NATIONAL MUSHROOM MONTH: All through September, National Mushroom Month celebrates the wide variety of "mushrooms" (the fruiting bodies of fungal mycelia) that are available.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also takes advantage of the opportunity to educate people on the versatility mushrooms offer, including their many health benefits.
As a result, mushrooms are gaining more and more appreciation as we learn more about them.
#NationalMushroomMonth
To fully celebrate the heritage of mushrooms (shrooms, toadstools, Easter eggs, fun guys in the garden...), we must first learn about the Mushroom Capital of the World.
Located just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one will find a small town known Kennett Square. Surprisingly, this small Pennsylvanian borough produces over one million pounds of mushrooms a day.
Each year Kennett Square holds the annual Mushroom Festival starting with a parade.
Visitors also enjoy tours of mushroom farms or visit vendors to buy food and other goods.
'Shroom Science
Scientifically, mushrooms belong to the fungi kingdom (not plant, not mineral, not animal).
Fungi grow from carbon and energy from dead plants (particularly the cellulose sugar and chitin proteins from husks) and animals. Interestingly, this has helped scientists to conclude mushroom DNA is more similar to humans than it is to plants, as previously thought.
Through the study of mushrooms, scientists learn more about fungi, especially identifying whether they are single-cell or multicellular organisms.
Mushrooms contain many useful nutrients. Because of this, mushrooms are an excellent source of vitamins (particularly Vitamin D, which significantly increases when cut mushrooms are placed in the sun). Eating mushrooms is a great way to naturally get copper, fiber, potassium, protein, selenium, Vitamin B, and zinc into the human body.
As scientists continue to study mushrooms, there is hope of discovering more medicinal uses -- such as treating depression, PTSD, phobias such as an intense fear of death, and other mental conditions, as with LSD, which is a fungus called ergot that grows on rye). These discoveries only add to the many benefits of mushrooms.
Mushrooms are either edible (nutritious, entheogenic) or inedible (toxic, poisonous). We find edible mushrooms in cuisine throughout the world. Almost all mushrooms available at the store are cultivated and safe rather than wildcrafted (foraged) and risky. These types of mushrooms are available year-round.
The most common cultivated mushroom are the white button, flavorful cremini (just a baby portobello), earthy adult portobello, shiitake, tasty tree oyster, maitake, but most mushroom eat (particularly in the form of mushroom soups) contains no soup at all but the more reliable mycelia).
"There are old mushroom hunters, and there are bold mushroom hunters, but no old-bold ones."
Inedible mushrooms are often found popping up in the wild, though many also grow in backyards and moist front lawns. However, it can be difficult to determine whether a mushroom is poisonous or safe to eat. It takes more than a guidebook; it takes an expert. There are no reliable shortcuts, hacks, or rules of thumb to depend on. For example, some think mushrooms that have red on the cap or stem are known to be poisonous, or that stems that bruise purple are hallucinogenic, but it is nowhere near that easy to tell. Avoid eating mushrooms with white gills, a skirt, or a ring on the stem -- or anything else until knowing with certainty that it is safe for consumption. Not all poisonous mushrooms are deadly; many might just cause a stomachache or voiding. But often there are no symptoms just liver damage leading to death days later. Because wild mushrooms are hard to identify, leave identification of wild mushrooms to professional mycologists and mushroom hunters and foragers.
Eating poisonous mushrooms, even if not deadly (like the famous fly agaric Amanita muscaria, can and often makes eaters very sick. It can possibly kill a person based on their personal constitution or susceptibilities. So, when in doubt, throw it out. Save it for examination rather than consumption. More
Every year, Peace Class goes on hiatus from July through September. There is this meeting tonight and again next week (June 24th), then summer hiatus begins. Join me for final two classes of this cycle. This is the text of the peace talk delivered last week:
When all beings can clearly see everything-that-is, all beings will choose to live in peace, in harmonious coexistence with one another.
Harmony (akin to kshanti) happens effortlessly when everyone has access to all-that-is. Harmony is what happens when everyone is engaging their full intuitive powers, seeing with clarity, gazing at the world through their higher consciousness, through their Peace Minds.
Harmony happens effortlessly when all is known by all. But we aren't there yet.
We are at the end of the age that precedes all beings knowing all. We are at the beginning of the time of revelation that bridges two ages. We are at the beginning of the revelation that gets us from not-knowing to knowing.
What does this transition period look like? What does it feel like? Imagine that all-that-is-true were shown to us as a huge sweeping picture, a massive wall-sized image, one enormous scene.
Then imagine that wall-sized picture sliced up into 10,000 pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Yes, one would be able to reassemble the full picture, if one had all of the puzzle pieces.
What's happening during this time of revelation is that some people are receiving some of the pieces of what-really-is, whereas most people hold just a handful of the pieces. And rarely do two people hold the same pieces.
