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The Quantum Leap
Crossing and Re-crossing Time
Time Travel
Taking a quantum leap traditionally means travelling in time. It is said that time is like an arrow. If you shoot an arrow indefinitely in one direction, after some time it will hit you in the back. It would have travelled 25 000 miles – the circumference of the Earth. The trajectory of an arrow would have to follow the curvature of the Earth due to gravity. To make a quantum leap we must determine whether or not time is an arrow. The arrow of time implies: going in a particular direction. The arrow came from the past, it is here now in the present and it is going into the future. The question is whether time moves in a straight or a curved line?
Space is vast, but mathematically, if you send a rocket directly upwards, after some time it would arrive at the place it has departed from. This indicates that space is also curved. In the physical world, we operate in the vectors of time and space.
Time is another dimension and it too is curved. If you go very far into the future, you will arrive at yesterday. And if you go very far into the past, you will arrive at tomorrow. You don't normally think of the trajectory of time as curved because there is no influence of Earth's gravity. How long is time? You would probably say: eternal. There is a song: "I will love you till the end of time," that means forever. But how long is that?
For everybody who has a regular watch, time is going round and round. The galaxy is going round and round. The Earth is going round and round. It appears that everything is going round and round except the human mind. Human minds go in straight lines, or more often randomly, all over the place.
It takes one day for the Earth to complete one rotation, and one year for the Earth to complete a rotation around the Sun. We are used to cycles. A year passes through stages of autumn, winter, spring, summer and again autumn, winter, spring, summer. The phases of the moon pass through a monthly cycle full moon, quarter and half, last quarter and then it goes round again. Everything we have to do in time in a practical way is cyclical.
There is the life cycle of an animal or a human. Everybody starts as a baby, become a child, an adolescent, adult and dies and next generation continues. When a person dies it is said: his time has come. The passage of time is the movement from new to old, young to old. The cyclic process of time is found in agriculture. In spring, the leaves start to emerge and grow. In summer the flowers come out. In autumn, you get the fruits. And then the only thing that can survive the winter is the seeds. And once the winter is past spring comes again and the seeds wake up.
Conventional Science
Conventional science defines time as linear: 14 billion years ago there was a big bang and after another 14 billion years, there will be another big bang. By that calculation we are somewhere in the middle of the time. It is OK because there is still plenty of time to go. We are here in between two big bangs. In the beginning there was a big bang and the material universe spontaneously came into existence and at the end there will be another big bang and it will cease. They don't say what causes either of the bangs. The beginning of time is a long time ago and the end of time is a very long time so in between, they say, we will no doubt resolve the problems of our existence.
Conventional science believes we have been evolving very slowly over time. They say that the human stage of evolution is the greatest achievement, the best. But if you look around circumstances seem to be getting worse and worse. From the economic, social, physical and mental health, climate, pollution point of view, there has never been as bad a time as we are in now. We are in a very critical time and we don't really know what to do. People are worried about this.
Astrology on the other hand says: it is not 14 billion years in the past and 14 billion years in the future, but the whole thing is just 28,000 years. This is the time it takes for all the stars to return to their original positions in their cycle. Astrologers calculate the past, present and future on the basis of the positions and relationships of the stars.
We normally operate in the awareness of chronological time. We born at a certain point of time, we live during a certain time and then eventually we die when the time comes. We have calendars and agendas that work in chronological time. Chronological time says: this happened, and then that and that and so on. In chronological time, you don't really take note of the quality of time. Chronological time is represented by the dash between your date of birth and your date of death. Isn't our existence is greater than this one inch hyphen?
Greek philosophy describes both Chronos time and Kairos time. The Greek god of time is Chronos, who is also the god of death. In terms of chronological time, everyone is heading toward his or her death. Of course, we don't like this idea.
Chronos is the primordial deity, who personifies time and destiny. He is immaterial and appeared at the moment of the creation of the world. He has the body of a snake and three heads, one human, one is a lion and one a bull. He entwines around his wife Anake, the goddess of necessity and fate. They surround the world as an egg. Their role is to bring the celestial world into eternal rotation. According to Orphic cosmogony they generate Chaos and Ether.
Chronos is also chronological or rotational time. Your calendar, your school year, your planning, is all chronological time. You get born, you go to school, you go to university, you get a job, you get married, have children, you get old, you die. This is the life cycle of humanity. In this way, you get a child, he carries on, he gets children, they carry on. You have your great, great grand parents, your grand parents, your parents, you, your children, your grand children, your great grand children. In that way, we think that we can make ourselves immortal through chronology. This is how people normally think. We can call this material consciousness.
The Greek God Kairos is the god of a very different kind of time. Kairos time provides a different sense of time. There are certain moments in life which are highly influential and may change the direction of your life. In Kairos time you qualify time in terms of events that make a deep impact on the quality of your life, and how you experience your existence. It gives meaning that is beyond mere chronological existence. Some of those very special key moments are enlightenments, but some are traumas. They change you so totally that you can never return to what you were before. These are very important defining moments of time.
Kairos time is the opportune moment. It is a dimension of time which creates depth within the instant. A door opens to another perception of the universe, an event, or the self. It is a question of a non material concept of time measured not by the clock but by its impact. The Greek god, Kairos is represented by a young man wearing nothing but a quiff of hair on his head. When he passes close to us there are three possibilities. Either we don't see him, or we see him and do nothing, or at the moment when he passes, we put out our hand and grab the quiff of hair, that is we seize the time, as in "Carpe Diem". This concept presented in the film: The Dead Poet's Society.
Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment, the supreme moment. The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens. What the special something is depends on who is using the word. While chronos is quantitative, kairos has a qualitative nature. Kairos also means weather in both ancient and modern Greek. The plural, kairoi means the times. In the New Testament kairos means "the appointed time in the purpose of God", the time when God acts (e.g. Mark 1.15, the kairos is fulfilled).
For how long do I exist? Consider also what is the nature of your existence. For most people their existence is that hyphen on their grave stone in between their date of birth and date of death. It is about two centimeters long! Short!
What is the shape of eternity? The horizontal figure eight symbol. There is also the symbol of yin yang: an S in the center of a circle, a little black in the white, a little white in the black. This is the symbol of your soul within eternity. The small dash between your birth date and your death date is a small section of that cycle.
What is before birth and after death? As an eternal soul, on some level you must be active and aware before birth and after your death. You exist always, there is no starting point, and no ending point either, since you are eternal. Is it possible not to have an ending point but yet have a starting point? Mathematics clarifies that if there is no end there is no start. If there is a start, there is an end. So if you say that you are eternal it means you have no start. Why is this important?
We need to make a quantum leap here. Is there anybody who does parachuting? It is a very good exercise to drop yourself into emptiness. This is a leap into a different kind of consciousness.
What is the meaning of death. Do we go to Heaven or to Hell? Some people want to go to heaven which is definitively considered to be somewhere up there. Depending on which part of the Earth you are going to die: you may or may not go into the right direction.
This is the problem with the concept of "up"… Otherwise "down" refers to hell. Wherever you happen to be, "down" will be the center of the Earth. If you have to go to hell, there is no problem, you just go down and here you are! But if you have to go up, it is large! The meaning of up and down may be more qualitative than geometrical.
When somebody dies we say: "his time has come." In many languages the word "time" also means death. In India the word Kaal has three meanings: first is time; secondly yesterday as well as tomorrow. (There is no terminological differentiation between yesterday and tomorrow); and thirdly kaal means death.
There is a mythological figure in the West called Father Time, a robed skeleton holding a scythe, also called the Grim Reaper or death. He comes along and cuts you down when it is time to go. We are in time when we are alive in the human form in human society.
The Kaalchakra: the cycle of time, is divided in four sections. The first quadrant is gold, the second silver, the third copper, and the fourth iron. The process of going from gold to silver, then silver to copper then copper to iron is a decline in value from a metallurgical perspective.
The soul passes through time, and is affected by events. If something good happens the soul is happy. If something bad happens the soul is unhappy. When you experience things are going well, you have more energy and when things are going badly, you have less energy, and feel more tired.
When you, the soul, pass through time you also pass through space. Time is how long it takes to do something. Space is where you do that thing. So the soul acting, in both time and space. When the soul is not in time and space, it is silent, still and at peace.
Any form of energy that comes into action loses power. Accordingly, the cycle of time does not make us progressively more evolved but rather we become progressively less evolved. Everything gets older, weaker and less powerful when it passes through time and space. You pass through gold then become silver, then copper then iron. How do you become gold again? To change from iron to gold is an alchemical process. The eternal soul has to find the alchemical stone to become gold again.
In India the word Yuga refers to the Age or Epoch. There are different ages and when one age finishes, another age starts. Satyuga, Treta, Dwapur, Kalyuga are the words for the Golden, Silver, Copper and Iron Ages. The New Age people talk about the age of the Aquarius. The New Age movement arose in the 1970s because a substantial group of people felt that an old age is finishing and a new age is coming. In western civilization, we think of time as the idea of slow evolution. There is the paradoxical concept of humans being next to God, yet behaving in ways towards the earth and each other that are the total opposite.
Western civilization has persisted for about a thousand years. In school, you are taught the history of the past one thousand years. In England where I went to school, they began history in the year 1066. That was when Christianity was formally established, and cathedrals were built. Before that there were the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, and before that the Greek and Roman civilizations, the pre-Christian area.
Historians and archeologists say the cradle of civilization was Mesopotamia. However now the evidence points to the Harrapan civilization in India preceding the Mesopotamian civilization. That was the start. And before that? We don't know. Religionists point to ante diluvium and flood, and before that, the Creation. And before that the Big Bang.
Biblical time started 6,000 years ago. They calculate who beget whom from Adam and Eve all the way to the Apocalypse, and return of Christ who brings 1000 years peace in the New Jerusalem. That means that Christianity based Western Civilization also has a background where time moves in circles.
Drastic Cataclysmic Change
Indian civilization refers to Satyuga, Treta yuga, Dwapur yuga, Kaliyuga, the Golden, Silver, Cooper and Iron Ages. The Golden Age is when human civilization is heaven, everything is beautiful, marvelous and everybody is good. The Iron Age is followed by another Golden Age. The time when everything is very dark, bad, negative and evil immediately precedes the Golden Age. Time is said to start when everything is absolutely perfect and then slowly degenerates. It reaches to the point when the human condition is absolutely abject. Then it changes drastically from absolute hell to perfect heaven.
Back to The Present Moment
Do you control everything that happens? There are some things that you have no control over. There are some things that you decide to control, just as when you are walking you use your left foot, then your right foot, etc. There are some moments when things are happening to you, and another moments where you make things happen. There are some moments when you are supposed to act, but you do not. There are some times when you do the wrong thing. There are some moments when you do the right thing by mistake! There are other moments when no matter what you do, it will be the wrong thing.
It is important for the soul to be right here right now, to be present for the present moment. The phrase "Be here now" was made famous by Ram Das in the 1970's. In their minds, most people spend time somewhere in the past, or the future. Ask yourself: are you where your body is, or are you where your mind is?
If you are really here right now, then you are present both with your body and your mind. That is quite rare. Most of our activities do not require 100% of our attention. Our mind is free to roam around. Indeed, many people say that they have difficulty concentrating, and admit that they get distracted easily. It is difficult for people to be that much focused because our mind is so strongly influenced by our sense perceptions. Sense perceptions keep us distracted. If you are really present at the present moment, then the actions you perform will be good, considered, conscious acts that you would take responsibility for.
When the map of the Earth is represented as a rectangle, it places, for example, Spain in the middle, the East on the left and West and the right. If you want to go from Spain to Vancouver you have to cross the Atlantic, plus the North American continent. That is 8 hours time difference which means 8 longitudes. The representation discourages you from thinking that is better to go North. You think we should go West, you can't imagine it is shorter because visually on a flat map it seems longer. But it is shorter if you go North. If you would place the North Pole in the middle of the map then you would think about the journey differently. The Earth is a ball. Our flat two dimensional maps create an inner sense of Earth as flat.
The iconography of the linear thinking is a similar distortion. When you travel in an airplane to the other side of the planet you travel straight but you actually follow the curvature of the Earth. Even if you are walking straight in the middle of this room you are sill following the curvature of the Earth. Our minds and intellects are limited by the presenting iconography. In order to make a quantum leap we need to become independent of the influence of iconography.
Transformation of Consciousness
Making a Quantum Leap refers to coming into the consciousness of the soul. The concept of making a Quantum Leap is deep and not simply a matter of taking a jump from physical to a spiritual consciousness.
Transformation of Consciousness is reflected in the quality of your life. Are we living the most natural life possible? Is my life natural, harmonious? Do you feel that your life is artificial, stressful, you don't get enough sleep, you can't relax, you feel you never have enough time and you wish your life could be a little bit natural? A change in consciousness creates change in the quality of your time.
The Confluence Age
The Confluence Age is a time of total transformation. This Confluence Age is actually filled with power by a mind which is not a human mind, the Higher Intelligence or divine intellect. He is considered to be capable of causing complete transformation.
When we are in an ordinary consciousness we are stuck in the Iron Age, and heading towards deep trouble. But there is another energy which is raising the quality of everything. To be part of that, you need to put your consciousness on to that other position of time. That means: a change of consciousness creates a change of time.
The change of consciousness is to move away from the everyday physical consciousness and consider yourself as an immortal soul. In this consciousness you can have direct connection with the divine intelligence and you change yourself in order to change your karma. The everyday reality is going downwards, but your mentality will take you upwards to an elevated awareness. That means that future is coming toward you and you are mentally connected with it in advance. Your intelligence starts to operate in the manner of the future age as you let go of the old age.
The mentality in the Iron Age is going toward materialism. It is driven by material values. Whereas your spiritual consciousness is driven by spiritual values. So the reason why you do, what you do, is based on spiritual considerations rather than materialist ones. We also need a substantially higher energy level. Awareness change is based on identity change. You draw on that spiritual energy to elevate yourself. In that sense your feet are on the ground of the Iron Age and your head is oriented toward the significance of the Confluence Age.
You are then living a double life. For the everyday purposes you are in an everyday consciousness otherwise you are in a higher spiritual consciousness. The actions you do in that higher consciousness while you are connected with the higher intelligence actually cause the Iron Age to disappear and the that Golden Age to emerge.
To be part of this transformation, means to be certain in your consciousness that the ancient past is the future. It is predestined, it is fixed, and it is returning once again. When you connect your mind with that, you create the energy that makes it come.
Mental Time – Thought and Speed
In your mind you can go anywhere, but not with your body. You are using memory. For example, I can say: "in your mind go to New York." You go, you know what it looks like, sounds like. In your mind, you can go to your childhood, when you were ten years old. The speed of thought is instant.
The speed of physical action is much slower. For example, when you fast, you have lot more time. It takes so much time to buy, cook, eat the food, then do the washing up, put it away and think about the next meal. People who fast have a lot of time. You might be surprised how much time it takes to eat!
How much time do you devote to commuting. I use to live in Los Angeles and most people drive two hours to work and two hours home again. It is eight hours work, four hours travelling. Twelve hours with the commute!
Every soul performs actions in time and space. Your actions can be acts of mind, verbal or physical acts. Many people spend a lot of time talking on the telephone. I did some research and I found that you can say anything you want to say within 37 seconds. We tend to repeat ourselves a lot. If we only say what we have to say once, we would save a lot of time. I don't know why we talk so much but we do. I think also people are afraid of silence.
Making a Quantum Leap is changing from material consciousness to spiritual consciousness. Are you a soul conscious soul or a body conscious soul? You have a soul. Are you conscious of your soul with your sense of self as a soul, or do you think: I have a soul but basically I am a body? In the morning when you go in the bathroom and you look at your face in the mirror do you see yourself or do you see your face? Is that the same thing? It is not really the same thing. Then there is another way to think about it: do you know who you are?
Space and Perception
The way we normally live in terms of space is on Earth. We can walk, go on a horse, a train, a car, an airplane, a rocket and we move around the Earth or slightly beyond it. The way we operate in time and space is primarily through our sense perceptions. We perform actions and those actions take time. They occur in space. This is a normal way of existing.
This is because the human mind is greatly influenced by sense organs and perceptions. Einstein said that sense perception is useful only for everyday reality. Once you get beyond it, sense perception is deceptive and ceases to provide the observer with reliable data.
At Stanford University, California, research was done on how some primitive tribes perceive things differently than we in the west. A tribesman with a herd of animals in a mountain area can see over the mountain. How? Because he is not limited by the idea that he can't, he does not know that seeing through mountains is impossible. He can see round the other side of the mountain because he doesn't have our mentality that says that you can't see the other side of the mountain. He uses his powers of perception differently from westerners. Our awareness has become very limited by our physical perception of everyday reality.
We humans are intelligent. But if you read the newspapers, you might think that we are not intelligent enough, because everything we do seems to make matters worse. Actions motivated by negative emotions like greed, anger etc. make everything worse. We would like to do the right thing but somehow we can't.
There is a crisis of the will. The will is weak right now. Where is your will located? Is it somewhere in your mind? Is it in your heart or in your intellect? Is it some sort of muscle? Actually your will is in your soul. The soul itself has to be regenerated. The source for the soul is the Supreme Being. That is a very powerful force which is also known to operate at the end of time and at the beginning of time. This is referred to as the Alpha and the Omega.
Karma: Cause and Effect
People want to know the future, yet are convinced it cannot be known in advance. Whatever you do is the cause of some effect, and that effect is the cause of another effect. The last effect is ultimately the first cause. We are talking about eternity. If you think of time in terms of cause and effect, then effects become causes of other effects and it keeps going until you have a circle that represents the sum total of all causes and effects. The last effect becomes the first cause. You keep going until finally you come back to where it started from. Time goes like that and arrows go like that. Your clock is going like that.
In Singapore, there is a statue whose arm is so long that it circles the world and its finger returns to touch his back. (see beginning of article) How far could your arm or action stretch and where would it ultimately reach? This metaphor defines the law of karma; your hand is the instrument for action, and the consequences of whatever actions you perform automatically return to touch your back.
All of us are continuously performing action. To act is to plant seeds. According to the seed you plant, you must accept the fruit of that seed. This is the philosophy of karma: every action produces an equal and opposite return. The consequences of karma are short term, medium term and long term. Short can be as short as instantaneously and long can be thousands of years. So whatever you do first, whenever you begin to act in your existence, is also the fruit you experience at the end of time.
Free will or Pre-destination
Some people question whether we have freewill or whether everything is predestined. Some say: "We have freewill!" and others say: "No, everything is predestined!…I don't have to do anything, it will happen by itself." It is subtle because we have to catch which moment is free will and which moment is predestined.
Do you believe you have a destiny? A few believe they have a destiny and quite a few don't. Nobody knows his destiny. Some people can feel it. Jimmy Carter said that he felt that he was destined to become president of America and he became it. When you ask young people: what will you be when you grow up? They often say they cannot see any thing in the future. The primitive tribes in the Stanford research project, could remember the future because they did not know that the future can't be known in advance. It all depends on your mentality.
The present moment is the razor's edge between the past and the future. The present lasts for one second, and when that second is gone, you have no more control over it. People are concerned about their free will, their freedom of action. If you ask whether there is pre-destination or free will, most people assert: "we are free!"
If you are distracted during one particular second, are you free and in control of your action during that second? I would say: you are not free. It is in such a moment that you say: "oh! I made a mistake!" But you cannot return back to that second because it is gone into the past. The next second has arrived and you have to be present and available to act in that second. But if in your mind, you are regretting your mistake of the previous second, then you also miss the next second! You have control over your actions only when you are present for that actual second of time.
Reversal of Time During the Confluence Age
There is another kind of time which is going in the opposite direction of the chronological time. The Diamond Age, also known as the Auspicious Confluence Age. To raise the quality from the Iron Age to Golden Age is not possible. Except that at the end of the Iron Age, you do rise and arrive at the beginning of the Golden Age. The diamond time is super-imposed upon regular time. The Supreme Power causes a complete change or reversal of time. Chronological Time continues to pursue its course. However, for the quality to transform from iron to gold requires a total change. This force brings a different time that operates parallel and opposite to current time. It resembles the bi-directional flow of water in the Bosphorus at Istanbul.
Chronological time, in terms of quality of time, is deteriorating. To move from the iron to the gold, you need a form of time which is ameliorating. There has to be a force operating in time that rejuvenates everything, changing the old to young or new. That force has to operate on people physically, mentally, socially, financially, spiritually, in every possible way. That is an extremely powerful force which carries the state of the world and the states of the people from the bottom to the top. That is an extraordinary transformative power. It is an intelligent power. In India a name for God is Mahakaal, which is usually translated as the great death, but it can just as well be translated as the Great Time, which, by extension, can be interpreted as the force that reverses the effect of time.
Negative Time
Time actually doesn't necessarily exist in and of itself. Time is computed as how long it takes to do something. It is said that time is money. Time can be compared to money in the sense that when you perform negative actions, you go into negative time, or negative fortune and invoke negative events in the future. Negative time is also experienced as loss of the treasure of time. Time is not available for you, time does not cooperate with you. If you would see into the minds of all of people here, consider how many negative feelings will be produced in one day? Moments of sorrow, hopelessness, doubt, moments of anger or irritation? They tend to be much more frequent and durable than moments of extreme faith in yourself and in your destiny. The predominant energy of thoughts and feelings of the people is declining to a lower vibrational quality or getting dissipated.
Positive Time Through Pure Thought
There is a distinction between time that is going into negative energetic force, based on material values; and time that is going into positive energetic force, based on spiritual values.
Instead of being in the negative, let your mind hold only powerful, pure, true thought. That changes the quality of time. You can say that your feet are in the Iron Age descending into the negative energetic field, yet your mind is connected with the much more powerful energy of understanding that is rising into a positive energetic field.
Material values or materialism cause the mind to move into negative vibrations which lead to Ego or negative self image. When a person compares what they possess with what someone else has, it generates a negative inner feelings or experience. In terms of possessions you say: I have less and those people have more. Confusing what you have with what you are, leads many to be motivated by acquiring possessions and positions. In that case they can be easily corrupted. But what you are and what you have are two different things.
Is it better to be a weak soul in powerful position or a powerful soul in a weak position?
By shifting your sense of awareness to a spiritual orientation, you give higher value to what you are than what you have. The Iron Age gets progressively stronger, the souls get weaker, and acquire things through corrupt means, while a powerful soul who maintains his integrity gets less and less. You all just indicated that it is better to be a powerful soul in a weak situation, because by moving a little forward in time, clearly a powerful soul will attract what is necessary and a weak soul will lose it.
From Negative to Positive Quality of Time
