Authorities in China’s Hubei province say the Three Gorges Dam is facing the most severe floods since it was built.
By August 20, the Three Gorges Dam in central China’s Hubei Province is expected to see the most severe round of floods since it was completed in 2003, Chinese authorities said.
According to a forecast by the Changjiang Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, the inbound flow of water is expected to reach more than 74 000 cubic meters per second after continuous heavy rain battered the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.
The Three Gorges dam on August 13, 2020. Credit: Copernicus EU/Sentinel-2, Antonio Vecoli
The Yangtze River, China’s longest waterway, recorded the fifth flood of the year in its upper reaches on Monday, August 17, Xinhua reports.
In addition, Chongqing municipality, which is located along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, upgraded its flood-control response to Level I on Tuesday, the highest rung in the four-tier emergency response system for floods.
The upcoming flood is expected to hit the city proper of Chongqing through Thursday, according to the municipal water resources authorities.
The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, in Yiling District, Yichang, Hubei province, China.
It’s the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity (22 500 MW) since 2012.
In 2018, the dam generated 101.6 terawatt-hours (TWh), breaking its previous record, but was still slightly lower than the Itaipú Dam, which had set the world record in 2016 after producing 103.1 TWh.
Featured image: The Three Gorges dam on August 13, 2020, as seen by Copernicus EU/Sentinel-2 Satellite. Credit: Antonio Vecoli
Derivative of ‘Love Love’ by Sumwhere7, CCBYSA4.0 | ‘CERO Fear’ by Cero, PD0
There has never been a time of greater potential for the liberation of the human spirit than the time we live in today, and never a moment when the human spirit has stood in greater jeopardy. Huge forces of awakening are at work amongst us, but huge forces also operate to counteract that process and plunge us back into millennial sleep.
Big government, big business, the big media and the big, hierarchical religions all thrive and prosper by multiplying and feeding off our fear. Every thought we have that causes us to feel fear strengthens these forces while shutting us down and limiting our potential.
On the other hand, every thought that leads us to manifest love awakens us and opens the way to renewed vistas of endless possibility.
The choice is ours. It always has been. In this time of awakening it is only fear – engineered, implanted, deliberately contrived fear – that prevents us from making the right choices and that misleads us again and again into the paths of hatred, greed and suspicion that destroy the human spirit.
The enormous long lines and figures drawn on the Nazca Plateau represent a map of Earth. In a similar way that a flat Mercator map represents the spherical Earth, the two- dimensional lines of the Nazca map represent three-dimensional circles called great circles. These circles can be imagined as invisible rings that encircle the Earth. Most of the straight lines at Nazca radiate from 5 locations on the plateau. The figures of animals and other shapes, called geoglyphs, are like place names on modern maps indicating specific regions of the Earth. Using the figures one can determine the 5 locations on Earth that are represented by the 5 locations on the plateau, and convert the long straight lines of the map into great circles around the Earth.
Once the lines are converted into great circles, a pattern emerges. Under the path of these great circles—in “alignment” with them—are the Earth’s major volcanoes, impact craters and ancient monuments. Submerged ancient structures may also form part of the pattern, as most that have been found, although few in number, seem to be beneath the paths of the great circles of the Nazca map.
Part II: The Random Simulation Experiment – A Statistical Analysis of The Nazca Great Circle Map-Plateau. Presents the proof of the hypothesis using the Random Simulation Experiment. The Random Simulation is a computer program which tests the great circles of the map for alignment with the major volcanoes, impact craters and ancient monuments of Earth by comparison with random great circles.
Part III: The Geoglyphic Code. Presents the visual evidence that the Nazca geoglyphs represent topographic and bathymetric contours of certain parts of Earth’s surface, similar to the contour drawing style of common maps.
You can view the entire construct on our Virtual Nazca Earth Map, which uses Google Maps to graphically present the lines as Great Circles. It also shows all the locations that we tested in our simulation experiment.
Below is a short video where we visually explain the key concepts. It may be useful to view this before diving into the Hypothesis. We also have an Introduction page which provides background information on various relevant topics such as the Nazca Plateau itself, the physical nature of the Nazca lines, the work of Dr. Maria Reiche, portolan maps, and more.
To learn more, go to the following link: https://nazcasolution.com/
Michael Ventrice, an atmospheric scientist at The Weather Company, tweeted Monday morning, “there’s risk for a hurricane to track towards the Gulf of Mexico in 7-10 days.”
Readers may recall the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season has been extremely busy, with eleven storms so far, and the risk of two more storms developing later this week.
At the start of the hurricane season, we said: “…this hurricane season could be above average, with 13 to 19 named storms.”
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) published a new five-day tropical weather outlook showing two disturbances developing in the eastern Atlantic.
“NHC is monitoring two disturbances for possible development within the next several days. A system in the eastern Atlantic has a high chance of development and a system near the Windward Islands has a medium chance of formation,” NHC said.
