A Crystal Primer

Posted on July 7, 2016 by marcia

Now That I Have My Crystals, What Do I Do With Them?

In5D July 5, 2016

HOW DO I CHOOSE A CRYSTAL

There will be times when you need to purchase a crystal, and given the great abundance of healing stones now available, it can be useful to have a system for choosing your crystals. You do not need to know the exact properties of every stone in order to buy one, although this may help.

Below is a list of possible ways you could go about choosing a crystal. Remember, just because a crystal is beautiful, and the nicest one of a bunch, doesn’t mean that it is the best crystal for you. It is more important to be receptive and allow yourself to be drawn to a stone that will have meaning for you.

CHOOSING BY “FIRST SIGHT”

Often when you first see a range of crystals, one stone will catch your eye, and continue to draw your attention. This is likely to be a stone that will be beneficial to you. At this point you may like to trust your intuition and purchase the crystal.

However, if you are overwhelmed by choice, or are unsure of what crystal it was that first grabbed you, try standing quietly for a few moments with your eyes closed, and remember the reason that you needed to purchase a crystal. When you open your eyes choose the crystal you feel most drawn to. This will be the stone for you.

SENSING CRYSTALS

One of the suggested methods of buying a crystal requires that you look at a crystal and see if it “vibrates” with you. All crystals vibrate at their own frequency and some people are sensitive enough to feel these vibrations. Holding or placing your hand on a large piece of clear quartz crystal is a good way to develop your sensitivity to these vibrations. Sometimes a quartz may give off a regular pulse of energy; you may feel others as being very cold in your hand, or even warm. Some crystals may produce a tingling sensation on your skin. Generally a crystal that will be beneficial to you will feel right to you even though you may not be able to describe the sensations it creates. Look through a large number of them until you find just the right one. This works fine as long as you wide variety to select from.

USING A PENDULUM

This is a simple way to seek answers from your subconscious mind. You can hold a pendulum over the top of a crystal and ask “will this crystal be beneficial to me?”. Another way to use the pendulum, if you are considering a large choice of crystals, is to pass it over the top, and look for any circular motion in the pendulum above a particular crystal. If you do find the pendulum reacting over a particular stone, hold it over the stone directly, and ask a question.

RECEIVING A CRYSTAL

Crystals given as a gift are a precious experience, and as you start to use crystals more, you may begin to find crystals, or rather, they find you! It is not uncommon for these crystals to be just what you need at that given moment. It is also not uncommon to lose crystals, and although this can be upsetting when your favourite goes missing, it is usually an indication that the crystal has served its purpose in that situation and is no longer required. This is particularly so with “Record Keepers” and “Window” crystals.

BUYING WHAT’S AVAILABLE TO YOU

Another method to purchase a crystal is buying whatever crystal that is available to you. You may also get one as a gift. In either of these cases, you will be “bonding” with the crystal and that provides the “tuning” of the crystal to your “vibration“. So it isn’t all that critical that you find the “perfect” crystal when buying one.

INTERNET BUYING

When choosing a crystal from an internet site it is not possible to touch the crystal, so you need to take your intuition one stage further. Browse through the pictures and note which most appeals to you. You may find yourself excited by the picture of a particular crystal, with a powerful urge to touch and feel it and a sense of frustration that you cannot. If you feel that you very much want that crystal to be a part of your life, it is likely that on some level it has something to offer you.

WHAT IF I’M NOT DRAWN TO A CRYSTAL

Don’t worry. As with all purchases relating to spiritual growth intent is crucial, and you may need to acknowledge that the time isn’t right. If nothing strongly appeals to you, accept that the time is not right and come back on another day when perhaps a crystal will plead with you to take it home. Beware of buying crystals purely because that is what you set out to do as this could result in a collection of crystals unsuited to your needs and lacking meaning.

A FINAL WORD

Expect the Unexpected – I often set out to buy a specific crystal and end up purchasing something completely different. Be prepared to have your unconscious lead you to a different crystal. The unconscious or higher self doesn’t get involved with life’s day-to-day clutter and thus can get straight down to the business of selecting the most appropriate crystal for you. This is why the best approach to choosing a crystal is to quieten your mind and simply do what feels right.

Clearing Your Crystals

Crystals can collect various forms of energy from emotions, thought, touch, and many other sources. When other people handle your crystal, they leave their energy imprint on the crystal. This isn’t “bad” however, in order to make your crystal truly yours, we suggest that you remove the stored vibration. This is known as clearing the crystal.

It is a good idea to clear your crystal when you first get it, after you use it for any healing work, or whenever you feel that the crystal lacks light, luster, and energy.

Sea Salt Method

(Please note: many feel this method is too harsh. They prefer some of the other, more gentle methods listed below.)

Bury the crystal in sea salt overnight, preferably in a ceramic or glass container. You can purchase sea salt in most health food stores and in some supermarkets. You may also put your crystal in a container of water and sea salt. Use your intuition to determine how much salt you need and how long you want to leave the crystal in the solution (usually one to three days). Wash all salt off the crystals after clearing them. (We recommend filtered water for this.)

Smudging

A wonderful Native American method of clearing is to burn cedar and sage leaves and pass your crystal through the smoke. Cedar and sage may be purchased in most shops that specialize in herbs. You can also use a smudge stick, which combines cedar, sage, and often other herbs. This method is excellent for clearing your crystal as well as yourself and your environment. We prefer it for clearing jewelry.

Breath

Hold the crystal in your dominant hand, or if it is large, in both your hands. Focus your thoughts on the crystal with the intention that it will become free of all negative energy. As you hold this thought, inhale through your nose and exhale forcefully through your mouth. Your breath carries your intention to clear your crystal.

Remember to use your intuition to determine when your crystal needs clearing. Whenever you sense a decrease in its energy, a cloudiness or stickiness, it’s time to clear.

Charging

To charge a crystal is to revitalize it. Think of what kind of energy you want to store in your crystal. We have tried charging our crystals with many different energies.

Use your imagination and experiment by putting your crystal in direct sunlight or moonlight, on a large crystal cluster, under a pyramid, buried in the snow, or in the earth.

Type of Energy Where (or When) to Place

Cleansing, purifying stream
Vitality, energy sea at high tide
Restful, relaxing sea at low tide
Optimism, hope new moon
Abundance, love full moon
Introspection dark of moon
Harvesting dreams fall equinox
Rebirth, renewal winter solstice
Growth spring equinox
Passion, joy summer solstice

Working With Crystals: Passive Use of Crystal

Even if all you do with your crystal is keep it near you, you will begin to notice subtle changes in yourself. Crystals amplify and balance even the most subtle mental energy. Just having crystals in your environment can improve the quality of your life.

Active Use of Crystal

When we consciously work with crystal we can accomplish anything that the mind can imagine. Crystals have been helpful in improving memory, helping plants to grow, healing animals, contacting spirit guides, and in communicating with the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms.

One particularly powerful way to work with crystals is through the use of affirmations.

Affirmations

Affirmations are one of the most powerful methods we can use to change the quality of our lives and to create the things we want. An affirmation is a declaration or a thought which creates a desired result. To affirm means to make firm.” What we think or believe about ourselves and the world becomes our reality.

Pay attention to your affirmations, not only to avoid rote-like repetitions, but to actually hear what you’re saying. Joyce once realized that her affirmation, “I have an unlimited number of valuable ideas” had turned into “I have an unlimited number of limiting ideas.” This was a valuable, if depressing, discovery.

We have been giving ourselves affirmations all our lives – only we weren’t aware of it. Anything we say or think to ourselves is an affirmation. Anything anyone else says to us is an affirmation if we accept it and believe it. When we’re not aware of the process and the power of that which we think and believe about ourselves and our world we affirm a lot of things which don’t serve us well.

