Enlightenment.Com Newsletter Late July '08

• an original Jordan Gruberessay entitled "Be Somewhere Else Now: Is the Internet De-Enlightening Us?"
  
• a link to an in-depth audio interview with Russell Targ, psychic spy facilitator
• an initial explanation of the Scoreboard at http://www.enlightenment.com/scoreboard/index.cfm.
• an invitation to an enlightening Movie Premier: Stealing America, Vote By Vote, by Dorothy Fadiman
  

Enlightenment.Com Newsletter -- Late July '08


    Contents of this Enlightenment.Com Newsletter:

1. Welcome to our 3rd plain-text newsletter.
2. An enlightening Movie Premier in New York and L.A.
3. An audio interview with psychic spy facilitator, Russell Targ.
4. An Original Essay:
     Be Somewhere Else Now: Is the Internet De-Enlightening Us?
5. Bungy-based Rebounders: Shipping Hiatus; Price Increase.
6. Here comes the Scoreboard!
7. Thanks!

[Note: This newsletter was written by Jordan S. Gruber,
Enlightenment.Com's Founder and CEO, who takes responsibility
for all errors and omissions found herein.
Please email me, mailto:jordan@enlightenment.com,
if you have any questions or concerns, or just want to say 'Hi.']

---------------------------
1. Welcome to the 3rd edition of our new plain-text newsletter.

Welcome to this newsletter, and thanks for taking whatever time
you can to peruse its contents.

Notwithstanding the 4-month interval since our last newsletter,
this edition had to be somewhat hurried at the end because of
two real-world timing considerations. First, there is a movie premier
in New York and Los Angeles that I very much you to know about.
Second, those of you who have been holding off should know
that there is a fast-approaching temporary stoppage in the shipping
of Bellicon's Ultimate bungy-based rebounders (as well as a price
increase starting August 18th).

New content includes an essay on whether the Internet is
making us spiritually superficial, as well as a free, in-depth
audio interview with Russell Targ who founded and ran
the CIA's "psychic spying" program at SRI.

Finally, it's time that we introduce you to the Scoreboard,
which is up and running as to Alexa traffic rank, as well as to
some additional concepts that we are actively working on.

OK, on to the rest of the newsletter.  Note that if you'd like to
unsubscribe, a link is provided near the end of this newsletter.

---------------------------
2.  An enlightening Movie Premier

[When you're ready, please click through to
http://www.concentric.org/stealingamericascreenings
to see when and where the movie premiers.]

We usually don't go out of our way to promote specific movies--
especially for movies that might seem to contain a political
agenda--but in this case we'll make an exception, and I'll
explain why shortly.

The movie, "Stealing America: Vote by Vote," is
Dorothy Fadiman's effort to tell the stories (with Peter Coyote
as narrator) of the people who, during the last presidential
elections, found their votes not counting or actively being
"switched" on electronic voting machines. It's an amazingly
chilling and important movie.  I urge you to go see it if possible,
and to let your friends in New York and Los Angeles know about
the premiers in those two crucial cities.

You can read more about the movie and see some clips here:
http://www.stealingamericathemovie.org/.

The New York premier is on August 1st, and the Los Angeles
premier in on August 15th, with other premiers coming to
other cities around the country. You can read about the premiers
at http://www.concentric.org/stealingamericascreenings

So, why am I recommending this movie in the
Enlightenment.Com newsletter? First, I've seen the movie,
and I personally feel it is very, very important to realize that
democracy itself is hanging by a thread.

Second, the award-winning filmmaker, Dorothy Fadiman,
is a close friend of mine, and her other movies, including
the psycho-spiritual classic "Radiance," are truly superb. Dorothy,
through her production company, Concentric Media,
(http://www.concentric.org) has tackled many tough social issues,
and I can guarantee you that she completely dedicated
-- with all her heart, spirit, and mind -- to serving the
collective good.

Additionally, Dorothy's husband, Jim Fadiman, is one of
Enlightenment.Com's best and longest-term supporters.
Jim, who is a former director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
and who co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,
has three different interviews (two written, one audio) on
Enlightenment.Com and can be accessed from the front page
at http://www.enlightenment.com.

Bottom line: It's crucial that as many people as possible
see this movie in its opening weeks so that it is picked up
nationally and so that the extremely important message
it delivers reaches public awareness generally. So if you know
anyone who is interested in such issues, please forward the
announcement to them. Thanks in advance for your help.

---------------------------
3. An Audio Interview with ESP-Expert Russell Targ

[See http://www.enlightenmentchannel.com/Russell_1.html]

Russell Targ, physicist and founder of the CIA-supported
remote viewing program at Stanford Research Institute,
has recently come forth with his memoir, entitled
"Do You See What I See? -- Lasers and Love, ESP and
the CIA, and the Meaning of Life."

The book itself (published by Hampton Roads, 2008) is a
fine read, as Russell has personally known many fascinating
people (e.g., he is Bobby Fischer's brother-in-law, and as a
young man he attended salons with Ayn Rand), and more
importantly, has done many fascinating things. Russell is
a great story-teller as well. For those interested in ESP,
PSI, and psychic functioning generally, this is a must-read.

And more to the point, the in-depth interview that I very
recently conducted wit Russell is now available to you,
free of charge, from our Enlightenment.Com home page,
at http://www.enlightenmentchannel.com/Russell_1.html.

You can download and listen to individual tracks, or
download the entire interview in either good quality or
high quality .mp3 format. Russell has some fascinating
things to say about why and how ESP and PSI work,
and he is also very adept and explaining Buddhist and
Advaita Vedanta ideas about self-liberation, enlightenment.
and the idea that we "give all the meaning" to everything
that has meaning for us (as in A Course in Miracles).

---------------------------
4. An Original Jordan S. Gruber Essay:
     Be Somewhere Else Now:
     Is the Internet De-Enlightening Us?


About a month ago I was saying to some friends that I
wasn't sure that I wanted an iPhone or the equivalent thereof
because I already felt, well, over-connected to the web.

"One of the first things I do in the morning is turn on my
computer," I pointed out, "and even when I have no particular
reason to be online, even when there are other productive
real-world things I'd rather be doing, I find myself ineluctably
drawn to seeing if I have new emails, reading the latest
news, and checking in on my social networking sites and
other interests."

Well, a few days later, as if on cue, in its July/August 2008
issue, The Atlantic magazine came out with a cover story
entitled, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid? – What the Internet
is Doing to Our Brains." The author, Nicholas Carr, begins with
a comparison to a scene near the end of Kubrik's
"2001: A Space Odyssey," where the supercomputer HAL is
being disassembled and is pleading for its mind: "Dave, my
mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it." Carr then writes:

"I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I've had an
uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been
tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry,
reprogramming the memory. My mind isn't going—so far as
I can tell—but it's changing. I'm not thinking the way I
used to think."

Carr then points out that he and many other people he's spoken
with have a much harder time than they used to in sitting down
and reading a real book or in-depth magazine article. These
days, he notes, many  us now kind of "skim" when we take in
information, surfing and hyper-linking from site to site, going
from article to article to article in a never-ending search for the
next piece of information or the next image  that will satisfy our
data cravings. (Irving Biderman, in a Los Angeles Times op ed
piece entitled "The Crackberry yields clues on our data-driven
desires," reviews brain research showing that finding the next
piece of "new data" gives us a neurologically rewarding,
opiate-like, "fix.')

As Carr also points out, technological advances that change
the way things have previously been done have been noted
and decried for centuries. From language to writing to the
printing press, each time a watershed innovation comes along
there's also a fundamental change in the way we humans
think and process information.

So what's wrong with this? Isn't it possible that yielding to the
iPhone and the need to nearly always be online is more of an
evolutionary development than something to try and fight
against? So what if we read fewer full books than before?
So what if we're not even as capable as we used to be of reading
the kind of in-depth materials that we were raised on in
high school, college, and beyond?

The fact is, we all have far, far more access to a much
wider range of information than we've ever had before, including
information on spirituality, enlightenment, and the psycho-spiritual
tools, techniques, teachings, and teachers that are the long-term
focus of Enlightenment.Com. So why not just assume
that all of this a positive development, and let it go at that?


The Real Problem

The real problem isn't that the way we're taking in and using
information is changing. Instead, the crux of the problem, as I
see it, is that we are much less frequently present in the moment,
in our bodies, in the skin-encapsulated psycho-spiritual framework,
the only place (I believe) where something like "enlightenment"
is really possible.

Think of Ram Das saying, "Be here now," or Eckhart Tolle's great
theme, "The Power of Now." When you are online,
are you Being Here Now or Being Somewhere Else Now?
Of course, one might argue that those who are online or who are
communicating by cell phones are, in fact, in their own cyber-now,
but in my experience, it just isn't the same.