The next 7-10 days could be a period of heightened activity in the Atlantic and or the Gulf of Mexico. NHC said Disturbance #1 has a 50% chance of developing, and Disturbance #2 has a 70% chance of developing by the end of the week.
Meteorologist James Spann tweeted Monday, “the Atlantic basin is about to come alive.”
Earth’s largest optical telescope, the Gran Telescopio Canarias, is closed due to COVID-19. Many others have also closed.
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias
The alarm sounded at around 3 a.m. on April 3. An electrical malfunction had stalled the behemoth South Pole Telescope as it mapped radiation left over from the Big Bang. Astronomers Allen Foster and Geoffrey Chen crawled out of bed and got dressed to shield themselves from the –70 degree Fahrenheit temperatures outside. They then trekked a few thousand feet across the ice to restart the telescope.
The Sun set weeks ago in Antarctica. Daylight won’t return for six months. And, yet, life at the bottom of the planet hasn’t changed much — even as the rest of the world has been turned upside-down. The last flight from the region left on Feb. 15, so there’s no need for social distancing. The 42 “winterovers” still work together. They still eat together. They still share the gym. They even play roller hockey most nights.
And that’s why the South Pole Telescope is one of the last large observatories still monitoring the night sky.
The world’s largest optical telescopes, shown here, have shut down in droves in recent weeks (open sites are in green). The Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas is the largest optical telescope left observing. Construction has also halted at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory site in Chile.
Astronomy/Roen Kelly
An Astronomy magazine tally has found that more than 100 of Earth’s biggest research telescopes have closed in recent weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What started as a trickle of closures in February and early March has become an almost complete shutdown of observational astronomy. And the closures are unlikely to end soon.
Observatory directors say they could be offline for three to six months — or longer. In many cases, resuming operations will mean inventing new ways of working during a pandemic. And that might not be possible for some instruments that require teams of technicians to maintain and operate. As a result, new astronomical discoveries are expected to come to a crawl.
“If everybody in the world stops observing, then we have a gap in our data that you can’t recover,” says astronomer Steven Janowiecki of the McDonald Observatory in Texas. “This will be a period that we in the astronomy community have no data on what happened.”
Yet these short-term losses aren’t astronomers’ main concern.
They’re accustomed to losing telescope time to bad weather, and they’re just as concerned as everyone else about the risks of coronavirus to their loved ones. So, for now, all that most astronomers can do is sit at home and wait for the storm to clear.
“If we have our first bright supernova in hundreds of years, that would be terrible,” says astronomer John Mulchaey, director of the Carnegie Observatories. “But except for really rare events like that, most of the science will be done next year. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. We can wait a few months.”
The prospects get darker when considering the pandemic’s long-term impacts on astronomy. Experts are already worried that lingering damage to the global economy could derail plans for the next decade of cutting-edge astronomical research.
“Yes, there will be a loss of data for six months or so, but the economic impact may be more substantial in the long run,” says Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “It’s going to be hard to build new telescopes as millions of people are out of work. I suspect the largest impact will be the financial nuclear winter that we’re about to live through.”
Closing the windows on the cosmos
Through interviews and email exchanges with dozens of researchers, administrators, press officers and observatory directors, as well as reviewing a private list circulating among scientists, Astronomy magazine has confirmed more than 120 of Earth’s largest telescopes are now closed as a result of COVID-19.
Many of the shutdowns happened in late March, as astronomy-rich states like Arizona, Hawaii and California issued stay-at-home orders. Nine of the 10 largest optical telescopes in North America are now closed. In Chile, an epicenter of observing, the government placed the entire country under a strict lockdown, shuttering dozens of telescopes. Spain and Italy, two European nations with rich astronomical communities — and a large number of COVID-19 infections — closed their observatories weeks ago.
Even many small telescopes have now closed, as all-out shutdowns were ordered on mountaintops ranging from Hawaii’s Mauna Kea to the Chilean Atacama to the Spanish Canary Islands. Science historians say nothing like this has happened in the modern era of astronomy. Even during the chaos of World War II, telescopes kept observing.
As wartime fears gripped Americans in the 1940s, German-born astronomer Walter Baade was placed under virtual house arrest. As a result, he famously declared Mount Wilson Observatory in California to be his official residence. With the lights of Los Angeles dimmed to avoid enemy bombs, Baade operated the world’s largest telescope in isolation, making groundbreaking discoveries about the cosmos. Among them, Baade’s work revealed multiple populations of stars, which led him to realize that the universe was twice as big as previously thought.
In the decades since, astronomers have built ever-larger telescopes to see fainter and farther-off objects. Instruments have become increasingly complex and specialized, often requiring them to be swapped out multiple times in a single night. Enormous telescope mirrors need regular maintenance. All of this means observatory crews sometimes require dozens of people, ranging from engineers and technicians to observers and astronomers. Most researchers also still physically travel to a telescope to observe, taking them to far-flung places. As a result, major observatories can be like small villages, complete with hotel-style accommodations, cooks and medics.
