"In
what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles
sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April,
based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago,
when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one
in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

"The switch
to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles has been building in recent
years, but has accelerated recently with the advent of $3.50-a-gallon
gas. At the same time, sales of pickup trucks and large sport utility
vehicles have dropped sharply." [read more]

Granted,
small cars may not be practical for people with babies and children.
Car seats alone take up a lot of space. But for the majority of people
who mostly do their driving alone to and from work, smaller coupes with
less horsepower should suffice.

When I was in Ireland, the average size of cars I’ve seen is that of the Toyota Yaris.
I rarely saw SUVs. There’s a big difference between Europeans and
Americans when it comes to their attitude toward their cars. For people
in Europe, a car is a means to an end: to get from point A to point B.
For Americans, a car is an extension of their personality and an
integral part of culture. So it has to be fast, furious, big, powerful,
pimped out, or classy, or all of the above.

I used to subscribe
to the American attitude on cars. The first time I moved to the U.S.
was also my first time to own a car. So I wanted a car that would
reflect my taste, personality, and social status. I remember car
shopping for a 1997 Nissan Pathfinder.
My reasoning was that the winter in Chicago is harsh so I needed a
four-wheel drive to be safer on the road. But the price, the mileage
per gallon, and the insurance premiums discouraged me. My frugal upbringing won over my short love affair with SUVs. So I ended up buying a more fuel-efficient (up to 30 mpg on highway) and stylish 3-door sports coupe — a jet black 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse.

More
than ten years had passed already and I’m still loving my first car. I
call him, Mitsu. We’ve driven on snow and icy highways in Chicago, up
and down the rockies in Colorado, in and around the steep wet roads in
Seattle and Vancouver, BC, and he still look and feel good as new. I’ve
taken good care of him and he took good care of me. I’m now emotionally
attached to my car. We’ve been through a lot together, through thick
and thin, ups and downs, literally and metaphorically. He’s no longer
just a car to me. Mitsu is my road buddy.

Once in a while I
get tempted to look at other cool new cars and dream of owning them.
But in reality I have no plans of buying a new car, that is, until
Mitsu craps out on me. If I have my way my loyal black steed will stay
with me until plug-in hybrids and electric cars become affordable.
When that time comes, I think Mitsu would be ready to retire. But for
now he still has less than 100,000 miles on his odometer. So it looks
like we have a few more years of bliss on the road together.

Looking back, I’m happy that I made the right decision of shrinking my ride.

My avatar is already more than a year old but it wasn’t until I attended virtual Conversation Week
that my interest in SL was rekindled. Serendipitously, last week while
I was browsing the bookstore at Dublin airport the book, The Making of Second Life by Wagner James Au, jumped right at me. I took it as a sign and devoured it during my 14-hour flight back home.

In one sitting I was educated with the history of SL, its ups and
downs, its current impact on our culture, business, politics, economics, and its
(almost sci-fi) potentials similar to Neal Stephenson’s vision of the metaverse. I particularly enjoyed reading about the mirrored flourishing
stories of in-world residents, the virtual revolts and cultural
transformations of virtual groups and societies. From a psycho-social
point of view, watching the history of SL is like witnessing the
cultural evolution of humanity, in hyper-speed. Linden Lab (creators of
Second Life) is akin to a group of benevolent dictators and Philosopher
Kings who maintain order in a virtual world by allowing residents to
do as they please within the bounds of SL’s code of conduct. When viewed from an integral perspective,
SL is a grand experiment on integral in-world governance. And when viewed
from a psycho-spiritual perspective, explorations in SL can be used to
aid in one’s witnessing practice.  (I’ll groove more on the topic of using SL for spiritual practice in future posts. In the meantime, check out a parallel discussion on Open Source Integral.)