To go through a change of time, from negatively charged energetic time to positively charged energetic time, you need great personal strength. You have to get it from up a source outside the material universe. Whenever there is huge change there is also a lot of disturbance and chaos. The key thing is to take maximum power from above in order to have greater personal stability while circumstances here below become progressively unstable.
You have to be spiritually powerful to connect with that one above. This connection will carry you across disturbing times, and enable you to get all the necessary internal ingredients to carry you across physical hardship. If you are weak inside, it is impossible to cross difficult times. But if you are aware, spiritually awake and connected to the higher power, then at such a time that power is with you, and you will just cross.
Everything is going into negative energetic time, but you are moving in the opposite direction, into positive energetic time. This takes you to a destination where circumstances and physical matter tend towards a beautiful, natural, correct way of life. This positioning of the self is a form of leadership. You lead the way through simply knowing: I am a spiritual being, I have access and I take that strength and I go across. Others will follow.
Shifts in Consciousness Create Shifts in Values
Throughout time there is a change in the quality of your existence. At times the quality of your existence is very good. Considering time in terms of the effect of action, depending on the quality of action of humanity in general, the consequences of our activities would be the quality of the world we live in. Some people's actions have very little impact on society. But the actions of people who are in the most powerful positions in any gathering or country influence a vast population. What a king says influences everybody in the kingdom. The actions of people who are in high political, economic, religious position, influence many. The actions of others will influence only their family. There is a law that says: The higher the position a person occupies, the greater their accountability. An eternal immortal soul who comes into action and time is also accountable.
Material values originate in the concept of being matter. For your body, you need a house, money, a car, clothing, airplanes, you need to eat, and you need various other items. Material values come from thinking of your self as an object. You say: my body is male or female. If it is mine it is a possession, an object. But if you think that it is me that means I am an object. Then you have to ask yourself: are you a possession or a possessor? If you say: "this is my body" who is the possessor of your body. It should be you, the eternal immortal soul.
The elements that make up a human soul are not physical. Your body is made of air, earth, fire, water, ether. Ultimately, your body is a leather bag of warm mud with bones in it to give it shape. Most of people think about it like that: "this one is a very beautiful warm mud and this one is a very ugly warm mud." Through our auditory and visual perception, we are strongly influenced by these warm muddy items. But, you are not warm mud or a piece of fashion! The soul is made of love, peace, purity, inner power and bliss. Are you peace, bliss, love, purity and inner power or are you a bag of warm mud?
In the world today, more and more things are in the hands of less and less people, and more and more people find themselves with practically no resources. These are the consequences of materialism. If everyone were motivated by purity, peace, love and bliss it would be a different world. What is necessary to change from material values to spiritual values? One is to have a very good memory. Can you remember back to the beginning of time? The beginning of time was the Golden Age or Paradise. Paintings of paradise portray everybody there as quite rich. There are no poor or sick people. It is very beautiful. There is no pollution. There are no wars. It was based on spiritual values. Now you have pollution, war, poverty etc. that are the ultimate consequence of actions based on material values.
Material consciousness creates confusion as to how we value ourselves and other human beings. Some people identify with their religion. That is deeper. "I am a catholic." Nobody will say: "I am only a catholic." Why? That means something: it refers to your values and to your spirituality. It brings you to the question of self-honor. Sometimes you hear people say: I am a bad catholic! That means: I don't go to church as often as I should. It doesn't mean: I perform criminal actions. Behind your religion, there are other more subtle identifications. That is your spirituality.
Shifts in Values Create Shifts in Circumstances
When people acquire physical wealth on the basis of material values, it depletes the Earth's non renewable resources, and compromises its potential for sustaining renewable resources. They say there is enough for everyone's needs but not for everyone's greed. If you destroy the Earth, where would you live?
When you fill yourself, the depleted soul, with the higher qualities of love, peace, happiness etc, which come from a non material and extra-terrestrial spiritual source, you get a different result. Individuals are spiritual beings so their source must be spiritual and extra-terrestrial. The Ocean of love, peace, bliss, purity, inner power, strength and wisdom dwells beyond the material universe. That intelligence radiates a different energy which changes the quality of time and of matter.
The Quantum Leap is: Shifting from Masks to the Glow
Behind the masks of material identities, lies the glow of spirituality. Spirituality is very subtle and intangible. In material consciousness, it is difficult to grasp. Consider the question: who is the real me behind the mask? It is difficult to answer because it lies beyond your professional identity, nationality, or social position. It is difficult to grasp because you are really trying to apprehend your own soul, and you can't see a spirit.
The masks are false due to being impermanent, and none of them are really you. It is just a production or performance. We perform: I am the father or the mother, or I am the boss or the employee, or I am the stupid one, or I am the murderer. Different facets. But can you be totally real and with no mask?
It takes a lot of courage to remove your mask. During Halloween or Mardi Gras when they put on masks it gives them permission to do anything they want. With your mask on, you feel free to do anything you like, because nobody knows who you are. One Halloween event I went with no mask, but I put a wig on and nobody could tell who I was though my face was visible. Hair makes so much difference. I put on a bright red dress and long blond hair. I saw the same people that I was with during the whole day. Nobody knew who I was. I was very surprised.
The mask implies that nobody really knows who you are. When you take off the mask, the essential reality of yourself becomes visible. It is risky because they will see you totally. Do you have anything to hide? You know what you might want to hide. There is a doubt that maybe, deep down, I am not perfect. If everybody would see how imperfect you are, that would be very delicate. They would see your pain, your shame, all the things that you normally hide behind the masks. That is why everybody likes masks.
The quantum leap is to remove the mask. It is a risk that requires enormous courage because of feelings like: "maybe they might reject me." Nobody likes to be rejected. We put on a mask and say: "don't reject me, I am very interesting, I am beautiful, I am rich, I am important." We want people to appreciate us. But if we take off the mask, there is a risk: "maybe they will like me, maybe they won't."
Then you have to ask yourself a deeper question: do I like me? You have to be really honest with yourself: do I love myself? Do I like me? Am I honorable in my own eyes? We have to think about our honor. When you take off all the masks and go deep inside, if you can say: "yes I am honorable", then you are very ready to take off your mask.
Spirituality means: looking behind the mask to see what is there. Material consciousness is focused on the mask. The mask is everything. In material consciousness there is nothing behind the mask. The quantum leap to spiritual consciousness is the intention to look behind the mask. This is why we question: who am I? My mask is my performance, but who am I behind it?
Otherwise, you think about your life, and find it is all about role. You play different roles with different souls. When you think about your identity, you may say: "I am a doctor." Many people identify with their professional mask. Your professional mask indicates how much money you earn, which in turn indicates your social status. In material consciousness the value of a person is how much money they earn. This is why people like to identify with their professional mask. Sometimes when I ask the women in particular about what they do, I hear this word "only": "I am only a housewife." You would never hear the doctor say: "oh, I am only a doctor." But a housewife says: "I am only a housewife." And then I ask then: "why are you saying only? Just because you don't get paid does it mean that you don't have any value? Is that why you say I am only a housewife! Or only a voluntary worker…"
It is very difficult to know who you are. The people in the house where you live: your wife, your husband, your children, your parents, do you know who they are? Do you think they know who you are? They probably know a little bit. A person is like a diamond with 56 facets. Others may see two or three of your 56 facets. Your friends see other facets. At work, they see yet other facets. And you have very private facets that nobody sees. Which one is you? The facets are masks. Ask yourself: "Ok! Is any one of the masks the real me?" Or: are all of them only masks? Usually, we think some of them are masks and some of them are me. In spirituality, they teach us that we are actors. That means all of the masks are masks. So who is the real you behind the mask?
Have you have ever seen a diamond through a microscope? Inside a diamond there is a glow. If you remove all the masks behind which you are normally work: how do you feel? You would be just a glow with no mask. Probably when God is looking at you, He sees that glow. If you would be God, would you look at the glow or the mask?
The Third Eye
Have you heard about the third eye? Of course, everybody only has two eyes! But it is very useful to have a third eye. The third eye sits in the middle of the forehead. The two eyes see everyday reality and the assisted two eyes see non visible material reality, using technical assistance like x-rays to see inside the body, or telescopes to see planets which are light years away. Technology can show us infra-red or ultra-violet light. The naked eyes see only within a certain spectrum and within a certain size range which we can call everyday reality.
To go outside everyday reality, we use scientific instruments. We use the microscope to see very small things, telescope to see very distant things. We use skype to see somebody who is not in the same room with us. Technology extends our range of perception of material reality.
Technology stops where spirituality starts. The third eye represents the soul's ability to perceive non-physical things. It is not possible to see a soul. You can understand what a soul is. And when you do, you say: "oh, I see!" One type of seeing is visual; other type of seeing is understanding. The third eye is not for seeing material things but for perceiving non material realities.
The third eye refers to your mental and intellectual capacity to conceptualize things that are outside material reality. Once you get to the limit of the material you reach the spiritual. Beyond physics there is metaphysics. The mask is material. The glow or the intelligence behind it, is spiritual.
Material Body, Spiritual Soul
All of us are a combination of two completely distinct things. You have the body and then you have the soul. Have you seen a dead body? There is no soul. Everything is there but you say: "he is not there." There is just a body but not a person. We say: this is the remains of the person. That means: when a person is dead, what's left? When we are alive, we don't call this body the remains. I am here. But if I go, then this remains.
The quantum leap is to shift from the idea of "I am this living, moving, breathing, active, visible person" to "I am the glow behind the mask."
How do we do that? There is an internal positioning that you can try out, to perceive the difference between me and my body. Almost everybody has their eyes. Your eyes are comparable to cameras. Imagine a little spirit inside your head who is looking out through your eyes. Can you identify yourself with someone inside who is looking out through the eyes. Your eyes move around, right? You can focus close, you can focus far. You see the thing you are looking at, and you have your peripheral vision. Who is moving your eyes around like that? Or do they do it by themselves? Do they know what to do?
Do I look where I want, or do my eyes tell me what to see? Who is in charge? Sometimes you see something you are not supposed to see. Who decides what is bad? Your eyes don't see something and then say: "oh I shouldn't see that!" and look in another direction. Somebody inside decides. You say: "these are my eyes." So who is the owner of your eyes? It is quite subtle. This is an exercise to distinguish between your sense organs of perception and you, the one who perceives visual phenomena through your eyes. You can close your eyes, and if you want and open up them again… Who decides? "I". So again we return to this mysterious question: "who am I?"
Who is the soul? This is the very subtle question of your identity. The more you think about it, the more it forces you to let go of identifying with something that you realize is not your identity.
The Human Soul is Genderless
There are not female or male souls. You have a female or a male body. When you say: "I am a man" or "I am a woman" that is not true. I have a male body or a female body. I am genderless. What's that? Am I feminine soul? Am I masculine soul? You can be feminine minded or you can be masculine minded. Some men are very feminine and some women are very masculine. Some people are perfectly balanced between the masculine and feminine. It is quite rare but it exists. Your spiritual self is genderless. Your body is the thing that gives you a gender.
It is said that the soul is light. The sun is also light. Usually they say the sun is masculine and the moon is feminine. "El sol y la luna." This is because of the symbolic value of these celestial orbs. This is quite subtle. Everybody's body is about 70% water. A recent typhoon named Haiyan was the most powerful typhoon ever to hit land. Survivors said the wind, at over 200 mph, screamed like a woman. But none of it is masculine or feminine. When you drink a glass of water, it is not a feminine or a masculine thing. Water is genderless, yet it symbolizes the feminine aspect.
Intelligence and sensitivity is contained within your soul. Your taste, your preference for one thing or another is contained in your soul. Your feelings about whether something is right or wrong, are also in your soul. These are very subtle things are called conscience. Consciousness is genderless.
Meaning and Aesthetics
These ideas take us into a very different kind of thought process from being caught up in the day to day material world. As soon as you start going into these deep questions: "who am I?" and "what am I?" you go beyond the everyday world. Keeping yourself exclusively to the everyday world, gives you insufficient meaning to satisfy you. Then you look for satisfaction through your senses organs. You want to eat because of the taste. You want to wear a certain dress because is beautiful. You want to buy a certain type of house because of its qualities, not just utilitarian but aesthetic.
The aesthetic is somewhere in between the material and the spiritual. Music also will take you towards the material side or the other more spiritual side. The other arts have this capacity. These are ways of transcending the limitations of day to day reality. When you don't have access to what is beyond day to day reality your life loses meaning.
If all you do is eat, sleep, reproduce, what is that? It doesn't have meaning. What is the most meaningful thing in your existence? You would probably say something like love. What is love? Can you go to the shop and buy two kilos of love? People try to buy love but you can't. How do you get love? Everybody wants love.
You have to give it. When you give from your heart, it makes you feel very good. That means you are giving love from your heart. You are giving a form of spiritual energy from your heart. This is why some say, the soul is your heart. But it is not the kind of heart that pumps your blood. It is the core of your being.
Consciousness of Being a Soul is the Quantum Leap
The dominant reality is the soul and the secondary reality is material. When your spiritual aspect is dominant then you bring God into the picture. Bringing the energy and the intelligence of God into the picture gives meaning. Then the material is subject to the spirit. When you are into materialism, the spirit is subject to the body and then the spirit gets damaged.
A big problem in the world today is damaged souls. If you take off your mask and find the damaged soul beneath, you will feel pain and horror. But if you take care of your soul and then take off your mask, you will have a beautiful warm glow. Then you feel that you are something like light, a child of God, eternal, happy, free.
The Mind Space
Where are your dreams? In your mind. Where is your mind? Have you ever seen a mind? Everybody has a mind? All of you have said that you have a soul… Have you seen a soul? You know you are one. Do dead people have souls? Actually the soul gives life to the body. It is the animating force of the material body. Your body is made of the elements of air, earth, fire, water and ether, in exactly the same proportions as the Earth itself. When you die, the priest intones: "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, etc."
Meaning and Poets
The self that thinks and feels is more subtle than your body. We assign meaning in our mind to whatever we perceive through our sense perceptions. If there are no poets, no artists and no musicians, then there is no access to meaning. That meaning gives a greater dimension to our existence. We have to think about our existence, about our life: What is our life? Our culture is predominately materialistic. Materialism gives rise to two problems. The first problem: materialism destroys the Earth. The second problem: the prevailing moral attitudes of most societies create hypocrisy. These two problems are difficult to resolve. This is one of the reasons why we need a quantum leap.
The Space of Silence
The physical world is of time and space, beyond it there is the mental space, and beyond that there is a third space which is of silence. The quantum leap we need to make is to go into that silence space. Actions of substance, powerful actions originate in silence. So it is very important for us to be able to access that dimension of silence. There are physical activities, mental activities, and then there is silence. Do you know how to remain in silence for one minute? I mean not just physical silence but mental silence?
When you find yourself alone in silence, things start happening in your mind. There is a global epidemic of worry. You worry about money, about your relatives, about your health. "What's going to happen? Why did that happen? This is not right, that is not right."
Waste Thoughts
A lot of mental energy goes in thinking thousands of thoughts. Every word and action is preceded by a thought or flow of thought. Many are repetitive. Some suffer from obsessive compulsive thinking. Many thoughts are not followed by words or actions. Sometimes in your mind you say: "shall I do it? No, yes, maybe?" and you don't do anything! "Should I do this or should I do that? This is right but that is also right, which one shall I do? What would people think? How do I know if it is right or not?" In that way we expend a lot of time. All this goes on in the mental space. The soul wastes a lot of energy doing both physical and mental actions that are fruitless.
Three Aspects of Time
One is eternal time. The second is temporary time, chronological time. Then there is another time which is: how everything changes? Things change, so we need to know in which direction they change. Are things getting better or worse? You tell me.
Ok we better have an election. Who think things are going better?
Ok that's very good. Now who think that they are going worse?
OK. That's about the same amount…
Now there is another kind of time and space. The progression of the soul through time involves expenditure of energy. The energy of the soul gets consumed through actions in space and time. You are continuously getting weaker as time goes by.
Usually when you get tired you go to sleep. Where do you go when you go to sleep? You go in bed, you lay down and then go to sleep. Where do you go? Into a space of silence. Into the subconscious. Anyway, you separate from your body. Yes? You are not dead! Some cultures call sleep: the little death. You leave your body and you come back again. That is you wake up. Some time you are half asleep half awake. This is a nice space to be in.
Maximum Weakness
When your soul passes through time it reaches a point where it cannot get any weaker. There is a point in the soul where you have maximum energy and another point where you have minimum energy. You go around the cycle of time; there is something called beginning of time and something call end of time.
At the present we have reached a very dangerous time. In fact, if you look around the world, there are several countries at war either internally or with each other. We could have global total economic collapse at any time. Every few days there is some big earthquake, some deadly hurricane. There are so many whales who don't want to swim in the ocean anymore. Yes! They don't like the ocean anymore. They jump on boats or commit suicide. This is not normal. Something is going on. But we don't know what.
The eternal soul has to develop a special flexibility, so that you can collapse all of time into your mind in one circle; and all of space in one circle. You can make a little drawing like that and say: "that's time and the other one, that's space." You position yourself outside time and space.
Being a soul, whether or not you are not in a body, you are still there. People have a survival instinct but you continue to exist as an individual whether you are dead or alive, in a body or not. If you are not here on the Earth in a body, then you could be in the mind space or in the silence space.
The Forces of Positivity and Negativity
There is a leap we need to make. Time moves from a beginning towards the end. You begin with a lot of energy and end up with almost no energy. Your personal energy is depleted and Earth's energy is depleted. Then we have to deal with the force of negativity. Equally powerful to the force of negativity is the force of positivity. That is more subtle.
At the Confluence or Diamond Age between two time cycles, the two forces meet each other. During that time you need special mental flexibility to be equally comfortable in the silence space, the mental space and the physical space; so that you can move easily between these two times. The two time cycles overlap. You have an opportunity to jump from one time cycle to the other one; one time cycle is plunging into an extremely destructive abyss while at the same time another time force is raising the quality of everything.
The force of negativity is pulling one time cycle down causing everything we know to collapse. Either you can collapse with it or you transfer to the other force which is rising. What do you prefer?
We have to practice to let go of the body. For that you need to understand the three aspects of your being. One aspect is your physical body. Another body looks like this one but is made of light, like a shadow of white subtle light. We call that the subtle body. You also can separate from that and become only the soul in the form of a point of light. You need to remember these tree things.
While the energy of materialism is bringing the collapse of everything, your body goes with it. Your body is part of the Earth but it's not you. It is your equipment. You need equipment but you are not equipment.
Your body of light goes with your mind. Your mind is a vehicle. You can go anywhere with that vehicle. You can actually separate, physically go one way and mentally go another way. Like a rocket dropping its stages.
These two are superimposed upon each other. The old time cycle going down with the new time cycle going up and there is a bridge between the two. You need to be able to stand on this bridge. Just to walk across.
The Bridge over Troubled Waters
This bridge is an attitude or a position that you adopt vis-à-vis what you perceive. When you perceive physically that things are going badly, just because it looks like it is going badly, it doesn't mean that it is going badly. Something else is going on as well. The force of good is also operating. The positive force makes you into the maximum, best, powerful, spiritual, value-based combination possible. The soul has to jump from its weakest point to its most powerful point. The bridge allows you to make that leap.
On this bridge you have direct access to the source of power and wisdom. Your body is made of air, earth, water, fire, ether; but you, the soul, are made of purity, peace, power, love and bliss. However, to get on that bridge, you have to dis-identify from and let go of your body, and identify with the soul.
Your body connects you to people, places and objects. When you leave your body, you also leave the people and places you are physically connected to, and your physical possessions. But to become detached from them, you need to see your people as beings of light who also have bodies, but they themselves are not bodies. You can let go of your attachment to their bodies because they, the souls, are just as eternal as you.
In exchange for your possessions and places, you will get better ones in the future. When a car get very old, you get rid of it and get a new one. It is normal to let go of old things and acquire new ones. You regenerate yourself by connecting with the source. You do that in your mind, in the mental space. However, your mind is polluted because you have worries, doubts, obsessive compulsive thinking, etc. All that prevents you from crossing that bridge.
Let it Be
The real work is to practice going into the silence zone. You do that by allowing everything to be what it is without qualifying it as good or bad, you like it or don't like it, etc.
In eternal time you are absolutely still and in a perfectly pure, peaceful, powerful, loving, blissful condition. Practice going there and being there, even though your mind will disturb you and pull you away. Keep on persisting, and you will acquire that detached and peaceful stability.
The Holographic Movie
Another device you can use is the cycle of changes. All changes go slowly from absolutely perfect to absolutely imperfect and then they start again. It is an identical repetition.
It is important to reduce the power of sense impressions to control you. Consider this world as a three dimensional holographic movie. When you see a movie, you have a remote device that enables you to stop it anytime you want; you always know this is only a film. Most movies make you laugh, cry and increase your heart rate, only by sounds and images. You always know that is not real. Even though you tell yourself: I will watch the movie, I will not cry. You cry. The power of the images and music is often greater than your power to control your feelings.
It is important to look at this earthly reality as if it were a three dimensional holographic movie. This practice reduces the power of sense impressions to control you. When you consider it to be a cycle of changes, you know that everything goes through this cycle eternally anyway. Intellectually at least, gradually you get ready to let it go totally. In your mind, you can fill your soul with all that lost energy and get ready to go to the next cycle.
You need power but you don't have power and you have to get it from the Almighty. The Almighty is not just sitting there being almighty for no reason. There is a purpose. This is your source. You have to fill from that source. You have to drink all of it. Nothing will happen to it. Don't worry.
But it is an extraordinary phenomenon. This source can be called God or the Higher power or the Supreme being. You can connect only with your mind, not with your body, because that One resides in the silent zone. You have to go there with your mind. The mind has to be very still in order for you to be able to jump, to drop the consciousness of the body, and establish yourself as a soul in your perfect form. Then connect and draw light from that Supreme Source into yourself. This is what is done on the bridge of the confluence between two cycles.
You have to give up worries and doubts. Definitely give up obsessive compulsive thinking. Practice. Once you make even a slight contact, you get power. When you have power you start to get more power. It is like money: you need money to make money, but you have to get some money from somewhere. Make special effort to connect to get at least a little bit. Then you start to pull power and you can take as much as you wish, because it is an unlimited source. You just have to be as greedy as you can.
But it is a leap. Move away from everyday consciousness and bring yourself into eternal consciousness, by identifying with the soul. That means be very sure that you cannot die. With or without your body you cannot die. That is the key.
Some people doubt in themselves. "Maybe the source will not open up for me! Maybe I am not worthy!" This is a doubt. It is very important to make very sure for yourself: "I am worthy." Whatever is on your conscience you have to let it go.
The quantum leap is to live simultaneously in two qualitatively different ages. This really works and it is available to us at the present time. This why you have to make your mind very pure. This is the underground work of a person who stands on the bridge of the confluence age.
Then you become an agent for change. This kind of change cannot be accomplished politically. It is done spiritually but political, economic, environmental consequences are to be expected. The work is to keep the mind in that mental space beyond, and to keep connected with the divine intelligence who is the cause of this qualitative change. This leap of consciousness is to keep oneself aware. You continue in everyday visible reality and yet align yourself mentally with that other dimension. It is a continuing process.
Om Shanti


