Remembering America’s Finest on Memorial Day

Throughout the year, there are plenty of holidays you might like to celebrate more than once.  Kids would probably like a couple extra days of Christmas presents and Halloween candy…two Valentine’s Days for your wife…and I would give plenty of thanks for an extra day of pie, turkey, stuffing and…well, more pie.  But more than any of those, the one day I say deserves as much repeating, reverence and recognition as it can get is today—Memorial Day.

Unlike most holidays, the sentiment behind Memorial Day isn’t abstract—it’s as concrete and immediate as today’s headlines. Officially speaking, Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who died while in the military service.  Now, you don’t need a history lesson to understand the sacrifice made by those who wear an American flag on their arm and put themselves in harm’s way—just watch tonight’s news.

We didn’t start celebrating Memorial Day until after the Civil War, but it was during that conflict, November of 1863, that President Abraham Lincoln gave his historic Gettysburg Address and eloquently laid out the simple yet profound idea that lies at the heart of this day:

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“The last full measure of devotion”—a beautiful phrase describing a tragic consequence.  And while the fight has moved from within our own country to conflicts overseas, the giving of your life in service to your country remains a uniquely sacred act.  American soldiers are fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the sad reality is those are not the last two wars that will ever need fighting.  On this Memorial Day and all the days before and after it, we must remember those in our military who bravely served and never made it home.

Just as we aren’t just Christians on Christmas or patriots on the 4th of July, we owe more to the fallen than just remembering them on Memorial Day.  Let today mark the beginning of your year-round remembrance, and never forget that the price of  living free to celebrate this day with your family was paid by those who wore a uniform, carried a gun, and gave “the last full measure of their devotion.”

God bless you, your family, and the United States of America.

Jack Armstrong, The Next Top Spiritual Author!

Hello Friends! PLEASE take one moment of your valuable time today to VOTE for my Companion in Light, and dear friend, Jack Armstrong, as the next Top Spiritual Author. He SO deserves it =)

If you have not yet read his beautiful book “Lessons from the Source” you can visit his web site to read an excerpt, read his recent new additions to the book, OR, read my personal review of his book here.

Once again, THANK YOU, Jack, for giving us all the freedom to expand, accept, love ourselves more, and grow grow grow. Exactly what our Soul’s need much more of every day. Let’s pay it forward with our vote! Simply click the link below to VOTE. Thanks!

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Obama adviser says documented UFO/ET landings on U.S. Capitol “could destabilize society”

Wilbur “Will” Allen, a former White House employee and Air Force One engineer under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, has stated that Everett Bellamy (Senior Assistant Dean of Georgetown Law Center), on behalf of John Podesta, who is a full-time faculty member at Georgetown Law Center, a former White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton (1998-2001) and Co-chair of the Obama Transition Team (2008-9), told Mr. Allen that the frequent UFO and extraterrestrial over flights and landings on the U.S. Capitol that Mr. Allen is able to document photographically using state of the art high definition equipment could, if made widely public, “destabilize society,” and urged Mr. Allen to cease his activity documenting these UFO/ET over fights and landings.

Ironically, at a November 14, 2007 press conference at the National Press Club, John Podesta himself called for public examination of the UFO phenomenon, stating, “It was the law.”

Mr. Allen is a professional photographer who was trained in photography and photographic analysis at a CIA film laboratory and has produced photography for major motion picture companies such as Warner Brothers and record labels such as DefJam.

Mr. Allen’s declarations are made in a wide-ranging exclusive radio interview with reporter Alfred Lambremont Webre on ExopoliticsRadio.org.

Mr. Allen’s photographs of UFOs flying over and landing on the roof of the U.S. Capitol on July 16, 2002 were taken 50 years from July 16, 1952, when UFOs were photographed over the U.S. Capitol. Mr. Allen’s historic photographs of the July 16, 2002 event together with UFO sightings and landings by U.S. Senate buildings, and the Washington Monument are set out a Slide Show in the article below.

In his in-depth Exopolitics Radio interview (available to Examiner.com readers in the article below), Mr. Allen, who grew up on U.S. military bases and now resides in Washington, DC, reveals that at age five he was visited by a group of “four to five grey extraterrestrials in silver spacesuits” who implanted him with a device.

That implant device went undetected during all the years of his military and White House service, and now signals him to go to specific locations in Washington, DC where he is instructed to photograph extraterrestrial craft and personnel that through hyperdimensional Star gates at extremely high speeds. Mr. Allen, who has reported some of these UFO/ET landings to the U.S. Capitol Police states that the police have told him his photographs confirm ET/UFO landings their officers are also encountering.

Mr. Allen believes that his photographs, which are forensic in quality, document that the same intelligent hyperdimensional civilization was behind the July 16, 1952 and the July 16, 2002 flyovers of the U.S. Capitol. These UFO/ET flyovers are continuing into the present. Mr. Allen states that the civilization communicating with him and directing his photographic documentation of their hypervelocity landings on the U.S. Capitol are “grey and human-hybrid.”

Continues at: http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner~y2010m5d19-Obama-adviser-says-UFODCdocumented-UFOET-landings-on-US-Capitol-could-destabilize-society

Seattle Exopolitics Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-2912-Seattle-Exopolitics-Examiner

Experiment Shows Brief Meditative Exercise Helps Cognition

A study published last month shows strong benefits between meditation and cognition. The study suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed.

Psychologists studying the effects of mindfulness meditation found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.

CHARLOTTE – April 16, 2010 – Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well.

While past research using neuroimaging technology has shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration, it has always been assumed that extensive training was required to achieve this effect. Though many people would like to boost their cognitive abilities, the monk-like discipline required seems like a daunting time commitment and financial cost for this benefit.

Surprisingly, the benefits may be achievable even without all the work. Though it sounds almost like an advertisement for a “miracle” weight-loss product, new research now suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed. Psychologists studying the effects of a meditation technique known as “mindfulness ” found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.

“In the behavioral test results, what we are seeing is something that is somewhat comparable to results that have been documented after far more extensive training,” said Fadel Zeidan, a post-doctoral researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and a former doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where the research was conducted.

“Simply stated, the profound improvements that we found after just 4 days of meditation training– are really surprising,” Zeidan noted. “It goes to show that the mind is, in fact, easily changeable and highly influenced, especially by meditation.”

The study appears in the April 2 issue of Consciousness and Cognition. Zeidan’s co-authors are Susan K. Johnson, Zhanna David and Paula Goolkasian from the Department of Psychology at UNC Charlotte, and Bruce J. Diamond from William Patterson University. The research was also part of Zeidan’s doctoral dissertation. The research will also be presented at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting in Montreal, April 17-20.

The experiment involved 63 student volunteers, 49 of whom completed the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned in approximately equivalent numbers to one of two groups, one of which received the meditation training while the other group listened for equivalent periods of time to a book (J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit) being read aloud.

Prior to and following the meditation and reading sessions, the participants were subjected to a broad battery of behavioral tests assessing mood, memory, visual attention, attention processing, and vigilance.

Both groups performed equally on all measures at the beginning of the experiment. Both groups also improved following the meditation and reading experiences in measures of mood, but only the group that received the meditation training improved significantly in the cognitive measures. The meditation group scored consistently higher averages than the reading/listening group on all the cognitive tests and as much as ten times better on one challenging test that involved sustaining the ability to focus, while holding other information in mind.

“The meditation group did especially better on all the cognitive tests that were timed,” Zeidan noted. “In tasks where participants had to process information under time constraints causing stress, the group briefly trained in mindfulness performed significantly better.”

Particularly of note were the differing results on a “computer adaptive n-back task,” where participants would have to correctly remember if a stimulus had been shown two steps earlier in a sequence. If the participant got the answer right, the computer would react by increasing the speed of the subsequent stimulus, further increasing the difficulty of the task. The meditation-trained group averaged aproximately10 consecutive correct answers, while the listening group averaged approximately one.

“Findings like these suggest that meditation’s benefits may not require extensive training to be realized, and that meditation’s first benefits may be associated with increasing the ability to sustain attention,” Zeidan said.

