Transrodental Meditations - Calm Discourse Edition

Greetings, fellow travellers on the path to enlightenment! It is I, your Swami of Seeds, Jacob the Syrian Hamster to lead you in another in a series of Transrodental Meditations.


First, let me remind you of the basics. In order to achieve Higher Consciousness, you need

Simplicity of Thought,

Purity of Heart and

Buckets of Sunflower Seeds.

Find a quiet place and assume a comfortable position. Clear your mind of active thought and fill your cheeks with pecan pieces. Once you have done this and the winds of clarity have blown the clouds of confusion from your mind, let us contemplate the following mystery:

In an era of plenty, what drives people to excessive, hysterical commentary on blogs?

Captain Ed has an excellent post today about this.

Of course, we have seen a lot of vitriol flung our way by the same people who usually do nothing but fling vitriol anyway. Yesterday we saw some goalpost-moving as the lefty bloggers attempted to equate "chickenhawk" with child molestation

The gentle Captain quotes from the blog A Shot in the Dark, which has further examples.

The Scratching Post itself has seen our Dear Leader assaulted by people who are angry beyond all reason at things smaller than a gnat. One commenter, when asked to stop referring to fellow Americans as Nazis replied,

You're right. I do feel comfortable describing Americans who hate brown people and want to see them marginalized and killed as neo-nazis. You seem to think they don't exist, but they do and can cause real harm here in America. The biggest problem I have with Miss Ego is that she transmits their hateful ideas and rhetoric to the mainstream.

All of this frustration and fury does nothing but clog our mental pathways with negative energies. Let us open those pathways with some gentler images that could not have been found in previous decades.


Release your negative thoughts as you meditate on the people around you applying themselves to advances in medical technology. They cannot have given us this if they had been clouded with hate.

Could this little one have provided comfort to others had his mind been filled with anger and jealousies?

In early September, 5-year old Jack approached his mother with an idea. He wanted to have a sale and use the proceeds to help those in need. With the help of this parents, Jack put up signs in his neighborhood to advertise the sale. Friends and family donated items to be sold, helped to spread the word and helped to run the sale. Strangers stopped by with trunkloads of donations, many customers paid more than their purchases were worth. Many customers enjoyed lemonade and cookies from Jack's lemonade stand as well.

The sale raised over $2,000 in just two days. Jack made a donation not only to Operation Iraqi Children but to many families after Hurricane Katrina.

Others of calm mind are working daily to bring us cleaner air.

Breath deeply and slowly and contemplate the wonders of life around you. How so many of your neighbors efforts make your world a better place. Know you their innermost thoughts? Can you fathom their political views? Can you delight in their inventions all the while cursing their philosophies?

Rage and hate is poorly matched to the world we live in. In general, life grows ever sweeter and longer thanks to the people around us. If life is getting better, then our ancestors lived through worse. If they did not fall upon each other with fire and sword, then we owe it to them to find gentler ways of dealing with our fellow man.