That means we might hold a few puzzle pieces of what-really-is, and our neighbor might hold a few pieces, and those pieces could be from different quadrants of the picture. Those assembled pieces could show entirely different things.
Our neighbor might hold three pieces that seem to be part of a barn and might say, "I've seen what is, and we're in the countryside."
We might hold a few pieces that seem to make a skyscraper and might say, "I've seen what is, and we're in downtown."
A third neighbor might be holding pieces that show part of a cloud and might say, "We're in the clouds—not touching ground at all!"
All three of these neighbors might have glimpsed some aspect of what-really-is yet not understand how those things fit together. So they might be tempted to turn to each other and say, "You're wrong!"
They might even be in despair wondering, "How can so many people think that this is an image of clouds we're in when I know it's a picture of a barn?"
This is what the Time of Revelation feels like, especially in the beginning. It feels to many like deep confusion. And such confusion can lead to despair.
But when we realize what's really going on, which is that all-that-is is being revealed, slowly, we can cross this bridge and transit this period with grace.
We can hold compassion for ourselves, knowing we are all undergoing a process that takes time. We can hold compassion for our neighbors, benighted as they seem. We can hold compassion for ALL beings.
Kill Iran so we can build up Israel. - OK, Bibi.
These are not easy times to transit. Our politics are polarized. Many of us look at our neighbors and say, "How can you believe that? How can you possibly see things that way?!"
What's happening is a literal difference of seeing, not a figurative one. This is not just a duel of differing opinions. Some have seen what's-really-happening by way of direct exposure or spiritual revelation, and others have not. Some have seen one slice of what's-really-happening, and others have seen a slice of a different portion.
We are stepping into knowing-what-really-is at vastly different rates. And this is exactly as things are meant to happen. What-really-is is that we're a group of beings evolving towards discovery and an expression of our own peaceful and loving truest nature. That's what's really happening!
We are evolving forwards. And eventually, we will know who we are. We are beings of peace. And eventually, we will feel as we are. We will feel the urge to choose to live peacefully, to express compassion-for-all.
We will choose to fully express our unique selves and selfhood, while creating space for others to express themselves fully. We will choose compassionate coexistence.
The trees have been waiting patiently in peace.
We will choose harmony with others, harmony with the waters and the forests and the soil and the air, harmony with the animals of this planet.
We will choose selfhood, and we will choose harmony. But we have a ways yet before arriving there. We are departing from one shore, sailing towards another.
We are departing the shore of believing our community is dog-eat-dog, that the rules are an-eye-for-an-eye. That's the shore we're leaving.
I like it better when we ALL get along in peace.
We'll arrive at the shore of dog-celebrate-dog, dog-help-dog. That's where we'll land.
Revelation is the time to discover who we truly are as a species. This is the time to learn, not later in peace. Right now, we can learn that dog-eat-dog was never our true nature. We were living through a dog-eat-dog phase, just as people, while they're babies, are living through growing pains in a diaper phase. A child grows out of using a diaper: A child becomes a grownup. We are now growing into dog-celebrate-dog.
Higher we rise, easier to see the big picture
We get from one shore to another by learning the truth about who we are. Now, there's a lot to know. The full picture of who we are as beings is a lot to take in. The full picture of what our planet is, how it fits into the greater universe, is a lot to take in.
The full picture of what's been happening in our societies, what's been happening of which we have been unaware, is a lot to take in. A lot.
Revelation arrives in pieces. It arrives as different pieces that are in the hands of different people fall into place at different rates. Eventually, all will know all. As for now, some know some.
So when we look at our neighbor and think, "How can that [bleep] think that way?" we must understand that our confusion is natural and know that our neighbor will eventually see everything. And so will we.
All will eventually see all.
In the beginning
The light slowly began to dawn.
What does revelation look like at its beginning? It can look like deep differences between how we see the world and how our family members, partners, children, and those pesky neighbors see the world.
If we choose to walk with compassion, we will understand that the children of earth are doing the work of waking up and becoming enlightened in perfect pace, with appropriate timing for everyone, at the right rate for each individual.
Everyone has the right to choose how quickly to evolve. Some will choose to cling to the dog-eat-dog way-of-being, and some will let go of such thinking, feeling, and being.
What happens when a person sees the completed puzzle, the full image of all-that-is? That person knows and chooses peacefulness, one's own peaceful way of being in peace. And what one feels for others at that moment is compassion-without-end.
Once we understand that all who can see the full puzzle will carry peacefulness, and once we understand that the puzzle pieces are arriving into the hands and lives of most people we know, at varying rates, this era of revelation begins to make sense.
I never saw it that way! It makes sense now.
This is what revelation looks like: It looks like a few more puzzle pieces arriving into the hands of a few more individuals.