“Further study is warranted,” he stressed, noting that brain imaging studies would be helpful in confirming the brain changes that the behavioral tests seem to indicate, “but this seems to be strong evidence for the idea that we may be able to modify our own minds to improve our cognitive processing – most importantly in the ability to sustain attention and vigilance – within a week’s time.”

The meditation training involved in the study was an abbreviated “mindfulness” training regime modeled on basic “Shamatha skills” from a Buddhist meditation tradition, conducted by a trained facilitator. As described in the paper, “participants were instructed to relax, with their eyes closed, and to simply focus on the flow of their breath occurring at the tip of their nose. If a random thought arose, they were told to passively notice and acknowledge the thought and to simply let ‘it’ go, by bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath.” Subsequent training built on this basic model, teaching physical awareness, focus, and mindfulness with regard to distraction.

Zeidan likens the brief training the participants received to a kind of mental calisthenics that prepared their minds for cognitive activity.

“The simple process of focusing on the breath in a relaxed manner, in a way that teaches you to regulate your emotions by raising one’s awareness of mental processes as they’re happening is like working out a bicep, but you are doing it to your brain. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to release sensory events that would easily distract, whether it is your own thoughts or an external noise, in an emotion-regulating fashion. This can lead to better, more efficient performance on the intended task.”

“This kind of training seems to prepare the mind for activity, but it’s not necessarily permanent,” Zeidan cautions. “This doesn’t mean that you meditate for four days and you’re done – you need to keep practicing.”

The paper, “Mindfulness Meditation Improves Cognition: Evidence of Brief Mental Training” is available on Pubmed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20363650.

Public Relations media contact: James Hathaway, 704-687-5743   jbhathaw@uncc.edu

Research Source: Fadel Zeidan, 704-578-1271  fzeidan@wfubmc.edu

Ruby: Fire and Passion

The Ruby is the most powerful of the red stones (which also include garnet, red jasper, and carnelian). In India, it was considered an especially important gift with which to honor Krishna. According to Hindu belief, the source of the gem’s glow was an internal flame that no mortal could extinguish. Its Sanskrit name is Ratnaraj, The King Of Gems.

The Second Chakra: Going with the Flow

The color red, though sometimes associated with the first chakra, is the natural partner of the second partner, which relates to sexuality, blood circulation, and flow in general.

This chakra relates to the natural flow of sensation. Because sensation is associated with sensory pleasure, those who’ve learned that physical enjoyment is wrong try to suppress it. The need for sensation occurs, however, in all those with the ability to feel, thus it is a part of being alive. Often those who have denied themselves its natural expression seek artificial stimulation by abusing food, drugs, or alcohol.

We are helped along the road to denial by a range of popular beliefs. Some orthodox religions take a dubious view of desire, viewing it as the fuel that blocks the road to heaven. We’re taught that the heart (fourth) chakra, representing love, represents a superior, refined, and pure energy, in contrast to the crude and dangerous passions (including sexuality) of the second chakra.

Ruby and the Second Chakra

To some degree, these social repressions may be working in any of us. Ruby, however, may not be the first choice of stone to achieve re-balance. Like opal, it amplifies all emotions, which can be overwhelming for those seeking to open a tightly closed door. Depending on the strength of the blockage, I would recommend in descending degree of severity:

Red Jasper: The most grounding red stone, it helps to bridge the energies of the first and second energy, connecting us to the deep flow of earth energies.

Carnelian: Helps to ground us in the present and awakens creativity.

Garnet: In many ways, this crystal has energies like ruby, but they are much softer and more diffused.

Ruby is also not for people who have a predominance of fire in their astrological or emotional makeup. If you are an Aries, Leo, or Sagittarius, and especially if you have many planets in fire signs, Ruby may be too much of a good thing. This is especially true if you tend to be quick-tempered, easily irritated, or nervous. Being an astrologically fiery person, I have little to do with rubies in their pure form.

However, ruby comes in two combinations that even the fieriest person can use. These are ruby in zoisite and ruby in fuschsite.