But although observatories might be remote, few can safely operate during a pandemic.
“Most of our telescopes still work in classical mode. We do have some remote options, but the large fraction of our astronomers still go to the telescopes,” says Mulchaey, who also oversees Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and its Magellan Telescopes. “It’s not as automated as you might think.”
‘You don’t know what you missed’
Some of the most complicated scientific instruments on Earth are the gravitational-wave detectors, which pick up almost imperceptible ripples in space-time created when two massive objects merge. In 2015, the first gravitational-wave detection opened up an entirely new way for astronomers to study the universe. And since then, astronomers have confirmed dozens of these events.
The most well-known facilities, the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) — located in Washington state and Louisiana, both pandemic hot spots — closed on March 27. Virgo, their Italian partner observatory, shut down the same day. (It’s also located near the epicenter of that country’s COVID-19 pandemic.)
More than 1,200 scientists from 18 countries are involved with LIGO. And no other instruments are sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves from colliding black holes and neutron stars like LIGO and Virgo can. Fortunately, the observatories were already near the end of the third observing run, which was set to end April 30.
“You don’t know what you missed,” says LIGO spokesperson Patrick Brady, an astrophysicist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “We were detecting a binary black hole collision once a week. So, on average, we missed four. But we don’t know how special they would have been.”
The gravitational-wave detectors will now undergo upgrades that will take them offline through at least late 2021 or early 2022. But the pandemic has already delayed preliminary testing for their planned fourth run. And it could prevent future work or even disrupt supply chains, Brady says. So, although it’s still too early to know for sure, astronomy will likely have to wait a couple of years for new gravitational-wave discoveries.
Then there’s the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Last year, the EHT collaboration released the first-ever image of a black hole. And on April 7, they published another unprecedented image that stares down a black hole’s jet in a galaxy located some 5 billion light-years away. But now, EHT has cancelled its entire observing run for the year — it can only collect data in March and April — due to closures at its partner instruments.
Around the world, only a handful of large optical telescopes remain open.
The Green Bank Observatory, Earth’s largest steerable radio telescope, is still searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, observing everything from galaxies to gas clouds.
The twin Pan-STARRS telescopes on the summit of Hawaii’s Haleakala volcano are still scouting the sky for dangerous incoming asteroids. Both instruments can run without having multiple humans in the same building.
“We are an essential service, funded by NASA, to help protect the Earth from (an) asteroid impact,” says Ken Chambers, director of the Pan-STARRS Observatories in Hawaii. “We will continue that mission as long as we can do so without putting people or equipment at risk.”
The 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas is now operating with just one person in the building.
Marty Harris/McDonald Observatory
The last of large telescopes left open
With observatory domes closed at the world’s newest and best telescopes, a smattering of older, less high-tech instruments are now Earth’s largest operating observatories.
Sporting a relatively modest 6-meter mirror, the biggest optical telescope still working in the Eastern Hemisphere is Russia’s 45-year-old Bolshoi Azimuthal Telescope in the Caucasus Mountains, a spokesperson there confirmed.
And, for the foreseeable future, the largest optical telescope on the planet is now the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at McDonald Observatory in rural West Texas. Astronomers managed to keep the nearly-25-year-old telescope open thanks to a special research exemption and drastic changes to their operating procedures.
To reduce exposure, just one observer sits in HET’s control room. One person turns things on. And one person swaps instruments multiple times each night, as the telescope switches from observing exoplanets with its Habitable Zone Finder to studying dark energy using its now-poorly-named VIRUS spectrograph. Anyone who doesn’t have to be on site now works from home.
“We don’t have the world’s best observatory site. We’re not on Mauna Kea or anything as spectacular,” says Janowiecki, the HET’s science operations manager. “We don’t have any of the expensive adaptive optics. We don’t even have a 2-axis telescope. That was [intended as] a massive cost savings.”
But, he added, “In this one rare instance, it’s a strength.”
The supervising astronomer of HET now manages Earth’s current largest telescope from a few old computer monitors he found in storage and set up on a foldout card table in his West Texas guest bedroom.
Like the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the handful of remaining observatories run on skeleton crews or are entirely robotic. And all of the telescope managers interviewed for this story emphasized that even if they’re open now, they won’t be able to perform repairs if something breaks, making it unclear how long they could continue operating in the current environment.
The 48-inch Samual Oschin Telescope is the workhorse of the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in Southern California.
Palomar/Caltech
‘We will miss some objects’
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) utilizes the robotic, 48-inch Samual Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory in Southern California to produce nightly maps of the northern sky. And, thanks to automation, it remains open.
The so-called “discovery engine” searches for new supernovas and other momentary events thanks to computers back at Caltech that compare each new map with the old ones. When the software finds something, it triggers an automatic alert to telescopes around the world. Last week, it sent out notifications on multiple potentially new supernovas.
