New Hippies through the Decades (video)

Amber Dorrian, Seven, Macpherson, Pauper Poet (Wisdom Quarterly)
1960s: "Wonderwall" with George Harrison

Imagine a world where we all got along. Nothing divides us but our arbitrary categories and allegiances. We say we're this, not that. Imagine converting to all religions, clinging to none. Imagine accepting everyone, rejecting none. Imagine not judging, and without judgment, acceptance and compassion.

1970s: "In every dream home a heartache. And every step I take takes me further from heaven."Is there a heaven? I'd like to think so. Standards of living, they're rising daily. But home, O sweet home, it's only a saying..." (Roxy Music).

The Buddha's Dharma is universal and leads to light. There is no reason to reject anything or anyone. Nirvana's Kurt Cobain seemed to be onto something. But even before that, the Beatles understood, and Led Zeppelin imagining themselves traveling through Kashmir. Then Rave Culture caught on in the very next decade, first in the UK then the US. And there may be no better example of techno than Makai's remix of "Five Elements Ninja."

• "Instead of money and power, rave called for empathy, intimacy, spirituality, and the joy of losing yourself in the crowd."

1980s: Rave culture is born

Of course many think the 90s were a dark period of materialism, blind ambition, and chemical drugs. But there was crunchiness and a longing for days gone by, as funny as it may seem that three decades on, the Sixties were still the only example of "peace, love, and happiness" many Americans had, that and Grateful Dead shows followed by Phish. This was followed in the aughts (00s) by endless free festivals that continue to this day.

Rainbow Spirit

1990s: Festivals, festivals, and more plans for festivals

Then the music industry fell into a dormant period, at least rock music did, until one Buddhism inspired some depressive Seattle slackers to wish for a "final end of suffering." The singer named his new band "Nirvana" as he tried to walk the path and cross over from the muddy banks of the Wishkah. It has smelled like Teen Spirit deodorant ever since. And in 1999, it culminated in a post-punk MTV orgy of violence and greed.

• Kurt Cobain: "At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us... leave us the ***K alone! Don't come to our shows, and don't buy our records."

2000s: Y2K began in 1999 with MTV's version of Woodstock

The Fenians, Irish Republic Proclamation: "All men are born with equal rights, and in associating together to protect one another and share public burdens, justice demands that such associations should rest upon a basis which maintains equality instead of destroying it. We therefore declare that, unable longer to endure the curse of monarchical government, we aim at founding a republic, based on universal suffrage, which shall secure to all the intrinsic value of their labour" (The Irish People to the World 1867).

Suburban angst builds before Los Angeles rises

2010s: "And now The End is near. And so I face the final curtain. Ha, ha, ha. You can't, I'm not a queer. I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full. I traveled each and every highway. And more, much more than this, I did it my way" (Sid Vicious).

• L.A. RISING 2011: Rage Against the Machine (July 30)

Things

• Los Feliz Village Street Fair 2011 (Hollywood)
• We beat JetBlue by Bike during LA's "Carmageddon"
• Pelican Bay Protest: Protecting tortured prisoners
• The amazing "Wonderwall" (1968) explained
  
• The most beautiful women in the world are Muslims
  
• Topanga Film Festival.com
• Earthbound Spirits on Coast to Coast (radio)
• Jim Crow Fascists: Woody Gutrie freedom songs
• Tortured prisoner hunger strike solidarity
• Awkward One Night Stands
  
• Timbuktu: A Journey to Africa's Lost City of Gold
• Titicaca: the Highest Navigable Lake in "The World"
  
• VIDEO: Shangri La, the Last Illusion in Bhutan
  

"Radical Acceptance" - Tara Brach

Guided meditations on radical acceptance by Dr. Tara Brach (goodreads.com)

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. - Rumi, Sufi poet

Something is Wrong With Me

"When I was in college, I went off to the mountains for a weekend of hiking with an older, wiser friend of twenty-two. After we set up our tent, we sat by a stream, watching the water swirl around rocks and talking about our lives. At one point she described how she was learning to be 'her own best friend.' A huge wave of sadness came over me, and I broke down sobbing. I was the furthest thing from my own best friend. I was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, often invisible but always on the job. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself, without mercy or kindness.

"My guiding assumption was 'Something is fundamentally wrong with me,' and I struggled to control and fix what felt like a basically flawed self. I drove myself in academics, was a fervent political activist and devoted myself to a very full social life. I avoided pain (and created more) with an addiction to food and a preoccupation with achievement. My pursuit of pleasure was sometimes wholesome -- in nature, with friends -- but it also included an impulsive kind of thrill-seeking through recreational drugs, sex, and other adventures. In the eyes of the world, I was highly functional. Internally, I was anxious, driven and often depressed. I didn't feel at peace with an y part of my life.

"Feeling not okay went hand in hand with deep loneliness. In my early teens I sometimes imagined that I was living inside a transparent orb that separated me from the people and life around me...." - Tara Brach

Tara Brach, Ph.D.

Psychotherapist and Buddhist meditation teacher in the tradition of Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (who wrote the foreword), first-time author Tara Brach offers readers a rich compendium of stories and techniques designed to help awaken from what she calls "the trance of unworthiness."

The sense of self-hatred and fearful isolation that afflicts so many people in the West can be transformed with the steady application of a loving attention infused with the insights of the Buddhist tradition, according to Brach.

Interweaving stories from her own life as a hardworking single mother with many wonderful anecdotes culled from her therapy practice and her work as a leader of meditation retreats, Brach offers myriad examples of how our pain can become a doorway to love and liberation.

An older Catholic woman in one of Brach's weekend workshops, for example, recounts how she learned to ask her God to help hold her pain. Like Brach's colleagues Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, and others in the Insight-meditation (Vipassana) tradition, Brach is open-minded about where she gathers inspiration.

Garnishing her gentle advice and guided meditation with beautiful bits of poetry and well-loved if familiar Dharma stories, Brach describes what it can mean to open to the reality of other people, to live in love, to belong to the world.

Obviously the fruit of the author's own long and honest search, this is a consoling and practical guide that can help people find a light within themselves (Reed Business Information, Inc.)

• "Radical Acceptance offers gentle wisdom and tender healing, a most excellent medicine for our unworthiness and longing. Breathe, soften, and let these compassionate teachings bless your heart." — Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
• Metta Refuge: Tara Brach and Radical Acceptance

Sounds True: Tara Brach on Radical Acceptance

• AUDIO: "Meditations for Emotional-Healing: Finding Freedom in the Face of Difficulty" (Tara Brach)

• 5 strange courting rituals from around the world