Ruby in Zoisite: Grounding Passion

Ruby in zoisite is the union of opposites. Zoisite’s green cools and stabilizes the fiery passion of ruby. Thus, it is excellent for healing the heart after an ended love affair and also for helping to dissolve obsessive feelings about someone. It is equally useful for grounding creative energies. For those whose ideas are always in their heads, never quite reaching the earth plane, it can provide a stabilizing medium.

Ruby in Fuschsite

Most of us have worked with fuschite without perhaps knowing it. A chromium mica, it gives aventurine its color. In conjunction with other crystals, fuschsite helps to speed up physical or emotional healing. It can return one to a state of wellbeing after an emotional confrontation. It also helps emotions travel from an unconscious to a conscious level and takes them further to psychic and intuitive awareness. It can also activate a lighthearted spirit and a feeling of compassion.

If you’re looking for a crystal to help bring up stubborn negative emotional states and to release them with minimum suffering, consider ruby in fuschite. I would recommend either holding it or placing it on the heart chakra.

The Benefits of Ruby

Having gone through the disclaimers and having named replacement stones, I believe that ruby can benefit many people. Whether you are strongly grounded or earthbound, ruby can add some dance to your walk on the earth plane. If your second chakra is relatively balanced, if you are basically comfortable with physical sensation, and if you want to enhance certain aspects, such as creativity, sensuality, or the ability to express anger in a constructive way, it is an ideal stone. It’s a stone that helps to make the good better.

An example of how to work with it is with anger. To bring long-held anger to the surface, meditate with a ruby in one hand and a clear quartz in the other or place ruby and clear quartz on the pelvic area. Consciously allow the anger to arise. The clear quartz will accelerate the process of releasing and dissolving the anger.

Ruby can also awaken passion — not only sexual passion, but passion for living, for experiencing, for creating. It can stimulate motivating energy and the power of creative visualization. It also helps people to be realistic and honest about their goals and intentions.

Thus, if you are experiencing inertia, feel unimaginative, or feel that your imagination is creating dreams which are unrealizable, a ruby may help you to move forward in a positive way.

Ruby Miscellany and History

Technical stuff: Ruby is a form of corundum, aluminum oxide silicate colored by chromium.

Inhabitants of the former Burma, now Myanmar, have mines and mining tools dating back to the Stone Age. Some mines in India and Sri Lanka are nearly as old.

In former times specimens worth more than 1,000 rupees had to be turned over to the king. However, clever miners figured out how to ignore this restriction.

Due to its rarity, a clear and flawless ruby has a value ten times more than a diamond of equivalent quality. Lab-grown rubies are often substituted for the hard-to-find and hard-to-ford real thing. According to crystal practitioners, their properties are strong and powerful.

New deposits of rubies continue to be found. In 1992 a deposit was found in North Vietnam.

Those fond of Tudor and Elizabethan history will be interested that a ruby Catherine of Aragon wore turned dark and dull the day before Henry the Eighth announced he was divorcing her.

by: Beyond the Rainbow

Resting the Busy Mind

Sometimes we’re angry but forget why. We may not be sure of the real reason for our anger, but our gut feeling says our anger is justified and we hold on to it.

We start to think of justifications for our anger: the time our friend forgot to call, insulted the family dog, was late for the movies, never picks up checks, and constantly complains. Suddenly, we have lots of reasons to be angry. The list is endless. That cheers us up, and our busy minds are satisfied for a moment.

Whether it’s anger or passion or just our “to do” list, the mind always seems to be actively involved with something. One instant, it runs outward toward something it sees and wants, the next moment, it retreats inward toward some engrossing thought.

Then it’s back to our friend and the anger that’s becoming so familiar. Our minds are always busy keeping track of this and that in our inner and outer worlds. It’s like having a job and a family — between the two, there’s hardly any break. One thought leads to another, and that thought leads to a third. At some point, we lose track and can’t remember how we got to where we are.

When the mind goes around and around like this, it’s like water that’s stirred up all the time. It never has a chance to settle and become calm and clear. You can even have trouble sleeping because your mind is not at rest.