text: Tim, I think a comparison between the Java app servers is not really accurate. The reason I say that is that most have commercial support. Tomcat might be the only one without commercial support, but it's the reference implementation and has plenty of books about it. As far as I know with all the other popular ones there is some company who's willing to support it. I think that's a big difference here between comparing Java app servers and Erlang servers. Misultin is completely open-source with one man supporting it and no commercial support. I'd much rather see fewer servers with better support and possibly commercial support than many with little support. I do agree completely that Erlang needs a consistent servlet-like API. It would certainly help a lot. I'd be keen on simple bridge if the Erlang guys would just come out and say if they support parameterized modules or not. If they don't, just get rid of it. What's the point of having something in a language if it's not going to be supported (but that's a different topic)? --Andrew On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Tim Watson <watson.timothy@REDACTED>wrote: > On 16 February 2012 22:05, Roberto Ostinelli <roberto@REDACTED> wrote: > >> On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Jesse Gumm <gumm@REDACTED> wrote: >> >>> Not to state the obvious or anything, but Misultin is open source, so >>> someone could always step up to the plate and become the *official* >>> fork. >>> >>> There will still be efforts to support Misultin: Chicago Boss uses it, >>> and barring some serious arguments against it, I'll still be adding >>> misultin support to Nitrogen and SimpleBridge for the upcoming 2.1.0 >>> release. >>> >>> So while it's unfortunate that Roberto is stepping away from Misultin >>> development, that doesn't mean it's necessarily dead - someone can >>> always take over. >>> >>> -Jesse >> >> >> hi jesse, >> >> please don't suggest that. while i cannot avoid someone doing so, i could >> have kept maintaing misultin myself. as i said, it has been a hard decision. >> >> my intent here is to avoid duplication of efforts, both for the >> contributors of the community (often reporting the same bugs in both >> repositories) and for the developers, which now have an hard time in >> deciding which way to go. >> >> i just wanted to clear the way for a single webserver library, and cowboy >> seems to have much more developer time to actually maintaining it. >> > > Personally I don't understand why having a single library is so great, > although I respect your decision to do this and am very grateful for all > the hard work you've put into misultin to date. > > In *java-land* I like being able to choose between Tomcat, Jetty (for > embedded stuff) and other commercial options too. I don't see why it's a > bad thing at all, although I would *really* love it if Erlang had just one > API for building standard web applications (a la servlets, but obviously > more 'erlang-ish' in flavour) and then interesting stuff like Chicago Boss > can be built on top of it. > > Personally I'm not keen on simple bridge because I don't like > parameterised modules, but in every other respect I think it's a laudable > effort. If we could standardise on an API - and god knows, I *really like* > the one in Cowboy - then I personally think that would provide more benefit > than having 'just one implementation'. Personally I don't think having just > one implementation is the answer though. > > >> >> r. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> erlang-questions mailing list >> erlang-questions@REDACTED >> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > erlang-questions mailing list > erlang-questions@REDACTED > http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20120217/75c3730e/attachment.htm>

