The Goal In Life Is To Unite The Conscious Mind With The Soul
A journal of one man's path toward spiritual enlightenment by physical
and mental purity, fasting, raw food diet, few words, natural living,
good works, right thinking, and exhilaration of the mind
by following the guidance of the Inner Voice.
Please,
see "Home" for more information.

PETE'S JOURNAL, OCTOBER 2005

Mt. Rainier

"We live in an age that is very fast-paced as
well as oftentimes chaotic and confusing. One
hundred years ago, the average person took in
about 600 impressions a day that caused
action or reaction in thought or deed. Today
the average person takes in about 60,000."

"...it is easy to see why stress
and anxiety levels are so high and physical
and emotional well-being are so low."

Frequently, I find myself at a loss what to write about in my journal. So I wait, and sooner or later my Inner Voice gives me a subject... sometimes I am told
in words what to write but more often the subject percolates up into my consciousness. And I think, "Yes, that's it, thank you Lord."

..."alternatives"...

Necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter...[2005]

Food:
Spiritual Lifestyle=Organic raw food, Vegetarian; Fruitarian. $200+/- Mo. person
Food purchased at Roadside stands, Growers Mkt., Farmers Mkt., Supermarket that sells organic, or home grown.

Establishment=Commercial meat, dairy, grain, oil, fruit and vegetables; Omnivorous. $200-400+/- Mo. Food purchased at Supermarkets, Specialty Shops, Farmers Mkt, Eating out=drinks and dinner.

Clothing: (including dry cleaning, laundry and repair)
Spiritual Lifestyle=Casual every day wear. $10 A month per person.
Mission Stores, SPCA, St. Vincent, Goodwill, Salvation Army, Wal Mart
About 5-10% of the clothes in these used stores are new. Shirts=10cents to $1, Pants $1, New shoes=$1, Winter coats=$5 and up. Hats, belts, caps=25-50 cents

Establishment=Casual wear, work clothes, dress clothing. $250-500+/- Mo.
Bon-Macy's, Specialty clothing shops and catalogs, L. L. Bean, Eddie Bauer

Shelter: (including utilities, rent or mortgage)
Spiritual Lifestyle=Small house or cabin in remote area. $250-500 month.

Establishment=Upscale house in suburbs or apartment in a city. $1000-3000 mo.

Transportation: (Gas and oil, tires, repair, insurance)
Spiritual Lifestyle=Walking, bicycle, small used car. $50-120 month.
One time cost of used economy car: $500-1000.

Establishment=New: SUV, or full size sedan, or sports car. $1200+/- month.
One time cost of new (every two or three years) SUV: $20,000-30,000; Sedan: $15,000-25,000; Sports car: $20,000 and up, and up.

Communication: (Including phone, cellphone, cable tv or satellite tv, computer server-DSL.)
Spiritual Lifestyle=Landline phone and computer server. $50+/- month.

Establishment=All of the above. $150-250+/- month.

Entertainment:
Spiritual Lifestyle=Reading, gardening, flowers, internet, playing or listening to music, free classes, hiking, camping out $30+/- month.

Establishment=Movies, out to dinner and drinks, night clubs, plays, concerts, dinner parties, golf, tennis, exercise club, vacations, cable tv, internet, social clubs, dating. $750 and up month.

Medical:
Spiritual Lifestyle=Raw food diet and fasting. 0% month

Establishment=Medical insurance, dental, eye care, prescriptions, over-counter drugs. $350 Month.

Total monthly expenses:
Spiritual Lifestyle $590 Minimum per month. This figure could be greatly reduced by working off the rent: $590-250=340; growing your own food: $340-200=140+/-

Establishment Lifestyle $3900 Minimum per month. This figure continues to rise as the "establishment" person makes more money... buys a bigger house,
larger boat-RV, more cars, cloths, jewelry... travels and takes longer vacations.

Alternative Attitudes

Establishment Lifestyle+/-

1.Goal in Life: Wealth-Fame-Possessions.
2.Works to Make Lots of
Money.
3.Upwardly Mobile.
4.Time: Past, Present, Future: Time is money.
5.God and Heaven: Without, somewhere in the sky.
6.Possessions: Never Enough.
7.The Bigger the Better.
8.Develops(destroys)our Natural Resources.
9.Little Concern for Environment.
10.Does the Socially Acceptable Thing.
11.Enjoys Shopping & Payed Entertainment
12.Eats Meat...
omnivore
13.Competitive and Assertive.
14.Conventional Thinking.
15.Always Buys New.
16.Concerned With Status.
17.Established Political Party

Give it all up
Except Necessities
And
Be free.
_____

Hello Seekers of a better world!
[Excellent article]

Let those of us who see a better world within our minds use our
vision to encourage and assist those who once had this vision but have either forgotten it or become discouraged. It really does depend on where you look and with what perception you use. If one uses the media of the world as the
filter, then discouragement and even hopelessness is all one can see.