If you know your mind is busy and full of thoughts, then that’s actually not too bad. But often that’s not the case. Sometimes we’re juggling five or six trains of thought and the emotions attached to them. With so much going on, the mind starts to get agitated and confused. We can’t see clearly how disturbed our minds have become. We also can’t see that there’s no logic to our confusion. Still, we remain very diligent and patient when it comes to holding on to our thoughts. We try to keep them all alive, to keep up the steady stream of thoughts. If the stream starts to slow down or stop, we immediately try to revive it. We even have gadgets to help us hold on to our thoughts — pocket PCs, Palm Pilots, notebooks, iPhones — so we can record anything. It’s all there: your emails, texts, schedules and shopping lists. That’s not always a bad thing, but with all this going on, it’s easy to see how our minds never get any rest.

Our problem is that this busy mind can lose its connection to its real nature. When we take time to look beneath all this activity, we discover a sense of spaciousness and awareness, peace and happiness, that doesn’t change from moment to moment. It’s always there for us. The Buddha taught that this is the actual reality of our minds. To reconnect to that reality, we need to slow down and relax — totally let go and rest our minds. Then there is the possibility of the mind clearing up, calming down, and tuning in to its basic state of peace and happiness.

So how do we rest and relax our minds? There are a number of things that can help. You can nourish and relax your body with a healthful diet and exercise, especially yoga. You can take breaks, go for walks, listen to music, and disconnect for a while from the cyber-, info-, and techno- worlds. But what can help the most is the practice of meditation where you are just watching your thoughts and resting your mind on the coming and going of your breath. This style of meditation is simple, can be practiced anywhere, and has a strong impact on our well being. Once we become comfortable with the basic technique, which is described in many places, we can take a closer look at our thoughts.

The first thing you’ll notice is how many thoughts you have, how they’re always shifting and changing, and how the mind chases after them. The practice is simply to notice when your mind wanders off and bring it back to the present, again and again. The way you come back is by letting go of the thought you’re following. Once you notice it’s there, you don’t hold on to it. Then you’ve cut the momentum of the stream of thoughts instead of encouraging it. There’s a sense of relief when you’re not being dragged around by your thoughts. It doesn’t matter whether the thoughts are positive or negative. If a good thought appears, you don’t need to improve it or rejoice in it; just let it be as it is. If a bad thought pops up, you don’t need to get upset about it or try to block or change it. You can just let it be as it is.

The way to really rest our busy minds in meditation is to let go of all thoughts about our thoughts. We can simply relax as our thoughts come and go. The more relaxed we become, the more we can see the mind’s spacious, wakeful quality, which we’ve been more or less blind to. When we see this, we are seeing what the Buddha called our “enlightened potential,” which everybody has.

What this means is that we can find our own happiness and peace of mind just as we are in this very moment, because it is within us. We don’t have to change our thoughts or change ourselves into someone else. We don’t need to think that who we are, this “me,” is not good enough, smart enough, or lucky enough to be happy. We don’t need to be Mother Theresa, Bill Gates or the people in the Vogue magazine ads to be happy. If we think we do, we don’t have to chase after that thought. We can just let it go like any other, and rest our busy mind.

© 2010 Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is a widely celebrated teacher known for his skill in making the full richness of Buddhist wisdom accessible to modern minds. A lover of urban culture, Rinpoche enjoys writing poetry and creating art of various kinds in his leisure time. Based in the United States for the past 20 years, he devotes much of his energy to his vision of a genuine American, and Western, Buddhism, free from the cultural trappings that sometimes distort the Buddha’s essential message of wakefulness. Born in 1965 in northeast India, Rinpoche received comprehensive training in the meditative and intellectual disciplines of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of many of the greatest masters from Tibet’s final pre-exile generation. Among the many organizational roles he juggles, he is the founder and principal teacher of Nalandabodhi, an international network of Buddhist practice centers. His latest book is Rebel Buddha (Shambhala Publications) forthcoming in November 2010. For more information please visit Rinpoche on Facebook, Twitter and his Website.