During the past week I have immersed myself in the virtual realm of Second Life® before retiring to sleep. I’ve meditated on air at SL integral, explored the green and sustainable community at Etopia Eco-village, did Tai Chi in a silk blue kimono, dressed up as a Samurai wielding the "three buddhas" katana, drank unlimited cans of Red Bull, practiced Tibetan Buddhist meditation, took a crash course on machinima-tography, sat on a campfire near a pyramid in Mexico, all the while taking snapshots of my in-world explorations using my trusty old Macbook Pro.

So what did I get out my in-world explorations? I’m glad to report that
I’m now up to speed with SL. I’ve become proficient with navigation and
the basics of in-world content creation. But more importantly, I’ve forged new connections
with like-minded creative people who are out there exploring in-world
and dreaming up better worlds. (We’ve also started a Metaverse Pod @ Gaia for members who want to meet up and learn together in virtual reality.)

Second Life is only one of the big slices of the metaverse but its on a category of its own. It mirrors real life (and wonderland) more than any other MMORPGs.
It’s not a game, it’s an experience. But unlike the web, SL is not
(yet) for everyone. Its early incarnation is still clunky. It has a high
barrier to entry, a steep learning curve, as well as a need for a shift
in mentality to be able to embrace and welcome its possibilities.

I harbor no illusion that SL is an "escape" from for the "real" world (what is
"real" anyway?). SL is just another medium. It’s a tool to be used for
rapid prototyping of one’s vision, expressing individual and collective
creativity, and experiencing a richer sense of community not
possible in meatspace. In short, SL is an extension of consciousness projection.

In the meantime, I’ll continue with my in-world explorations. SL made
it possible for my blogging persona to have an avatar form. In essence,
my SL persona is a "third-order reality." Technically, my SL avatar is
not my "second" life because I consider my blogging persona as my
"second." My SL avatar is a digital incarnation of this blogging persona, not
my "first" life. Yet they’re all inseparably connected and meshed together in a
single conscious life-stream I call "I."

"Real" world blogging on real world topics resumes shortly. But expect to see in-world blogging from time to time.

It’s barely a day since Zaadz transformed into Gaia and I’m already feeling a pinch of nostalgia. Most members have embraced the change. Some members have expressed sadness and protest. We (the team) feel their zaadness. We have our reasons. Zaadz will always be special to us. We’ve (the team and members)
taken a cryptic Dutch word and gave it a new meaning in cyberspace.
We’ve made it hot. We’ve made it fluffy. We’ve made it cool. We’d like
to thank all 150,000+ members who made Zaadz a sweet success.

Our deepest gratitude to all of you! 

But the time has come to practice what we preach — to be the change so
we could change our world. And there’s nothing more fitting than this
serendipitous quote from William Butler Yeats.

"Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing." ~William Butler Yeats

Thanks again to all our members. If you’ve grown to love Zaadz, you’ll
love what Gaia has in store for you (and that purple color will sink in
too ). We’re just getting started. Here’s to more adventures that lie
ahead.

Keep on growing and flowing…

As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post,
I grew up Roman Catholic by virtue of my parents’ religion (they are
lukewarm Catholics, btw) and the norm of the culture I was born into.
But I can safely say that I’ve already outgrown the religious
memes–dogmas, irrational beliefs, unsound moral teachings–I was
indoctrinated with from childhood to my teen years. This “purging” of
religious memes didn’t happen overnight. It happened gradually
as I grew up and got exposed to more knowledge of history, psychology,
sociology, philosophy, science, comparative religion, and mystical
writings of people within the context of their own religious
traditions.

So the question is: Am I an Atheist? My quick answer is, Yes and No.

Here’s my long answer…

First let’s have a definition of Atheism. Wikipedia defines Atheism as a philosophical view:

“…that either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism.
When defined broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities,
alternatively called nontheism. Although atheism is often equated with
irreligion, some religious philosophies, such as secular theology and
some varieties of Buddhism such as Theravada, either do not include
belief in a personal god as a tenet of religion, or actively teach
nontheism.”

