Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times The term “self-actualization” was made popular by Abram Maslow in his hierarchy of needs theory of human development. Essentially self-actualization is an existential term indicating the prominent feeling of being fully alive and aware of what it means to be a meaning-creating creature in an otherwise meaningless universe. …
Frank Huguenard, Staff Writer Waking Times In 1859, when Charles Darwin published his landmark manuscript on the theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species, the book generated a firestorm of controversy and still today the debate between scientists and Creationists seems to be more contentious as ever. According to Darwin’s theory, the basic mechanism …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “The only way to deal with an un-free world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” –Albert Camus The current unsustainable system has made us overly comfortable and ridiculously complacent in our ways. We have every luxury, and yet, for …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.” –Henry David Thoreau Behold, I am the world’s first Self-inflicted Philosopher and I’m here to tell you: You’ll reap no evolution if you don’t sow a little revolution. The current existential interregnum is a collision …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “We stumble on; the Übermensch plants a foot where there is no certain hold; and in the struggle that follows, the whole of us get dragged up.” –William James Friedrich Nietzsche is a fascinating philosopher that must be taken with a grain of salt, and possibly the entire salt …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “Danger: real probability of the awakening of terror and dread, from which there will be no turning back.” –Ernest Becker Caveat lector: reader beware! To be or not to be, is that not the essential question? Or maybe it’s: to become or not to become. Or perhaps Carl …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.” –Joseph Campbell All of us were raised with a particular worldview. Some of us may have even been conditioned and/or brainwashed into believing a certain way. Either way, none of us had control of our preconditioning. We …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times In Jung’s famous book The Red Book, he comes to a library inside a castle, looking for a place of sanctuary and reflection. When the librarian asks him to choose a book he names The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. He debates with the librarian what it …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “There is nothing you can learn from as much as a problem you cannot fully solve. Unsolved problems can be some of the greatest tormentors, but also the greatest teachers. Unsolved problems keep the mind hungry and the eyes open.” –Jonathan Zap When it comes down to it, …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “Money has the same relationship to real wealth that words have to meaning. And as words are not the physical world, money is not real wealth. It is only an accounting of available economic energy.” –Allan Watts Our culture is suffering from a serious psychological hang-up: that money …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Waking Times “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” –Shunryu Suzuki The beauty of cyclic learning is that it kicks expert-mind back into beginner-mind. It is …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times In a culture where “thinking outside the box” is a common cliché that gets tossed around by people who simply do not think outside the box, we sometimes need ways to jump-start our world views, to stimulate our weltanschauungs, and to kick open our third eye. Here are …
Gary “Z” McGee, Staff Writer Waking Times “A human being is part of the whole called by us universe. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Contributor Waking Times “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved, and people are being used” –Anonymous Relationships are challenging. Attempting to develop a healthy relationship in a culture that is bound and determined to …
Gary ‘Z’ McGee – This isn’t about the wealth of an industry or the robustness of our nation’s ability to trade. This is about ecosystems and abundance over ego systems and greed.
Gary ‘Z’ McGee, Contributor Waking Times “If you want to tell people the truth, make ’em laugh. Otherwise, they’ll kill you.” –Oscar Wilde Writing a comedic article about militarism is a lot like trying to escape a straightjacket: finding leverage in the midst of constriction is not nearly as easy as you think it is, and …
Z, Contributing Writer Waking Times “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” –Abraham Lincoln “Be not the slave of your own past – plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, …
Z, Contributing Writer Waking Times 1. You are an advocate for changing fear, as opposed to fearing change By transforming fear into courage, you understand that power is merely a stopgap that must be expiated, lest it corrupt absolutely. For any action to count as courageous it must first come from an understanding that the …
Z, Contributing Writer Waking Times “Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.” – George Bernard Shaw “At this point in history the capacity to doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all that stands between a future for mankind and the …
Z, Contributing Writer Waking Times Step one: Look in the mirror. As long as you’re not a zombie, a slave, a sucker, or a sadomasochist, you’re an environmentalist. Step two: Ask yourself if you like breathing clean air. If the answer is yes, you’re an environmentalist. If the answer is no, you’re either a zombie …