Remember, we have a very long tradition in the West of either
ignoring or, more directly, vilifying our bodies. In my experience,
many of us "spiritual types" are woefully weak in terms of the "body"
part of the body/mind/spirit equation. Being online rarely involves
us in our bodies the way many other simple real-world activities do.
(For a very interesting take on where there is "more" information,
online or offline, see Bill McKibben's great book, "The Age of
Missing Information," with our book review available
at http://www.enlightenment.com/media/bookrevs/mckibben.html.)

So, if you're finding yourself constantly pulled to check your voice
messages, check your email, and go online and play with your
cyber-friends, then there's a good chance that your other
psycho-spiritual practices are suffering somewhat.
If it's easier to go online than it is to meditate or pray, and going
online is neurologically rewarding and socially stimulating, why
bother meditating or praying? If it's easier to go online than it is to
engage in your physical disciplines or to interact with or serve
those immediately around you, why bother with the real world?


The Drive to Enlightenment

There was another very interesting article in the July/August 2008
Atlantic magazine. In "Distracting Miss Daisy," John Staddon
compares the state of American versus British traffic signs. He says
that while America has many more traffic signs of all types,
the accident and fatality rates are both generally higher. Why?
Because traffic signs train Americans to look at traffic signs rather
than the road, and we come to rely on traffic signs rather than
what's going on in real-time as we drive. Paying attention in real-time
to what's actually happening right in front of you, Staddon says,
is far more valuable than assuming that the signs will take care of
everything if you just place your full attention on them.

The analogy here is obvious: the ubiquitous data-web, whether
through cellphone or laptop or desktop, gives us lots of signs,
signals, and other information about what's happening in the world
beyond where we happen to actually be physically and
psycho-spiritually located. The more attention we pay to this
online data-flow, the less attention we necessarily pay to
the real world that we are actually embodied in and locally part of.

(The studies on cellphone use are very clear: the real safety issue
isn't about whether or not you're driving hands-free, as California
law recently mandated, the real issue is that when you're on the
phone with anyone, you pay far less attention to driving. As brain
scans have convincingly shown, when you're on the phone, reaction
times are slower, accident rates are higher, and using a headset or
speakerphone changes this very little.)

Now, I'm no Luddite. I have multiple Macintosh computers, and I
even just got a new cell phone (no, not an iPhone, but an LG Dare).
And I love my Casio EX-F1 that shoots in super-slow motion.
(See my slo-mo bee starting at 29 seconds in at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4fnFLWEL78 .)

However…I recognize that I, like many others, have a tendency to
get over-involved in technology at the risk of ignoring that
unbelievably complex and generaly underused piece of
equipment – the human bio-computer and body/brain
co-creation device – that we are all issued as part of our
ticket into this world.

Proper appropriate use of technology is fine, but knowing when
and where  to draw the line is absolutely critical. Most importantly,
it's crucial to have a sense of whether our technology is
unconsciously deflecting us from our chosen psycho-spiritual
practices and pursuits.

When I once asked Ken Wilber about the viability of entheogens
as a spiritual practice, he said, "Well, don't just do drugs. Make
sure you have a spiritual practice." I think the same thing
holds here: don't just surf psycho-spiritual websites; make sure
that you have an ongoing, integral, practice that really serves
you in the short- and long-run.

Truly, there's no doubt that the Internet is amazingly cool, and
that it has brought us worlds of wonder and serves as a fantastic
data and information, and perhaps even knowledge and wisdom,
resource. But the primary material for your own ongoing evolution
and transformation is something that you can already
tune into -- in real time and in real space -- without any electronic
interface. Too much of anything, including the Internet,
is unlikely to be good for us, so be here now most of the time,
rather than usually, virtually, being somewhere else.
(And then...you can blog about it.  ;-))

---------------------------
5. Ultimate Bungy-Based Rebounders:
     Shipping Hiatus; Price Rise

[Go to http://www.enlightensource.com/buybellicon.html to
order your bungy-based Bellicon Ultimate Rebounder.]

Fans and followers of Enlightenment.Com know that for
the past year we have been supporting the site solely through
the sale of Bellicon's bungy-based rebounders, which are,
in my experience, the best rebounders in the world. (And,
needless to say, I think that rebounding is one of the best
integral exercises in the world.)