Similarly, the telescopes that make up the Catalina Sky Survey, based at Arizona’s Mount Lemmon, are still searching the heavens for asteroids. In just the past week, they found more than 50 near-Earth asteroids — none of them dangerous.
Another small group of robotic telescopes, the international Las Cumbres Observatory network, has likewise managed to stay open, albeit with fewer sites than before. In recent weeks, their telescopes have followed up on unexpected astronomical events ranging from asteroids to supernovas.
“We are fortunate to still be keeping an eye on potential new discoveries,” says Las Cumbres Observatory director Lisa Storrie-Lombardi.
But, overall, there are just fewer telescopes available to catch and confirm new objects that appear in our night sky, which means fewer discoveries will be made.
Chambers, the Pan-STARRS telescope director, says his team has been forced to do their own follow-ups as they find new asteroids and supernovas. “This will mean we make fewer discoveries, and that we will miss some objects that we would have found in normal times,” he says.
NASA’s DART spacecraft is scheduled to launch in 2021 on a mission to visit the binary asteroid Didymos. Astronomers need additional observations to help plot the course.
NASA/JHUAPL
‘It’s stressing them out’
Astronomer Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University studies asteroids. She was the last observer to use the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope before it closed March 31 under Arizona’s stay-at-home order.
Thomas warns that, in the short term, graduate students could bear the brunt of the lost science. Veteran astronomers typically have a backlog of data just waiting for them to analyze. But Ph.D. students are often starved for data they need to collect in order to graduate on time.
“It’s stressing them out in a way that it doesn’t for me. We’re used to building in a night or so for clouds,” Thomas says. “If this goes on for months, this could put [graduate students] pretty far behind.”
One of Thomas’ students was set to have observations collected for their dissertation by SOFIA, NASA’s airborne observatory. But the flying telescope is currently grounded in California, leaving it unclear when the student will be able to complete their research. And even when astronomy picks back up, everyone will be reapplying for telescope time at once.
But the damage isn’t only limited to graduate students. An extended period of observatory downtime could also have an impact on Thomas’ own research. Later this year, she’s scheduled to observe Didymos, a binary asteroid that NASA plans to visit in 2021. Those observations are supposed to help chart the course of the mission.
“The big question for us is: ‘When are we going to be able to observe again?’” Thomas says. “If it’s a few months, we’ll be able to get back to normal. If it ends up being much longer, we’re going to start missing major opportunities.”
The Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii use high-tech adaptive optics equipment that changes their mirrors’ shape 1,000 times per second to counter the twinkling caused by Earth’s atmosphere. Keck instruments also need to be chilled below freezing to reduce noise. If the warm up, cooling them down can take days or weeks.
W. M. Keck Observatory/Andrew Richard Hara
Can’t just flip a switch
The same qualities that brought observational astronomy to a standstill in the era of social distancing will also make it tough to turn the telescopes back on until the pandemic has completely passed. So, even after the stay-at-home orders lift, some observatories may not find it safe to resume regular operations. They’ll have to find new ways to work as a team in tight spaces.
“We are just starting to think about these problems now ourselves,” says Caltech Optical Observatories deputy director Andy Boden, who also helps allocate observing time on the Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii. “There are aspects of telescope operations that really do put people in shared spaces, and that’s going to be a difficult problem to deal with as we come out of our current orders.”
Astronomers say they’re confident they can find solutions. But it will take time. Tony Beasley, the NRAO director, says his team is already working around a long list of what they’re now calling “VSDs,” or violation of social distancing problems. Their workarounds are typically finding ways to have one person do something that an entire team used to do.
Beasley’s research center operates the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, as well as the Very Large Array in New Mexico and the global Very Long Baseline Array — all of which are still observing, thanks to remote operations and a reimagined workflow.
Although the new workflow is not as efficient as it was in the past, so far there haven’t been any problems that couldn’t be solved. However, Beasley says some work eventually may require the use of personal protective equipment for people who must work in the same room. And he says they can’t ethically use such gear while hospitals are in short supply.
But Beasley and others think interesting and valuable lessons could still come out of the catastrophe.
“There’s always been kind of a sense that you had to be in the building, and you’ve got to stare the other people down in the meeting,” he says. “In the space of a month, I think everyone is surprised at how effective they can be remotely. As we get better at this over the next six months or something, I think there will be parts where we won’t go back to some of the work processes from before.”
Modern-day cathedrals
Despite best efforts and optimistic outlooks, some things will remain outside astronomers’ control.
Right now, researchers are completing the 2020 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, a kind of scientific census. The guiding document sets priorities and recommends where money should be spent over the next 10 years. NASA and Congress take its recommendations to heart when deciding which projects get funded. Until recent weeks, the economy had been strong and astronomers had hoped for a decade of new robotic explorers, larger telescopes, and getting serious about defending Earth from asteroids.