We are all carrying around basic core beliefs. Some of them are non-supportive things that we learned early in childhood from parents, teachers and friends.

Some unconscious affirmations:

If I look at food I gain weight
Life is nothing but suffering
The universe is against me
I am doomed to die without ever having been appreciated
Metaphysics works for everyone but me

Discovering Negative Beliefs

Becoming aware of these unconscious affirmations is the first step to dissolving them. Be conscious of your negative thoughts. One way to do this is to create a positive affirmations for example, “Abundance comes to me easily.” Your helpful mind will quickly come up with a list of reasons why this isn’t going to happen.

It never did before.
Some people aren’t meant to have money.
Why should I get my hopes up?

Another way is take the situation you want to change, and list the benefits of the negative situation. The benefits of not being prosperous might be:

No one will ever ask you for money.
You’ll never have to worry about suddenly losing your fortune.
You won’t have to feel guilty that others have less.

Whatever your issue is find out what its benefits are. Be careful not to censor yourself in the process, i.e., don’t tell yourself, “If I had a lot of money and someone needed help I’d be a terrible person not to give it to them.” Self-condemnation will not encourage your beliefs to surface; honesty will.

Work on each belief, identifying the emotion connected to it. Would you give money to people who needed it? Do you feel ungenerous? Are you afraid of acquiring money, only to lose it? Is this fear part of your life? Does guilt have a lot to do with how you relate to other people?

We strongly recommend the use of flower essences for deeply-held emotions.

The Three Aspects of Affirmations

When we consciously create affirmations we choose words which exactly express the reality we desire to create.

Another important aspect is the visual image we create to accompany the words. If we want to create a vacation in Hawaii we visualize palm trees, beaches, blue skies, warmth, etc. (It can be very helpful to look at the pictures in a travel brochure, and some people like to make a “wishboard” with an arrangement of photographs which represent whatever they’re creating).

A third (and perhaps most important) aspect is to create the way we feel when our special dream comes true. For a Hawaiian vacation you may feel relaxed or excited and stimulated to be in a new place. If you’re with someone you love you may feel increased closeness or a heightened sense of romance. If you have difficulty in visualizing or feeling the reality of your affirmation go back to the section on discovering negative beliefs.

Programming Your Crystal

Your thoughts, visualizations, and feelings have an energetic charge; when you program a crystal to assist you in manifesting your desires and dreams you put that energetic charge into your crystal.

Although quartz crystals are usually the preferred crystals for programming, we’ve used many others: citrine for abundance, rose quartz for a situation which calls for love, aquamarine or turquoise for creativity, aventurine for physical health.

Below is one method of programming.

Exercise

Hold the crystal in both hands and gaze into it, making contact with the crystal.
Start breathing with deep long breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling forcefully through your mouth.
Concentrate on what you want to program into the crystal„ a new job, good health, a better relationship, etc. As you inhale, see a visual image of what you want; imagine how it feels to have it, and repeat an affirmation to yourself.
With each exhale send your desire into the crystal.
Your intention has now been programmed into the crystal. This vibration is stored in the crystal until you clear it and replace it with a new intention.

Written Affirmations

One of the most powerful methods of programming that we’ve discovered is to write your intention on a piece of paper and, after using the above method, place your crystal on the written note and leave it there. We did this when we were searching for the perfect spot for Crystal Gardens. We placed a programmed quartz cluster on a map of Greenwich Village along with a note requesting the size and rent we wanted. It worked!

Basic Meditation

We prefer to meditate with crystals and describe this further along in the article. For those who are unfamiliar with principles and practices of meditation, though, we provide a basic introduction.

Meditation gives us a chance to relax, and to heal our bodies. It provides periods of mental stillness, an opportunity to silence the mundane chatter which so often fills our minds, time and space for us to focus our thoughts, to concentrate on the solving of a problem, to visualize the accomplishment of a particular goal.

As we become more skilled at quieting our busy minds, we discover that meditation helps to focus our attention on the here and now. When we give ourselves the gift of time in which we are neither regretting the past nor worrying about the future, we are able to appreciate the present.

Seth, the entity channeled by the late Jane Roberts, often said that he had only one rule for changing one’s life. That was: The point of power is in the present. When we concentrate on the present, we experience our aliveness, the strength of the energy which flows through us. We learn to recognize that energy as power, the raw material with which we create ourselves and our worlds.

(Very) Active Meditation

Some forms of exercise, such as hatha yoga and tai chi ch’uan, which consist of particular patterns of movement, are recognized as forms of meditation. We believe that any form of physical activity can be meditational. The key is to be totally focused on what you’re doing.

When you’re exercising concentrate on the smooth, easy movement of your muscles, your breathing. If you swim, be aware of the feeling of the water. In hiking or walking, focus on the ground beneath your feet.

Sometimes, while swimming or walking, we silently repeat affirmations. To do this, repeat each affirmation three or more times, focusing on the instructions you’re giving your mind, visualizing that you are prosperous, or thin, or loved. We recommend physical exercise not only for its own meditative values, but because it discharges excess energy, the kind that creates worries and anxieties which can prevent us from being relaxed and at peace when we want to practice passive meditation.

(Not Very) Passive Meditation

Passive meditation generally involves sitting or lying down. Create a time during which you’ll be undisturbed. Take the phone off the hook. Go into a room where you’ll be alone. Create this as a special time for yourself.

You may want to start off with a guided meditation tape. This will help direct your mind into appropriate channels. You can also direct passive meditation by silently repeating affirmations. When you feel comfortable with these forms of meditation you can begin to guide your meditations.

We like to listen to meditation music (which can be any kind of music which makes you feel relaxed and calm) on a mp3-type device. This is especially helpful when garbage is being collected, fire engines are blaring, or strangers have entered your life by having a fight outside your window.

Concentrate on your breathing, following each inhale and exhale, feeling energy flowing from your feet to your head and back. Do this for as long as you can. If you find yourself wondering whether you’ve paid the rent, or thinking about what you’ll have to eat when you’re finished meditating, let those thoughts drift away.

It may help for you to imagine that you have a feather duster with which to brush them out of your mind. You’ll find that your ability to meditate improves with practice. In passive meditation, you’re developing psychic and mental muscles. As you learn to silence distracting thoughts, you’ll begin to receive messages from your intuitive mind: new ideas, creative solutions to problems.

You may want to ask specific questions of your intuitive mind. Don’t worry if the answer doesn’t come right away. It may occur to you a few minutes or a few days later.

Crystal Concentration

We have noticed that the quality of our meditations improved immeasurably when we started making crystals part of our meditation. Crystals help to focus our energy, and thus our thoughts. They raise our vibrations and energy level and help to turn our attention from everyday concerns to our greater purposes in being alive.

The simplest way to introduce crystals into your meditation is to hold a clear quartz in one or both of your hands. To receive light and energy, hold the quartz with point facing you. To project your wishes into the universe (as when you’re repeating affirmations), face the points away from you.

Chakra Balancing

For stress reduction and overall energizing, place quartz points (they may be very small) at the base of the spine, just above the pubic bone, on the navel, heart, throat, 3rd eye (between the eyebrows), and at the top of your head.

These seven chakra points can be further activated by slowly rotating a quartz point over them. If you find that, despite your best efforts, you’re still worrying when you want to be meditating, place an amethyst on the third eye. If you’re feeling extremely depressed or spaced out, hold a smoky quartz. Before long you’ll discover that you intuitively know what stones you want to be with on a particular day.

We believe that your intuition will generally be opened if you begin the practice of daily meditation. It is a discipline, and there will be times when you’d rather read the newspaper or call a friend, or do anything in the world except meditate. Persevere. You’ll be glad you did.

Chakras, Color & Gemstones

There is no homogeneous system for classification of the chakras, either by body location or by color. We have found that the system used by Katrina Raphaell, author of Crystal Enlightenment, Crystal Healing, and The Crystalline Transmission gives us the best results.

After working with crystals and the ideas presented in this article, you may notice that you are developing a new consciousness, a new belief system which stretches the limits in which you were living before. There is a new inner freedom in which anything becomes possible as long it is in harmony with your deep heart’s core. This is the gift crystals give us.

from: http://in5d.com/now-that-i-have-my-crystals-what-do-i-do-with-them/

Time for Real Connection

Posted on July 6, 2016 by marcia

Why Do We Feel Lonely in an Over-Connected World?

Jul 5, 2016

The world has never been so connected as it is now. Communication and internet technologies have made it possible to stay in touch with anyone no matter where they live. Today, it’s probably impossible to find a person who doesn’t use social networks and instant messaging apps, which have become an integral part of our life. Many people can’t even imagine their daily routine without online communication and feel incomplete if they don’t chat with their friends and don’t see their updates in the Facebook feed st least once a day. We are basically never alone and yet, we are lonelier than ever.

This is not just a claim – studies show that the number of people who feel lonely is constantly increasing. For example, a survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that one out of ten people in the UK often feels lonely while 48% of the respondents believe that modern people are getting more and more lonely.

It seems that the feeling of loneliness is a real epidemic of our society. But why do we feel this way while numerous ways of communication with other human beings are available to us at any minute of every day? To answer the question the title of the article asks, first of all, let’s figure out what loneliness actually is. While the dictionary suggests that it’s a state of being alone paired with the feelings of sadness and isolation, loneliness is far more complex than that.

Have you ever been in a company of people you didn’t have much in common with? Or maybe in a company of strangers/acquaintances who were good friends with each other and didn’t pay much attention to you? If you have been in similar situations, you will agree that in those times, you were feeling lonely without being alone.

This is what loneliness really is – a lack of connection and understanding, no matter if you are alone or not. In fact, this feeling may be even more intense when you are among people you don’t resonate with rather than when you are by yourself. Let me cite Robin Williams here: “I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”

So isn’t it the reason why we are so lonely in an over-connected world we live in today? Popular culture and our excessive reliance on the social media have basically made us believe that human communication is about quantity, not quality.

To demonstrate this contradiction, let me ask you two simple questions: How many friends on Facebook do you have and how many of them do you have a really deep connection with? I bet that most of you have hundreds of Facebook friends and yet can name only a few individuals you are truly close to.

As you see, what we lack in the modern world is a deep and meaningful connection with other people, which inevitably makes us feel lonely. We are constantly surrounded by people (if not physically, then at least virtually) and yet, we rarely feel truly close to someone mentally and emotionally.

If you think about it, it makes sense why human communication has become so superficial, since the entire mainstream culture is based on superficiality and shallowness. We are made to believe that all we need is to satisfy our physical needs and fulfil our selfish desires.

To sum up, remember that the only way to avoid loneliness is not about being and communicating with people all the time. It’s about establishing a deep connection with the right people along with being a self-sufficient individual who doesn’t need approval from others.

from: http://themindunleashed.org/2016/07/feel-lonely-in-an-over-connected-world.html

Finding Light in The Dark Night

Posted on July 6, 2016 by marcia

A Dark Night of the Soul and the Discovery of Meaning

By Thomas Moore

Published in Spring | Summer 2015

Anyone may go through a period of sadness or challenge that is so deep-seated and tenacious that it qualifies as a dark night of the soul. Not long ago I was giving a talk at a university when a man shouted at me from back in the crowd: “I’m terribly depressed. It’s been years. Help me.” I shouted back my email address. In his voice and body language I could see that this man was not caught in some passing depression. His life was broken by some loss, failure, or long-forgotten emotional wound that left him in a desperately dark place.

I reserve the expression ‘dark night of the soul’ for a dark mood that is truly life-shaking and touches the foundations of experience, the soul itself. But sometimes a seemingly insignificant event can give rise to a dark night: You may miss a train and not attend a reunion that meant much to you. Often a dark night has a strong symbolic quality in that it points to a deeper level of emotion and perhaps a deeper memory that gives it extra meaning. With dark nights you always have to be alert for the invisible memories, narratives, and concerns that may not be apparent on the surface.

Faced with a dark night, many people treat it like an illness, like depression. They may take medication or go into counseling looking for a cause. It can be useful to search for the roots of a dark night, but in my experience the best way to deal with it is to find the concrete action or decision that it is asking for.

Engaging the Night

A dark night of the soul is a kind of initiation, taking you from one phase of life into another. You may have several dark nights in the course of your life because you are always becoming more of a person and entering life more fully. At least, that is the hope.

One simple rule is that a truly deep dark night requires an extraordinary development in life. One outstanding example is Abraham Lincoln. With his early life surrounded by death and loneliness and his adult life weighed down by a war in which thousands of young men died, he was a seriously melancholic man who, in spite of or through his dark night, became an icon of wisdom and leadership. One theory is that he escaped his melancholy in his efforts for his country, but another possibility is that the very darkness of his life—he once said, “If there’s a worse place than hell, I’m in it.”—was the ground out of which his leadership grew.

As a therapist, I have worked with people profoundly sad and discouraged, and I join with them in looking for ways to transform that heavy mood into a weighty life. Contemporary people often don’t take their lives seriously enough. This tendency might be an aspect of the cult of celebrity, where we lose sight of our own importance by making too much of it in others.

In the archetypal psychotherapy that I practice, we always say: Go with the symptom. I don’t look for quick escapes from the pain or good distracting alternatives. I try to imagine how a symptom, like a long-standing dark night, might be re-imagined and even lived out in a way that is not literally depressive. As far back as the Middle Ages at least, dark moods were considered to be the work of Saturn, a spirit symbolized by a planet far out in the solar system. He was cold, lonely, and heavy, but he was also the source of wisdom and artistic genius. Look through history and you will find a great number of creative men and women who have struggled with the Saturnine humor.

This ancient idea that a dark night may be connected with genius and inspiration could help us today as we try to be constructive with a Saturnine disposition, like Lincoln’s, or a period of smoky moodiness. We might imagine it as the root and basis of an engagement with life that could give meaning and purpose. This doesn’t necessarily mean that eventually the dark spirit will go away, but it may have a counterweight—some extraordinary creative activity and involvement in life—that will make it more than bearable and may diminish it.

With our contemporary view of anything that looks like depression, we think: I’ll never be happy, never have a good relationship, never accomplish anything. But with the medieval image of Saturn, we might instead tell ourselves: A dark night is the sign of a high calling. My pain and loneliness will prepare me for my destiny.

Finding the Gift in Darkness

There are many examples of men and women who endured unimaginable ordeals and yet contributed in a striking way to humanity’s progress. Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years under harsh conditions, yet he never lost his vision and sense of destiny. One of his younger fellow prisoners said of him: “The point about Nelson, of course, is that he has a tremendous presence, apart from his bearing, his deportment and so on. He’s a person who’s got real control over his behavior. He is also quite conscious of the kind of seriousness he radiates.” This is dark night talk—presence and seriousness, the key gifts of Saturn—as a long tradition holds. Mandela’s dark night was an actual imprisonment, not a mood. Still, he teaches how to deal with a dark night. Don’t waste time in illusions and wishes. Take it on. Keep your sense of worth and power. Keep your vision intact. Let your darkness speak and give its tone to your bearing and expression.