(For a quick review of what rebounding is, go to
http://jordangruber.com/rebound.php, and for a
lot more information--everything from FAQs on equipment
to video to a free downloadable .pdf book--go to
http://pods.gaia.com/digital_darshan .

So, just in case you were thinking that it was time for you
to invest in a bungy-based rebounder, you should know
that ALL ORDERS MADE AFTER THIS COMING
TUESDAY, JULY 29th, WILL NOT BE SHIPPED UNTIL
AUGUST 18TH. Also, prices will go up noticeably on
August 18th as well.

Put differently, if you want a bungy-based rebounder
at the current price -- see
http://www.enlightensource.com/buybellicon.html -- then
you have to order by August 17th. And if you want to get the
rebounder in the next week or two, you have to order by this
Tuesday, July 29th.

Blessed Bouncing, Blessed Be;
Make Your Body, Light with Chi!

---------------------------
6. Here Comes the Scoreboard!

[Go to http://www.enlightenment.com/scoreboard/index.cfm.
But note that the Scoreboard sometimes goes "down" still,
so please be patient with us.]

The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Since Enlightenment.Com was first conceived in 1995, the
eventual creation of something akin to a Consumer Reports
rating system has always been one of its goals. Now, with the
Scoreboard 1.0, we have begun the task of sorting out who's
who, and what's what, among the vast number of websites that
have enlightenment* as one of their primary goals.

The Scoreboard, version 1.0, lists 50 or so
enlightenment-oriented websites, and ranks them according to
their total traffic (as taken from Amazon.Com's Alexa service, with
lower numbers being better or standing for higher total traffic).
The goal here at this early stage is to begin to determine
"what works" in the pscho-spiritual universe by seeing which sites
are the most popular in terms of total web traffic rank.

We recognize, of course, that the Alexa traffic rank is a
poor proxy for how good, true, or beautiful
an enlightenment-related site is, but we have to start somewhere.
In the near future, we are going to present a kind of
"EnlightenMatrix" or "map" of the online psycho-spiritual space that
will enable us all to get a much better feel for what different sites
(and the impetus behind them, and the leaders behind them) are
really like. We will add User Ratings as well, and eventually let
you sort the Scoreboard by different factors.

Another way to use the Scoreboard is just as a jumping-off point,
a tool for exploration. Why are these the most popular
enlightenment-oriented websites? What of value is there in them?
How can they be made better? Yes, there's Google and
many other listing of psycho-spiritual sites, but the mix of
interests you'll find here is a bit different than anywhere else on
the web, because, after all, we are...Enlightenment.Com.
(Live the name; live the entelechy.)

All feedback will be considered. If we're missing a site that has a
traffic rank of 100,000 or less, or there's a site that should be on
there that isn't, then let us know, at
mailto:scoreboard@enlightenment.com.
We take ourselves both very lightly and very seriously, but in
any case, we know that enlightenment is now a group activity,
a planetary endeavor, and therefore we both ask for,
and welcome, your input and assistance.

[*For our purposes, as always, "enlightenment" refers not so much to
the Western notion of "The Enlightenment," the great Age of Reason
that shaped modern European thought and brought us science and
the modern world as we know it, but rather, the crossing point where
spirituality, mysticism, Eastern and Western estoric thought,
self-development, self-growth, health consciousness, and many other
"off the beaten path" types of practices and experiences
come together, from the mundane to the quite wild and "out there."

So while we rely on no one single definition of "enlightenment,"
if you examine our website's pages, feel our vibe, and resonate
with who we are, what we've done in the past, and what we're
doing now, it's likely we share a great deal. (For a list of one way
of categorizing the online enlightenment universe, see our chart
of "20 Types of Psycho-Spiritulaists" available under the "Essays"
pull-down menu on our front page at http://enlightenment.com.
As you'll note, there are many, many different types of
psycho-spiritual seekers out there.)]

---------------------------

7. Thanks!

Thanks for reading this newsletter. Thanks for sticking with
Enlightenment.Com for the long-run. Thanks for all your personal
work and practice and discipline and energy. Thanks for being
who you are. Special thanks to all those who have over the
years supported me and the website. Thanks to my two
partners, Jeramy and Gabriel. Thanks to all our lovely
families and friends and pets. So, thanks for many reasons,
and we at Enlightenment.Com wish all of you
a wonderful rest of your Summer.

Best Blessings and Warmest Wishes,

Jordan S. Gruber
Founder and CEO, Enlightenment.Com

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