Engineers prep NASA’s Mars InSight lander for launch to the Red Planet. It is currently stationed on Mars investigating the planet’s deep interior.
(Credit: NASA)
“Many of NASA’s most important activities — from Mars exploration to studying extrasolar planets to understanding the cosmos — are centuries-long projects, the modern version of the construction of the great medieval cathedrals,” Princeton University astrophysicist David Spergel told the website SpaceNews.com last year as the process got underway. “The decadal surveys provide blueprints for constructing these cathedrals, and NASA science has thrived by being guided by these plans.”
However, many experts are predicting the COVID-19 pandemic will send the U.S. into a recession; some economists say job losses could rival those seen during the Great Depression.
If that happens, policymakers could cut the funding needed to construct these cathedrals of modern science — even after a crisis has us calling on scientists to save society.
These days it seems there is not much good news out there. People are still panicked over the coronavirus, governments are still trampling civil liberties in the name of fighting the virus, the economy –already teetering on the edge of collapse – has been kicked to the ground by what history may record as one of the worst man-made disasters of all time: shutting down the country to fight a cold virus.
That’s why we’ll take good news wherever we can get it, and President Trump’s hiring of Dr. Scott Atlas to his coronavirus task force may just be that good news we need. As the media has reported, President Trump has sidelined headline-hogging Anthony Fauci in favor of Atlas, the former Stanford University Medical Center chief of neuroradiology.
Recall, Fauci was the “expert” who told us a few months ago that we would never be able to shake hands again.
Fauci’s advice, forecasts, and assessments proved to be wildly wrong, contradictory, and just plain bizarre: Don’t wear a mask! You must wear a mask. Masks are important as symbols. Put on goggles. Stay home! Churches must be severely restricted but Black Lives Matter marches and encounters with strangers met over the Internet are perfectly fine.
When Anthony Fauci demanded a lockdown of the economy for an indefinite period he actually seemed oblivious to the havoc it would wreak on the economy and on people’s lives. People like Fauci and others who demanded lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were still collecting their paychecks, so what did they care about anyone else?
Dr. Scott Atlas is not only a former top physician and hospital administrator: as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution he also understands the policy implications of locking a country down.
On April 22, Dr. Atlas wrote an op-ed in The Hill titled, “The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation.” In the article he made five main points that are as true today as when he wrote them: an overwhelming majority of people are at no risk of dying from Covid; protecting older people prevents hospital overcrowding; locking down a population actually prevents the herd immunity necessary to defeat the virus; people are dying because they are not being treated for non-Covid illnesses; we know what part of the population is at risk and we can protect them.
Imagine how many thousands of lives could have been saved had the Administration listened to Dr. Atlas back in April. CDC Director Robert Redfield admitted last month that lockdowns were killing more Americans than Covid. “First do no harm” was thrown out the window and nearly six months of wrong-headed policy has done perhaps irreparable harm to the country.
South Dakota and Sweden did virtually nothing to lock down or restrict their populations and they actually fared better than lockdown states in the US. They had lower death rates, their hospitals were never over-run with Covid patients, and they have an economy to go back to.
We very much hope that Dr. Atlas will not “moderate” his message to please the blob in Washington. Trump’s Covid policies to this point have caused more harm than good. With Fauci out of the driver’s seat we finally have a chance of turning things around.
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.? Ralph Waldo Emerson
Through the ages, the Higher Self has been given many names: the inner Self, Soul, Christ-consciousness, Beloved, Buddha-nature, and Spirit. Regardless of what we call this fundamental inner Core, it is our deepest, most Divine essence.
Yet despite being familiar with these concepts, many of us still struggle to understand the Higher Self and its role in our lives. In other words, how can we transform this topic from an intellectual concept into a feeling that we experience
What is the Higher Self?
The Higher Self is your True Nature: it is your wise, unconditionally loving, creative, Whole, and eternal inner Center.Deep down, we all carry a certain level of resonance with these words. We recognize that there is something mysterious within us, something sacred. What few of us manage to come to terms with, however, is that our Higher Self totally goes beyond our conditioned fears, limiting beliefs, wounds, and ego fixations. It actually represents our most authentic state of being that we’ve lost touch with in modern life. While our Higher Selves are completely free, they can be blocked, repressed, and denied by the limited ego (or small self).
The Shaman and the Lake Story
You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
I want to share with you a story that will help illustrate what the Higher Self is:
Once there was a Great Ocean. All of existence was birthed from this Great Ocean, lived off this Great Ocean, and returned back to this Great Ocean. In the beginning, millions upon millions of tiny rivers sprung from this Great Ocean. Each river snaked across the land like delicate veins. But one day, a great drought came. No one saw it coming. The scorching sun dried up each snaking river so greatly that they all turned into lakes. No longer were they connected to the Great Ocean, so they felt great loneliness and isolation. As time went by, each little lake became more and more depressed, forgetting the Great Ocean.