The regenerative power of nature grows more beautiful after a devastating forest fire at Yellowstone Park in 1988. photography | Wikimedia Commons, Jim Peaco

As strange as it may sound, there is a temptation in a dark night to slip into enjoyment of the pain and to identify with your emotions and moods. “I’m a lonely person. I’m depressed. Help me.” One striking quality we see in men and women who are dealing with their dark nights effectively is a lack of masochistic surrender to the mood, which can be forceful and dominating.

Mandela had “control over his behavior.” He didn’t succumb. It’s important to live through the dark night, acknowledge it, notice its qualities, and be affected by it. At the same time, it is not useful to be too attached to it or to let it dominate. You don’t want to be the hero who slays dragons and tries to obliterate the darkness, but you do need all the strength of heart you can muster.

While giving a dark night its due, you can also cultivate a love of life and joy in living that doesn’t contradict the darkness. You can be dedicated to your work and your vision for humanity and also feel overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. To do this it helps to have a philosophy of life that understands the creative coming together of conflicting moods. The rule is simple: Human beings can do more than one thing at a time. You can acknowledge your darkness and still find some joy.

An example of the dark night leading to a transformative presence in the world is Maya Angelou, who went from not speaking for five or six years as a child out of guilt and the wounds of abuse to reciting the inaugural poem for Bill Clinton and inspiring millions to make something of their own dark nights. In all her public appearances, Angelou showed both the pain and the joy that shaped her mission in life. She carried her pain throughout her life and yet her joy seemed to increase with her impact on men and especially women around the world.

Angelou’s experience demonstrates in an intriguing way how a dark night might take away your ‘voice’ and then give it back with added power. The question is, how do you go from a dark night to having a positive impact on the world, thus giving your own life purpose?

The first step is to embrace the darkness, take it to heart, winnow out any subtle innuendos of resistance. Then find any images that are trapped in the thick dark mood or situation. Those images may hold the clue to your release and future service. Angelou lost her voice, a fascinating symptom and a strong image, and then became known worldwide for her voice. The cure lies in the illness, the hint at future activity within the symptom. If you tone down the dark elements because they are painful and discouraging, you may also hide the gifts that are there for you.

The Return of Aliveness: The Dark Night of the Soul

By Eckhart Tolle

The ‘dark night of the soul’ is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life… an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything. Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event—some disaster perhaps. The death of someone close to you could trigger it, especially premature death—for example, if your child dies. Or the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.

It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster, which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before. Really what has collapsed is the whole conceptual framework for your life. That results in a dark place.
There is the possibility that you emerge out of it into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain. Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.

They awaken into something deeper. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual. It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died—only an illusory identity. Now, it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realize that they had to go through that in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.

You arrive at a place of conceptual meaninglessness. Or one could say a state of ignorance—where things lose the meaning that you had given them, which was all conditioned and cultural and so on.

Then you can look upon the world without imposing a mind-made framework of meaning. It looks, of course, as if you no longer understand anything. That’s why it’s so scary when it happens to you, instead of you actually consciously embracing it. It can bring about the dark night of the soul. You now go around the Universe without any longer interpreting it compulsively, as an innocent presence. You look upon events, people, and so on with a deep sense of aliveness. You sense the aliveness through your own sense of aliveness, but you are not trying to ﬁt your experience into a conceptual framework anymore.

Another important strategy is to avoid making the dark night too personal, too focused on yourself. Yes, you feel it intimately and alone. But it could still have more to do with the suffering of the world than with yourself. Maybe dark nights are generally less personal than they feel. At any one time, beings on the planet are suffering. The planet itself is suffering; it is going through a dark night constantly. If you live in a place where children are hungry and dying in wars and in domestic violence, you are within the realm of the world’s dark night. Listen to political leaders deny climate change and you worry about the future, not of the planet on which you live but the planetary being of which you are a living part. If you can stretch your moral imagination to perceive this suffering, then you will have the energy and focus to work toward a transformation.

Waking Up

By definition, visionary people imagine utopia, a word that means both ‘no-place’ and ‘good-place.’ It is an imagined state of the world in which people are free of their struggle, where at least the basic insecurities and inequalities have been dealt with. But oddly, it takes the pain and despair of a dark night to envision utopia.

Think about it, you wouldn’t be compelled to imagine a perfected life unless you were steeped in its imperfection. The emptiness of the dark night transforms into the no-place of a wonderful world. If you don’t feel the hopelessness of a dark night, you will probably float through life identifying unconsciously with the values and expectations of the culture. You won’t know that there is something wrong, something that calls for a response from you. Personally, you may not feel your being. You may eventually decide that you’re a nobody, for you become a somebody by identifying with the world outside you. Self-realization is not a private psychological achievement managed by a strong will and a hygienic attitude. A strong sense of self emerges when you own and activate the awareness that you are your world. A mystical sensibility and social action go together. Through an essential shift in imagination you realize that you are not the one suffering; the world is.

The real stunner is that when you begin to serve the world, your darkness changes. It doesn’t go away completely; nor should it. It continues to feed your vision of utopia and your frustration at the imperfection of it all. But your personal darkness converts into anger at injustice and then into compassionate vision and effective action. The darkness and the vision are two parts of one flowing movement.

Maybe it isn’t that your darkness eases but that your ego investment in it diminishes. It feels as though it goes away because you’ve been grasping it. There may be a degree of love for the darkness and a disdain for hope. You don’t want the challenge of being alive and engaging the world. It may be easier to sink into the pit. Some people resist participating in the transformation of the world because they glimpse the challenge in it. They will have to give up a long-held philosophy of easy, comfortable pragmatism and, maybe for the first time in their lives, feel the world’s suffering.

You see this pattern of waking up from pleasant unconsciousness to awareness of suffering in the story of the Buddha, and one of the key words Jesus uses in his teaching, not often pointed out by his followers, is ‘wake up.’ But waking up is also entering your dark night instead of remaining in the oblivion of avoidance. You do wake up to a joyful message, the meaning of the word ‘Gospel,’ but the dark night is always part of the picture, the other side of the coin.

The best source in classical spiritual literature for describing the paradox of darkness and vision is the Tao Te Ching, where on every page you are invited to live without polarization. Chapter 14 is a good example: “Above, it is not bright. Below, it is not dark.” ‘It’ is everything. Below, where you might expect darkness, it’s bright. Above, where you think you’d find light, it’s dark. Keep this paradox in mind and you will be neither a sentimental idealist nor a cynical pessimist. You will be part of the transformation of it all because it is happening in you.

from: http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/a-dark-night-of-the-soul-and-the-discovery-of-meaning/

Ways To Get Your Creativity Flowing

Posted on July 6, 2016 by marcia

How to Boost Your Creativity

02/21/2016 10:03 am ET

Berkeley Wellness Berkeley Wellness offers you positive ways to live a long, healthful life.

By John Swartzberg, M.D.

Do you sometimes feel like you’re surrounded by creative people—musicians, writers, artists, builders, inventors—but have no muse of your own? Maybe you’ve said to yourself, “I’m not creative. It’s a personality thing and I’m just one of those logical left-brained folks.”

Not true. We are all creative. Creativity lives within each and every one of us. We sell creativity, and ourselves, short when we believe that creative people are only those who can paint beautiful paintings, or perform in a symphony, or invent brilliant new technology. Creativity, at its essence, means coming up with new ideas, recognizing new possibilities, and solving problems.

How can you foster your own creativity? Studies suggest that there are a myriad of ways you can tap into that inventive, innovative side of yourself. Try a few of these activities and see where they lead:

Go for a walk. Getting off the couch and moving doesn’t just do your body good—it apparently gets your creative juices flowing as well. A 2014 study from researchers at Stanford University found that people who went for a walk significantly increased their creativity—what’s called “divergent thinking” over people who just sat. This held true whether they were walking on a treadmill or outside, so it wasn’t just exposure to the great outdoors that stimulated more creative output.

Get a hobby. You may think that you have to already be creative or talented to develop a hobby like cooking or painting or music. But a recent study found that people who engage in creative hobbies outside their job also have better problem solving skills on the job. So what if you’re never going to be a pastry chef? Taking that cake decorating class might open up your mind in new and unexpected ways. According to the study’s author, organizational psychologist Kevin Eschleman, the participants described these hobbies as providing “self-expression and an opportunity to really discover something about themselves.”

Daydream. Set time aside—maybe even ten minutes a day—to let your mind wander, with no set destination. You may be surprised at where it goes and what you discover. Researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara have found that daydreaming when you’re consciously aware of what you’re doing—called “meta-awareness”—can help you find creative solutions to problems that have been stumping you.

Embrace the Mess. Conventional wisdom says that a neat work space is essential for productivity. But isn’t creativity unconventional? Researchers found that while a neat desk encourages “good behavior” (like choosing an apple over a candy bar), working at a messy desk promoted novel choices and stimulated new ideas. “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights,” said the study’s lead author, psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota. “Orderly environments, in contrast, encourage convention and playing it safe.”

Work in a coffee shop. Too much or too little noise may hinder creativity, researchers have found—but just like Goldilocks, a moderate hum of background noise may be “just right.” In a series of brainstorming experiments published in the Journal of Consumer Research, scientists found that a light level of ambient noise—like you’d find when you settle down with your laptop at Starbucks or Panera—spurred divergent thinking.

Dim the lights. Working in dimmer light can instill a sense of freedom and dis-inhibition that breeds creativity, compared to standard office lighting, suggested a study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 2013.

Spend time in another country. Multi-cultural experiences can make you look at things from other perspectives, and stimulate innovative and flexible thinking, suggests a series of studies, including one in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in May 2009.

For the most part these are all small and relatively subjective studies. After all, measuring the lightning in a bottle that constitutes “creativity” is a complicated and highly variable process. And I suspect that many creative people have found ways to prime that pump of innovation that aren’t on this list. But all of this research, taken together, supports the idea that creativity isn’t just something that’s stuck in the on or off position. We just have to be open to new ways to tap into the creativity that lies within us all.

from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/berkeley-wellness/how-to-boost-your-creativity_b_9253724.html?utm_hp_ref=healthy-living

Hands-On Healing

Posted on July 6, 2016 by marcia

Healing With Your Hands

All healing must start by getting to the emotional cause of the ailment, or the problem will reoccur or manifest in another part of the physical body. Once established, with forethought that the patient is ready to accept the energy you will channel to them, you are both ready to begin.

Healing, using the palms of the hands, is almost instinctual, and is becoming a growing technique, especially with Reiki, as an easy way for anyone to tap in and develop healing skills.

When you begin, focus on the palms of your hands, relax, and slowly feel the higher energies filter through them. This may create a sensation of heat or tingling. here’s what’s going on. You raise your frequency … bring in higher balanced energy … transmit it to the other person by touching them, or holding your hands near their body. Some people wash their hands before and after a healing session.

Basic skills for healing with your hands

Let’s first determine which hand works best for you.

Hold both hands out in front of you – palms up. Focus your attention on your left hand and experience the flow of energy. In truth, the left hand receives energy and the right hand sends it out.

Focus on your right hand and see how strong the energy from that hand feels. One palm should feel stronger energy flow – hotter – more tingles. Now place your hands – palms facing each other – just in front of you. Keep them about 3 inches – 7.6 cm – apart. Move your hands slowly – back and forth. Feel the lines of energy between your palms. Now slowly move your palms further away from each other.

See how far out you can go before you no longer feel the ‘pull’ of the energies.

When the energies stop – move your palms back and forth slightly in opposite directions and you should continue to feel the energies.

Now let’s tap into that energy … relax, breath deeply, and focus on your palms. For some people this happens immediately, for others it takes time to recognize the changes in frequency. The more you practice, the better and more powerful you become.

Now allow the energy to come through you. You may feel the source of the energy if a spirit guide, another healer on the other side, angels, or you may come to understand that it is you … that you have the power once you practice and learn to tap in. Take your time working with the energies until you are comfortable with them moving through your body, and how your body reacts to them – heat, cold, tingles, increased psychic abilities, etc.

You are ready to go.

Find someone who needs healing. Be sure the person comfortable. Determine their emotional problems. Keep the conversation brief, this is not a therapy session, but you do need to know what’s going on and what the physical problem in masking. The person will heal faster and more permanently if they are confident in your abilities. Assure the person that you will do nothing to hurt them in any way or aggrevate the situation.

Place your hands within three inches from – or on the person. Pause and allow the energies to begin to flow through your body. This could take a few minutes.

You can do an auric sweep of the body by move your hands slowly down the body starting with the top of the head. You are looking for changes in temperature levels which is an indication of improper flow of the energies in their subtle body. When you feel this change tell the person. They may respond with, “Oh yes, I have been having discomfort there.” At the very least you are finding one or more problems.

When you find the problem, place your hands near, or on that part of the body, focus your attention to it, and visualize the higher frequency energies coming through you into the other person. It will happen. Anyone can do it.

There is no specific time frame for the healing. The amount of time you spend with the person is up to both of you.

On occasion, someone you nay as if someone has energetically entered your body to do the healing. The other energy could come from your spirit guide or that of the person being healed, as we all have guides.

It all takes practice. You can use the healing energies from your palms on pets, animals, plants, on your own body, anything with an auric field to accept the exchange of energy to create healing, balance and understanding.

from: http://www.crystalinks.com/healinghands.html

We Are Always

Posted on July 3, 2016 by marcia

Quantum souls. Part one

Posted by Angela Dijanic on July 03, 2016

The following article is the first in a three-part series dealing with scientific evidence supporting the existence of souls and an afterlife. There may be excerpts from A Quantum Soul in a Newtonian World (Outskirts Press, 2016) and The Quantum Afterlife (due out Fall of 2016).

Science is not the word of … umm … god.
Debunking the debunkers – there can be no proof, but there is scientific evidence, get over it.
TBA

1: Science is not the word of …umm… god.

Ever since the death of my son on September 2, 2014, I have been struggling with the concept of the soul, and by extension the existence of an afterlife. I wish I could believe in it. I want to believe in it. But, as a scientist, I am the type that needs rational arguments to convince me, and it seemed that the soul was too abstract for my mind. I am not one to resort to blind faith to believe in the soul. I needed evidence. I needed proof.

I was navigating the web one night, lost in despair, wanting nothing more than to be done with the pain, looking for this evidence – this proof – and I came upon a response from a Rabbi whose name I never did get. The Rabbi was responding to a young man who had lost his brother seven years earlier, who was looking for the same answers that I was. The Rabbi stated that even if our deceased loved ones were cloned to perfect identical duplication, down to the precise memories of your life together, something would still be missing. That even though that replicate might have your loved one’s expressions and thoughts, voice and mannerisms, s/he would be missing the spark that is unique to your loved one. And, that, he said, is what soul is.