A Blind Date With The Infinate Unknown

The   Creative  Spirit  leads me  into  many worlds. I’ve  trekked   alone in the Himalayas  and lived  naked in virgin jungles of Hawaii. I’ve  been   scientist,   monastic in a mystic order artist and  teacher. I seem to  learn  the  same  lessons wherever I am:   to have faith in the unknown; to ride the  wave of the moment;  to let go of  the illusion  of control;    to plumb the depths of mind and emotion  without fear  or  judgment. And  best of  all –to play!

Soon after I started taking cello lessons at the age of 7,  I began to tune my  strings to a new chord each morning–Bird calls, traffic, electronic hums, wind, rain on the roof… any sound of  the moment entered into  my  chord.  My cello teacher  gave up on me,  saying, “I cannot teach this child. She does everything her own way!”    The  unknown chord was my way–my true teacher.   I  never knew what to expect when  I moved  from one string to another on the  fretless cello finger board.  Anything could happen!   I could not plan  or prepare or practice my response. The unknown chord taught me  to  ride the wave  of the moment   and  to hear unfamiliar sounds with  new ears,  just  as  they  are,  without judgment.  There is  no  mistake!

At  the age of   8,   I discovered that bathrooms have wonderful acoustics.  I would lie on my belly in the tub,  submerge  my  whole  face  in the  water  and  generate  sounds  through    my mouth or nose.   The  different chambers  in my mouth, throat,   nose,  sinuses,  and head  were  like  newly   discovered  rooms  in  an  infinite  mansion.   I   could  mold  strange and wonderful sounds  by  changing  the size and shape of  these inner chambers.   Overtones  transported  me  into  a reality beyond  time  or  space  where   I  rode  the  wave of  uncreated  sound.

After many  years  in  the  academic  world,  I  left  my  doctoral  dissertation  in  psychobiology to  pursue  my   adventure with  the  Creative  Spirit.    In  an  ashram  on  Maui I   gathered  with  others  at  dawn  for  Chaotic  Meditation.   In  the dark  we    moved   and  emitted  random  sounds  for  10  minutes  without  stopping.   “Issha,  zszpbt,  horrimandidn,  pfftlllllttt,  grandgnet,  loooof,  llllit,  ansugggggg!  click,  cluck,  snaggzzz…….”   Whispers,  calls,  yells,  chants.   No  rules.   But you  couldn’t  stop  moving  or  making  random  sounds no matter what.    Chaotic  meditation  blasted through  my  barriers of  fear,   habit and  conformity.   Everyone  sounded  pretty much like  me in the  dark…so  I  wasn’t  crazy!   And  I  discovered  sounds,  movements  and  feelings  that  transported me  beyond  the  boundaries of  my  culture and  my  mind.   I  AM  MORE THAN  I KNOW!

Chaotic  meditation inspired me  to  create  gentler versions of the process–freeflow  writing,  toning,  painting,  energy drawings– all  done  in  concentrated  5-minute  sessions.    I  remembered  how  to  paint  like  a  child–dripping,  splattering,  spraying,  rotating  pieces of  silk  in  large  frames.  What  will  happen  when  a  river of red flows into a pool  of  blue? Sprinkling  salt crystals  on  layers of  wet  dye,  I  watched them   come  alive,  move  and grow.  Sometimes   they  created  schools  of  tiny  fish,  amoebas,  ghost  faces,  frost,  blossom  or  leaf  patterns  as  they  absorbed the  dye and  dried.  Painting  outside,  I  set  things up  and  choose the colors,  but   wind, sun,  water,  salt  and   gravity   did  the painting.    As  I  gave  up  the illusion of  control,  I  became  free to play.

The  computer became  a  mystic  friend  who  leads  me  into the  heart  of  nature.      When I rotate simple patterns,  like hand-written letters around a center, using a simple  painting  program,  all kinds of  patterns and fractals,  as seen in  flowers, plants,  shells,  water,  wind,  emerge.  Cyberalchemy is  also   a  path   into the  mystery  of   my  inner life.  I  close my  eyes,   take  the  computer mouse  in  my  non-preferred   hand,   and  let my  energy  create  movement.   When I  release the mouse,  a  record of my  experience  leaps into being in   the  colors  of  the  moment.  The  titles  of  these  quick  daily  paintings   reveal  their  meaning  for me:  “Stimulus”,  “Alone”,  “Emergence”, “Fool”,  “Jagged Energy”,”Help me!”,   “Birth”….

My  scanner is   a  time machine   connecting  me  with  memories,  feelings and  wisdom  from  the past!   A  mandala made  from multiple  images of  my   my father  who  died  when  I  was  seven  and  my  4-year-old self  potently   concentrated  his   presence and   intensified my  memories  and  feelings about him.   As  I created this  new,   empowering pattern,  I  transformed  some of the   loss and insecurity evoked by his death.   I  brought  his  power and  support  into  my  present.    Later  I created  a  spiral  superimposing   childhood,  adolescent and mature  images  of  myself  to  help   me  remember  who  I  am  beyond  all  the  changes:

The Creative  Spirit   beckons me:
Go  further.  Go  beyond  the  curtain,
Go  backstage where the  technicians and artists
of the inner theater create the show.
Go  deeper.  Go to the core.  Go to the  center.
Where the sap of  creation flows thick and  steady.

Go on!  Go  on!  Nothing to cling to.
Nothing to  grab.
Flow  down the  stream singing of the  moment
that comes once and dies..
Of  the moment  that  comes and dies,
comes and dies..
Waves in the ocean,  blinks in the eye,
yods of the light of  eternity…

I  am  that!  I  am  that!

by Sara Deutsch

Regain Your Right to Be Self-Ruling

Have you ever gotten angry at a knot? Maybe you couldn’t get your shoelace undone, or clear that fishing line. A knot in a thin gold or silver neck chain can be especially difficult. When you fight with a knot you feel frustration. Now, if you think about it logically, clearly the knot has no intelligence of its own with which to thwart your intentions or make you feel angry. Yet when you fight with it, you fall under its power. You feel yourself to be at the mercy of the knot.

Since the knot itself has no power to act upon you, where is the power coming from that puts you under the influence of the knot? From one place only: your perception. Your perception of the knot is the only power it has, and that power is not in it; it is in you! You cannot be free of the frustration or anger you feel in not being able to untangle the knot until you learn to separate the fact of the thing from the power of it. It is a fact that the rope has a knot, but it is not a fact that the knot has power. It is your perception that attributes power to it.

We frequently feel ourselves to be under the power of things. We feel we are the victims of an unfair social system, economic upheavals, painful relationships — even a lawn chair that won’t unfold right. We fight these conditions, feeling ourselves to be under their “dark” influence. The fact is, however, these events do not exist as negative events except for our perception of them. The only power they have is the power we give them. What is the proof? Someone else observing the same event may not see it as negative at all.

If we separate the facts from what we perceive as a thing’s power, we are on the way to freeing ourselves from all things that bother us. Your wish to understand your pain by shining the light of Truth on it will show you where to break the thought connection through which you give your life energy to events that would otherwise have no power over you. If you truly wish to be free, you can even shine that light back into what feels like your own hard or cold past, and the warm light of Truth will melt all those long past difficulties dwelling there until eventually nothing about your life will have the power to bother you again.

– Guy Finley

Learn the secrets of how to let go of what has been holding you down in life. Awaken a New Self within you that lives above all struggles. Be self-ruling.  Learn the inside story about a whole new kind of inner success.

Excerpted from The Intimate Enemy: Winning the War Within Yourself

Guy Finley author of  Secrets of Being Unstoppable is also the acclaimed author of more than 30 books and audio programs on the subject of self-realization, several of which have become international best sellers . His popular works, published in 16 languages, are widely endorsed by doctors, professionals, and religious leaders of all denominations. His popular works include The Secret of Letting Go, Design Your Destiny, and The Lost Secrets of Prayer. To learn more about the work of Guy Finley visit the Life of Learning Foundation at http://www.guyfinley.org.