One day, a shaman came to drink from one of the lakes. He noticed that it was depressed. “Why are you so sad?” he asked. The lake, despondent and gloomy responded, “Because I am nearly dried up and there is little water left. Time is running out. Soon I will be gone forever.” The Shaman peered intently at the lake and laughed hysterically. “Silly lake, don’t you know that you are connected to the Great Ocean? Although you change, you are changeless. Your water evaporates and returns back to the Great Ocean. It is then reborn, repurposed, and redistributed. How can you live or die? You are birthless and deathless. You are in all things. You are all things.”
This story is the best way I can think to describe the Higher Self.
We are all like the lakes in this story. We believe that we are separate, isolated and cut off because of the ego. But something within us (the Shaman) continuously drives us closer to the truth through the voice of intuition, instinct, and deep knowing.
Eventually in life we have an illuminating moment of self-realization or remembrance: that we are rivers that are connected to the Great Ocean. The river represents the Higher Self. The Great Ocean represents Spirit, Source, or Oneness.
‘Benefits’ of Connecting With Your Higher Self
Here are some inevitable benefits of reconnecting with your True Nature. In fact, I prefer to think of these “benefits” as “semi-permanent to permanent shifts of being” depending on how strong the encounter is:
Lowered or completely diminished anxiety
Lowered or completely diminished depression
Openness and receptivity to life
Creativity and inspiration
Enhancement of intuition and spiritual/personal gifts
These “benefits” touch only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to experiencing your Higher Self! Because the experience is so individualized and personal, we all taste different benefits to varying degrees.
11 Ways to Reconnect With Your Higher Self
I first encountered my Higher Self during an intensely traumatic shamanic experience. In this encounter, I lived through what felt like hell.
All of my deepest fears were exposed and laid completely bare in front of me.
For about an hour or more I experienced waves of the purest forms of anxiety, paranoia, terror, insanity, and loneliness imaginable.Despite constantly feeling on the verge of madness, I managed to surrender and accept what was happening. This shamanic experience awakened me to the existence of my Higher Self, or what I prefer to call “Divine Nature.”
Thankfully traumatic experiences aren’t the only way to reconnect with your Higher Self, however!
Other people encounter the Higher Self during activities such as meditation, fasting, wilderness retreats, dreams, visions, or even near-death/out of body experiences.However, for everyone the situation or technique is different — there is definitely no one “prescribed” way to experience the Higher Self. Sometimes, we experience our Higher Selves in completely spontaneous and ordinary circumstances!
Here are some paths and practices that may help you reconnect with your Higher Self:
1. Discover the face of your Higher Self
What does your Sacred Self look like or resemble? You might like to use visualization, inner journeying, or self-hypnosis to help you with this. Although your Higher Self is ultimately beyond all labels and forms, it helps to have a visual depiction to aid the human mind.
2. What does your Higher Self feel like?
For example, when you have a mystical experience or a spontaneous meeting with this deeper part of you, what sensations arise within your body? How does your chest, belly, head, and body as a whole feel? You can also connect with your intuition to help you answer this question. As your intuition is the voice of your Soul/Higher Self, it provides direct access to this eternal part within you. Pay attention to what the voice of your intuition feels like within you. Is it a soft whisper? Perhaps it is a feeling of inner stillness, calmness, compassion, or deep knowing.
3. What message/s does your Higher Self have for you?
You might like to explore automatic writing, dream analysis, and even the use of oracle cards to connect with the messages of your Higher Self. You can also try developing more body awareness and use inner visceral mindfulness as a way of tuning in to present moment guidance. Meditation is another powerful way of connecting with the insight offered by your Higher Self.
4. Make time for silence and contemplation every day
Start with a minimum of 10 minutes daily. You can use this time to meditate or to simply revel in nature and the wonders of existence. What feelings or thoughts do you have during this time? You might like to record them in a journal.
5. Explore what things you can surrender or let go of
One of the biggest reasons why we struggle to connect with our Higher Selves is that we are carrying too much mental and emotional baggage. What needs to be surrendered and removed from your life? How can you practice letting go more? Introspect and examine what beliefs, ideals, assumptions, and/or conditionings are causing you to feel separate and unhappy.
6. In what ways can you accept and love yourself (and others) more?
Love opens your heart, and your heart is a direct doorway into your Soul. What could be a more powerful way of reconnecting with your True Nature? The more love you feel, the more life expands, and the more deeply you can embody your Higher Self. Learning how to love yourself is a crucial way to experience your True Nature. Ask yourself, “What within me needs to be held in the loving arms of compassion and self-forgiveness right now?”
7. Try non-resistance (“going with the flow”) for one day
Here’s an experiment: commit to allowing everything to happen as it happens, including your thoughts, emotions, and external circumstances. Try this for at least one day. How do you feel? The more we resist life, the more we are stuck within our dualistic minds. Non-resistance doesn’t mean being a push-over or doormat (it’s important to create boundaries and say no). Instead, non-resistance is a philosophy toward life. It honors reality – and the more connected we are with reality, the more access we have to our Higher Selves.