I read his response over and over again. I realized that the soul – our soul – is the who of a person, rather than the what of a person. That my son had really only left his physical existence, but that he was still there (here?), somewhere, and that we will at some point, in some form, be together again. That we still were. Then I became aware of my own soul, and the souls of others who had passed, and I began to feel a universal tug; and my entire outlook on life, death, and the universe changed forever. I have walked between the worlds since, one foot in this physical, or Newtonian world, and one in the spirit realm, where quantum properties and characteristics are the norm.

I started to really pay attention to what other people were saying and doing, I began to thoroughly observe, with full sensory acceptance, how animals and plants interacted. I had been a biologist for decades, but only now was I really seeing what life and death were. And I was not alone.

With very few exceptions, the people I passively observed and actively interviewed said that they knew that there was something. The phrase life force was used quite a bit. But when I asked them if they thought this was their soul, they would hesitate. Some answered yes outright but others did not want to get hung up on religious semantics. They didn’t want to associate this spiritual ideal with stringent religious dogma. Very few defined soul using scientific definitions.

Why, I wondered, are so few people doing research into this, our only truth? We are all born to die. Dying and death are the only absolutes and yet we would rather sweep the concept under the rug and belittle the idea that there is something that enters the body upon birth and leaves upon dying. I decided right then and there to devote the rest of my life to investigating and researching the existence of the soul and all that that entails. Because I am a scientist, I will use scientific methods. It’s what I know and what I am comfortable with. But I also acknowledge that science is limited and limiting and as such is not the only way to investigate something.

Those of us who are conducting research into the realm of the beyond, other dimensions, soul’s journey, are blackballed from the rest of the scientific world. People would rather believe that I have lost my mind due to the trauma of losing my child then that I have been enlightened to what really happens upon dying. The fact of the matter is that the reality lies between the two. What is most interesting to me is that these same people who like to judge others, who place their own self-righteousness in place as some marker of truth and sanity, claim to believe, absolutely, in other theories and hypotheses which have not been proven, so why this particular bias? For them, it’s ok to know that atoms exist or that DNA is an absolute truth, when much of the science behind both shows only evidence of the existence, but never proof. Nothing in the universe is certain. Nothing.

It is highly probable that atoms and DNA exist. The evidence backs that up. But it is also highly probable that souls exist. The evidence is abundant on this theory as well. My book, A Quantum Soul in a Newtonian World, goes into detail on this, as does its sequel, A Quantum Afterlife.

The nay-sayers will say that our thoughts and life energy are simply extensions of the mind, but they can’t define exactly what the mind is. They say that it is all about impulses and sparks within the neurological network that makes up the brain, but they have no idea what that means either. No one does. Not fully. Not yet.

They say that we can prove thoughts and emotions as simple brain functions because we can record the changes in brainwaves as they occur. But when near death experiences occur, and complete cessation of brainwaves are recorded, and yet thoughts are still processed, they would rather believe that a dead brain can have hallucinations than that intelligent energy is somehow being transferred, as in a soul, from one dimension to another dimension.

They will not or cannot accept that there must be an energy, one that we cannot fully measure yet, that makes cells function and communicate, and that drives biological and chemical processes. There is nothing supernatural about our souls. There is nothing religious about the existence of our true selves. There is really nothing scientific about our souls other than that science is an acceptable means for providing evidence of the possibility of the thing.

When the quantum sciences came along and challenged the cogs and wheels mentality of Newtonian thinkers, they once again were selective in placing limitations. But until the advent of the internet and social media, it was a very hush-hush thing shared only within the science world and only within closed circles. Now it’s not so easy to hide facts and evidence; and it is much easier to share information and experiences.

Through the quantum sciences, in particular quantum biology, evidence of the existence of the very small and non-linear – those things that surround us but are invisible and behave in seemingly magical ways – can be gleaned.

The idea that we are quantum beings having materialistic experiences is a challenging paradigm for us because we were born into a three dimensional linearly aligned physicality. And for too long, that physicality has been defined within the limitations of Newtonian Laws, or rather by the followers of those laws, often times with their own interpretations – laws that place us as cogs and wheels in an enormous superficial machine with little room for forces beyond simple matter.

But we are not superficial machines that run on cogs and wheels. We are complex organisms made up of matter that is in turn made up of energy. Our physical bodies may fit neatly into Newton’s very limited world, but the force that drives these bodies, the intelligent energy that is behind thought and emotion, life and death, can only, for now, be explained through quantum science; and through the technologies we have not yet discovered or mastered.

Because of the nature of energy, we are very limited in our understanding of it, and so it becomes this magical thing that we either believe in or not… for now. But remember magic is simply science that has not yet been defined. Thus, anything that is too nebulous to understand, at the time, is labeled magic or philosophy.

We need to remember that at some point in history, in fact several points in history, everything we consider science now was considered magic then. By extension, everything that we consider magical now will be considered scientific in the future as technology evolves and understanding is gleaned. Even what we thought we understood, through scientific methodology, has changed. How many theories and hypotheses have been blown out of the water as we gain better insights?

We must remember that science is merely a human construct in and of itself. We fall under the excuse that magic is of gods, but science is of men. Not everyone believes in gods. Not everyone trusts the wisdoms of men.

We made science. We decided that magic and faith weren’t enough to go by so we created a system that would be more succinct and consistent, an attempt to even the playing field. But that succinctness and consistency is defined by us. We decide what succinct means. We decide what consistent means. Humans created language. Then we fit our scientific ideals within those constructs. We are making this up as we go along.

Always, the various disciplines of science, regardless of type, focus or methodology, were developed through the minds, hands and hearts of humans using the tools available to us at the time- tools that we either discovered or created, like fire, hammers, and computers.

And, because science is a human construct, it is at the mercy of its creators. Just like magic. Like small gods giving birth to worlds, the creator and the created fused; and the philosophies grew with their followers. And so too did the limitations.

And yet everyone wants scientific proof of anything being espoused. Until they are given that proof, they label the entity as metaphysical, paranormal, or supernatural. But science is not about proof. It is about evidence. Science cannot prove anything because proof is subjective. The only person who can prove anything to me is me. Only I can decide if something is true or not. The evidence of the thing is objective. Evidence cannot buckle under opinion. It’s just data. Personal bias cannot sway evidence. It doesn’t matter what you think, the facts are just the facts.

Selective wiles and cyclical arguments are the hallmarks of close-minded, biased, judgmental people. Why do we care what fanatics from either extreme believe or do not believe? They are ignorant bullies who think that by using words bigger than the ones you use makes them superior and therefore they must be right. They may not be right.

We have been taught to think in terms of human experiences and not soul experiences. This is a necessity since we are in a physical form in a dimension that is based on time and space. Unfortunately, we get tangled up in this physicality and forget how to communicate that which is most important to our existence. Perhaps that’s part of the experience. We simply need to break through the static.

We are quantum souls living in a Newtonian world. Science is not the end all to be all, but it’s what we have so let’s use it responsibly recognizing the limitations.

from: http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2016/07/03/quantum-souls-part-one/

Concerned About Your Blood Sugar?

Posted on July 3, 2016 by marcia

14 Early Warning Signs Your Blood Sugar Is Super High – Eat These Foods To Reverse It

bodymindsoulspirit | July 3, 2016

via WeeklyHealthLife,

Diabetes is a disease of high blood sugar in the system for longer time. This disease is riseing among people young and elder. It is always best to know about the symptoms if something like this is coming or not. If it runs in your family there are bigger chances of getting this disease in your system.

Here you can read about all the symptoms what are causing the diabetes and the high levels of sugar in the blood.

If you have recently gain weight, if you have stomach problems and feel hungry all the time, are very common symptoms of diabetes.

High blood sugar can be caused by: poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, health conditions and medications.

