Miscellany from popurls.com

A Rube Goldberg-inspired Honda Ad which involves a gazillion little steps (an elaborate domino-style effect) and which apparently took 606 takes to film properly.

Driving directions from California to Sweden. Steps 32-34 are my favourite.

Kermit the Frog covering Hurt, by I think Nine Inch Nails originally, then covered really well by Johnny Cash.

Why I get nothing done (pic, SFW).

On Wal-Mart's consistent inability to break through into New York, the CEO has finally given up on trying anymore. Says it's too expensive and no longer worth the effort, given the extreme opposition from New Yorkers: “You have people who are just better than us and don’t want a Wal-Mart in their community.” Right ON, New York!

And, on how to be a superpower with humility AND responsibility (isn't that an oxymoron?), Zbigniew Brzezinski, former advisor to Carter, I think it was, was recently interviewed on The Daily Show, and what Stewart says at nearly the halfway point cracked me up. My edited transcript:

You talk about [G.W. Bush not having a] grand vision, but what could be a grander vision than 'I will be the Johnny Appleseed of democracy, which is not my gift to the world, but in fact God's gift to humanity, and I shall start here in Iraq with my Genesis machine...' I mean, you can't get a grander vision other than in a Star Trek movie.

On Eckhart Tolle's latest book; videos on Oneness; and instructions on how to become a Buddha

From Issue #2715 of the Nondual Highlights, a very lucid review of Eckhart Tolle's latest book, A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life's Purpose (google). One salient excerpt from the review is below:

Ego, as Tolle perceives it, is no more than identification with form, ‘which primarily means thought forms’: thought forms, physical forms, emotional forms. In this state, we lose all apprehension of our connectedness with the Whole, our ‘intrinsic oneness’, not only with every other living soul, but with the Source. Underneath the forms that we perceive via our senses, everything is connected with everything else and also with the Source of all life from which nothing can ever be separated.

If there is Original Sin, it is our unnecessary suffering, our delusion of our separateness, our feeling of aloneness. Because we continually perceive the same world, the world of the ego, we always end up creating the same dysfunctions that prevent us from knowing who we are.

Also:

Be aware,’ Tolle says, ‘that what you think, to a large extent, creates the emotions that you feel.’ (p. 96)

Awareness teaches us that we do not need to give value to every thought we think. It’s merely a thought. No more; no less. We need to be aware of our thoughts and emotions.

And:

Our feelings are not who we are.

No great Damascus experience is needed to become free of the ego. All that is required of us is to be aware of it: ‘Awareness is the power that is concealed in the present moment’, and the present moment is the only moment in which we can exert this awareness. The present moment – and nowhere else - is where life happens.

This is why to become free of the ego cannot be made into a goal: ‘You can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow.’ (p. 78)

---

From Issue #2680, a description of numerous high-quality videos about oneness from the Global Oneness Project. This video interview with Peter Kingsley is very pleasant to listen to, and there's some interesting no-nonsense insights in the interview, also. It pertains to using our senses to become conscious of God.

Incidentally, I read in a trashy celeb magazine last fall that Jim Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, are into a new spirituality called "Oneness" now. I wonder if it's the same thing. (Probably not, since more recently than that, I heard that they were taking intro courses in Scientology...)

---

From Issue #2668:

The Buddha's teachings are unusual in that they explain at great length the
nature of his enlightenment and the types of meditative disciplines he used to
gain his insights. He left us a road map to enlightenment. Indeed, his chief
motivation for teaching was to lead others to the spiritual awakening he
experienced. Statements attributed to the Buddha make it very clear that all
sentient beings have the capacity to become Buddhas, and that his own
realizations occurred by practicing the Dharma he taught. Over the past 2,500
years the Buddha's teachings have been tested experientially by thousands of
the greatest sages of Asia. Many have verified for themselves the Buddha's
words and have achieved the same realizations he did.

--B. Alan Wallace, Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground Up

---

(x-posted to nonduality)