tired of the doom and gloom? me too- so enjoy the Good News Reports:


I'm thrilled to report that we just won an important interim
victory in our long-term campaign to block Big Oil from drilling
in Alaska's spectacular Western Arctic Reserve, one of NRDC's
endangered BioGems.

Thanks to your support, most of the Teshekpuk Lake region -- one
of the most important tundra-wetland ecosystems left on our
planet -- will not be opened to oil and gas development for at
least 10 years.

This victory is particularly sweet because we fended off the
Bush Administration's plan to hand over this natural treasure to
Big Oil before it leaves office next January.

Thanks to years of court battles by NRDC and the tireless
activism of tens of thousands of online activists like you, we
did it!

Next, we will focus our campaign on Congress, in support of
legislation to permanently protect this world-class wildlife
habitat.

In the meantime, this home to more than one million migratory
birds, the legendary Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd, and the
threatened polar bear will remain undisturbed by toxic oil and
gas development for at least another decade.

Together, we succeeded in stopping the industrialization of this
magnificent Arctic wilderness -- and that's a victory for nature
that is well worth celebrating.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council


*the photo is of a friendly frog helping a mouse to safety in a monsoon in India

How quick are we to form an opinion of a person, to come to a conclusion about them. It is satisisfying to the egoic mind to label nother human being, to give them a conceptual identity, to pronounce righteous judgement upon them.

Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in certain ways-- conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood experiences and their cultural environment.

That is not who they are, but who they appear to be. When you pronounce judgement on someone, you confuse those conditional mind patterns w/ who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and that false identity becomes a prision not only for the other person, but also for yourself.

To let go of judgement does not mean that you don't see what they do. It means that you reconize their behavior as a form of conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You don't construct an identity of that person.

That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego then no longer runs your relationships.

As long as the ego runs your life, most of your thoughts, emotiones and actions arise from desire and fear. In relationships you then either want or fear something something from the other person.

What you want from them may be pleasure, or matieral gain, reconition, praise, or attention, or a strengthening of your sense of self through comparision and through establishing that you are, have, or know more than they. What you fear is that the opposite may be the case, and they may diminsh your sense of self in some way.

When you make the present moment the focal point of your attention-- instead of using it as a means to an end-- you go beyond the ego and beyond the unconscious compulsion to use people as a means to an end, the end being self enhancement at the cost of others. When you give your fullest attention to whoever you are interfacing with, ypu take past and future out of the relationship, except for practical matters. When you are fully present w/ everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them-- your interpretationof who they are and what they did in the past-- and are able to interact without the egoic movements of fear and desire. Attention, which is stillness, is the key.

How wonderful to go beyond desire and fear! Love does not want or fear anything.

If their past were your past, their pain your pain, their level of conciousness yours, you would think and act like them. WITH THIS REALIZATION COMES FORGIVENESS, COMPASSION, PEACE.

The ego does not like to hear this, becaue if it cannot be reactive and righteous anymore,it will loose strength.

When you receive whoever comes into the space as a Nobel guest, when you allow each person to be as they are, they begin to change.

~ Eckhart Tolle
"Stillness Speaks"

youtube.com/watch

Fantastic news! A federal court in California has just imposed
the strongest-ever protections for whales against an onslaught
of military sonar.

The new controls are the result of an NRDC lawsuit that demanded
the Navy rein in its deadly sonar before beginning two years of
maneuvers near the Channel Islands -- one of the world's most
sensitive environments and home to five endangered species of
whales.

The Navy itself estimates that the booming sonar would harass or
harm marine mammals some 170,000 times -- and cause permanent
injury in more than 400 cases.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said the Navy's
existing plan for protecting marine mammals was "grossly
inadequate." And she has ordered the Navy to put a series of
precautionary measures in place -- many of them recommended by
NRDC -- that will go a long way toward protecting whales from
needless injury and death.

For starters, the Navy will not be permitted to use its
dangerous mid-frequency sonar within 12 miles of the California
coast, a zone that is heavily used by migrating whales and
dolphins. Sonar will also be banned in the Catalina Basin, an
underwater canyon with a high density of whales.

The Navy will also have to monitor for marine mammals -- from
the ship and from the air -- both before and during its sonar
exercises. If any marine mammals are spotted within 2200 yards
of the ship, the Navy will have to shut down its sonar.

These safeguards represent a giant leap forward in our
decade-long campaign to make sure that whales don't have to die
for the sake of military practice.

Needless to say, this fight is far from over and many more court
battles lay ahead.

But case by case, we are accomplishing what many thought
impossible: forcing the Navy to obey our environmental laws and
stop its needless killing of whales -- and all without
compromising military readiness.

Thank you for standing with NRDC in defense of the world's
marine mammals.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
NRDC