I’ll be sharing the booklist in my occasional newsletter, focusing on one book each time. Be sure to sign up. There is always something for everyone in it. 

There is an enormous amount of research about how sounds and language affect us. You can learn to use language and sound to manipulate nearly every aspect of your life. Commanding and wielding sound is our birthright. Appreciate this innate power. You will also start to notice how the world at large, especially the media uses language and sounds to manipulate our thoughts and behavior. Once you know what to look for you will have the power to denounce another’s will upon you. 

I will share the first book on the list here. We always start with this book because it offers a very potent way to change your life through language. If there was just one book to study and master, this would be it. 

Conscious Language, by Robert Tennyson Stevens, gives you a step by step guide to reforming how you speak, in turn reforming how you think, in turn reforming your life. There is some religious language in it, so if this offends you, please skip this one. However, if you can tolerate or even love this aspect of the book you will be rewarded with a life changing skill.

Conscious Language

Please feel free to share any insight you receive, I’d love to hear it. Blessings , Zoe 

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Btw – the book is very challenging to read, you must learn to accept another language into your psyche, a language completely made up by the author, he explains it as the story goes, but it is a sweet unfolding, not always direct definitions. The whole story, everything about it, pushes you to THINK, examine, analyze and surrender into a story being given to you. And when you come out on the other side of this book you feel like you accomplished something, and you did – you learned what it means to be human.

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Nowadays we can still communicate with our representatives. Most do it through email, and I wonder how many actually get read, and how many can easily be deleted and lost in cyberspace. Can we go back to old fashioned letter writing? Is this an effective way to get through to our government? Yes, I believe that writing letters can save the world. However, it must be done en mass. I’m hoping to inspire whoever reads this to take a few minutes of your time weekly or even daily to write and send letters asking for what you want.

Activism must take precedence right now, especially if you feel a daily struggle to survive. The struggle grows amongst the people of the United States. But don’t just write your representatives, write your hospital’s administration, the administration of your children’s school, write doctors and teachers, and grocery stores. Write corporations and banks. Speak up about the systems of inequity, inefficiency, inferiority, and inhumanity. Let’s upgrade America!  National Priorities can help you find the correct person and address to send your letters.  3, 2, 1, GO.  – Zoe 

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In general I would say that the American people are unaware of their rights. I’m posting this so that you can refresh yourself and feel confident when discussing personal and national issues. Of course each state has its own laws, so look into those as well. Familiarize yourself with our Constitution, and all of its amendments. 

Did you know that in 1948 the United Nations wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These are meant to protect all of the people on Earth. Every time I read them, I wonder how many other people know that they exist, have read them and would like all of Earth’s people to live by these laws.

Teachers and parents, let’s make sure our children know their rights.  Thank you – Zoe

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From Muhammad Yunus:

“We can approach poverty in many different ways. It can mean lack of opportunities, lack of income, lack of a future, lack of a dream for a future. This is one way to look at it. Another way poverty can be considered is as a denial of all human rights, in that a poor person lacks access to what we see as human rights: right to food, shelter, and so on. Poverty can be looked at as a situation where you leave creative human beings in a total waste, in the sense that they are not being useful to society or themselves. Poverty can be looked at as a blockage of the energy that all these people have to contribute to society. This is related to a belief that I have that all human beings have unlimited potential, unlimited capacity, unlimited creative energy. Simply, some have the opportunity to unleash that potential, be it a fraction or all of it, and others are denied the chance to even explore these capacities that exist within them. The other thing I should mention is that poverty is not created by poor people. Poverty is not in a person; it is something that is imposed on the person.  In the sense that is is not in the person, but is imposed by external forces, which I see as the system as it prevails. The system creates poverty.

Environment, food security, capital markets – these are not separate issues. These are manifestations of the basic problem in the structure we have built. These are not separate issues. Only we are looking through our own glasses, and each one of us sees only what their glasses allow them to see. So they see only food or only the environment. And this is the fundamental flaw in the way we have conceptualized the world itself. Moreover the basic flaw I see in the whole structure is misinterpretation of the human being. We now have only one kind of human being: a human being who is dedicated to making money. Se we create a structure where money is central. We are all chasing money because in this world business means making money, maximizing profit, accumulating value. 

I understand a system where money is a means, but I don’t understand why money-making should be an end. Money-making as an end is unacceptable. The real question of ends, of “Why am I here on this planet?” The system should be consistent with our purpose. I’m not saying the purpose is defined by somebody else. You define your own purpose. But when you leave, what is it that you want to see that you have achieved? Money cannot be the purpose. It cannot be the only thing we achieve.” 

I think human beings are selfish. There is no doubt about it. And this came out of self-protection. This was the origin of selfishness. I want to protect myself, my family, and so on. But it has been overblown in economic interpretation. There is a fundamental difference between selfishness, in the sense of not caring if you damage others, and selfishness as self-protection. Moreover all human beings are equally endowed with something called selflessness. And that was completely forgotten. When I raised this question about selflessness, economists answer, “Well, why don’t you step outside of the economic world? Be a philanthropist. Work in charity. Give away your money.” And I say that I’m not talking about giving away my money, but about selflessness in the economic world. How can we create a business on the basis of selflessness? What would that look like? How might I create a business to solve certain problems rather than simply to create financial benefit for myself?

So what’s the difference between the business way and the charity way? In the charity way, when I give money away, it goes out and never comes back. It has a very limited application. But what if, somehow, I can transform this project into a business, and so keep the charity objective but do it in a business way? So I send the money, it does its work, and then it comes back, and then I can achieve much more with that money. I can make changes, make it more efficient, bring in technology. I have created many such companies. I call these social businesses. 

I also raise the question of why there should be unemployment. What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with human beings that make them unemployed? Young people who have done everything possible, are energetic, creative, educated, but are not employed – Is is their fault or the fault of the system? I say it’s the fault of the system. If the system cannot take care of the able-bodied human beings that belong to it, throw out the system because it doesn’t work. We have to design a new system where the word unemployment will be totally unknown. So you need to redesign. First, you need to reinterpret the human being as both a selfish and selfless being. Second, recognize that selflessness can also be expressed though business. Problems are caused by selfishness, but we have no methodology to solve them other than giving charity. I don’t want to leave this to government.. Governments don’t have the power to do all this because the way we create problems – the speed and the energy with which we create them – governments cannot match that energy and those resources to solve the problems. So problems accumulate. Problems become massive. 

Whenever I see a problem, my mind starts working. I ask myself, “Why don’t I design a business to address this problem?” As a result I have created more than fifty companies. And each time it’s been all about addressing a problem.”

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