “closeness” of Venus to the sun in this case, or the depth of the the underworld to which Venus is diving, has not been seen in our lifetime, nor will it be seen again before we are gone. From Tim Miller’s blog:

Right now Venus is visible in the western sky about 30 degrees above the setting sun. For the next two weeks it will move closer and closer to the Sun and will eventually disappear from view around May 30th. On June 5th the Sun and Venus will be conjunct, and from some vantage points, Venus will appear as a small black dot moving across the face of the sun for about seven hours. This phenomenon (such a close conjunction of Venus and the Sun) has not occurred since 1882 and will not happen again in our lifetime. Venus will then gradually shift to the other side of the Sun, reappearing on June 13th as the “Morning Star” just above the eastern horizon before sunrise. In the Mayan culture, this transition of Venus from an “Evening Star” to a “Morning Star” symbolizes the rebirth of Venus after spending some time in the underworld.

And if the Vedic symbolisms of these particular occurences interest you, please read the rest of his post here »

I found the entire interview fascinating, and suggest you read it. But I will quote here, from his final remarks, his major claim of access:

Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game.

Wait, they didn’t hack in? And mostly what they are known for are DDOS attacks? How again are these people “hackers” then? I jest, but I think it is funny that the biggest “hacktivist” group in the world is not actually doing much, if any, hacking at all.

[photo: cc via laist]

But not so with Mother Day! We have here an actual celebration of something worth celebrating, and though “moms” are certainly just that, it turns out this day’s origin had more to do with preserving lives than with creating them.

Let me first say I have no idea if this history is factual, but the sources seem legit. From an article over at Nation of Change I found some very interesting information about how this day began, and I thought I would share it with you all. From the article:

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars.

The article goes on to quote Howe’s Proclamation.

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

In addition to the rest of what Howe had to say, you can read on to find out all the permutations that this holiday has gone through since its advent here » (the article is where all the quotes above come from).

Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers, and may you be inspired to inquire into the true meaning and purpose of all things we hold as an institution.

As if having one blog that covers the myriad topics I am interested wasn’t difficult enough, now I have grown a new blog where I will be blogging about runes. The difficulty is in the the question of how best to promote the information on each. Do I cross post? Do I set up different social pages for each? Do I leave it alone?

My decision for now is to occasionally round up some general posts from RavenStones.com right here, so that they may be easier to discover for my masses of passionate fans (ehem).

Fortune-Telling vs Initiation
On May 10, 2012
In a typical mainstream reference to the runes, as with tarot and the i-ching, you will hear them most often described as “fortune-telling” tools. This is because of their popularity with people who would provide such services as sitting you down at a table and reading your future.

A Personal Note On The Runes
May 9, 2012
I was first introduced to runes through the work of Ralph Blum and his Book of Runes. I found it mixed-in amongst the Dungeons & Dragons books at my local game store, some 25 years ago, and thought it somewhat a curious item to find, as it wasn’t about any of the other games that sat beside it. Something in it called to me and I snatched it up, took it home, and started to play.

Runic Conversation
May 8, 2012
One of the most interesting things about runes to me is their simple structure. Each rune is drawn from one or more straight lines, multiple lines intersecting in very basic, seemingly logical, ways. I personally believe this came from a time when sticks were cast on the ground, their random crossings enabling the diviner to skrye rune messages from the shapes that seemed the most significant.

[photo: erik montero]

Recently, in my book club, we decided to read some material by the writer William G. Domhoff, author of Who Rules America? His writing is refreshingly clear of the dark conspiratorial overtones that one would expect from such a title. He simply portrays the reality of the culture and behaviors of those he terms the power elite, and makes a good case that they are not the satanic martian lizards that many would prefer to believe they are.

We didn’t acutally read the book. Instead we read his website, which is about the equal of an 800 page book, and covers much of the same material. One set of essays in particular I found very interesting, as they conveyed to me the reality that the power elite live in, often from birth, and helped me to see for the first time some very human truths about them.

Do they run the world? Yes. Do they keep the money and other power for themselves as much as they can? Yes. Do they continually screw over the little people just to feel the buzz of power? No doubt. But it also made very clear just how hard these people work for it. From an early age they are indoctrinated into these power structures and made to play along if they ever want to rise into the prestigious positions of power that are hotly contested.

I have done my share of griping about the government, about the foolishly rich and other such typical maladies of the commoner class. But now I have much more respect for those in power. I may never agree with them on what they choose or believe in, but I certainly would not want to be in their shoes.

They are serious achievers, and courageous in a way, that they would opt to take on others of their ilk, head to head in the world arena. But both the personal world they inhabit and the mental paradigms that they harbor seem to me to add up to a living hell. So I have to admit, I am glad that others are willing to take the reigns in my place, challenging though their decisions may be to my sense of right and wrong.

Here is the essay in question, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to see the power elite in a more human way. Though be warned: I found reading this info a little depressing, lol.

Yogasanagalu (translation project) »
A translation project of a book by Krishnamacharya which outlines practices that bear very clear resemblance to the modern Ashtanga sequencing. There is a big movement in Ashtanga to try and validate its origin or some other such nonsense, and I suppose this will help. For me though I am always interested in reading anything Krishnamacharya thought was worth writing down, just to tune in with his vibe. [via: Ashtanga Yoga Mother Earth]

Breath of the Gods, a journey to the origins of modern yoga »
This looks like a pretty cool documentary, with a serious focus on Krishnamacharya’s teachings and students. Check out the clip below. [via: Confluence Countdown]

What Science Can Teach Yoga »
An interesting interview with Dr. Marshall Hagins, of Long Island University, who is at the head of  a study on “yoga’s effectiveness in combating hypertension that would include an Ashtanga-based yoga designed by Eddie Stern.”

From the intro:

“Does science have anything it can teach yoga? Does yoga need to be “validated” by science in order to be embraced by more people in the West? Or is it somehow the opposite?”

I was far from alone in my enjoyment of the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence 2012, and the big question everyone had was “will there be another one next year?” Well, the answer is yes. Just a few moments ago I got the announcement update which included this info:

Ashtanga Yoga Confluence 2013, Feb 28 – March 3, San Diego

Teachers include Nancy Gilgoff, Dena Kingberg, Tim Miller, David Swenson and Eddie Stern.

It is great to me to see that more than one female teacher will be headlining this time, as that is really the only thing that seemed off at the first Confluence.

Also, they included a link to a short video of the last Confluence.

I have a lot of fond memories of this event and am deeply looking forward to the next.

A shot of me and the band at the Confluence 2012.

[photo: the Confluence Countdown]

Some people are just activists. They arrange their life around a cause and give it their all. Most of us are not. But I don’t think it has to be an all or nothing thing, you know, the way the mind likes to frame things. I think that there is a very easy entrance point for people looking to survey the possibilities of their involvement, and it is online.

I was recently inspired by this quote:

“All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once… Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.”

― Joss Whedon

I am not the kind of guy who wants to preach about what others should be doing to legitimize their existence. But I am the kind of guy who feels bad when I don’t have that sense of legitimacy myself. What I have gotten from these sites has been not only educational, but also encouraging in that I have sometimes even felt that all-to-rare-these-days sense that one vote can make a difference.

Just check out the opening slideshow at change.org and you will see how some of their successes have come about. If that gets you curious, check out the other sites too. It might be more informative and easier than you think.

• change.org
• moveon.org
• avaaz.org

[photo: flickr cc]