My Take on Breaking Amish - Fake or Real?

Recently, I came across a photo and article of Kate (one of the "stars" of the Breaking Amish show) posing for Maxim's, and I heard myself thinking that it looks like someone at Maxim's said "There's a buck to be made here." Reading some of the comments on that article lead me to do some online searching about Breaking Amish. Seems people are seriously wondering about the reality of this reality show. Last night, I actually broke down and spent a "hefty" $1.99 to see the first episode of Season 1 on you tube. After watching the first episode and just to make sure, I also bought the second episode.

So far, I have to say that the show is both fake and real. More fake than real, I believe. I don't doubt that there were heart-wrenching scenes upon departure of the individual from their family, but I doubt that the scenes in the show are the real scenes but instead are loose re-enactments, if that.

First, a few questions. How realistic does a reality show actually have to be? And, who determines this? Much about the Amish, Mennonites, and plain people remains cloaked in mystery to many people. People are interested in the mysterious. It's easy to see how a reality show such as this came about. Americans love to be entertained. Personally, I thought the title Breaking Amish following Breaking Bad was a bit cheesy when I first heard of it, but that's really not that important.

So here goes...my first thoughts in watching the first episode were "who is taking these photos?" Most Amish aren't permitted to have themselves photographed, much less filmed.  To me, the interviews of the individual stories of "getting away dreams" are staged and filmed way after the fact. Same goes for the "saying goodbye to family" scenes. No one would have been there to film any of that in the original events. So, there's that.

The second thing that had me curious was how did these five individuals end up meeting? Two came from the same community in Punxatawney so it's pretty safe to assume they knew each other beforehand. But who coordinated the New York hotel meeting? Did some "mysterious force" just tell all five simultaneously to pack it up and leave for that specific hotel in New York at the same time? Seriously.

Rebecca seems pretty sure of herself in picking up the phone and calling the hotel to request another bed to deal with the sleeping situation. "So not happening" is what she said about sleeping with another girl. I don't believe that would have been original for someone who is just fresh off an Amish farm. The real deal in her situation would never even have thought to call and request another bed. Most Amish probably don't even know what a lesbian is.

The boys talking about pretty girls, and one saying he's seeing a lot of "skanks" in New York - not real, in my opinion. Talking about skanks is an expression of the more experienced, and not that of a hay seed who just walked away from an Amish farm and shoveling manure, imo.

Then there is the matter of back stabbing almost immediately. If you had five Amish converging in a big city like that for the first time I believe there would have been much more of a "the five of us surviving against the world" thing going on. But, I could be mistaken.

As with the Amish, there is also a lot of confusion about the Mennonites. Sabrina speaks about the Mennonites as having cars and radios, etc. That is true for the Mennonites she grew up with. They are an off-shoot of the Old Order Mennonites.  The Old Order Mennonites do not own cars, radios, TV and definitely not upright pianos, as was seen in Sabrina's home.  How do I know this? Because I was born into and grew up in an Old Order horse and buggy Mennonite family and community.

I made my exit years ago. My ears are always perked for the stories of other "plain people" who also yearned for the freedom to experience a different life. In their shoes, at that age, I might have sold out to the alluring glitter of fame, too. Who knows? It wasn't what I was after though. I was more interested in the freedom to swap out false religious ideas in pursuit of genuine spiritual teachings. The freedom to dress in clothes that are seasonally comfortable, own and drive a car, listen to classical music, etc. - all that's very nice too.

It's doubtful that I'll watch the rest of the first season, but I do have an idea for a new reality show...."Breaking Fake". ;-)

Here's a quote from A Course in Miracles that seems apropos right now..."Do you want freedom of the body or of the mind? For both you cannot have. Which do you value? Which is your goal? For one you see as means; the other, end. And one must serve the other and lead to its predominance, increasing its importance by diminishing its own. Means serve the end, and as the end is reached the value of the means decreases, eclipsed entirely when they are recognized as functionless. No one but yearns for freedom and tries to find it. Yet he will seek for it where he believes it is and can be found. He will believe it possible of mind or body, and he will make it serve his choice as a means to find it. Where freedom of body has been chosen, the mind is used as means whose value lies in its ability to contrive ways to achieve the body's freedom....
Chapter 22, section VI. The Light of the Holy Relationship, paragraph 1 and part of 2.

beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing

"Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

~mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century

There are No Small Upsets

"There are no small upsets. They are all equally disturbing
to my peace of mind." (W-5:4:3-4)

Visit our websites at ACIM.org and at ACIM-Archives.org To see our selection of ACIM books and related products, visit our ACIM Online Store Join the Foundation's General Mailing List

This work may be shared in accordance with this Creative Commons License (Click for details).

©2013 Foundation for Inner Peace | PO Box 598 | Mill Valley, CA | 94942-0598

NASA and the Benefits of Sun Gazing

What is Sun Gazing?

Sun gazing (also known as sun-eating) is a strict practice of gradually introducing sunlight into your eyes at the lowest ultraviolet-index times of day – sunrise and sunset.  Those who teach the practice say there are several rules to the practice.  First, it must be done within the hour after sunrise or before sunset to avoid damaging the eyes. It is important to only look at the sun when it is orange or red according to the ancients. Looking at the sun when it is yellow or white, or uncomfortable in any way is not recommended.

Second, you must be barefoot, in contact with the actual earth – sand, dirt or mud; and finally, you must begin with only 10 seconds the first day, increasing by 10 second intervals each day you practice.  Following these rules make the practice safe, says sources. For the entire blog post see:

nasa-confirms-super-human-abilities-gained-through-sungazing 

 ~~~

I was one of those very active little kids that doesn't eat much. My grandmother, who meant well enough - or that's how I choose to spin it - urged me to eat. She would say "You can't live on wind puddings and walk arounds! Eat!" She didn't "know" my source of "fuel". I mean, I didn't either at the time. I remember when going to grade school and using the swings at recess, facing the sun I would go as high as I could, close my eyes and see all the colors of the rainbow vividly. I thought that everybody could see them. I told my friend Rachel. She tried, and said she didn't see them.

~~~
P.S. ..apparently the NASA article authenticity is debatable. It just makes sense to me that there are (admittedly just a few) people who have the ability to process the suns rays directly, as opposed to the majority of us having learned to get it indirectly through food. Btw, fossil fuels are ancient sunlight. Using solar bypasses years and years of time. Maybe people can regain the ability to bypass time too.  

Discover the Gift

Live A HEADLESS Life.

"MOVE AS A TOTAL BEING AND ACCEPT THINGS. LIVE A HEADLESS LIFE."

~ Osho 

"You carry your wound. With the ego, your whole being is a wound.  And you carry it around.  Nobody is interested in hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you; everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound. Who has got the energy? But still it happens, because you are so ready to be wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.

You cannot touch a man of Tao. Why? ... because there is no one to be touched. There is no wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word whole is beautiful. The word heal comes from the whole, and the word holy also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed, holy.

Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal; with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move as a total being, and accept things.

Just for twenty-four hours, try it - total acceptance, whatsoever happens. Someone insults you, accept it; don't react, and see what happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you that you have not felt before. "

~Osho

Oriental Heron Zafu Cover Thrift Store Treasure

This morning I had a number of stops scheduled for my shopping itinerary. 

World's Attic Thrift Store is where I was going hunting for black and gold buttons 

for a set of Bridesmaid Zipper Purses that are partially made - just waiting for the perfect buttons. 

With only two items on my list for the thrift store I fully intended to "hit and run". 

(har har! where have we heard that before?)

 I did find really great buttons for the purses. And more!

Three, metal "My Album" Button Covers

These are just too darling for words! They measure 7/8" W. x 1" H. each.

I don't know yet what I am going to do with them, but they were coming home with me. For sure!

And, THEN there is....

Oriental Zafu Slipcover

Heron Zafu

 Made with stretchy fabric and a zippered back, it fits one of my zafus perfectly.

I absolutely love the tucked perimeter, times two!