Revelation happens in stages, dependent on an individual's desire to know more. And individual who really wants to know more creates space within oneself.
If we create openness in mind, if we cultivate compassion in heart, with non-judgment and non-attachment (letting go), more puzzle pieces will begin to fall into our hands.
I'm starting to see, but my eyes are blurry.
It may take five or 10 or 20 years to have enough puzzle pieces to get a full sense of what's really going on, but we are so loved. Every human alive is so loved through this process, so loved by the divine, so loved by our ancestors, so loved in all phases of self-discovery and self-actualization. All who walk this process do it perfectly.
This summer, we might spend time with family members whose puzzle pieces imply a completely different picture than ours, and if we allow the lower mind to run the show, we are very likely experience, at best, frustration being around them, at worst, anger and hate, at very worst, expulsion of others from own compassionate heart because they're holding different pieces of the puzzle and they imagine that the shape of the puzzle is different than what we imagine it to be!
We get to choose how we walk this moment of revelation. We can do it with compassion, we can do it with grace, or... Walk in the way that builds the world you want. When you see all, you will know your own peace, and you will choose your own peacefulness.
If we choose peace now, even before we see all, we will walk through challenging times with the most possible ease. And our presence here, among those of earth, will be a living slice of grace.
So much of rap is stupid, unbearably so. Rock 'n roll was better, not by much but it was making something new of older Black music (blues, guitar driven gospel, jazz). But we're coming around to this rap thingy after a half century. For all the boisterous bluster, some really has kick (umph), the right beat. We're finally seeing it.
What four young Black men formed and called themselves "Gho$tmane," incorporating death and Black metal into their sound? Here they are:
(Yeah, that guy, Sunny McCalifornia. How could a boy with buckteeth get so groovy he not only develops a distinctive sound but a unique aesthetic from the 1920s?) We have to guess that it's because we mainly hear pop-rap (the cr-p rap the radio plays to death) that rap seems boring and anything but phresh.
But with radio removed, one is now exposed to all the other ways of listening (peer-to-peer sharing, TikTok, underground shows, networks, influencers, curation, recommendations, luck, and social media.
With the censors out and the "filters" on, there's some really good stuff out there. Some recent Buddhist articles we produced got a tremendous response with what looks like hundreds of thousands of views. It's just rap. Rap is old. Hasn't all the hoopla about rap died down already. It might have about the old stuff, but there is much more vital NEW stuff. Who even knew this was rap.
We thought it would be good to hear rap songs done in another genre thanks to the GREAT Richard Cheese (longtime fans since he appearances on the Kevin & Bean Show decades ago). So just tapping in something like death metal rap got an unexpectedly good response on YouTube. What, it's a thing? We thought, what are these suggestions? So clicking on a few of them, not bad. It was just Slipknot when Corey spits bars. We knew about that. We didn't know some of these songs got videos made for them.
Then, skipping down, we tapped the White Album looking suggestion, just to see, and the song that came up was really good or not what we expected. It was rap, not death metal. We were looking for death metal. But then it was metal as rap. Who were these guys? Are there bands of Black youths who listen to black metal (which is called "black" not because of the race of the artists or fans but due to the dark arts discussed by the music, such as Venom, Mercyful Fate, Deicide) and rap about it? No. Who knows? (There's that horrorcore freakshow stuff, but that seems very niche). Everyone listens to everything nowadays. There's no reason to stay in a compartment and limit yourself.
Rock rap with Wes and Limp Bizkit
This was someone smart enough to rap but very dark, but still actual rap, not a parody or imitation. Hey, there's something here. You see, a few months ago, we surfed through a video of Limp Bizkit live in the Netherlands, and before the show, they are getting the crowd amped up and start playing a rap song.
All of the 100% Caucasian audience loves it, starts moving, singing along. "They do know this is not a Limp Bizkit song, right?" was the question that crossed our minds. But it was a rap song, and that was the amazing thing--one that Limp Bizkit knew it, and two that the audience loved it so much. Oh yeah, duh, they are there to see rap-rock. It turns out it wasn't Limp Bizkit but Limp's DJ spinning Ludacris as Wes is standing, holding his guitar, in his briefs, about to noodle.
That's how The Heart Sutra (RAP version) article got written. Real rap is what Ludacris was doing, that old skool yellin and cars and women and other featured rappers on a track.
Who's ever heard of Gho$temane? Apparently, everybody but us because he's already played Coachella, though not with the reception he might have been expecting (during the day, under the desert sun, on the lawn, in the heat, to a smaller audience.
How is this guy not in all our faces or in the manifesto of the teen who takes a shot at Eminem in the future? Didn't Megan Fox's boytoy diss Marshal Mathers in a rap only to have it blow up in his face? Who ever heard about MGK? Or Riff Raff featured on Far East Movement's "Illest," Vanilla Ice (aka Rob Van Winkle) or the way mad white rappers The Bloodhound Gang feature him as Robby Winkle, that Australian one-hit-wonder Masked Wolf, where drill (gangsta rap is breaking out) as well as biker gangs.