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Just saw a very nice analysis done by Tim O'Reilly and his research team about Facebook applications. A very small excerpt from his post called "Good News, Bad News about Facebook Application Market: Long Tail Rules
The good news has already been widely disseminated: there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. The bad news, alas, is in our report: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users.
A lot of discussion on in in the comments as well. The Graphics provided show a very steep long tail, where really only a few companies are probably making any money on Facebook applications. Interesting enough, if I am a Facebook application developer I can easily get investors interested.
When reading through the post two things come to my mind:
- Writing a Facebook application is easy! Writing an application that provides the user with such value that he will actually use it is,….. well, just like on any platform, hard. Don't think about leveraging Facebook as a network or platform, think about providing users with value.
- The business model for a Facebook application is not a very positive one. According to this research there are only 45 applications with more than 100.000 users. I haven't read the report yet, but judging on the data Tim provides, of those 45 there are few reaching more than 1Mln users.
I can't help but think that there will only be very few companies that can actually create business models that are based upon creating value for the users on the Facebook platform.
So what are all those investors and developers doing out there? I can't see this lasting very long in this way? Are we slowly closing in on a Facebook shake out, or am I missing the point here? What is your opinion on this?


text:
Illustrator Rob Loukotka's ACME Corporation Kickstarter project is worth writing about for many reasons besides the fact that he's trying to raise money. Here's what it is: a poster of every Acme Co. item used by Wile E. Coyote in his futile pursuit of the Roadrunner. There are 126 items represented on the poster from the 43 Coyote and Roadrunner shorts that director Chuck Jones was personally involved with between 1949 and 1994.
The project wouldn't be as noteworthy if not for how successful it's been. Loukotka has currently sold over 2000 posters for nearly $70,000, and there are still five days left in the campaign. He is careful not to mention the Roadrunner, the Coyote, Warner Bros. or any of the cartoons in his poster. He also benefits from the fact that most of Acme products in the Chuck Jones cartoons are quite generic.
Nevertheless, Loukotka is walking a legal tightrope. He is mass producing merchandise based on a corporation's intellectual property. If this was just a collection of random items with the name Acme on them, no one would ever buy the poster. It's only because of the role these invented Acme items have played within a series of animated shorts that they are recognizable and of interest to the general public.