Dyeing fabric with Sharpies and alcohol filmed at the Houston Quilt Mark...

I do believe a portal just opened up into a whole 'nother world!

 I discovered the youtube presentation (below) after I made this zafu...

Canvas Zafu with Sharpie Pen Artwork

From Yard Sale Placemat to Bridesmaid Purses

A few Saturdays ago the church across the street was having a community yard sale. I spotted two placemats that interested me - a lot. I didn't know why, but sometimes you just have to go with it. I'm sure many of you  know what is meant by that. Anyway, from this...

Placemat and Supplies

 

 

to this...

Bridesmaid Zipper Purse in Gold, and Chevron Trim

 

 

using...

Assorted Yellow Yo Yo's

Chevron twill tape trim from Fabric.com

Yo Yo's from etsy store krzyqltr

Vintage Coat of Arms button - my button box

Close - up of Yo Yo,  Chevron Trim and Button

Interior and Gold Ribbon Zipper Pull

Dreams within Dreams

by Sarah Nolt (Notes) on Friday, May 24, 2013 at 10:58am

~ Leo Tolstoy's Letters
"...now our whole life, from birth to death, with all its dreams, is it not in its turn also a dream, which we take as the real life, the reality of which we do not doubt only because we do not know the more real life?"

Forgiveness 24/7

"Whatever you're upset about happened, and is over ...

so get over it already " ~ David Hawkins

Your (and my) entire past is over.

Breathe in. The past can touch us not. (acim)

Breathe out. It's always NOW when we practice surrendering

everything that just happened. Forgiveness 24/7.

The Wrong Key

The Wrong Key

by Sarah Nolt (Notes) on Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 10:19am

The words "Love is the Key that Opens Heaven's Door" have been going through my mind this morning....parts of a song I learned as a younger person. I have occasionally thought about how this is the wrong key. Now, I'm going to verbalize it. Not that there is anything actually wrong with Love as a Key. It's just that that is not the key. Forgiveness is the Key. Heaven IS Love, or the state of Love, our original pre-body state as Spirit. 

~~~

Forgiving little grievances, imagined or otherwise, is nice, but it's not the Master Key. The kind of Forgiveness that is needed is the kind that sees that all one's thinking and seeing as an individual had been based on erroneous thinking and seeing. Individuality is based on...well, based on being an individual - separate and apart somehow from other individuals... uniquely better than, or uniquely worse than even. 
~~~

Conversion to a major (or minor) religion is not a key, either. It can be helpful. Mostly, though it ends up being just  more mental constructs and edifices. Ultimately, at some point those walls will have to come down too. 
~~~

Sepia Dream

Early this morning I had a dream that woke me up. First of all, in real life, I cannot swim - not even float. Last time I checked anyway! In the dream, I was crossing a river by walking on a long bridge that it seemed I crossed often. I was very familiar with it. There were no guide rails at the sides. It seemed like "they" had been re-doing the bridge, and the only way I could see where I was going was a straight thin line in the middle of the road. It was dusk, with everything in sepia colors. The farther I walked the less clearly I could see the line. It became snowy. The road, the river, the scenery all blended more or less into one seamless experience. The line disappeared. The bridge was now at the level of the river. Then I began to see patches in the snow. I could still faintly see the bank on the other side. Too late, I realized what the patches were. Holes. I stepped into a hole and sank down beneath the surface. I thought, OK...so this is where I finally have my drowning experience. I've had a lifelong fear of drowning in water. There was some kind of purple plaid wool encapsulation surrounding me, and much to my surprise I found I could actually breathe. My lungs were not filling up with water.  Still not quite trusting in the fact that I could breathe there I felt if I stayed still and just let myself be there I wouldn't use up the oxygen in my lungs or body. Then I woke up, and it was 5:00 A.M.
~~~
Despite my lifelong fear of some day drowning this dream was not frightening.
~~~
Drowning in Love is not to be feared.
~~~
The Bridge has been redone recently. It's easier now to crossover.

~~~

Yellow Rose from Circe's Garden

Happy is the New Wealthy

"Learn to like what doesn’t cost much. Learn to like reading, conversation, music. Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking. Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills. Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different…different from you. Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done. Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs and cats. Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things. Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day. Most of all, learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others." 

~ Lowell C. Bennion

~~~

Basket of Greens gratis Circe's Backyard  Garden

 

 

(Lettuce, Carrot Tops and Onion Tops)

Surface Tension and Humor

Last night, as I was doing a sink full of dishes by hand (yes, manually in this digital age - somehow, I  like it - most of the time) and scrubbing a kitty food plate I was remembering how my most recent ex - boyfriend told me the reason dish soap works for cleaning dishes, etc. is because it breaks the surface tension of the dirt. Once broken, it can be removed easily. Actually, I still don't get the chemistry aspect of why dish soap breaks the surface tension of dried-up food on a plate and not the plate too?  But, hey! I missed out on high school, and didn't get to chemistry on the way to acquiring a GED. I get that it works because I've seen it in action...a lot. Back to last night, and my dishwashing musings...it occurred to me that surface tension is what holds this world together. That thought lead to another thought. When my siblings and I were little kids we fought like many kids do. If it got out of hand, in my experience, I would find my dad and report to him that my brother was fighting me.  What I wanted was for him to make my brother stop fighting. His answer though invaluable always angered me then. He would invariably say to me, "It takes two to fight, but only one to stop fighting. You can stop the fighting any time you want to. Just walk away."

~~~

Walk away, and it's over. Break the surface tension.

~~~

Sometimes people complain that "Peace is boring. Who wants it?" Well, that's just it. Who does want it? Certainly not the highly individualized sense of self - for it needs tension for its very existence. Push/pull.

~~~

Humor goes a very, very long way in breaking surface tension. It can...when we choose to laugh instead of taking everything so effin' seriously.

~~~

Rose Colored Glasses vs Rose Colored Vision

~~~

"Looking through rose colored glasses has been given a bad rap, 

and rightly so. 

However, there is another kind of Rose-Colored Vision...

the kind that practices Quantum Forgiveness - 

on purpose."

~~~ 

Louis Philippe Rose

~~~

Mooji on Presence vs persons

~~~

"I never get tired of Presence, but persons become a strain."

~ Mooji

8th of April, 2013
www.mooji.org

~~~

I have to admit "persons" DO become a strain. I become a strain to myself!

Easy does it! 

~~~ 

Need i say less?

Need i say less?

You are the Sky...

"You are the Sky. Everything else is just the weather."

...  Pema Chodron  ...

Siesta Key Beach - Mar. 31, 2013

Enough with the Personal Civil War

Deepak Jain

Much energy is wasted in fighting with oneself; in rejecting, in condemning. Much energy is wasted. If you start accepting yourself, you become a reservoir of energy because then the conflict ceases; then there is no civil war; then you are one piece. Much energy is preserved, and that overflowing energy is creativity.
A person who is in conflict with himself can never be creative. He is destructive, he is destroying himself, and through himself he will destroy others also. All his relationships will be poisoned. The most basic and the most fundamental commandment is to love oneself. I don’t say only accept, because that word is not enough — you can accept and you may not love. You may accept, because what can be done? — you are in a deep helplessness, but that is not acceptance.
Unless you accept yourself as a blessing, unless you accept and welcome yourself, unless you accept yourself in deep gratitude, unless you love yourself, you will never become an overflowing energy. Then the energy can flow in song, in dance, in painting. A thousand and one ways of creativity can be found; or it can simply flow in deep silence. And whomsoever comes in contact with that deep silence will be transformed and will hear for the first time the music which is celestial. So not only accept, but accept with deep gratitude.

Be thankful that God has made you you, and not anybody else. Everybody has a unique function to fulfill, that’s why he exists. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. A Judas is as much needed as a Jesus. Without Judas, Jesus will be poorer; something will be missing in the story. So Jesus has to be thankful to Judas also. Not only accept yourself, but accept everybody else as he is. God knows better.

 

...~!~ Osho ~!~...

 

 

 

How my Creativity "Rolls"!

Lavender Corduroy Zafu