Regular symptoms can appear even if you don’t have diabetes. Many people don’t have these symptoms, or all of them, and still have diabetes. Here you can read about the symptoms that you need to look for and be aware so that you can check yourself or your close one for diabetes if you or them are showing this symptoms.

They are:

Dry mouth
Increased thirst
stomach problems
Impotence
Slow healing cuts and wounds
feeling hungry all the time
having dry or itchy skin
frequent urination
having problems with concentration
nerve problems
blurred vision
infections that keep coming back
weight gain
frequent fatigue and tiredness

There is a list called GI ( glycemic index) list that shows which food are containing carbohydrate and can raise the blood sugar. The high GI levels increase the blood glucose a. The scale is from 0 to 100. High GI in the food can be rapidly digested but the low GI are slowly digested. They also reduce the insulin levels and can help you control the weight.

Here is the GI list and you can see which one has the low or the high concentration of carbohydrate.

1 egg is 0
1 cup of broccoli is 10
1 medium yellow onion- 10
1 cup walnuts – 15
1 cup cashews- 22
1 cup cherries – 22
½ grapefruit0 25
yogurt- 23
sausage- 28
butter beans- 31
kidney beans- 34
medium apple- 38
1 cup spaghetti- 42
green grapes- 46
1 carrot- 47
orange- 48
banana- 52
peas- 54.

This scale is from 0 to 54 and it is considered to be low glycemic foods and can be consumed and digested with no problems. However, the scale from 54 and up to 100 are more glycemic and can be considered to be linked with high blood sugar.

brown rice, tablespoon honey – 55
oatmeal- 58
macaroni and cheese, white rice- 64

The scale between 55 and 69 is showing the medium level of glycemic foods.

Here are the high concentration glycemic foods and you need to avoid them from your regular use if you don’t want your blood sugar levels to rise.

white bread (one slice)- 70
2 cups popcorn- 72
doughnut- 76
rice cake- 78
medium baked potato- 85
corn flakes – 92
pure glucose- 100.

Source:http://www.naturalmedicinebox.net

from: http://www.bodymindsoulspirit.com/14-early-warning-signs-your-blood-sugar-is-super-high-eat-these-foods-to-reverse-it/

Perils of Empathy

Posted on July 2, 2016 by marcia

5 Ways to Stop Absorbing Negative Energy from Others

Anna Hunt, Staff Writer
Waking Times

With empathy, the ability to recognize and feel other people’s emotions, comes the disadvantage of also absorbing the suffering and negativity of the others around you. When this occurs, your ability to function at your best can be significantly impacted. Even a person who is not so empathic can be affected energetically when around negative or dramatic people.

Absorbing other people’s negative energy can be just as toxic on a person as ingesting unhealthy food, and perhaps even more noticeably draining. Thus, learning how to stop this from happening can be a valuable skill. Here are five methods that you can use so you absorb less negative energy from others around you.

1) Be Selective About the People You Allow into Your Life

You have to come to terms that not everyone will like you, and you don’t have to become friends with everyone that you meet. You do not need to pressure yourself into befriending everyone you meet, either at work, though existing friends, or via your kids. Of course you want to be polite, but trust your intuition when meeting new people and don’t ever feel like you need to spend time with people just because you’ve come to know them by association.

Furthermore, if you find yourself often needing to vent about a person, have a friend that is consistently negative about life, or feel like someone in your life is regularly taking advantage of you or is unkind to you, then perhaps it is time to create some distance. Some friendships or relationships are just not good for you, and you have to be able to accept that. Once you do, you can let go of the friends and acquaintances who dump their negativity on you.

Learning to let go and saying “no” to people who do not deserve your time and attention allows you more time for the ones that do, including your family and YOURSELF.

2) Don’t Try Please Everyone

We all have only so many hours in one day, so be selective about who receives your time. Don’t waste it on people who don’t seem to care about you, give you a hard time, or are overly critical of you. Just as you won’t like certain individuals, there will be some that don’t like you or do not treat you kindly.

Focus on developing relationships that seem to thrive naturally, versus working on getting people to like you who naturally don’t gravitate to you. The latter will not only leave you drained, they will probably affect how you perceive yourself.

3) Beware of Energy Vampires

As already mentioned, you may have existing friends that are always negative about life, but consider that some people are can be even more toxic. These types could be dubbed energy vampires because they suck you dry of all positive energy and leave you with all their negativity. That is what keeps them going.

Beware of energy vampires who always use negative words and dump negative emotions onto you. Notice which “friends” use pessimistic language or treat you like a soundboard for their negative feelings. You are likely absorbing all of their negativity every time you see them.

This doesn’t mean stop being there for a friend in need, but pay attention to the ones that take advantage of a kind ear or are inclined to always use negative language. Let them know how you feel about all the pessimism. If these “friends” don’t understand that they are draining you, then perhaps they are not really your friends.

4) Be Responsible for Yourself

You are the only person that has control over how you feel. In any situation, you have the choice of how you react and what you do. Some say it takes years of training to control your feelings, but it all starts with awareness, which you can practice right now.

Taking responsibility for yourself means that you have to start becoming aware of how you feel when certain people are around you. And then are not afraid to take action. If you spend time with someone who makes you feel bad or leaves you drained, it is time to create some distance between you and that person.

Don’t be a victim, because you have the power of how you experience life. You will absorb more goodness and less negativity if you really reflect on how people, places and situations make you feel, and then take action to change what does not serve you.

5) Spend Time Alone

For some reason the Western society has come to denigrate personal characteristics such as introversion, shyness, timidity, etc. However, time alone, and the personal discovery that happens during this time, can be quite healing and regenerating.

For some, solitude is quite difficult as it is a time when a person starts to really look at what’s happening with their own self. Yet it is necessary if you are to cultivate the awareness you need to identify when you absorb negative energy and who in your life is an energy vampire.

Remember simple tools such as breathing slowly, quiet meditation, reading a good book, and spending time in nature. They are all available to you so you can enjoy solitude. Use these tools when you are ready to take action to rid yourself of unwanted energetic toxicity and reinforce yourself for yet another day.

from: http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/07/02/5-ways-to-stop-absorbing-negative-energy-from-others/

Whole Foods Wants Whole GMO’s? Take Action!

Posted on July 2, 2016 by marcia

Whole Foods goes ROGUE… partners with Monsanto to kill GMO labeling across America and replace with fake labeling deception… SENATE VOTE PLANNED AS EARLY AS TOMORROW

Wednesday, June 29, 2016
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) IMPORTANT UPDATE: Whole Foods was just caught blatantly LYING about everything covered in this article. CEO Walter Robb has been captured on video admitting total support for Monsanto-engineered GMO fake labeling law that kills Vermont GMO labeling bill. Whole Foods takes to social media to LIE to everyone, denying everything, even while Robb is captured on video… click here for the breaking news report on Whole Foods CAUGHT LYING.

According to breaking news reports, Whole Foods Market (WFM) has gone full rogue, partnering with Monsanto to kill GMO labeling across America under the guise of a new, fraudulent “GMO labeling compromise” in the U.S. Senate that’s actually a fake labeling law requiring no clear labeling of GMOs whatsoever.

Food Democracy Now has issued this red alert, naming the sellout corporations (including Whole Foods) that have betrayed health-conscious consumers with a sellout deal that outlaws GMO labeling nationwide.

The deception on food labeling has never been greater. With this act of ultimate betrayal, Whole Foods cements its position as a poison-pushing distribution partner of Monsanto, the world’s most evil corporation that produces poisonous, deadly crops laced with bt toxin and glyphosate, a cancer-linked herbicide.

With this betrayal of consumers, Whole Foods might as well now be called, “POISON FOODS” because that’s what they’re pushing.