text:
Mayor declares state of emergency for Louisville ahead of anticipated Breonna Taylor decision
Related video above: Settlement reached in Breonna Taylor wrongful death lawsuit
The mayor of Louisville has declared a state of emergency for the city ahead of a looming decision in the Breonna Taylor case.
This declaration is different than the one for the police department made Monday. Mayor Greg Fischer said it allows him to exercise any of his emergency powers, including those to hire or contract for services, and implementing curfews and other restrictions.
Meanwhile, the Louisville Metro Police Department is canceling all off-day and vacation requests for personnel until further notice in anticipation of an announcement in the Taylor investigation, referring to the moves as part of its "state of emergency" preparations.
The investigation is being conducted by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's office. While the attorney general himself has remained mum on a timeline — or date — on when he plans to make an announcement in the probe, sources have said it could take place this week.
Officials have also confirmed a separate internal investigation of six Louisville police officers in connection to Taylor's death.
A spokesperson for the Louisville Metro Police Department confirmed to sister station WLKY that the police department's Professional Standards Unit has initiated the internal investigation.
The investigation will determine if the officers broke department policies.
The officers include Sgt. Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, who fired their weapons on March 13, when Taylor was shot and killed during the execution of a no-knock warrant at her apartment.
Detective Brett Hankison was the other officer who opened fire, but was fired in June. The LMPD said he violated two standard operating procedures, including obedience to rules and regulations and use of deadly force.
The other officers named in the Professional Standards Unit investigation include detectives Joshua Jaynes, Tony James, Michael Campbell and Michael Nobles.
The Professional Standards Unit investigation is separate from the one that Cameron's office is conducting, which will determine whether Mattingly, Cosgrove or Hankison will face charges.
A spokesperson for the LMPD added that "it is important to note that the AG has said there is no timetable for the announcement," reiterating the uncertainty around when an announcement will take place.
According to the LMPD, which sent out a statement Monday, residents might also start seeing barriers being staged around downtown. The spokesperson said it's another part of the police department's preparations for an announcement.
The LMPD said in a tweet that "no parking" signs will also be placed along downtown streets.
Interim police Chief Robert Schroeder issued a memo to the LMPD in which he said the "state of emergency" preparations will help the police department "ensure we have the appropriate level of staffing to provide for public safety services and our policing functions."
Schroeder's memo goes on to address the cancellation of off-days and vacation requests.
Click here to read the police chief's memo to LMPD
Elsewhere in Louisville, the federal courthouse has also taken measures in anticipation of an announcement. The building will be closed for the week, suggesting the announcement will take place before Friday.
The building's first floor windows were also boarded up.
Anticipation has been mounting for Cameron to make an announcement, especially after Fischer announced a $12 million settlement with the Taylor family over a wrongful death civil lawsuit.
Fischer said the city is not admitting wrongdoing in this settlement, but is acknowledging the need for reform. He also said the timing of the settlement is not related to reports that a grand jury is currently meeting to determine whether there will be any criminal indictments in this case.
Still, activists and family members are awaiting a decision on whether the police officers involved in Taylor's death will be charged.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, for his part, declined to give any comments on the investigation or an announcement amid preparations in Louisville. Previously, the governor has stressed the importance of the AG's office being transparent about its findings in the probe.
Cameron has not shared any details with the public on the case since announcing in August that his office had received a ballistics report in the probe.


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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
A Dangerous Proposition
He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds.
—Titus 2:14
Can a Christian lose his or her salvation? Once you are saved, can you become unsaved? When I hear questions like these, my thought is, Why would you want to push the envelope? What concerns me is there are people who want to know how they can be saved and still live as though they are not. That is a dangerous proposition.
We are told in Titus 2:11-14, "For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people. And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God. . . . He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds."
Is that a description of your life today as a follower of Jesus? Are you totally committed to doing what is right? If you really have been saved, then there will be results in your life. Jesus said, "Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions" (Matthew 7:20). People should be able to see spiritual fruit, changes in your life that will indicate to them that you are a true follower of Jesus Christ.
Writing to the church of Laodicea, Jesus said, "I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!" (Revelation 3:15-16).
Rather than trying to live in two worlds, it is far better to live as close to God as you possibly can.
Copyright © 2010 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
For more relevant and biblical teaching from Pastor Greg Laurie, go to www.harvest.org
Listen to Greg Laurie's daily broadcast on OnePlace.com.
Watch Greg Laurie's weekly television broadcast on LightSource.com.
In As I See It Pastor Greg Laurie takes biblical principles and teachings and applies them to everyday occurrences and situations within our culture, ranging from how to experience personal happiness, how to have a strong and lasting marriage, to how to deal with crisis.
As I See It is a resource I believe will help you to see the truth of Scripture and to better be able to think and live biblically.
You can have your own copy of Greg Laurie's As I See It in appreciation for your gift to Harvest Ministries this month.