The litany of grief is continually cranked out because the bad news sells and so that is what is featured. The most sensational and extreme deeds are spotlighted. The worse side of human nature is shown in full color. This of course unbeknownst to the media is serving the spiritual interest of souls.

The constant display of the worst even if manipulated to appear to be larger than it is in, disturbs, disgusts, and causes humans of good intent to grieve. They grieve for the past and they grieve for the future and so this offers many opportunities for action and reaction.

But it is because this present time is one of great contrasts, that choices are set before humanity. To long for and seek a better world is the result of seeing a world of such utter disregard for others. Unless you experience the gutter, you don’t see the contrast between what has been created on earth and what could be created. Many of the major cities of the planet are now reaching this point.

Technology no matter how widely touted will never bring happiness because there is a lacking within the spirit that causes decay and unhappiness. What benefit is it to have millions of acres of engineered food, when the result is not better health but damage of health.

What benefit for those who reap riches at the expense of the planet when their yachts will be sailing on dead seas. When concern for the health of others is primary, not the reaping of dollars then humanity will be on a road to self-healing.

Since those who are in charge of giving humanity the latest news are only interested in readers not in betterment of the human condition, the stories of human healing if mentioned at all, are given a back page status, while the front page is reserved for the latest scandal.

But in every corner of this planet are those who hold a better vision and it has nothing to do with any kind of order or government new or old. This is not spearheaded by the intellectual elite, or those who seek to rule over a future world. Such future world if created would be like ruling over a dust bowl or a empire of ashes for by listening to them the world has been brought to the brink of disaster by their creations.

Those who seek the spirit of universal love are not in any one group, religion or movement. Those who hold this vision of a better world know it will not come from any government nor will it come from any religion or race but it universally springs from the yearning for something better than is here now.

Neither is it in any one holy book but it all the holy books. It does not see any persons as better than another but all as equal and deserving of respect and consideration. Most of all it sees the Oneness of all creation.

Human rule givers, of course despise this idea, and are not about to give this new vision any promotion, as it goes against the nest they have feathered.

Since there is no temple or holy building, no rule givers or rule books, those with this vision cannot be labeled or controlled, because there is no leader to look up to, they can be found in every part of society. These are the Seekers. Humanity, which looks to the typical avenues of hope through the media will not find them listed in the local phone books.

Hope comes in the form of new scientific research, which is now threatening to topple old perceptions, heralding the wedding of Spirit and Science.

It comes in the form of the Spirit of God moving through the planetary populations releasing many from fear.

It comes from in the form of the freedom to dare to keep one’s vision when so many around you stick to the old peddlers of the status quo.

It comes from the display of real genuine concern for the physical and spiritual health of oneself and others as many are now learning to put financial considerations on the back burner while putting human life to the forefront.

This is the quiet revolution. This is the second coming of Christ in hearts, not the pious who sit in buildings arguing back and forth about words in a book.

This is the new day emerging. This is a vision of the earth within the universe as part of a larger family, and by this perception alone, is the One who set the planets as spheres seen.

Hope comes from those who do not fear the machinations or feeble plans of the elite. Absolute steadfast trust in the Divine plan of spiritual evolution provides a hope which cannot be doused with any dire predictions, neither does it need any props to shore it up as do the organized belief systems which are increasingly being seen as dry wells of hope. It is to these true seekers to whom visions and dreams are given that nothing seems impossible.

There is a light shining into every heart right now. Some will close it out, turning away and listening to those who are afraid but others will go towards the light with their hearts held in front of them. Let the world in general continue on their insane course of self-destruction.

Those who wait for their friend or neighbor or mother or father to seek are not feeling this light. To what extent this light will find receptive souls is not important for numbers do not validate or invalidate this view. The path of the seeker in this world has always been the less path taken.

To see the light and seek it, and encourage vision is the privilege of every seeker. To always point towards the light as the answer and to the Oneness and connection of all living things for it is the ignorance of this universal truth, or lack of love, which lies at the heart of spiritual darkness.

Tree Hugger
http://www.treehugger.com/

Unity Prayer
United in the transforming power of
God's love, we are renewed in mind,
body, and spirit as we pray for
one another and the world.