Eminem said the N word with style in rap battle. - And he managed to finally rhyme with "orange"
The rap trap is some fake cr-p
Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Sheldon S., Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY, The Future of Musick
(MorgueOfficial)
Started streaming March 10, 2025 (during Women's History Month) Dawn of the New Earth (The Neogenian Dawn). Ancient texts speak of a mysterious, powerful figure — a female Messiah — whose wisdom was hidden, suppressed, and nearly lost. Was she the true Christ (Kristos, "Annointed One," drugged with entheogens or venoms in the mystery school, according to Dr. Ammon Hillman)?
The Gospel of Mary, attributed to Mary Magdalene, offers a unique perspective on salvation through self-knowledge and inner exploration. Contrary to traditional Christian teachings, this ancient text challenges the concept of sin, framing it as an illusion tied to the physical body. It reveals a vision of spiritual authority where wisdom is accessible beyond institutional limits. Rooted in Gnosticism, this work highlights the diverse landscape of early Christianity, advocating for a personal connection with the divine.
Is there a Buddhist Messiah? Is it Maitreya?
I'd better flatter women so that they'll know they're loved (statustown.com)
Who will it be, who will rescue the humans and gods (devas) from the blights of greed, hatred, and delusion? The world sleeps under the pall of delusion, and it is high time we awaken. But we can't rouse ourselves. Someone arrives to help. This special being was predicted long ago and named "Friend" or maitri. ThisMaitreya or Metteyya may be the origin of the Western world's "Messiah"). Might it be a woman? Ancient tradition seems to have been altered to exclude women in a worldwide sexist push that erased much of their contributions, leaving half the population as a sidenote. Indeed, there have been powerful women.
In Buddhist lore there is the great Prajna Paramita, a goddess personification of the "Perfection of Wisdom" and the Goddess of Compassion Kuan Yin, a Mother Mary figure for the worldwide Mahayana tradition, which accounts for 90 per cent of Buddhists today. In the past, in Early Buddhism, there was great recognition of the female enlightened ones:
Now the Teachings have been construed to say no in Theravada and Vajrayana traditions, but Mahayana holds out that there are many powerful female deities, the Taras, the dakinis,protectors (lokapala) and wrathful guardian spirits, and though no "Cosmic Buddha" like Amitabha or Vairocana are ever depicted as female, the caveat is always that a being determining to become a supremely awakened (samma-sam) buddha will transform into a male before achieving that ambition.
So many females and males take bodhisattva vows with the stated goal of delaying their own liberation (nirvana) to save all other sentient beings, as messiahs are won't to do. It may be a useful mindset if not an achievable goal.
But as the Dalai Lama once joked, "Any woman can become a buddha...so long as she becomes a man first." Why he thought this was funny, that we may never know. (Endemic sexism and androcentrism in an all-boys monastic club in the imperial Potala Palace?)
Nevertheless, none of us are really male or female but have the potential to express the best qualities of both. In the derivative Catholic/Christian faith, there may still be hope or recovering the Mother Goddess (Queen of HeavenAsherah, God’s Forgotten Wife, or Miriam, the Son-God's mother, a restored and reappointed Eve or Mary Magdalene. We can all see how openminded the God of those Abrahamic traditions is, so amenable to being talked into things like the divine rapport emphasized in Judaism, but we won't be holding our breath).
In this book the author describes "Ancestors’ Ceremonies" as practiced in the Taiwanese Catholic Church. The author’s point is to demonstrate how the Chinese symbolic universe made a deep translation of the "new" symbolic system represented by Catholic doctrine. At the same time the effort of the Catholic Church in order to adapt the Gospels’ message to the local situation built up a particular phenomenon that the author defined as cultural dialogue. It is this dialogic relationship the process that the author defines as Culture.
...[The] most usual and popular representation of this Goddess is a beautiful and gracious woman, who holds a child in her arms [Maya and Siddhartha rather than Mary and Jesus] and wears a rosary [mala] around her neck. This iconography has been reused in order to paint the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary at a point where it is hard sometimes to distinguish between the two figures (Figures 3a and 3b).
My point is not that Catholic people consider the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Christian reference of Guanyin [Kwan Yin, the Mahayana Buddhist "Goddess of Compassion"], but I want to stress that, when honoring the "new" supernatural figure, Taiwanese Catholics still maintain the forms they learned through their involvement in popular religious practices from an early age, which are linked to the cultural system they inhabit. God Jesus and the Ancestors: An Ethnography of the Ancestors’ Rites in the Taiwanese Catholic Church
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