Click here for the Food Democracy Now petition page to take action now.

What follows is the full text of the Food Democracy Now announcement:

Whole Foods Joins Monsanto Try to Kill GMO Labeling in America

Washington D.C. — National grassroots organizations expressed their outrage today towards a group of U.S. Senators and major, self-described, “organic companies” that have brokered a backroom legislative deal to kill mandatory GMO labeling of food products across America while stifling first-of-its-kind state legislation in Vermont (slated to go in effect this Friday, July 1st) that would mandate labeling of foods that have been genetically engineered in laboratories.

The companies, including Whole Foods, Smucker’s and Organic Valley, among others, have historically funded major public relations and advertising campaigns to promote themselves as “organic” brands. Now, some national leaders are criticizing these companies for “selling out” the GMO labeling movement, public health and the environment and urging the public to fight back.

“Make no mistake, these self-proclaimed organic companies, including Whole Foods, Smucker’s Stonyfield and Organic Valley have just joined with Monsanto and sold out the ability for parents to know what they are feeding their children,” said Dave Murphy, Executive Director of Food Democracy Now!

Murphy continued, “Monsanto and Whole Foods’ new fake labeling bill would not only preempt Vermont’s bill this week, but all provisions of the bill are OPTIONAL — the bill’s language is so poorly written that it would actually not include 85% of the current GMOs on the market, including Roundup Ready GMOs owned by Monsanto that are sprayed with the weedkiller glyphosate, which the World Health Organization declared a “probable carcinogen” linked to cancer in lab animals and humans last year.”

Food Democracy Now! and Organic Consumers Association are now leading a grassroots pressure campaign to urge the US Senate to block the last minute legislative deal.

“Consumers need to resist this outrageous attack on consumer and states’ rights with their pocketbooks and their political voices,” said Ronnie Cummins, the International Director of the Organic Consumers Association. “This is an outrageous assault by corrupt corporate interests on our basic freedoms and a mother’s right to know what’s in the food they feed their children.”

Polls regularly show that ninety percent of American consumers want to know whether their food is genetically engineered and the impending Vermont GMO labeling law has already forced major food corporations to disclose GMO contamination in their products”.

“Now, at the last minute, a self-selected group of so-called “organic leaders,” including the head of Whole Foods Market, Walter Robb; Gary Hirshberg, the CEO of Stonyfield Farm, the bogus pro GMO labeling group Just Label It, run by the Environmental Working Group, and lobbyists for the corporate owned organic companies inside the Organic Trade Association (led by “natural” brands Smucker’s and White Wave) have made an absolutely corrupt bargain with Congress completely embracing an industry-crafted DARK Act “compromise”, now known as The Stabenow/Roberts bill,” continued Cummins.

A coalition of independent family own organic companies and consumers groups is actively working to get Senators the real facts about this bill even as the Organic Trade Association and its corporate-own organic companies are working behind the scenes to intentionally confuse Senators about what’s actually in the bill and the fact that the millions of Americans that actually support GMO labeling are not represented by their corrupt corporate interests.

Take action NOW or be forever screwed by Whole Foods and Monsanto

Click here for the Food Democracy Now petition page to take action now.

Call your U.S. Senator at this switchboard number: (202) 224-3121

Demand they vote AGAINST the GMO labeling “compromise” being pushed by Monsanto.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/054514_Whole_Foods_GMO_labeling_Monsanto_deception.html#ixzz4DHTx8KrE

Benefits of Meditation

Posted on July 2, 2016 by marcia

Meditation Makes Us More Aware Of Our Unconscious, Study Suggests

There’s just so much we aren’t aware of.

06/29/2016 02:24 pm ET |

Bahar Gholipour Senior Writer, The Huffington Post

“People can vary in how much access they have to the unconscious events happening in their brain,” says psychologist Peter Lush, whose new study suggests that meditation gives us better access to those unconscious states.

Imagine being in a dark room holding a flashlight. You can only see where you’re pointing the light, and only what the light reaches. This room is your mind, and what the flashlight reveals is your limited awareness of it.

But a new study suggests that people who practice meditation may extend the boundaries of how aware they are of their unconscious intentions. In other words, they might have a bigger flashlight.

As scientists are increasingly realizing, our conscious awareness is only the tip of the iceberg — a lot of brain processes for which we take credit are in fact happening under the hood of our awareness. Some of this was shown in classical experiments in the 1980s carried out by psychologist Benjamin Libet: In those experiments, people were instructed to press a button at their leisure and watch the clock as they did it, then report the exact timing of their decision to press the button. However, electrodes placed on their scalps picked up on brain activity in areas controlling physical movement starting to ramp up a couple of hundred milliseconds before the time participants reported as the time of making the decision to move.

This finding sparked a series of follow-up experiments and raised big questions. If the unconscious brain has already made the choice to move the finger, is our sense of agency only the story we tell ourselves after the fact? Do we have any say in the matter, or are we merely puppets?

There’s no clear-cut answer to that question. But in the debates that followed, many researchers have argued that those experiments didn’t really measure free will. Instead, they measured how much high-level awareness we have when it comes to small things happening in our minds, such as intending to move a humble finger.

Does high-level awareness ring a bell? Mindfulness meditation is supposed to increase exactly that — our awareness of internal processes, or “metacognition.” A meditator practices control over what to attend to (the breath, for example) and decides what other experiences are irrelevant and have to be let go (such as thoughts that pop up).

“Mindfulness meditation is thus intrinsically an exercise in the (metacognitive) control and monitoring of mental processes,” psychologist Peter Lush and his colleagues at the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K., wrote in their study, which was published on June 21 in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.

Lush and his team decided to test experienced meditators using a version of Libet’s experiments (minus the brain electrodes). They recruited 11 long-term meditators with at least three years of meditation practice and 36 undergraduate students without significant meditation practice.

It turned out that experienced meditators seemed to be quicker in picking up on their intention to move the finger, reporting their intention to move about 150 milliseconds before the physical movement. Other participants reported their intention about 70 milliseconds before the movement.

“We interpret this as meditators having an earlier access to their unconscious states,” Lush told The Huffington Post. “An intention can be unconscious. It’s only when you have a thought about that unconscious intention that it becomes conscious. And people can vary in how much access they have to the unconscious events happening in their brain.”

The team also tested the degree to which the non-meditator participants were prone to hypnosis. While it’s not clear how exactly hypnosis works or even whether it’s a real phenomenon, researchers believe that it is possible for some people to enter a mental state in which they intentionally and voluntarily let go of their sense of agency.

There are standard tests to figure out the level of this ability in people. Generally, about 10 percent of the population is categorized as highly hypnotizable. Another 10 percent is categorized as very hard to hypnotize. Everybody else is somewhere in the middle.

The researchers found that those who could be easily hypnotized reported the timing of their intention to move later than those who were hard to hypnotize. In other words, people with high hypnotizability didn’t have early access to their unconscious intentions.

Lush emphasized that these results don’t mean that meditators have more “free will” or that hypnotizable people have less. Rather, the findings suggest “that highly hypnotizable people on the one hand, and meditators on the other, lie at two ends of a spectrum of metacognition.”

The study suggests that meditation can provide earlier access to our unconscious states, the researchers said. But to be certain that meditators didn’t start out with more aware brains in the first place, the team is conducting another study in which amateurs are trained in meditation, to see if that changes their performance.

from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/meditation-awareness_us_5773fe84e4b0352fed3ea9a4?cps=gravity_2676_-6368728665752109738&ir=GPS+for+the+Soul&kvcommref=mostpopular&section=us_gps-for-the-soul&utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul