Just Letting It Be!

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Wu Wei: The Ancient Art of Non-Doing

By Chip Richards on Wednesday July 6th, 2016
WuWeiFeature2

Aligning with the Natural Flow of Life

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

A few mornings ago the surf was rising, so I drove down to one of my favorite spots at sunrise with the vision of catching some sweet waves before the world woke up and the water got crowded. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with this idea. As the first rays lit up the ocean, I paddled out to find about 30 other surfers already out there. Instantly I felt behind, like I’d missed something. So I hit the water with a sense of urgency, trying to make up for lost time – paddling this way and that to dodge people, ducking under big waves, navigating currents and looking for my groove. But every wave I paddled for seemed to have someone else on it, or it broke too soon or too late for me to catch. The harder I tried, the more difficult it seemed to find my flow with the ocean… Until eventually I got so tired I couldn’t keep paddling – so I stopped for a moment, sat up on my board and just let the current take me.

Before long I had drifted away from the main peak where everyone was jockeying for waves, to a quiet little area where I was sitting all alone. Catching my breath, I started noticing the way the light was dancing on the water, the way the dawn air brushed against my face. As my lungs slowed down and I let go of trying, I started feeling good just being out there. Just feeling the ocean, and me in it. Right about that time, I glanced up to see the rising face of a beautiful wave picking up right before me.”What are you doing way over here?” I smiled, turning to meet it, stroked once or twice and popped up onto a clear blue wall that carried us both all the way to shore.

As my lungs slowed down and I let go of trying, I started feeling good just being out there. As my lungs slowed down and I let go of trying, I started feeling good just being out there.

Accessing Flow

Wu Wei is a Chinese concept central to Taoism and a core theme of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. Translated literally as “non-doing”, Wu Wei is not so much about “doing nothing” as it is about aligning our movement with the greater flow of life. Often referred to as ‘natural action’, Wu Wei does not involve excessive effort or struggle, but a kind of “going with the flow” where we are able to move with the energy of the moment and respond freely to whatever situation that arises.

We each have moments in our life when we access flow. In these moments – through sheer focused intent or absolute letting go (or a combination of both) – we enter a state of connectedness to what we are doing, and our movements become simultaneously highly productive and effortlessly expressed. The world around us seems to slow down, and in that space, it is as if we become one with the very thing we are trying to do. The words pour onto the page revealing what to write, the waves of the ocean carry us and we are part of them, the rhythm of the song we are dancing to comes right through us… and becomes a pure expression of who we are.

While each of us catch glimpses of this state of flow in peak moments of movement, love and creative endeavor, we often believe that these extraordinary experiences are the realms of the elite, only accessed through miracle or mastery. But what if this sense of flow was actually meant to be our normal way of being – available to each of us in every moment? What if, beyond the many details and mixed agendas of our daily life, we each had direct access to experience a sense of oneness and flow everyday, no matter what we were doing?

Move with the energy of the moment and respond freely to whatever situations arise.Wu Wei is a Chinese concept central to Taoism and a core theme of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.

How do we learn to do, without doing?

Historically, many Taoist adepts chose to explore the essence of Wu Wei by withdrawing from society – wandering freely through the mountains, meditating for long periods in caves, and cultivating a daily existence which was nourished and guided directly by the energy of the natural world. According to Lao Tzu, the ultimate expression of Wu Wei is found not only in retreat from the world but in our experience of flow in the way that we live in it.

“When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard.” – Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

While many of us wake into our day with multiple “to-dos” stacked on our list and a sense of urgency to get things done, it’s powerful to consider that there is a natural order in everything we do. If we tune in and follow the order, things get done effectively, efficiently and without extra effort. If we go against the order, it takes extra time and energy to get things done and in some cases (like me in the surf) nothing will get done, no matter how hard we try.

If we go against the order, it takes extra time and energy to get things done.If we go against the order, it takes extra time and energy to get things done.

Following the Way of Nature

Whatever our intent or outcome may be, and whatever our mind may be saying about how urgent or pressing things are, Wu Wei tells us that ultimately the most effective way of doing anything is to follow the way of nature.  As we tune in to the natural flow of any task, we may find that there are critical actions for us to take, but by aligning with the energy of what we are pursuing, we can often achieve way more by doing less.

How nature does its work reveals many perfect examples of Wu Wei. The cycles of the sun, the rotation of the earth, the orbit of the moon, the flow of rivers to create and feed valleys, the life of a tree to grow and give life to so many others… Each is highly productive, fit for the purpose to naturally deliver that which it was born to deliver. Each does it’s work without doing it.

Some people intuitively interpret ‘non-doing’ as something passive, laid back or lazy. In the eyes of Tao, there are times for action, but if no action is needed based on the laws of nature, then doing anything may be ‘overdoing’.  In fact, sometimes action can do more harm than good.

If we are growing a plant and we have created the right conditions for growth with healthy soil, sun and water, there comes a time when the very best way to ensure the growth of the plant is simply to leave it alone. More water, more sun, more fertiliser won’t help, in fact too much of any of these may stifle the growth of the plant. We remain attentive, connected to the plant’s needs but for the time being, doing nothing is just what is needed. Wu Wei teaches us to not force actions but to let them take their course of nature.

“When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.” – Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

 For the time being, doing nothing is just what is needed.

Finding our Wu Wei Today

If you are depressed, you live in the past. If you are anxious, you live in the future. But if you are at peace, you live in the present. – Lao Tzu

When we look around at the world today, it seems there is so much to do. Amidst our striving for progress, personal achievement, and in some cases, survival, the idea of “non-doing” can feel out of reach. Fortunately, the essence of Wu Wei is simplicity and there are some simple things we can do (and not do!) each day to help us align with the natural flow of life. Here are a few:

1.Spend time in nature – If our fundamental aim is to align with the natural flow of life, there is no better teacher and no better place to connect with this aspect of ourselves than in the natural world. When we step into nature (ideally without plastic-soled shoes) we plug into a Wu Wei world, where natural, generative, flow-filled systems abide on all levels. If there was a “practice” to discipline ourselves around in the aim of bringing more Wu Wei into our lives, being in, observing and connecting with nature would have to be one.

2. Give without condition – As we come into alignment with the natural world, we are reminded of the generosity that comes when living systems are in harmony with themselves and each other. A single seed produces fruit which feeds many and gives forth a thousand more seeds. The sun gives everything that it has without being drained. A river gives life each step and turn of the way as it follows its calling from mountain to the sea. One of our most natural expressions of flow we experience in life is to give freely to each other. When we allow ourselves to follow our spontaneous callings to give – even in small ways – we bring ourselves into alignment with the generous nature of life and (without trying or looking for it) open ourselves to receive in ways that we could not have imagined.

When we step into nature, we plug into a Wu Wei world.When we step into nature, we plug into a Wu Wei world.

3. Let go of how we think it’s supposed to look – There may always be elements of our life that we consciously plan for, but every step along the way will invariably reveal passageways and possibilities that we could not have predicted. Sometimes our efforts to fulfill the plan and gain a predictable outcome shuts us off from seeing what other possibilities may be waiting to reveal. When we find ourselves struggling (as I did in the surf this week), often it’s because we have a fixed idea of how things are supposed to be, according to our desires or “the plan”. As we let go of our agenda and attachment to have it be a certain way, we open ourselves up to how it actually is… and in that space of acceptance, we become available for flow to find us!

If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, “Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…” Then you realise that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. – Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

Sometimes our efforts to fulfill the plan shuts us off from seeing what other possibilities may be waiting to reveal.Sometimes our efforts to fulfill the plan shuts us off from seeing other possibilities.

4. Stay open to spontaneous emergence – One of the fundamental principles of Wu Wei is that the essence of flow is not premeditated, but arises spontaneously. We can play our part to create the right conditions, we can bring ourselves into the ocean, but we can’t make the waves. My family has a beautiful, well-planned veggie garden, but amidst our consciously planted rows of lettuce and kale, one of the most productive crops this season was an entire patch of pumpkins that rose spontaneously from the compost. As we take steps in any area of life, one of the great invitations Wu Wei offers is to remain open to what is emerges spontaneously (inside and out!). What whispered calling or fresh impulse may be giving us an opportunity in this moment to experience our intended outcome (and more!) in ways that we never could have planned.

What simple things can you “not do” today to begin opening yourself to the greater flow of Wu Wei in your life?

“Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.” – Lao Tzu

from:    http://upliftconnect.com/wu-wei-ancient-art-non-doing/

Lighten Up!

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Humor Is A Gas!

By Zen Gardner

by Arhata Osho

Apparently in the ‘story’ of Jesus there is no account of his laughter. Strange? Apparently Buddha told jokes or saw the humor in many things, and ‘just’ life – out of happiness. Because he laughed a lot, we are ‘informed’ that he’s a good reminder to ‘lighten up’ and enjoy. Positive laughter is a healer, and in it’s few forms like smiling, chuckling, and just using any humor to lighten situations as a tool of behaviors to have developed for many situations. Sometimes ‘light humor’ is a peacemaker for challenging happenings like taking the ‘air’ out of someones anger, frustration, or just negativity.

Be aware of your own laughter or humor. ‘Feel good humor’ to others is not hard or harsh, but ‘soft’ to evoke a better atmosphere. A few years ago, I had two people in my center who laughed all the time, and very loud, sometimes in talking to each other. It came across to those in a more peaceful state as ‘offensive’, particularly when they didn’t seem to be any reason to laugh. Then there is the person who laughs at half the things they say themselves – unresolved pain? Harsh laughter or humor when done often is symptomatic of early negativity, ironically, and happily most with unresolved issues don’t indulge in the ‘foghorn’ laughter. Seems it happens more with certain substance abusers.

Humor is a great gift that needs to be cultivated from the heart and that ‘light, grateful part of the brain. Kidding, teasing, mischievous banter, light sarcasm, etc., from the heart is a greater fuel for positive, supplemental interaction. Often, healthy laughter will release tensions or stress. In my ‘let go’ meditation groups in Venice Beach with 20-50 in the group, we’d have 45 minutes of laughter with the idea to ‘fake it ’til’ you make it’! Clearly, there were startled neighbors who walked by. Afterwards, folks would lie down and just watch the thoughts in meditation. Of course, some couldn’t stop laughing. A great cleansing of the mind bringing everyone into the moment. Try it for a few minutes every day for a while, stopping with eyes closed to meditate for a few minutes. Laughing will become more accessible in everyday life then.

A twinkle in the eye be it the smile of a newborn or a 90 year old enjoying the blessings of life, it’s a reminder to feel the spirit of the goodness of love, life, and thankfulness. We are all told to exercise, eat well, have good thoughts, sleep well, but it’s important to have humor in its many forms that ‘greases’ life’s smooth journey. There is a season or time to be serious, friendly, to cry, to  empathize, to have foresight, on and on, but never forget to keep laughing readably available. Lightness of being is the path to enlightened love.

from:    http://www.zengardner.com/humor-is-a-gas/

 

A Crystal Primer

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

July 5, 2016 

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

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.

quartz crystal chakra 1111

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

Smudging 1111

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

  1. Hold the crystal in both hands and gaze into it, making contact with the crystal.
  2. Start breathing with deep long breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling forcefully through your mouth.
  3. 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.
  4. With each exhale send your desire into the crystal.
  5. 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

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

feel lonely overconnected world

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

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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

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

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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.

    • BananaStock via Getty Images

    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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

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    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

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    How to Spot A False Flag Event

    by Tyler Durden

    Jul 2, 2016 10:15 PM

    Via Chuck Baldwin Live,

    A missionary friend of mine in Eastern Europe recently gave me a heads up regarding an excellent article written by Sebastian Swift entitled “5 Confirmed False Flag Operations And How To Spot Them In The Future.”

    Swift writes,

    “The false flag phenomenon is distinctively modern and used as an ideological weapon to control populations with the fear of a manufactured enemy. They are used in ostensibly democratic systems where people believe they have inalienable rights. Such democratic systems–primarily the United States, Israel, and Great Britain–must shock people into sociopolitical and geopolitical consent and, as such, require sophisticated modern propaganda systems and advanced covert operations teams with highly proficient skills.”

    Here are his telltale signs of a false flag operation:

    • There is an immediate comprehensive narrative, including a convenient culprit. Law enforcement, government agencies, and the mainstream media immediately proffer a narrative that completely explains the event and encourages citizens to tie their intellectual understanding of the tragedy to the emotions they experience. In his lecture at Contact in the Desert, [author and researcher] Richard Dolan noted that a distinguishing characteristic of a false flag operation is that the official narrative IS NOT questioned by the media. There are often legislative, ideological and sociopolitical power plays waiting in the wings, which the government can immediately implement.
    • The official narrative has obvious domestic and geopolitical advantages for the governing body. The Bush administration used 9/11 to usher in the War on Terror, which has served as a lynchpin for countless civil liberty infringements by the national security state, including ubiquitous domestic surveillance and indefinite detention.
    • The narrative behind the attack serves to leverage emotions like fear, as well as patriotism, in order to manufacture consent around a previously controversial issue. For example, many of the recent domestic terror attacks, including the Aurora [and Orlando] shooting[s], have exacerbated and reinforced advocacy of gun control legislation.
    • Military training drills and police drills occur on the day of and very near the attack itself, causing confusion to obscure eye witness testimony and allowing orchestrators to plant both patsies, disinformation and backup operatives. This is no small point. An incredible percentage of major domestic or international terror attacks have involved simultaneous “training drills.” This list includes, but is not limited to, the infamous NORAD drills of 9/11, the 7/7 London Bombings, the 2011 Norway shooting, the Aurora shooting, Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon. Though none of the aforementioned events can be confirmed or denied without a doubt, they bear a striking resemblance to previous false flag attacks and should be looked at with an investigative eye.

    It’s time for those of us who have been reluctant to consider the possibility that our own government (and the governments of Israel and Great Britain) could actually be complicit in domestic terrorism in order to further a nefarious agenda to at least stop accepting the government and media’s version of these tragedies at face value. For the most part, the mainstream media is little more than a propaganda ministry for the federal government. We haven’t seen true objective investigative journalism since before the death of John F. Kennedy.

    Granted, not every national tragedy is part of a government conspiracy–and there is a plethora of “conspiracy nuts” out there to whom EVERYTHING is a conspiracy and through which we must wade to try to ascertain the truth. These people make it difficult for all of us. The Internet has provided the Chicken Littles of the world with an opportunity to play journalist. And their “everything’s-a-conspiracy” rants only serve to mask the true conspiracies and turn the average John Doe away from the truth. That’s why I believe that many of these “conspiracy-everywhere” Internet bloggers are actually PART OF THE CONSPIRACY. Their job is to make genuine whistleblowers and researchers look like conspiracy “kooks.” Then, of course, there are genuine kooks out there, too.

    Regardless, the similarities and “coincidences” of many of these national tragedies are just too numerous for rational people to ignore. I believe Mr. Swift’s analysis is very intelligent, coherent, and plausible.

    Our Founding Fathers believed their government (the British Crown) was deliberately conspiring against them. Thomas Jefferson said as much in our Declaration of Independence:

    “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

    Read it again: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a DESIGN to reduce them under absolute Despotism . . . .” Jefferson and the rest of America’s founders believed that there was a “design” (i.e, “plot,” “scheme,” or “conspiracy,” if you please) to “reduce them under absolute Despotism.” So, if you believe that government conspiracy is only for kooks, you must include America’s Founding Fathers in that group.

    Patrick Henry may have said it best:

    “We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?

     

    “For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth–to know the worst and to provide for it.”

    I submit if we deliberately “shut our eyes against a painful truth,” liberty is not long for this country. And there is plenty of blame to go around.

    Obviously, the “no conspiracy” group is contributing greatly to the demise of liberty by their unwillingness to even examine the evidence suggesting government conspiracies. Truly, they are shutting their eyes “against a painful truth.” And, unfortunately, this group is most prevalent among pastors, Christians, and churches.

    I find it incredible that people who supposedly study their Bibles are so completely blind to government conspiracies. The Old and New Testaments are replete with examples of government conspiracies. Jewish governments, especially, were notorious for conspiring against God’s prophets in the Old Testament and against Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament. Plus, the New Testament plainly pictures the master conspirator, Satan, as being the “god of this world” and “the prince of the power of the air.” His offer to Christ on the Mount of Temptation to give Jesus the “kingdoms of the world” was NOT challenged by the Lord. In other words, Jesus didn’t dispute the fact that Satan controls many, if not most, of the world’s governments. The Book of Ephesians warns against the conspiracy of “principalities,” “powers,” “rulers of the darkness of this world,” and “spiritual wickedness in high places.” Every Bible commentator that I respect includes wicked civil magistrates within these personages. Yet when one brings up the possibility of government conspiracies to the average church member, he or she is treated as if they have the palsy.

    Nowhere is this attitude of the denial of conspiracies more evident than in the whole Muslim versus America façade. Almost no Christian leader seems to be able to see the “man behind the curtain” in this whole affair. They have absolutely NO concept of what the governments of the U.S., Great Britain, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are surreptitiously doing to instigate and foment this “war with Islam.” (Of course, there is no war against the Islamic states of Saudi Arabia and Turkey; they are our “allies.”) Christians aren’t even willing to study the matter. Therefore, the devil–along with the evil miscreants inside Western governments that he controls–is able to go about his diabolical work completely undetected.

    But, in all fairness, the “everything’s-a-conspiracy” group must also share culpability in our country’s demise. There are too many professing “patriots” who seem to have no honesty or objectivity whatsoever. To them, everything government does is bad whether it is or isn’t. And, of course, they, the so-called “patriots,” can do NOTHING wrong.

    For example, if a black kid in an inner city is unjustly killed by a police officer, these “patriots” say absolutely NOTHING. But if one of their “own” is justly killed by police, they scream “tyranny” and shout about the need for revolution. Such people seem to have no reasoning ability and no understanding of Natural Law. They are agenda driven as surely as are big-government toadies. In fact, some of these “patriot” Internet bloggers and radio broadcasters are no better than the mainstream media: they twist the truth in order to pander to the people who are supporting them financially. It’s not about principle; it’s not about truth; it’s not about the rule of law. It’s all about their financial success.

    When we only condemn injustice committed by government, while overlooking and condoning injustice committed by so-called “patriots,” we lose all credibility and integrity. Everything is not a conspiracy. Every policeman or federal agent is not a Jackboot. Sometimes there are real acts of violence committed by real deranged criminals with no help whatsoever from anyone–including anyone in government. And sometimes there are so-called “patriots” who are themselves evil, using the freedom movement for their own ulterior purposes. And, of course, there are well-intentioned people who sometimes do very foolish and unwise things. And only foolish and unwise people would condone and support foolish and unwise actions, even if they are well-intentioned.

    I totally agree with Sebastian Swift’s article that there are indeed false flag operations being perpetrated by rogue elements within government–including the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. I further agree that people need to honestly and objectively be alert for the identifying characteristics of these false flag operations. More than that, the American people need to begin holding our civil magistrates accountable for these operations, as they could not continue without the tacit support of our elected representatives and President.

    But what we do NOT need are phony “patriots” who do nothing but distract, confuse, and incite by calling everything a conspiracy and who themselves are guilty of unlawful conduct–unlawful conduct as defined by God and Natural Law. (This is why the ignorance and silence of America’s pulpits is such an egregious crime: people do not even know how to discern lawful and unlawful conduct because pastors are not teaching them these Biblical Natural Law principles.) Plus, I am personally convinced that many of these hot-headed so-called “patriots” are in reality government agent provocateurs who are deliberately trying to incite real patriots into doing something stupid.

    Again, I submit if we deliberately “shut our eyes against a painful truth,” liberty is not long for this country. And that includes admitting when a tragedy is NOT a conspiracy. But it also means admitting when evidence suggests that it IS.

    from:    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-02/how-spot-false-flag-event

     

    Some Homesteading Links

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    5 Best Homesteading YouTube Channels to Binge Watch

    Garden WorkJeffrey Green, Contributor
    Waking Times

    Can you picture yourself living a homesteading lifestyle?

    Waking up early to milk the cows, release the chickens to scratch the barnyard, collect their eggs and then update your blog before your stay-at-home family rises. The rest of the day you do chores aimed at delivering an authentic human experience for people you love. You produce high-quality food and happy healthy humans. You have independence and security but still enjoy the fruits of modern convenience.

    Yes, you can do it. Many families are already living the dream and sharing their experiences on YouTube.

    Wikipedia succinctly explains homesteading as “a lifestyle of self-sufficiency…characterized by subsistence agriculture, home preservation of foodstuffs.”

    In the past, homesteading has been viewed as a rugged life full of hardship. Yet modern technology and creative farming practices now make it possible for nearly anyone to turn a home into a homestead.

    These YouTube homesteaders highlighted below share their personal experiences through vlogs and courses. They teach methods for raising livestock, growing fruits and vegetables, preparing and preserving food, homeschooling, and saving and making money.

    There are many reasons for the growing popularity of homesteading, but general motivations seem to be the following:

    1. Desire for independence from potential social disruption
    2. Craving the highest quality food to optimize health
    3. Desire to gain authentic human skills and experiences
    4. Desire to live in better balance with nature

    One of the biggest challenges for all homesteaders, old and new, is financial independence. Despite the goal of “self-sufficiency,” homesteaders still need to make enough money to interface with society and to take advantage of creature comforts. Mortgages, taxes, insurance and addiction to imported coffee are stubborn things.

    Besides being entertaining teachers, the YouTubers below are my favorites because they also share the secret ingredient to cooking up a sustainable homesteading experience – making a supplementary income from home.

    Here are the 5 best homesteading YouTube channels worth binge watching:

    Justin Rhodes

    Every day the Rhodes family puts out a high-definition video blog that records daily activity on their homestead. After studying permaculture and pastured livestock under the likes of Joel Salatin, Justin practices what he preaches. With help from his wife and four enthusiastic kids, the Rhodes homestead is a beautiful example of how anyone can produce high-quality food. Rhodes also teaches free webinars and sells a video course on raising permaculture chickens. Entertaining and educational! Visit their website here: http://abundantpermaculture.com/

    You can check out their recent farm update below, but I strongly suggest binge watching their archives.

     

    Jack Spirko

    Jack Spirko runs the wildly popular 5-day-a-week podcast show called The Survival Podcast which covers “how to live a better life if things get tough or even if they don’t.” He also runs a YouTube channel that documents his adventures into raising pastured ducks and quail, permaculture design, and “Meads of the Week” among other topics. Spirko authentically lives the solutions he promotes. He explains why he does things and he’s not afraid to show his successes and failures. Spirko teaches live workshops, webinars and speaks at live events.

    Below is the first episode of Spirko’s latest Duck Chronicles series:

    Wrangler Star

    The Wranglerstar family documents their move from city slickers to become modern-day homesteaders. Through vlogging their daily experiences and reviewing homesteading products, they teach others to “become truly independent from the mythological American dream.” Playlists include titles like “Back to Basics,” “Kitchen Remodel,” and “Survival Kit.”

    Below is a brief trailer of the Wranglerstar YouTube channel:

    Becky’s Homestead

    In every episode Becky shows you how to go from a consumer lifestyle into the self-sufficient homesteading lifestyle even if you never had any previous experience. Becky built a log cabin by herself. She grows gardens and keeps goats, chickens, pigs and more. Her videos are very educational and motivational. Visit Becky’s website at http://beckyshomestead.com/

    Watch Becky’s trailer below. It’s sure to convince you that anyone can do it and you’ll want to watch more.

    An American Homestead

    An American Homestead follows three generations of a family who live completely off-grid with the exception of a phone line for Internet. They don’t have electricity or running water and yet they still manage to live an abundant lifestyle. Their videos will teach you to raise sheep, chickens and fish in their aquaponics system, rainwater collection, gardening, food preparation, how to store butter in an underground fridge, and so much more. They also run an excellent blog at http://anamericanhomestead.com/.

    Here is a snapshot of why they became homesteaders and how they did it:

    This article (5 Best Homesteading YouTube Channels to Binge Watch) was originally created and published by Activist Post and is re-posted here with permission. 

    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/07/03/5-best-homesteading-youtube-channels/

    Messages in the Water

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    “THE HOUR” Has Arrived – A Water Message From The Hopi Elders

    July 5, 2016 Spiritual Awakening

    by Gregg Prescott, M.S.
    Editor, In5D.com

    As we transit out of the Age of Pisces (water sign) and into the Age of Aquarius (air sign), I find the following Hopi message quite intriguing.  I’m a triple Libra (air sign). This means my sun, moon, and ascendant are all in Libra.

    While the Age of Aquarius is an AIR sign, it’s also portrayed as a man bearing a pitcher of WATER. One must ask about the mixture of AIR and WATER in this sign. Water is a mutable energy and can represent a solid, liquid, or gas.

    A Message From The Hopi Elders

    by The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation,

    “You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.

    Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.

    Here are the things that must be considered:

    • Where are you living?
    • What are you doing?
    • What are your relationships?
    • Are you in right relation?
    • Where is your water?

    Know your garden.

    It is time to speak your Truth.

    Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader. This could be a good time!

    There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift, that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.

    Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate.

    At this time in history, we are to take nothing personal. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

    The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!

    Banish the word “struggle” from your attitude and your vocabulary.

    All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

    We are the ones we have been waiting for!”

    – The Elders Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation

    After posting a video on a dream I had about 3 massive tidal waves, I received NUMEROUS confirmations on both the video and article of people having the same or similar dreams.

    As I mentioned, water is a mutable energy and in this dream, it’s a WAVE of ENERGY that is coming. The first two waves will converge and will create something magical. I had a vision of what will happen: White light will FLOOD the planet and the only thing you’ll feel is complete unconditional love for everyone and everything. All 3rd dimensional worries will be completely gone. You can find out more in the article, “THREE Massive Tidal Waves Are Coming And It’s Not What You Think!“.

    Not only did we receive numerous confirmations on the tidal wave dream, we are receiving MANY reports of people having dreams about water, in general, whether it’s a swimming pool, a river, etc…

    The Hopi’s message implies water as well.  I have no time frame on when these tidal waves of energy will arrive, but based on other people having the same or similar dreams, I’d say it’s sometime in the very near future.

    Are the Hopi are telling us, the time is NOW?

    from:      http://in5d.com/the-hour-has-arrived-a-water-message-from-the-hopi-elders/