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[#image: /photos/55828f1fe52bc4b477a98c5f]||||||
Photo: AKM-GSI
Ah Coachella. The music. The racially insensitive fashions. The celebrities pretending to be regular people. Two such celebrities this weekend were Nikki Reed and Ian Somerhalder and as a part of their "definitely not celebrities or vampires" role play they partook in some serious PDA. And then our brilliant hero showed up, stared directly into the Paparazzi's cameras with an expression that says "The Molly was good until it was bad," and saved the day.
God bless you, you brilliant, brilliant weirdo you.
More: The Gentleman Lobsters Reveal What Really Happens at Coachella**


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National Team Administrator
Stephanie serves as the EMCC National Team Administrator. She attended Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College and holds a strong background in administration and ministry in the local church. She currently serves at Plattsville EMC in Ontario with her husband, Tim.
Stephanie longs to see the Bride of Christ come alive in response to the Presence of Jesus through intercessory prayer and worship, and works to draw her home community in Wilmot Township to healing and freedom in Jesus. Stephanie, Tim and their two daughters spend their summers investing in family ministry at Camp Mishewah.
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The rejections pile up,
First The boy,
Then the emails
And now rejections, in the form
Of sealed papers,
Arrive at my doorstep.
Like I need,
A physical reminder to
"I don't want- you, yours".
"It's not you, it's me"
He said.
"Your work is great, just
Not for us"
They said.
Neither of them having
The courtesy,
The guts,
To speak the truth we both know:
"The problem is with me".
But that's fine.
Really, that's okay.
I've done the calculation:
6 months of rejected writing,
Requires 1 week of grieving.
5 rejections,
ergo 5 weeks.
Then its back to pen and paper.
The world has told me
Too many Nos,
It has rejected me,
Too many times,
For me to reject myself.
Me myself and I,
We gon' keep at it,
We gon' be alright.


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It was late September, 1982, no one had a cell phone yet.
My one year stint working in a law office was just about up. I had taken the job while applying to law schools, just to make sure practicing law was what I really wanted to do.
I dreamed of being Perry Mason when I was a child. I loved how he uncovered the truth by the end of every episode. I loved how everything worked out fairly and squarely and dramatically.
But my Perry Mason dreams were deflated that year. Immersed in the day to day nuts and bolts of the law I saw that the legal practice is much more about posturing, winning at all costs and making money, money, money than it is about uncovering any kind of truth.
So I said no to the school that had already accepted me and no to the school that wait-listed me and took a job as a social worker instead.
But before I left the firm, on a late summer late afternoon, something perfectly Perry happened – no, better than that, something perfectly heavenly happened.
One of the senior partners asked me to drive to Lansing to file a motion with the Michigan Supreme Court. "You can take my car," he said. "But you might want to get the oil changed first."
I would barely have enough time to get there and get the motion filed. Get your own oil changed, I thought, sweetly, as I plucked his keys from his hand and headed out the door.
I made the hour and a half drive, stood in a long line, filed the motion with seconds to spare and headed back to the firm.
I was on a fairly deserted stretch of expressway, about an hour from the office, when the car's engine suddenly lost power. Completely.
I coasted to the shoulder and stopped.
Before I could assess the situation, come up with a plan, consider my options, panic, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a fancy red sports car pull up immediately behind me. Its very pleasant-looking driver got out and approached my car.
Ordinarily I would have been wary, somewhat frightened even, but on this day, oddly, I wasn't.
We chatted about the law as he drove me to the nearest exit with a service station. He told me his name and the name of the firm for which he worked. He was an attorney who specialized in environmental law. I told him about an environmental case one of our attorneys was working on. He listened with interest and then gave me a piece of information to relay to that attorney saying it might be useful to his case.
When we got to the service station he arranged to have "my" car towed there. "You'll be safe now," he said as he drove away.
There was something so likable about him that I was sad to see him go.
The next morning I relayed the information he gave me to Jerry, the attorney on our environmental case.
A few days later Jerry approached me and asked, "What was the name of that attorney again?"
I told him.
"Are you sure you have the right firm?"
I rummaged through my purse: "Yep, I wrote it down right here. Why?"
"The information he gave you is about to win my case. Big time. So I called his firm to thank him and they insist there is no one there by that name."
I never did become Perry Mason, but if I were to put that very handsome, very helpful good Samaritan on trial, I am convinced I could get him convicted of being an angel. My evidence? The perfect peace and lack of fear I felt while in his company, for starters.
The perfect piece of information he provided – the Hail Mary Pass Jerry needed just as the clock was running out on his trial.
And then there was the icing on the evidentiary cake – Jerry was representing a Christian couple who lived in another state.
God killed two birds with one bum car – giving a legal victory to a couple of His kids in Ohio by bringing an angel to the rescue of another of His kids in Michigan – by way of a senior partner who apparently NEVER got his oil changed.
You gotta' love Him.


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Dorado Soapstone Dry Wax is a 100% natural combination of walnut oil, beeswax, and canuaba oil. Our Dry Wax is used to ensure uniformity of the patina as it develops on the stone. Dorado Soapstone Dry Wax brings out the deep beauty of your Soapstone while eliminating the need for frequent oiling.
Instructions for use:
Apply to a small section (6" x 6") to see if the desired color is achieved. If so apply a small amount with a soft cloth in a circular motion. Let set for 5 minutes and wipe the excess off with another soft cloth. Reapply as need to achieve the desired look. Dorado Dry Wax is only used to achieve a darker color and not as a sealer. Soapstone does NOT require sealers.
If the desired color is not achieved after testing on a small area and a darker color is desired follow these instructions. First apply 2 coats of mineral oil with a soft cloth. Rub the mineral oil on your countertops and leave overnight. The next day apply a second application and wipe the excess off. Wait 2 hours and wipe all excess mineral oil off the countertops. Apply the Dry Wax over the top of the mineral oil. This usually darkens the stone a shade darker than with just the wax alone. However, every stone is unique so some only require the wax to achieve the level of darkness desired. A video demonstration by Steven Chavez on how to use Dorado Soapstone Dry Wax and a comparison to using mineral oil.


