The Nonduality Highlights, #5100

The Nonduality Highlights • http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights/

This marks the 100th issue since our last milestone issue of #5000. Happy Thanksgiving and Chanukah greetings to our US and Jewish readers. I hope that none of you were affected by the various shootings, stabbings and assaults that occurred throughout the US at Black Friday retail events.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=black+friday+violence+2013

This 1985 performance by Whoopi Goldberg might have been one of the first "one-woman shows" to have been performed on one of Broadway's main stages. In this production, she portrays several different characters: a drug dealer named Fontaine who has her world view rocked by a visit to the Anne Frank Museum; an apparently vapid Valley Girl whose waters run deeper than they first appear; a woman with a severe physical disability who finds love and a sexual partner; and a young black girl with a painful yearning to look like a Caucasian girl with long, straight blonde hair.

By inviting us into the souls and minds of these disparate characters, we learn of a commonality to our human experience that we might not have previously acknowledged. It's fun to imagine experiencing this show nearly 30 years ago, too.

I've also always been totally tickled by Goldberg's stage name. Born Caryn Johnson, she apparently she chose the name "Whoopi Goldberg" because she was told that "Johnson" wasn't a Jewish-enough name for show business.

Fair warning: this video does contain a fair bit of swearing and other explicit language. It's what the kids would call NSFW (Not Safe For Work):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V12jLuWPLLI

On a slightly related note, a Florida school made the news this week when it threatened a 12-year-old African-American girl with expulsion if she didn't tame her natural Afro. An initial read of the story reveals that the school is citing concerns about the transmission of lice, although sadly, I strongly suspect the decision has some sort of racist underpinning.

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/change-natural-hairstyle-or-get-expelled--school-tells-12-year-old-girl-213351760.html

Several of my artistic friends and I enjoyed this comic strip from Doodle Alley about self-judgment, discernment, taste, and mastery in the context of practicing visual arts:

http://doodlealley.com/2012/10/10/be-friends-with-failure/

This was one of the biggest take-home messages for me: