Alt Car Expo (Los Angeles)

AltCarExpo.com

Occupy Los Angeles (Oct. 1, 2011)

Wisdom Quarterly, Kloncke.com, OccupyLA.org

Let's our country back from bankers and police state officials by occupying it from coast to coast, from Wall Street and downtown Los Angeles. We are the 99% being destroyed by 1%.

[Kloncke] began gathering some friends into a group we call Bay Area Radical Sangha (BARS). BARS is a space for meditators with "radical" politics. How is that defined? Structural critiques of our racist, hetero-patriarchal, war-reliant, capitalist system.

• RUMOR Alert: RADIOHEAD to play Occupy Wall Street!
• Buddhist production, feminist effort, and the god of work
• Meditation Flash Mob: Noon, Saturday, October 8, 2011 at Pershing Square, downtown Los Angeles

Instead, we support one another in contemplative practice and development. Having met and talked with many of you, I know for a fact that everyone has something wonderful to contribute.

If you are established in some sort of contemplative practice (it does not have to be Buddhist, although this is the foundation of the group) and would like to join in building a committed, holistic center of radical struggle, you are warmly welcomed and appreciated. The first BARS meets in the San Francisco Bay Area. New groups are forming in New York at Occupy Wall Street and Los Angeles at this weekend's launch.

All are welcome to stand up in a peaceful demonstration (occupyla.org)

(TheOther99Percent) Consider donating $9.17 to a Media Fund to continue reports from the front line. OccupyWallStreet.org

Police State Brutality on Wall Street
(USLAWdotcom) This is a slow motion video analysis of the NYPD's mace/pepper spray deployment near Wall Street on Sept. 24, 2011. Alternate angle analyses indicate that this crime was retaliation for an immediately preceding interaction between an officer and some individuals on the sidewalk. More information and updates.

Conscious Life Expo (LA, Friday-Sunday)

2011.consciouslifeexpo.com

George Noory	Terri Amos Britt	John Major Jenkins	Gloria Loring	Sen. Mike Gravel	Giorgio Tsoukalos
Nick Redfern	William Henry	Don Tolman	Marisa Russo	Laura Eisenhower	Mellisa Hevenor
Bruce Goldberg	Jason Martell	Stephen Bassett	Whitley Streiber	Sean David Morton	Barbara Lamb
Emy Shanti	Debra Katz	Roger Leir	Marcia Martin	Bashar	Chief Golden Eagle
Dr. Carlos McDonald	Xavier Yxayotl	Gail Thackray	Pat Boone	Peter Canova	Lupita Villalaizo
Dr. Jim Bourque Starr	Selacia	Ron Amitron	Riz Mirza	Marsh Engle	Kaitlyn Keyt
Beth Lapides	Dee Wallace	Lori Spagna	Scott Catamas

Shaolin Warrior Temple in L.A. Storefront

Gendy Alimurung (Candyland, LAWeekly.com, Sept. 29, 2011)

Shaolin Warrior Monk Operates from an L.A. Storefront

Master Shi Yan Fan, Shaolin warrior monk (Simone Paz/Laweekly.com)

The Shaolin temple in China is 1,500 years old and one of the nation's most ancient sacred treasures, the source of all martial arts. The Shaolin temple in Los Angeles is 3 years old and is located in a Sherman Oaks storefront next to a pet store.

It is, however, no less sacred to those who seek refuge here from the modern world. Here, the warrior monk known as master Shi Yan Fan, or "Powerful Sky," teaches Zen Buddhism and Shaolin kung fu. "Shaolin means young forest. Shao for young. Lin for trees. It means you can live forever," he'll say to those who wander in.

(Hellfil2e) The official ordination of the first Western Caucasian disciple to receive JieBa at Shaolin Temple in Henan, China, in centuries

The temple wasn't always there, at least not in the physical sense. When the master first came to Los Angeles from China, he would train students in community centers, gyms, parks, and forests. Eventually, the students got tired of carrying their weapons everywhere. They opened the temple, donating its rent, furnishings and upkeep.

Master Shi Yan Fan wasn't always a kung fu master. Actually, he wasn't always Shi Yan Fan. For all of his youth he was Italian-born Franco Testini. Though he has trained his entire life, only recently did he become an official Shaolin warrior monk, the first to do so in 300 years. He was branded on the head with nine incense sticks for five minutes. The last two minutes, when the incense burns through your skin, he says, "are very painful."

(Hellfil2e) The story of Shi Yan Fan in Italian

The ceremony was performed in 2007 at the Shaolin Temple in China when the Chinese government lifted its centuries-old ban on the practice. There was much fanfare. Preparations lasted a month. There were arduous training sessions and equally arduous lectures. Knees and foreheads became bruised from bowing for five hours a day. Some monks fainted from exhaustion. In the end, 100 monks were scheduled to receive the burn marks, but only 43 went through with it. "They got scared," Testini shrugs.

Testini has given his life to Shaolin. His mission is to share it with as many people as he can, and by share he means teach them compassion (a noble endeavor), to exercise every day (preaching to the choir) and to be happy without material possessions (good luck with that).

Training American disciples in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles

Testini speaks quickly and with a thick Italian accent. His assistant, Cindy, occasionally serves as unofficial interpreter. She also has given her life to Shaolin and, by extension, to her master, or as she calls him in Chinese, shifu. Training in Shaolin, the master taught her, isn't about tournaments and color belt systems and trophies. It's about learning to be Zen. More

Psychedelic Research: LSD for depression, autism

Wisdom Quarterly, CoasttoCoastAM.com
(Mariesou/Flickr)

Dr. James Fadiman, who has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s, joined Ian Punnett on Sept. 24, 2011 to discuss the newest research into the psychotherapeutic value of visionary drug use.

Psychedelics can be effective at micro-doses that have no intoxicating effects that are nevertheless medicinal. They have the capacity to increase personal awareness, produce spiritual epiphanies, and treat a host of serious medical conditions. Before it was banned LSD was in fact the most researched psychiatric drug on the planet, according to Dr. Fadiman.

Dr. Fadiman on Coast to Coast 9/24/11

The compound, which grows naturally and is derived from ergot fungi on rye, was first synthesized in 1938. It is effective in miniscule doses at only millionths of a gram, he stated, adding that mainstream researchers used LSD therapeutically to treat common neuroses, alcoholism, and even autism before it was banned in 1966.

Among hardcore alcoholics there was a 50% success rate. The efficacy rate was even higher for those with autism, he noted.

• Curiously, according to the doctor, the main effect of LSD occurs after the drug itself has left the body.
  

It is thought to work by opening up one's "awareness capacity." Religious Studies scholar Dr. Huston Smith learned this after taking LSD and having an experience that confirmed what he understood to be at the core of all religious faiths, Fadiman explained.

"Psychedelics give you a kind of a different view of everything... they take you much more into observing your life," he said.

A recent study at UCLA demonstrates how this inner journey can help people diagnosed with terminal cancer. Psilocybin, according to Fadiman, is a drug similar to LSD that has successfully been used to treat anxiety in late-stage cancer patients. Source

"Psychedelics and Freedom"

Psychedelic Explorer's Guide

"This is some of the most thoughtful, wise, heartfelt, and essential instruction for the use of sacred medicine."
- Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, (Spirit Rock) author of A Path with Heart

"Jim Fadiman's manual offers helpful and well-informed guidance for those who seek 'the divine within' through sacred plants and psychedelic substances."
- Daniel Pinchbeck,(Reality Sandwich) author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl and Breaking Open the Head


"Transpersonal Conversations"