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Date: June 10-13, 2013.
Place: New York, U.S.
А7 CONFERENCES organized the International Investment Forum & Road Show "Invest in Ukraine: Revealing the Potential" which was held on June 10-13, 2013 in New York, U.S. The Forum run in 2 first-class venues: The Princeton Club (The James Madison Room, 15 West 43rd Str.) and the New York offices of Chadbourne & Parke LLP (Rockfeller Centre, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 34th floor).
The forum got together more than 150 CEO level representatives of the Top-100 Ukrainian companies and US investment professionals, who represented investors, private equity funds, investment and commercial banks. The named parties exchanged critically important information about opportunities for attracting/providing investments to Ukrainian companies at the time of economic challenges, and about the Ukrainian investment market development and improvement.
The main topics that were covered: the reasons why some economic sectors deserve to get the "second chance", financing sources available for companies in the already mentioned sectors including debt, private and public equity, as well as the outlook of global investors for Ukraine in generally.
Organiser: A7 CONFERENCES
The expert panels were represented by:
- Olexander Motsyk, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States of America
- Robert Bensh, Managing Director, Pelicourt Ltd.; Advisor to the Vice-Prime-Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Boyko
- Jorge Zukoski, President, American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine
- Bluford H. Putnam, Chief Economist and Managing Director, CME Group
- John Valiska, First Vice President, RB International Finance USA
- Igor Obozintsev, Head of NY Representative Office, State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine
- Taras Kytsmey, President, SoftServe
- Edilberto Segura, Chief Economist and Partner, SigmaBleyzer
- Serhiy Hoshovsky, Chair of International Section Committee on Central & Eastern Europe, NYSBA
- Adam Mycyk, International Partner, Chadbourne & Parke, Kyiv office
- Myron Rabij, Partner, Dentons LLP, Kyiv office


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Uses of SWOT analysis
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis looks at internal and external factors that can affect your business. Internal factors are your strengths and weaknesses. External factors are the threats and opportunities. If an issue or situation would exist even if your business didn't (such as changes in technology or a major flood), it is an external issue.
Strategic planning, brainstorming and decision making
A SWOT analysis is a useful tool for brainstorming and strategic planning. You'll get more value from a SWOT analysis if you conduct it with a specific objective or question in mind. For example, you can use a SWOT analysis to help you decide if and how you should:
- take advantage of a new business opportunity
- respond to new trends
- implement new technology
- deal with changes to your competitors' operations.
Building on strengths
A SWOT analysis will help you identify areas of your business that are performing well. These areas are your critical success factors and they give your business its competitive advantage.
Identifying these strengths can help you make sure you maintain them so you don't lose your competitive advantage. Growing your business involves finding ways of using and building on these strengths.
Minimising weaknesses
Weaknesses are the characteristics that put your business at a disadvantage to others. Conducting a SWOT analysis can help you identify these characteristics and minimise or improve them before they become a problem. When conducting a SWOT analysis, it is important to be realistic about the weaknesses in your business so you can deal with them adequately.
Seizing opportunities
A SWOT analysis can help you identify opportunities that your business could take advantage of to make greater profits. Opportunities are created by external factors, such as new consumer trends and changes in the market.
Conducting a SWOT analysis will help you understand the internal factors (your business's strengths and weaknesses) that will influence your ability to take advantage of a new opportunity. If your business doesn't have the capability to seize an opportunity but decides to anyway, it could be damaging. Similarly, if you do have the capability to seize an opportunity and don't, it could also be damaging.
Counteracting threats
Threats are external factors that could cause problems for your business, such as changes to the market, a competitor's new advertising campaign, or new government policy. A SWOT analysis can help you identify threats and ways to counteract them, depending on your strengths and weaknesses.
Addressing individual issues
You can conduct a SWOT analysis to address individual issues, such as:
- staffing issues
- business culture and image
- new product development
- organisational structure
- advertising
- financial resources
- operational efficiency.
When you're conducting an individual SWOT analysis, keep in mind that a strength for one issue might be a weakness for another. You might also identify a weakness, such as a gap in the market that you're not covering, that could be an opportunity for your business.
Also consider...
- Find out more ways to grow your business.
- Read about how to benchmark your business so you can identify where your business currently stands.
- Last reviewed: 18 Jul 2017
- Last updated: 20 Dec 2021
I want to...
- Mentoring for Growth Day - Online 01/12/2022
- Mentoring for Growth Day - Online 06/12/2022


text:
The Chrome Ottoman offer a playful yet functional furniture for a compact design. Simple, versatile and also can serves as a foot stool, additional seat or unconventional accent chair. Wrapped in a premium Faux leather with a bright, dynamic pop of Dual Tone Colors stands out in any room.
Dia 50/50cm x H 40cm
Color Options
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100% Man-made Faux Leather
High Quality ABS Black Legs
High Density 36kg/m3 Non Sag Polyurethane Foam
Kapor Hardwood
Meets British standards for contract durability BS15373 Level 2 and BS EN1022
6 Months Warranty
Local Manufacturer
Product is custom made and will be available within 2 weeks upon order


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Genghis Khan. Nomads with epic hats. Nomads who train wild eagles. Camels. Herding goats to their appropriate goat quarters before sunset. Asia's largest desert. Sand dunes – (I hiked one!)
I've dreamt of going to Mongolia for years now. Before my backpacking trip around China, I thought I would start in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, sleeping in a few yurts (or a Ger, as they call them in Mongolian) along the way before heading south to China.
I didn't end up going. Four years later, last month after teaching for a year and a half in South Korea I flew from Seoul to Ulaanbaatar.
I landed in a sprawling, golden and mountainous paradise, followed by a frenzy of taxi touts at the airport. Compared to the bright lights of Seoul, being in Mongolia's most populous city (or only city) I felt like I was in the countryside. I checked in at Sunpath Guesthouse (and Tours) and relaxed in the cozy house turned hostel on Peace Avenue.
I was in Mongolia.
After a day of exploring the country's oldest Buddhist temple (similar to Tibetan Buddhism, just a different Lama), a wander down the main road followed by dinner on a patio with new friends, a late sunset (10 p.m!) yummy Mongolian beer and dumplings with sour cream I wasn't ready for a week tour of the countryside. I wanted more city vibes! Patio dinners and sour cream…it had been so long. It had been so long since any type of dinner before sunset, for that matter.
In Korea the only meal while the sun is up is lunch, and a boiling hot pot of "hangover soup" early in the morning.
My friend Jean woke up the next morning jet-lagged, and I woke up with a sore throat and a slight fever. "Great, I'm headed to the desert today," I thought. Perfect timing. I hadn't been sick in over a year. I couldn't stop sniffling for the longest time. I'm still convinced it was my sinuses adjusting to the lack of smog.
They were confused. I was confused. I'm still confused. I'm not sure what continent I'm on right now. Is the Black Sea the part that separates Europe from Asia? Was I in Asia when I arrived in Bishkek, where people shook hands and ate with forks? A lot to ponder. More world to see.
We lucked-out with the sharpest and most appropriately named guide for our tour. A lady named Bogi. We were headed to the desert Gobi, with Bogi! We told her later that she should start her own tour company. "See the Gobi with Bogi!" #gobiwithbogi. So many options, we told her, while relaxing outside of our ger one evening as we played the ankle bone game. It's a game where you roll pieces of goats ankle bones (cleaned and meat already eaten, of course) like dice. Then you flick the bones to the matching ones. Repeat. Yes, Mongolia is so hardcore that even their leisure play involves parts of an animal carcass.
Bogi is a lovely woman from the Eastern Gobi desert, who works as a guide in the summer (tourist season May-October) while her husband takes care of their son. He then works the rest of the year, while Bogi seeks shelter from the harsh Mongolian winters in the city.
One world for Mongolia: VAST. It's pretty vast. The epitome of vast. Vastness personified in one beautiful country. We would drive in an old Russian van through the countryside, and maybe once a day we'd see a town. One town.
Every second day we'd stop in a town for lunch on the way to another Gobi site, before settling into a ger for the night. We'd play with nomad kids and have dinner in a cozy ger before an inevitable trip to an outhouse in the middle of nowhere. You haven't peed outside until you've peed in front of about a hundred goats starring at you.
All the tour groups who travel by Russian vans with modest travel companies are a way for the nomads to earn some extra income, who host different groups almost every night during the high season.
The woman in charge of the household always greeted us with a fresh bowl of goat (sometimes camel) milk, as per Mongolian custom. We rode camels, horses (the horses were more fun, but the camels so pretty) and I think my fever broke when I hiked the sand dunes after dinner on the fourth day of the tour.
One day was an ancient monastery, another was a beautiful spot called the "flaming cliffs".
My favourite day of our tour in Mongolia was walking through a valley as we approached the desert. The valley, Yol Valley, is home to these tiny little animals called "pikas", which Pikachu was named after.
Jean and I spotted about 30 of them before they'd run into their little holes.
Along the way, we saw the locals prepare for the annual Nadaam Festival which happens every July by racing their horses around. Some little boys even do it without a saddle. Mongolians eat mostly meat, and their "milk tea" consists of pure and fresh goat or cow's milk, and a lot of people know how to ride horses bareback. Mongolians don't mess around.
When are you planning to visit? Personally, I feel feistier, healthier and overall more awesome since stepping foot in Genghis Khan's homeland.


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De Kaaskamer
Cheeses from Holland
The best known Dutch cheeses are Gouda and Edam. There are a lot of "tourist trap" cheese shops in Amsterdam. We have selected another one: De Kaaskamer, a cheese dairy unlike any other in the city, this one is traditional, the French-speaking cheese makers know their products: Remeker young and old, Rijpenaer, Frisian, Limburg, Kernhem, Bluefort, Subenhara, Maasdam, Old Amsterdam, Old Alkmaar, Mimolette AOC, Maasland, Texelaar-Kollumer, Leyden and Leerdammer, there are also French cheeses.
Address de la boutique : De Kaaskamer Runstraat 7 Amsterdam
This cheese shop selects its products directly from the best farms in the Netherlands…
Go for a tasting, you'll come out with good purchases!
Oriane's opinion: These Dutch cheeses are really surprising!


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Lauren Friedman
Senior Workforce Operations Manager
Lauren supports GRID's national workforce development efforts. Dedicated to the creation of environmentally and economically sustainable communities, her interest in solar comes from time spent researching governance, sustainability and renewables for academic and nonprofit institutions. She holds a master's degree in Public Administration from Florida State University.