8. Discover who (or what) your Spirit Guide is
Spirit Guides are powerful beings that help us to connect with the truth, courage, wisdom, and love within us. Whether you believe them to be archetypes or actual independent energies is irrelevant: they can help you connect with your Higher Self by guiding you into rediscovering who you really are.
9. Find your soul place
We all have at least one soul place on earth. A soul place is a special site or spot where we experience unique feelings of belonging, empowerment, and energetic rejuvenation. Finding your soul place will help you to connect with your True Self by relaxing and slowing down your nervous system, as well as inspiring you to be introspective and mindful.
10. Practice mirror work
When you stare gently into your eyes in a mirror and call on the presence of your Soul, what do you feel? What do you experience? The eyes, after all, are the mirrors of the soul. See if you can gently move past the voices of self-judgment that naturally arise when doing this activity, and tap into your inner Source. This is a powerful and rapid way of reconnecting with your Higher Nature. Read more about mirror work.
11. Connect with the present moment
Awakening to your True Nature can only (and ever) happen right here, right now, in the present moment. This is the secret passed down through ancient traditions and spiritual teachings: Paradise is here within you, the Kingdom of Heaven is Now.
The difficulty we face is the monkey mind that is constantly running around, trying to get us to some special future place. But the beauty and ultimate compassion of Life is that you don’t have to find your Higher Self/Soul in the future: it’s right here within you!
Unfortunately, most of us struggle to settle into this simple but sacred truth. Our minds have such a strong grip on us that we can barely sit still for two seconds without squirming and trying to avoid how we feel. This is why a combination of spirituality and psychology is so important. We need psychology to help untie our inner knots, and we need spirituality to help loosen the mind….
To connect with your Higher Self, try establishing a regular meditation practice. Explore different meditation techniques (such as following the breath, open awareness, body scan, self-inquiry, etc.) and see what works for you. Sometimes a combination of techniques works the best. If you need help, try downloading a free meditation app such as Calm, Headspace, or InsightTimer.
“Higher” Self is Not Exactly True
In fact, any label that describes That-Powerful-Presence-Within-Us isn’t correct as it both transcends and integrates all labels. On an absolute level, our True Nature simply is – it is beyond time, beyond duality, beyond even thought.
However, for the human mind it does help to refer to that Powerful Presence within us with a phrase such as Higher Self because it does indeed feel ‘higher’ than the ego (and so it is in a sense). But that is not all it is and we need to be careful of making the mistake of associating spirituality with nothing but the ascending, transcendent path.
Remember that true spirituality, your True Nature, encompasses everything.It is here in the dull moments just as equally as it is in the ecstatic and blissful moments. It is here while you’re scrubbing dirty pans in the sink just as much as it is while you’re gazing at the stars.
Terms such as ‘Higher Self,’ ‘Buddha Nature,’ and ‘Soul’ are useful, but they’re ultimately limited. Who you are is so much more than a concept. Remember that as you seek to reconnect with the Truth of Who You Really Are.
Higher Self Q&A
How to listen to your higher self?
The best way to listen to your Higher Self is by learning how to trust your intuition. Your intuition is like a conversation between your mind and heart: it communicates the deepest and wisest truths that you need to be aware of in the moment. Start by journaling about any intuitive ‘hits’ you’ve received during the day and check back on them. What happens when you listen to vs. ignore these intuitive tugs or gut instincts?
Is the higher self the same as the soul?
Yes. The ‘Soul‘ is just another way of saying Higher Self. These words can be used interchangeably.
What is my lower self vs. higher self?
Your lower self is your small, limited ego. It is the self that believes itself to be separate from existence. Your Higher Self, on the other hand, is your True Nature that recognizes itself as one drop in the Ocean of Life. While your lower self is defined by fear, isolation, and paranoia, your Higher Self is defined by love, interconnectedness, and expansion.
What questions should I ask my higher self?
When reconnecting with your Higher Self, try to think carefully of deep and significant questions you’d like to be answered. Questions might include, “What is my life’s purpose?” “What are my gifts?” “Why do I keep repeating this negative pattern?” and so on. Remember that the answers may be revealed to you slowly, so be patient but receptive.
How to connect with your higher self?
There are numerous ways of connecting with your Higher Self. Some paths you may like to consider include meditating, going out in nature, practicing dream work and mirror work, using oracle cards, doing guided visualizations, and so on. Choose a path that resonates with you.
Hippocratic Hypocrisy: A collaborative film by Spacebusters and Dr. Andrew Kaufman about how authentic medicine was hijacked by the power elite and turned into a deadly, sickness for profit industry.
Video Player
56:40
Written by : Dr. Andrew Kaufman and Steven S. Busters
Produced by: Spacebusters
Technical advisor: Rosco S. Busters
This tale of two snakes is the story of how medicine in the United States, and eventually the world, was subverted into a commerce business enterprise with the central goal of creating and maintaining illness throughout the population for profit.