Wisdom

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop In: A Simple Living Primer

by John O. Andersen
November 26, 2001

UNCONVENTIONAL IDEAS
Counter-Mainstream Thoughts on Living
Meaningfully in the 21st Century
http://www.unconventionalideas.com/

Timothy Leary’s famous statement from the ‘60s: "turn on, tune in, drop out," had wide appeal for those seeking alternatives to the "Establishment." Today, a slogan such as turn off, tune out, drop in might have a similar appeal to those seeking to escape the rat race.

In my personal quest of that goal, turning off and tuning out have been important steps. It mostly has to do with breaking ranks and blazing my own trail. Each individual who does this will, by definition, have a different path. Nevertheless, I have a few ideas which have worked for me, and may work for others. Here they are:

Turn off the influence of mainstream opinions and advertising

A person can stay informed about what’s going on in the world, but largely independent of mainstream thinking. Personally, I get most of my news from non-commercial sources. I freely admit that no source is completely unbiased, but see the relentless bombardment of advertising in the mainstream media as a major distraction. Generally, I’m skeptical about opinions which imply that higher personal income, increased spending, and economic growth are always desirable.

Prolonged exposure to advertising is a minefield for people seeking a simpler life. It’s helpful to remember that those creating the ads are specialists in the craft of appealing to raw human instinct. Their work incorporates the fined-tuned results of research and experience over many decades. Hence, it’s very difficult for the unsuspecting layperson to not be misled by advertising.

For me, the best defense has been to just ignore it. Visiting the public library, surfing websites for news and information, and listening to shortwave radio--these are some of my primary links to the world of information. After all of that, I have little time left for advertising-saturated sources such as commercial television.

Turn off the pressure to keep score by the number of things you have

Forming lasting relationships, giving service to causes in which you deeply believe, or pursuing hobbies with passion--each could give you infinitely more satisfaction than spending your energy hoarding possessions. Clear out the clutter. Free yourself for the things you really love to do, or always wanted to try.

How much more leisure time would you have if you owned less stuff which require regular repairs, maintenance and upgrades? Consider Henry David Thoreau’s insight that the "cost of a thing is the amount of...life which is required to be exchanged for it immediately or in the long run." Do you really want to obligate your future leisure time with caring for a lot of possessions? Would you rather be doing something else? Is it possible that too much baggage could keep you from doing some of the things you've always wanted to do? Could selling off a bunch of unused stuff help to make those dreams a reality?

Tune out conventional thinking about careers

Having a career isn’t mandatory in order to be a success. Instead, you could opt for a "portfolio life" (see Charles Handy’s book, The Age of Unreason, 1989). That option recognizes the importance of adequate income, but deemphasizes things like social status, or personal identity tied to career choice. The idea is that income can flow from a variety of sources: part-time jobs, micro-businesses, seasonal careers, working on contract, investments, etc. Frequently, this lifestyle may require getting use to living on less than if you chose a conventional full-time career.

Nevertheless, people who try out the portfolio life, may find, in spite of having less money, they are happier than when they had a career which consumed the bulk of their time and energy. The portfolio life may offer many rich and diverse experiences. It can give people greater mobility and flexibility; the chance to get away when others are working; to enjoy uncrowded vacation spots in the off-season, or just avoid the everyday annoyance of long lines at the checkout stand. And, those who opt for this path, may also discover that clever frugality enables them to be portfolio people for life. In other words, "work for pay" becomes just one (not usually the most important) part of their identity, and so they work until they have enough for their needs. After that, they may spend their time as a volunteer, or pursuing a hobby, or both.

When I share these concepts with others, I often encounter resistance. "But I've got a mortgage, bills to pay, and have to put my kids through college," they say. My response is that if you had fewer "needs," you would have fewer bills to pay. Also, are those financial obligations ones you chose because you truly wanted them, or were they foisted upon you because you were too timid to make your own decisions, and felt more comfortable following the herd? I wonder how many people, if given the chance to start over again, would choose "mainstream success" over following their hearts. I have a hunch that many would go for the latter, notwithstanding the price they would have to pay for their non-traditional choices.

Tune out the idea that you need to spend money in order to have fun

See for yourself whether the old adage "the best things in life are free," really is true or not. Re-learn how to be imaginative and savor the simple pleasures: the scent and feel of plants, the wonder of watching the clouds, or the laugh of a small child. Be creative: next time show your love not with a purchase, but rather an afternoon in the park with that person, an unhurried friendly chat, or just writing a letter and sending it the old-fashioned way (in a stamped envelope). Consider the possibility that "fun" doesn't have to mean expensive, exciting, and action-packed entertainment. It can also mean engaging conversation, reading a book, or just telling jokes around the dinner table.

