Here's a nice poem I ran across from Rumi:

i was dead i came alive
i was tears
i became laughter

all because of love
when it arrived
my temporal life
from then on
changed to eternal

love said to me
you are not
crazy enough
you don't
fit this house

i went and
became crazy
crazy enough
to be in chains

love said
you are not
intoxicated enough
you don't
fit the group

i went and
got drunk
drunk enough
to overflow
with light-headedness

love said
you are still
too clever
filled with
imagination and skepticism

i went and
became gullible
and in fright
pulled away
from it all

love said
you are a candle
attracting everyone
gathering every one
around you

i am no more
a candle spreading light
i gather no more crowds
and like smoke
i am all scattered now

love said
you are a teacher
you are a head
and for everyone
you are a leader

i am no more
not a teacher
not a leader
just a servant
to your wishes

Today I heard the sad news of Andrew Koenig's death. I was fortunate to have known Andrew - though not that well. He was one of the improvisers at the now defunct Empty Stage Theater in West Los Angeles, which I performed at for almost 10 years. While I knew Andrew was "Chekov's son," I did not know while he was at the theater that he had played "Boner" on Growing Pains - he was that humble and non-pretentious about his celebrity.

Andrew was not someone I was friends with, but an acquaintance who I saw on a regular basis for many years. He never struck me as the kind of person capable of taking his own life. In retrospect, I can see some evidence of the depression in his sharp humor. I don't remember him as a happy or joyful person, but a bright guy who expressed a more cynical view of life in his creative expression. Still, I would have never in a million years thought he was capable of ending his own life.

It is always strange to see yourself on TV...but here I am, teaching a past life regression workshop at RakSa in Culver City, Los Angeles:

James Arthur Ray has been arrested on charges of manslaughter for the deaths of three participants in a sweat lodge ceremony he held last year.

From the Daily Mail:

...(One of the victim's) mother, Ginny, said yesterday that she would have liked to believe the deaths were accidental - but that everything that Ray did during the 'Spiritual Warrior' event almost made them inevitable.

'One of the things that horrifies me after we found out Kirby had died was to see how he behaved, to really yield his true character,' she said.

'This wasn't just a horrible accident. His own conviction in his omnipotence and his own seduction of money and wealth made him delusional.'

The Love Guru (brought to us by Mike Myers) is either one of those love it or hate it films...but I thought it was pretty funny despite an over-reliance on penis jokes. Maybe you need to have lived in Southern California and joined the new age community to get it.

What made this film for me was the spot on parody of the yoga gurus who cropped up in America in the 1960s. The first part of the film really hits the satire hard, starting with a sea of starry-eyed followers at the Love Guru's ashram. Everyone greets each other with "Mariska Hargitay," which, despite being the name of an actress, actually does sound like some sort of funny Sanskrit mantra.

At the ashram, "Guru Pitka" (the Love Guru) gives a hilarious yogic talk complete with silly acronyms and words turned into other words. For example:

Intimacy = "Into-me-I-see"

I have just started offering healing, hypnosis and coaching sessions at RakSa, a beautiful new space in Culver City (West Los Angeles). I am offering free 1/2 introductory Reiki or Angel Healing sessions Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10 am and 3 pm until February 4, 2010.

To schedule, call 310.559.7200

http://raksasala.com

Is there some agency that is charged with reviewing all the foods we've been eating for centuries, for the purpose of driving us insane about what we can and cannot eat? Seems hardly a month goes by without some food being declared unfit for consumption. It started with coffee than went to milk and I've lost track of how many foods have been deemed unfit for consumption. Is this an industry? What's next apples?

Such is the lament of one commenter on Jill Richardson's article "Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare."

And yes. Now the big bad food is shrimp. Shrimp!

Given all the scare and horror stories around about various types of food, you think something as seemingly benign as shrimp would be OK. Ooops. No, it's not.

I hate to sound like a stereotype, but ramen noodles were one of my staple foods in college. I also remember eating a lot of waffles and popcorn. Sometimes for lunch and dinner. That, and Hamburger Helper. It's a wonder I survived at all, now that I think about it.

My friends recently gave me some packaged food they didn't want, and it included one lone packet of ramen noodles. It was chicken "flavor," which really doesn't mean there's any actual chicken in it (though there is plenty of MSG).

Once I cooked the ramen, I noticed how lonely they looked sitting there in the bowl. Nothing green or colorful, just a bland mix of cloudy yellow water and yellow noodles. Kind of sad looking.

I remember I had some roasted seaweed in my cabinet, and when I put some strips into the soup bowl, voila, I suddenly had something that looked like actual soup!

I see a lot of well-meaning people saying "Health care is a right!!" as their rallying cry. Yet, I don't think they've stopped to really think about what they are saying. Health care can't actually be a right, because forcing someone else to give you a service against their will is called slavery, and you'd be taking someone else's rights away in the process.

Consider. I know how to do Reiki healing. It can help a lot of people. You could say "Reiki healing is a right!" and then try to force me to Reiki everyone I possibly could, non-stop, 24-hours per day. Perhaps I do help people in that fashion...but is that right, to lock up Reiki healers in a room and force them to heal until they are exhausted?

I hope Andy Swan doesn't mind that I am copying his entire blog post on the subject verbatim, because he explains it very logically:

Mike Adams over at Natural News just published an article claiming that swine flu (H1N1) was a hoax. He writes:

The great swine flu hoax of 2009 is now falling apart at the seams as one country after another unloads hundreds of millions of doses of unused swine flu vaccines. No informed person wants the injection anymore, and the entire fear-based campaign to promote the vaccines has now been exposed as outright quackery and propaganda.

You can read the rest of Mike's rant over at Natural News.

Now...I like Mike Adams and love his site (I even contribute to it occasionally). But sometimes Mike gets caught up in either/or thinking. In this case, it's either that swine flu is a real threat, or it must be a hyped, made-up threat to profit Big Pharma.