The Facts:More than 500 German doctors & scientists have signed on as representatives of an organization called the “Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee” to investigate what’s happening on our planet with regards to COVID-19.
Reflect On:Why are so many professionals and experts in the field being censored, ridiculed and shut down by organizations like the WHO? Should we not have the right to examine information openly, freely, and transparently?
Is this article ‘fake news?’ No, because the statement in the title that reads “we have a lot of evidence that it’s a fake story all over the world” is an actual quote from a representative of the group discussed in the article. The statement was said. Whether or not what the quote says is true, on the other hand, is up for you to decide or according to multiple governments, is up for the World Health Organization (WHO) to decide. Is the title misleading or inaccurate? No, again, it’s a direct quote and represents the opinion of multiple health professionals. Are these health professionals implying that COVID-19 is a fake virus? No, they are simply implying that it’s not as dangerous as it’s being made out to be., and I summarize some of that information below that has them coming to that conclusion.
These doctors and scientists are being heavily censored across all social media platforms, and those who write about them are experiencing the same. Many of the claims these doctors make have been ‘debunked’ by mainstream media, federal health regulatory agencies and ‘fact-checkers’ that are patrolling the internet. Any information that does not come from the (WHO) is not considered reliable, truthful or accurate, and that would include the information presented in this article and information shared by these experts in the field. People are being encouraged to visit the WHO’s website for real and accurate information about COVID-19 instead of listening to doctors and scientists who oppose the narrative of these health authorities.
What Happened: More than 500 German doctors & scientists have signed on as representatives of an organization called “Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss.” Außerparlamentarischer Corona Untersuchungsausschuss stands for the “Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee and was established to investigate all things that pertain to the new coronavirus such as the severity of the virus, and whether or not the actions taken by governments around the world, and in this case the German government, are justified and not causing more harm than good.
As the Corona-Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee, we will investigate why these restrictive measures were imposed upon us in our country as part of COVID-19, why people are suffering now and whether there is proportionality of the measures to this disease caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus. We have serious doubts that these measures are proportionate. This needs to be examined, and since the parliaments – neither the opposition parties nor the ruling parties – have not convened a committee and it is not even planned, it is high time that we took this into our own hands. We will invite and hear experts here in the Corona speaker group. These are experts from all areas of life: Medicine, social affairs, law, economics and many more. (source)
You can access the full english transcripts on the organizations website if interested.
This group has been giving multiple conferences in Germany, in one of the most recent, Dr. Heiko Schöning, one of the organizations leaders, stated that “We have a lot of evidence that it (the new coronavirus) is a fake story all over the world.” To put it in context, he wasn’t referring to the virus being fake, but simply that it’s no more dangerous than the seasonal flu (or just as dangerous) and that there is no justification for the measures being taken to combat it.
I also think it’s important to mention that a report published in the British Medical Journal has suggested that quarantine measures in the United Kingdom as a result of the new coronavirus may have already killed more UK seniors than the coronavirus has during the peak of the virus.
Below is a press conference held by representatives of the group that took place last month, you can find more important information below that.
Why This Is Important: It can be confusing for many people to see so many doctors and many of the world’s most renowned scientists and infectious disease experts oppose so much information that is coming from the WHO and global governments.
Many scientists and doctors in North America are also expressing the same sentiments. For example, The Physicians For Informed Consent (PIC) recently published a report titled “Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) Compares COVID-19 to Previous Seasonal and Pandemic Flu Periods.” According to them, the infection/fatality rate of COVID-19 is 0.26%. You can read more about that and access their resources and reasoning here.
John P. A. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Stanford University has said that the infection fatality rate “is close to 0 percent” for people under the age of 45 years old. You can read more about that here. He and several other academics from the Stanford School of Medicine suggest that COVID-19 has a similar infection fatality rate as seasonal influenza, and published their reasoning in a study last month. You can find that study and read more about that story here.
Michael Levitt, a Biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University criticized the WHO as well as Facebook for censoring different information and informed perspectives regarding the Coronavirus and has claimed that, with regards to lockdown measures, that “the level of stupidity going on here is amazing.” You can read more about this here.
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history is also part of Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee mentioned above and has also expressed the same thing, multiple times early on in the pandemic all the way up to today.
Implementation of the current draconian measures that so extremely restrict fundamental rights can only be justified if there is reason to fear that a truly, exceptionally dangerous virus is threatening us. Do any scientifically sound data exist to support this contention for COVID-19? I assert that the answer is simply, no. – Bhakdi. You can read more about him here.
Below are some interesting statistics from Canada. (source)
As I promised earlier this week, most(but not all) of this week’s honorable mentions concern the planscamdemic. I’ve tried to gather the most informative, and in some cases most helpful, articles on how to fight the medical technocratic tyranny. My thanks to all the following: