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So just how does one step out of oneself and into nature or another culture. The first step is an awareness of just how we have become embedded or indoctrinated into the culture we are in and what is it that keeps us stuck in our self and our culture. I believe this involves the mental dialogue that is constantly going on in our heads. We share mental self and cultural reinforcements continuously amongst those we associate with and over time this mental dialogue can become a impediment to observation and analysis of ourselves, nature and human culture with disastrous results. In order to step out of ourselves and our culture we must exert discipline over the mental dialogue of culturally reinforcing views and beliefs constantly streaming through our minds. This mental dialogue separates and distorts individual and collective perception of the outside world and keeps the individual or collective bottled up in their own mental imagery and in a state of conflict inwardly and outwardly. An extreme case of this are people with mental illness walking down the street constantly talking to themselves, oblivious to their surrounding. Zen Buddhism and teachers of meditation understand this problem with the ever present mental dialogue and work to develop techniques and disciplines to deal with the problem. The most useful techniques are techniques that focus the mind on one thing and hold it there. One learns through these techniques how to slow down and even drop the mental dialogue resulting in great clarity of perception, observation, and analysis of both oneself their surroundings. In other words one learns how to step out of themselves and their culture and into a greater reality unencumbered by preconceived notions and beliefs tied up in the streaming mental imagery. One really has to look no farther than ones own self to understand and resolve problems of the individual and of humanity. I strongly believe that as more people grasp what is right before them, closer than even their nose, then the futile chase for that ever elusive pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will stop. The problems of humanity will begin to abate as we learn to stop seeing our own reflections superimposed on our surroundings both natural and cultural. This would be a great step in our human evolution and great boon to both our political and exopolitical understanding. Do We Inhabit A Simulation The article by this NY Times reporter http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html stimulated my thinking further on this subject of our living in a artificial virtual reality or simulation. The author makes a good case that within fifty years or more, simulations could become indistinguishable from reality if one were embedded in one. Furthermore, he makes the case that there could be far more artificially created simulations than realities and so the chances that are we are living in a simulation today could be high. My thinking is that all the evidence accumulating with OBE's, NDE'S, reincarnation, UFO antics, etc. could be pointing to the fact that we could be living a simulation created by a very advanced super-civilization. For quite some time I have been thinking that reality seems to be a school that uses both carrot and stick to push individual consciousness and character forward. If we fault the 223