Whew! That definition is a mouthful. But discerning readers will notice in the definition that Atheism is dependent
upon theism for its existence. It’s impossible to define Atheism
without referencing Theism. The etymology of the word Atheism attests
to that. Atheism only makes sense in a culture that has a concept of
theism. In short, we cannot teach Atheism without teaching Theism. In
that sense, Atheism is inseparable from Theism. In the realm of nonduality, Atheism and Theism are two sides of the same coin. I think this is the reason why Sam Harris rejects the “Atheist” label.
I agree with him on this. (And Harris is very ballsy to parade that
kind of reasoning in a big room full of Atheists. That’s why I like the
guy.)

That said, we (or most people) spend most of our awareness in a waking
world of duality where labels (such as good, bad, ugly, beautiful,
etc.) is how we make sense of our reality. So in this post I will
accept and groove on the reality of Atheism as being a valid label for
the sake of rational discussion.

So, can you quit philosophizing and just answer the damn question? Are you an Atheist or not?

Ok, fine. But first let me point to a short and insightful article by Ken Wilber on BeliefNet: Which Level of God Do You Believe In?

In that article, Wilber describes levels of “God” which are parallel with Jean Gebser’s structures of consciousness. Here is the key quote:

“Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental

God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe

in?

“An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic
God
locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to
change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is
located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world,
entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and
rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God,
a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence.
And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above.”

In their books, the New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Hitchens) argue about the supernatural mythic God,
and rightly so, because majority of the religious population (and
unfortunately, politicians and world leaders) has a mythic concept of
God. In fact, Dawkins devoted a chapter in his book, The God Delusion, to explain and define what kind of God he is attacking. I think Dawkins is right in asserting that God is such a loaded
word because it means differently to different people (at any stage of
development). That is very respectful of Dawkins, imho, contrary to
what others have accused him of being arrogant, silly, and foolish. I
think people who outrightly dismiss Dawkins’ book, before and without
reading it, are the ones who are arrogant, self-righteous, and being
intellectually lazy and dishonest. (More on this later when I post my
review of the book, The God Delusion).

Anyway, before I tangent into philosophical obscurity, my answer to the question is:

Yes, I’m an Atheist relative to the mythic and supernatural God. I’m a “believer” in a rational and integral
God. But I remain Agnostic in matters of ultimate questions, such as
origin of our existence and the nature of consciousness. If I’m pressed
to put a label on the philosophy which I subscribe to, I think Agnostic Buddhist comes closest. Here’s a definition by Stephen Batchelor:

“So what would be the
features of an ‘agnostic Buddhist?’ Such a person would not regard the Dharma
as a source of ‘answers’ to questions of where we came from, where we are
going, what happens after death. He or she would seek such knowledge in the
appropriate domains: astrophysics, evolutionary biology, neuro-science etc.  An
agnostic Buddhist would therefore not be a ‘believer’ with claims to revealed
information about supernatural or paranormal phenomena, and in this sense
would not be ‘religious.’ An agnostic Buddhist would look to the Dharma for
metaphors of existential confrontation rather than metaphors of
existential consolation. He or she would start by facing up to the primacy
of anguish and uncertainty (dukkha), then proceed to apply a set of
practices to understand the human dilemma and work towards a resolution.  An
agnostic Buddhist would eschew atheism as much as theism, and would be as
reluctant to regard the universe as devoid of meaning as endowed with
meaning.  (For to deny either God or meaning is surely just the antithesis of
affirming them.)  Yet such an agnostic stance would not be based on disinterest.
It would be founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know.  It
would confront the enormity of having been born instead of reaching for the
consolation of a belief. It would strip away, layer by layer, the views that
conceal the mystery of being here at all.”

So there.

It’s easy to philosophize and reflect on this issue in a blog post
where I can write and distill my train of thought, reference the works
of others, while feeling good about the soundness of my reasoning. But
when asked directly, in person, by people I care about whom I don’t
want to offend, now that is a tricky situation!