Drop In

Simple living for me is about clearing the clutter from my life so that I’m free to do the things I really want to do. This is what I call dropping in to real life. It’s about feeling whole and complete.

If this is what you seek, then learning to turn off and tune out is a worthy goal. You may find as I have, that you’ll soon be dropping in to all sorts of things you truly enjoy.

Some Unbeliefs*

I don't believe in power lunches
I don't believe in easy payment plans
I don't believe in academic jargon, or profspeak
I don't believe in mall shopping
I don't believe in perfect bridgework or smile makeovers
I don't believe in turf building
I don't believe in personal data assistants
I don't believe in rank, degrees, or titles
I don't believe in multiple choice tests
I don't believe in day-planners
I don't believe in supermoms
I don't believe in fast-food
I don't believe in motivational tapes
I don't believe in McMansions
I don't believe in the American Dream™

I just believe in me
Mandy** and me
And that's reality

The dream is over. What can I say?
The dream is over. Yesterday
I was the teamplayer, but now that's all gone
I was the MBA, but now, I am John
And so dear friends, you'll just have to carry on

The dream is over

*Adapted from the song "God" by John Lennon
**Mandy is my wife

"It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." --Thomas Paine

Henry Thoreau was the second son and third child of John Thoreau, whose father Jean had emigrated to America from the Isle of Jersey about the time of the American Revolution. The Thoreaus were of Huguenot stock, having been driven from France in the Protestant persecutions of the late seventeenth century, culminating in the revocation by Louis XIV of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Thoreau’s energetic mother, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, was of hardy Scotch lineage. Growing up in Concord, Massachusetts, home also to Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau attended Harvard College in nearby Cambridge from 1833 to 1837, graduating without conspicuous honors. The remainder of his life, except for visits to Canada, Maine, Minnesota, and nearby locales, he spent in his home community, whose flora and fauna he explored with a microscopic eye, recording his observations in a compendious journal which he faithfully kept from 1837 to 1860. Early interpreters of Thoreau understandably thought of him as a naturalist, since his observations of botanical phenomena were copious, and since he spent much of his time roaming the environs of Concord with spyglass, notebook, and pencil, recording the seasonal changes and life cycles of hundreds of plants.

But this interpretation of Thoreau is now universally adjudged to have been too narrow. The mistake lay in part in the failure to perceive in Thoreau his immersion in the world view of his “Transcendentalist”* friend and neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had propounded in his seminal book, Nature, the doctrine that every physical fact is but the facade of a spiritual truth. Emerson had counseled his generation to look through the transparency of nature in order to grasp the essential spirituality of the universe embosomed there; and Thoreau, of all Emerson’s followers, acted upon Emerson’s teachings most consistently. His most dramatic act was his retirement for two years, two months, and two days in 1845, 1846, and 1847 to Walden Pond, where he built a hut and studied nature to discover what she had to teach of moral and spiritual truth, the record of which he narrated in one of the most influential books of the nineteenth century—Walden—a triumph of refined, condensed, figurative prose that has provided the base for his present distinguished literary reputation.

Thoreau’s “Transcendental” premises led him to take a negative view of the dominant values of pre–Civil-War America. He wrote disparagingly of the destruction of the natural environment, of which human beings were an integral part; he deplored the implications of the rise of industrialism, with its emphasis upon materialistic values; he condemned the institution of black slavery, which debased people to the level of property, and as a corollary, the government which fostered and perpetuated the institution. Astute readers will also discern in Thoreau an awareness of the philosophical systems of his day, particularly of Kant and Coleridge; of the political and economic theories of the time; and even of many scientific assumptions that were to flower in the twentieth century. In short, Thoreau was not only a writer of great skill, but a man remarkably alert to the thinking of his age, who with remarkable prescience anticipated the crises in values of the centuries to follow him. He is a man of his time, it is true, but he is a man of our time also; and it is his perceptiveness of the human problems of all times that makes him such an engaging literary figure to the student today.

Though Thoreau considered his profession to be that of writer, he published only two books in his short lifetime of 44 years. The first, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) is the record of a two-week river excursion by rowboat taken by Thoreau and his brother, John, in the fall of 1839, condensed in the book to one week, and embellished by Thoreau’s reflections on a variety of subjects for the most part suggested to him by his wide reading in world literature. For many readers, the book is a collection of remarkable essays that lack cohesion and relatedness. It is, however, the second book, Walden (1854), that has elevated Thoreau into the first rank of American authors, and distinguished him throughout the world as an artist and philosopher of unique perceptiveness and vision. Walden breaks out of the structure of Emersonian Transcendentalism current at the time (though influenced by it), lifting the perceptive reader to a rare and exhilarating self-knowledge, as Thoreau’s romantic contemporary John Keats observed that poetry should do, “surprising by a fine excess.” That is to say, by employing many of the devices of poetry—allusion, figures of speech, imagery—and through a disciplined process of refinement and constriction of his text that took portions of the book through seven versions, Thoreau achieved a work of such subtlety and suggestiveness that repeated readings do not exhaust its meanings or dim the brilliance of its insights. Though only a few chapters can be excerpted for inclusion in an anthology such as this, students of American literature should secure a copy of the complete Walden, perennially available in multiple inexpensive editions, and enjoy the coherence and unity of the book as a whole.

Next to Walden, Thoreau is best known for his essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” often mistakenly called “Civil Disobedience,” which delineates his view in 1849 of the legitimate role of the private individual in a society whose government sanctions the immorality of black slavery. Published in a soon to be defunct journal, Aesthetic Papers, edited by Elizabeth Peabody, Thoreau’s contentions that private morality is a privileged sanctuary that governments have no right to intrude upon, and that such intrusion by government should be passively resisted by the individual, have elicited sympathetic responses in widely separated parts of the world, from Gandhi’s India to Martin Luther King’s American South. The immediate occasion that provoked the essay was Thoreau’s incarceration in the Concord jail for one night for his refusal to pay his poll tax to a government which supported black slavery, a story that he narrates in his essay; but what chiefly interests the modern reader is Thoreau’s perceptive definition of the line of demarcation between individual prerogative and the power of the state. In other words, Thoreau universalizes his experience, seeking not so much to justify his own actions and motives, as to illuminate the principles that provide the cutting edge that separates individual rights from state authority. Black slavery is to him a moral issue, and a government that condones it and even abets it has intruded into an area where governments, according to his principle, have no authority. Over against the American Constitution, which condones black slavery, Thoreau superimposes an eighteenth-century “higher law” resembling that of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, which accords supremacy to individual morality.

By 1859, Thoreau’s passive resistance to governmental intrusion upon individual rights, so eloquently argued in 1849, had changed to a methodology of militancy. When John Brown made his abortive assault upon the armory at Harpers Ferry, Thoreau applauded Brown’s resort to arms, tacitly admitting, it would seem, that so entrenched an evil as southern slavery was unresponsive to the passive resistance he had offered earlier as the appropriate weapon to use to confront state authority. Thoreau had met John Brown in Concord and had been impressed by his single-minded aversion to human slavery; and in “A Plea for Captain John Brown,” delivered by Thoreau as a lecture on several occasions before Brown was executed by hanging on December 2, 1859, Thoreau elevates Brown to the level of mythical hero, a “man of principle” who defied personal danger in order to shock both North and South into a recognition of the moral obliquy that black slavery typified. Thoreau had written earlier of his horror of the institution of slavery, notably in “Slavery in Massachusetts” (1854), which excoriated the Fugitive Slave Law that permitted southern sheriffs to pursue fleeing blacks across the boundaries of northern states; but Thoreau’s John Brown essays are perhaps the most polemic that he ever wrote, charged with outrage at the social institution that was soon to provoke the American Civil War. Ironically, Thoreau was not to live to see the day when the Emancipation Proclamation would extinguish the American government’s approval of a practice he found so heinous.

He died in 1862 of tuberculosis, the scourge of his family, at the age of 44. Within four years, four books of his writings were in print, edited and published by his sister, Sophia, his friend, Ellery Channing, and by Emerson. His remarkable journal was issued in 1906, adding to his growing fame. As he declined into death in the spring months of 1862, just as nature was renewing herself around him, he expressed no regrets for the life he had lived. To the deathbed question, “Have you made your peace with God?” he allegedly replied, “We never quarreled.” “Are you ready for the next world?” another acquaintance asked. Thoreau’s response was: “One world at a time.”

Wendell P. Glick
University of Minnesota

Ralph Waldo Emerson
"...every physical fact is but the facade of a spiritual truth."