Here’s an autobiographical case in point…

One evening I was lying in bed with ~myDakini while talking about our plans for our future. Suddenly, she blurted out a question:

“Are you an Atheist?”

“Why do you ask?” I was surprised and caught off-guard.

“Well, because I read your blog.”

“Huh? You read my blog?” OMFG! She reads my blog. Please don’t read my blog.

“Of course I read it, when I have nothing to do.”

“Um, ok. But you shouldn’t take everything seriously.” Please don’t tell your friends that I have a blog, damnit.

“Regardless, why don’t you just answer my question. Are you an Atheist or not?”

I took a deep breath, stuttered a bit, while I grasp for the right
words to say. “Let me put it this way. I no longer believe the
teachings of our religion. I think the teachings put a limit on the
concept of God. So I no longer believe in the kind of God that was
thought to us.”

“Really? But where do Atheists get their sense of morality? How can people be moral without a concept of God?”

[Note: As an aside ~myDakini is just expressing the cultural norm in
the country where we grew up, where Atheism is generally misunderstood,
ridiculed, and even despised (thanks to the ignorance of our religious
and political leaders). ~myDakini is far from being a religious
fanatic. She's one of the most open-minded people I know.]

“You see. There are other religions (and philosophy) that don’t have a
concept of God. Like Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. But they have
developed a sophisticated moral system. For example, our family values
come from the influence of the Chinese [our country is located in South East Asia,
and ~myDakini has Chinese blood so I thought that it's a perfect
example to cite]. Our ancestors already had a developed moral system
before we got influenced by the Christian religion. So although our
morality is heavily influenced by our Christian upbringing, it doesn’t
mean that we get all of our morality from our religion.”

“I see. Well, if you put it that way… I won’t even argue about it. The
thing is, I don’t care if you’re an Atheist, as long as you’re a good
person, a good husband, and a good father to our children.”

“I am. And I will do my best to be.”

We embraced, kissed, then fell asleep into each other’s arms.

[~My dear Dakini, this post is dedicated to you. I love you.]

I was looking at the stats of my Typepad blog
this morning to see what’s new. I usually do this to check who’s
linking to my blog posts so I could follow the conversations. I don’t
get much links. Most of the hits are coming from search engines
(Google)–from people searching for random things. A good portion of my traffic comes from a four-year-old blog post about the End of the World. When I looked at the total lifetime page views of my blog, it says 374,224.

WTF?! More than four years of blogging and only this?  ICanHasCheezburger gets more traffic in a single blog post in a day than my four-year-old blog. Why do I bother?

After that initial rush of egoic emotion came a sense of a humbling
realization. I remember that I’m not blogging for traffic. I’m blogging
for self-expression, to connect to other people, to connect people to
other people, to connect to ideas, to connect people to ideas.

I’m not saying that I don’t appreciate site traffic. The more traffic,
the better. The more people and ideas I can connect with, the more useful this blog would be for me and for visitors.

So I reflect on the main reasons why I don’t get that much traffic:

1) This blog (and this blogger) sucks.

2) This blog is not very interesting for most people. It doesn’t have a focus. The general theme of this blog is too cryptic. Integral what?

3) I’m not very skillful in self-promotion.

4) I’m not feeling lucky.

5) I don’t care too much about traffic so I never made a conscious effort to address it.

All of the above are true. But I think reason #5 is key (and #4 too). You see, blogging is more of a "spiritual" practice
for me. It’s more for expression than getting attention. It’s more for
discovery than gaining popularity. Traffic is just secondary. It would
be cool if I could monetize my blog and join the ranks of A-list
bloggers (Perez Hilton comes to mind) but I neither have the passion nor savviness nor talent (nor luck) to follow through.