Transcendentalism

*In his essay "The Transcendentalist," Emerson explained transcendentalism is "Idealism as it appears in 1842" and linked it with "the very oldest thoughts" such as Buddhism. Transcendentalism in the 19th Century was more than a trend in American literature. It was a philosophical movement, but it owed its development as much to democracy as to European philosophers. Transcendentalism centered on the divinity of each individual; but this divinity could be self-discovered only if the person had the independence of mind to do so. American thought lent itself to this concept of independence.

The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications to the state of man...

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds... A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

Yes, men, but women too.

Walden

The Language of Walden

"Where I Lived and What I Lived For" is a particularly good example of Thoreau's addiction to puns, or words which sound alike but have different meanings. It takes a very alert reader to pick up most of them, because few of us are as sensitized to language as he was. (His ability to read Greek, Latin, and old English taught him much about the primitive sources of words, and those early meanings which they retain to some degree). Sometimes these puns are humorous, jokes for those who are "in the know." More often they are the sources of serious metaphors for this transcendentalist writer who believed that abstract, spiritual reality is thoroughly embedded in physical reality, rightly seen. Virtually every account he gives of his actual experiences can also be interpreted metaphorically, as he uses the concrete world to suggest unsayable truths.

Thoreau was also very fond of paradoxes, or statements which seem to be logically contradictory but do present a truth which reconciles the contradiction. One example in "Economy" is his conclusion that the savage may actually be the truly civilized man. Paradoxes like this often depend on his redefinition of a key term. Such redefining is most clearly seen in sentences like "To be awake is to be alive." From: American Transcendental Website.

To overcome the difficulties of reading and understanding, Walden, the American Transcendental Web has produced the "Walden Study Text" with drop down "Study Notes" with definitions and explanations for a better understanding of Thoreau's words. This is a wonderful innovation for first time readers, or those with little knowledge of the period in which Thoreau lived. "The book expresses a fervent passion for living life simply, immediately, and free of restricting conventions and habits."

Thoreau quotes:

What are Life's Necessities? [Food, Shelter, Clothing, Fuel.]

Economy:

For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.

I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer's day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit... [The wages for common day-labor from sunup to sundown in the early 1800's was about a dollar a day.]

Food:

My food was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt; and my drink, water.

I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips.

If one lives simply and raises no more than one eats one need not work very hard, nor cultivate very much ground; one has great independence and need keep no schedule.

One may use as simple a diet as the animals and still retain health and strength.

I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard.

Clothing:

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.

Shelter:

Thoreau's 10X15' Cabin

Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary.

The cost of a thing is the amount of life that must be exchanged for it.
Half a working life is commonly required before a person owns his shelter outright...

The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was twenty-eight dollars and twelve cents.

My furniture, part of which I made myself, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp.

Transportation:

I have learned that the swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot.

Communication:

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.

Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?"

What's the last really vital news we got from a newspaper? To a philosopher all "news" so-called, is gossip.

A telegraph has been stretched from Maine to Texas -- unfortunately the natives of each place have nothing important to communicate to one another.

Entertainment:

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness...

I think that I love society as much as most... I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute...

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta...

Here is a great site! The major writings of 46 philosophers from Plato c355BC, to Jean-Paul Sarte 1945. A condensed version of Thoreau's, Walden, 107,263 into 9800 words... can be read in 33 minutes.

Glyn Hughes'
Squashed Philosophers
The books which defined the way The West thinks now.
In their own words, condensed and abridged to keep the substance,
the style and the quotes, but ditching all that irritating verbiage.

http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/

Walden... THE VERY SQUASHED VERSION
When I wrote the following pages I lived alone in the woods, a mile from my neighbours, in a house I had built for myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labour of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. Men labour under a mistake. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed laying up treasure which moth and rust will corrupt.Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply, nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles. The exact cost of my house, was just over twenty-eight dollars. I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. I found myself suddenly neighbour to the birds and animals. Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. Time is but the stream I go fishing in. Sometimes in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon. I realize what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. I found, by measurement, that Walden Pond was not bottomless. I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I learned this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. In proportion as he simplifies his life the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor will poverty be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Favorite Thoreau quotes of the webmaster of http://www.transcendentalists.com/

A Brief but Thoreau Outline
The Polemical [argumentative] First Portion of Walden
The Autodidact's [A self-taught person]Journal
by Tom Price
http://www.monad.com/sdg/Journal/index.html

Thoreau coined the phrases: "mutual admiration society." "civil disobedience,"
"passive resistance."

You might say that Thoreau, was the the father of alternative thinking in America. Pete