So do I consider my blog a failure due to its insignificant traffic?
Far from it. You see, because of my blog I am able to make meaningful
connections and conversations with other people, online and offline.
Once in a while I get emails from people thanking me for the links and
ideas I express on my blog. I’ve met artists, philosophers,
celebrities, friends, and people from around the world whom I otherwise
wouldn’t have met without my blog presence. I’ve landed a cool job at Zaadz
because of my blog visibility. My blog serves as my outlet for
creativity. The total lifetime pageviews of my blog may look
depressing, but it doesn’t reflect the quality experiences I’ve had
since I started blogging my heart out.

So why do I blog thee? I blog for serendipity. I am living my Kosmic blogging dream. And because of that I’m one of the happiest bloggers in the world.

P.S. Those lolcats really give me the LOLs.

“We
poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men
friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with.” – William Butler Yeats Source: The Letters of W. B. Yeats, Letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 1936

Just
finished packing all my stuff. I’ll be flying to Ireland in a few
hours. Will be staying there for a couple of months or so. Blogging
will be light this weekend.

When I get back, long distance will suck no more.

I will take a break from blogging in the next few days. Tomorrow I fly to Ireland and stay in a small town where W.B. Yeats used to draw his inspiration from. I’ll be there to be with mine.

I’m
not sure what’s the context of him sending me just a link without any
accompanying explanation as to why he sent it to me. So I wonder:
Does my friend think I’m a cult member or he’s just merely sending this
to me to entertain me? I think it could go either way because some of
my friends still probably think that I joined a cult when I moved to
Boulder a few years back. Nothing can be farther from the truth.
Yeah, I did get that cult-vibe while I was there. But it’s far from the
destructive cults that people are so freaking out about. And I do
believe that not all cults are evil.

Although I have no problem with people joining exclusive groups, communes, experimental communities in search of utopia
or what not, I’m not the type of person who would fall
for that, I think. I’m too stubbornly agentic to even join a club at
school while I was growing up. In fact, one of the reasons I "fell
away" from my childhood friends was because they started joining
"fraternities." Nope. Not me. I’m cool with a small circle of friends, but for the most part, I prefer to ride alone. If I’m the Lone Ranger,
I wouldn’t even allow Tonto to tag along.

However, it’s not that I don’t value relationships and communities. Heck, it’s because of my contact with offline and online communities that I am where I am right now–working for a groovy social network with meaning and purpose,
in which one of my roles is acting as community support and moderator.
I’m not a big social person myself, but online, I love interacting with
people. I love linking people with other people. I like meeting up with
them in meatspace sharing stories and talking about crazy stuff. But
formally joining exclusive groups, spiritual circles, or communes? Nah.
Like I said, I’m too stubbornly agentic for that.

So I wonder why my friends have that perception of me as being a
gullible cult member. I think I only have myself to blame. Maybe
because I’m too agentic that people don’t get to know me very well. Ah
well….

John Naisbitt
Source: Mind Set!: Reset Your Thinking and See the Future, Page: 179

I
remember it like it was yesterday. I could still smell the scent of my
first rental car. It was a Hyundai Accent from Enterprise. It was my
first time driving an automatic transmission on Interstate-90. A
motorist gave me the finger. It was my fault. I was too slow merging
with traffic. I was overwhelmed. Where I come from the roads were
narrower, the traffic lanes were imaginary, and cars moved bumper to
bumper. Ahh, so this is how it feels like driving on the freeway. Cool.

I
blamed the crappy car rental map for making me lose my way. It took me
two hours and a couple of gas station stops before I found Red Roof
Inn.  As soon as I entered my room I put my belongings aside, took a
deep breath, and plunged myself on the bed. Suddenly, reality hit me.
For the first time in my life I was alone, away from my family. I was a complete stranger. I just
moved into a foreign land with only a suitcase full of clothes and a
box of books. I wanted to wallow in sadness, but there was no time for
melodrama. I was hungry. Now where can I buy a pizza?

Fast
forward ten years later. Everything feels surreal. I’m in a room full
of people from all over the world–more than thirty countries. Along
with these ninety-nine people I’m renouncing my citizenship from the
country where I was born and taking my pledge of allegiance with the
United States of America. I’m neither sad nor ecstatic. But I feel a
sense of gratitude for being granted special privileges, like voting in
the most powerful Democratic nation in the world and being able to
travel more freely to other countries without restrictions.

Pero ika nga ni Bamboo, Pinoy ako, buo ang aking loob, may agimat ang dugo ko.

I
may have taken an oath, signed some papers, received a fancy certificate,
but I don’t feel any different. This morning I woke up as a Filipino.
Tonight I’ll be sleeping as an American. Tomorrow I’ll wake up as a
citizen of the world. But I’ll always keep in mind that I’m neither
this body, nor this mind, nor this nationality.

Today, this holy Monday, I become an adopted citizen of this great nation of immigrants. So help me God.

I’ve
never been too attached to money. I’m satisfied with making enough to
support myself, my family, my folks, and other needy relatives. Yes, I
have daydreams of becoming a millionaire someday but not for the sake
of money or wealth. It’s more of freeing up myself so I can do what I
want, pursue the things I’m interested in, while using the wealth to
be in service to others.

Whenever I daydream of becoming a
millionaire I don’t see myself driving around in fancy cars, buying mansions, or dressing up with blings. Instead I imagine myself
traveling around the world learning from different cultures, taking
photographs, and blogging about it I also imagine investing my
wealth in conscious businesses or social enterprises in line with my values and buying real
estate properties that would generate enough income to keep me liquid
until my old age. Read: Multiple streams of passive income. Steve Pavlina describes this as, Making Money Consciously.

Being an only child, I’ve always wanted myself to be independent. My biggest fear in life is not death. It’s being dependent on others when I get
old or being stricken by a debilitating illness or accident. I hate the thought of burdening my children and grand children
with my worn out wrinkled butt. And forget about Social Security or
Medicare. I don’t want to depend on those too. Too risky. It doesn’t work on most of the Baby Boomers out there, so I don’t want to even consider that as an option.

So far
I’m lucky to be blessed with just-in-time wealth, meaning: I always
find a decent job whenever I need it the most. Thankfully I haven’t experienced
being shitty poor. I always have just enough wealth for myself and for the
people that I really care about. However, this is only true for now,
while I can still work my ass off–while I’m still in my first quarter
of my life.

Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, talks about the quarters of life as follows:

• PRE-GAME SHOW (e.g. you’re lucky if you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth like Paris Hilton. most us of have to work it.)
• age 25-35 —> first quarter
• age 35-45 —> second quarter (people get married, their career takes off, etc.)
• HALF-TIME (mid-life crisis?)
• age 45-55 —> third quarter
• age 55-65 —> fourth quarter
• OVERTIME (people over 65 who still have to work and
  cannot retire, because not enough savings, e.g. taking order for Big
  Mac or bagging groceries in your seventies.)
• OUT OF TIME (dying in a shitty poor condition)

Last night while I was watching PBS, I saw Robert Kiyosaki pimping out his principles on getting rich.
Unlike other infomercials out there, Kiyosaki doesn’t preach about a
get-rich-quick scheme. His approach is more practical and takes more
hard work. But most important of all is that, Kiyosaki goes against the
mainstream approach to building wealth and teaches you how to be more
skillful in investing and saving. Sounds good to me.

So although I’m not too
attached to money, the reality of life as I get older is starting to
sink in. Yes, I may be only in my first quarter, but I’d like to "win"
the game early so that I don’t have to keep playing in my old age. I
can always try my luck winning the lottery, but I have more chances of
finding my inner genie.

Bottomline: Financial intelligence is another stream in the spectrum of multiple intelligences.

~C (for Cash flowing)