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The Magic of Finding Our Perfect Mirror
Excerpt #46 from:
That Elixir Called Love
How do we fall in love? Falling in love is first to have worked upon ourselves, honed in ourselves. We cannot fall in love if we are begging illness, if we are begging death, if we are begging sickness, if we are begging poverty, if we are begging victimization. We don’t fall in love; we only get relief, but that is not love. We have to work on ourself and we have to love what we are, like we would love us as children. We cannot look at our face in the mirror and say it is too fat or it is too old or it is ugly, my nose is too big or my eyes are too far apart or my eyes are black and blue is pretty, or blue is ugly and black is beautiful. We can’t take ourselves apart like that. We have to love us like we would love a child of ours that suckles at our breast or is protected in our great arms.
We have to learn that propaganda to the world is that the most beautiful people are already found — they are already found — and they just simply live up to an ideal of commercialism. As soon as they get one wrinkle in their face, they are out of here and they are no longer beautiful. That is not your story. You wouldn’t cast away your child because your child was not socially beautiful; at least my confidence in you is that you wouldn’t do that and that your child is yours. Love is its own beauty. Body parts don’t make beauty. Soul and Spirit make beauty. To have a child that comes from your loins, your semen, your eggs, a living, breathing incarnating Spirit that came from you, it is a miracle. Who would not love this child because they were not photogenic or they had big thighs or an oblong face or they didn’t have hair or they had too much? If you did, shame on you. Accursed is you, and to these things you will be in your next lifetime. That is a fact. You know why? Because what we resent and hold secret in this life builds the temple and the model of your next incarnation. I promise you, that is how it works.
What do we do when we fall in love? When we have worked on ourself, when we have rooted out our secrets, found the source of our anger, rooted out our self-guilt, told the truth, because you can’t love someone when you are battling your own guilt. To make them be your redeemer is idiocy. You have to do it yourself. You have to clean the vessel. That means that you have put all your attention to you, and you take your life apart and you put it back together again. Change the way you live, please. Please. Love is not what goes in your mouth. It isn’t about how much food you can consume. It isn’t about how much sex you have. It isn’t about how cool you look. It isn’t about how much money you have. It is all waste. It all turns to crap.
Now I will tell you the greatest love affair there ever was is God loving you into life and having the patience to allow you to be alive, you who have squandered it through pizza and beer, squandered it through all of your addictions. Your heart is still beating — amazing, amazing. Amazing your heart is still beating.
So when we have cured ourself, we know the only reason we are sick is because of our attitude, and it stinks, and we change it. We start being active in our life. We start forgiving ourselves by telling the truth, that we can forgive. We do. We hold no secrets. We have no monkeys on our back. And, oh, yes, the cost of telling the truth is a good relationship, money in the bank, a new truck, a new car, a garden. Telling the truth has consequences but they ain’t nothing compared to what, in the quantum world, that which we hide and suppress we are doomed to become, and the next incarnation will be built exactly on that.
Did you know that all of the years that you have lived in this body that you have had great lives and you have had lousy lives, lousy, bloodsucking, leeching lives? So why is it if you were really great in one life you were such a louse in the next? Because being great in the one life was at the cost of suppressing a lot of things, just like a clever politician does. And in the next life you are that which is suppressed, and it doesn’t look so good. Do you understand?
Look at me. Mind does not die. Mind does not die. Flesh and blood will pass away, but the kingdom of heaven shall never pass away. Mind never passes away. All reincarnation is is the need to keep picking up lives that we can burn out, hoping to get to a conclusion of wisdom. Yes, you didn’t hear that. Well, that is about right. And you probably won’t ever realize this till some years after I am gone, and you will go, “My God, why didn’t I realize that then?” Well, because you didn’t want to realize that you are just an ongoing drama machine and you change more costumes than are in a Shakespearean play. You burn out bodies, but the mind goes on. And all we are looking for is that perfect marriage.
So to love, the greatest example is that we are the product of a great parent, not our partner, not our mate. You are the product of a great parent who has allowed you to be here stuffy, limited, ignorant, buffoonish, and on a bandstand preaching about your physical immortality, and all the while the wisdom of the ages is listening to this speech because it has heard it before. It ain’t going to happen.
So what happens when we fall in love? Well, it is a lot different than sexual magnetism and it is a lot different than feeling sorry for somebody and it is a lot different than being drawn to a charismatic person. Falling in love is not this at all. I will tell you why.
When we find a person whose mind mirrors our own — mirrors: their thoughts are our thoughts, our thoughts are theirs, not because they want to be, because they naturally are — when you find a person who thinks as highly of you as you do of yourself and vice versa, the magnetic power of mind to mind is billions of years transcendent of sexual attraction. When we find our greatest mystery, our greatest hope — which is ourself — finally reflected in another one, we are confused; is it the other or is it myself? It is the same. That is when we love.
Now is it true opposites attract? Well, absolutely. For mating purposes that is a necessity. People are attracted because they are different in the first seal. People are attracted in the second seal because there is a need and a demand. In the third seal people are attracted because someone controls your life so you don’t have to. But in the mind we are attracted because we have found the perfect mirror of our own mind. We are turned on with profound respect, admiration — listen to me — respect, admiration, all divinity. This is how we hold the great mind. We don’t want to even tarnish this with having sex; we have to get down there in the basement to do it. What turns us on is something about this other person that allows us, as if somebody cleaned the mirror and finally we are seeing ourself, and they vice versa. That is where true love is.
So will you have that? It is my most utmost desire that you have that. It is my utmost desire for you to find a woman in your life whose mind is like a steel trap, whose wonder is more beautiful in the far reaches and far corners and valleys of thought and concept, mixed in with dreams and will, or with a man — a man, no matter what he looks like — to find that man who is handsome and is noble and, as regal-looking as he is, does not fall to his lowest denominator and act like lions in heat, act like hyenas in heat, a pack of dogs doing it in the junkyard. This is a man that, unlike any other man, could easily be these things but is not, but understands them not with a force of control but simply that it is not important, but still that this man who has dreams, whose Spirit speaks through his mouth, whose passion vibrates the beating of his heart, whose concept of humanity, his place with humanity, his understanding, his love of God, his nobility of — A man who loves truth more than deception is rare. A man who loves greater than his loins is rare. When we find such a man, a noble man — I mean, they have been all through history. It doesn’t mean they are gay. Just because they don’t have sex doesn’t mean they are gay, just noble men. And to know their mind, I mean, you have to get your vibration up there to get into that mind. This is a man that is not a victim, a warrior, but a peacemaker at the same time. It is a man who tills his own field, brings in his own food, creates his own kingdom, and is responsible for joy in that kingdom and protecting that kingdom. That is a great man. And in that is a quality for all people. They are very rare to find. When you find that man and you recognize him, then maybe you are the lady who long has wanted to find such a man, and maybe you are the lady the man has longed to find, a truly polarized situation that really is a oneness in mind.
When we find out our greatest treasure — to be in love with another person, to be in love with ourself — when we are in love with that person, it is because we are in love with ourself. We expect nothing from them that we wouldn’t expect of ourselves. We ask not of them anything that we wouldn’t ask of ourselves. We expect from them what we expect from ourselves.
Loving yourself is living to your highest moral and spiritual aptitude. That is loving yourself. And to love another person is only equal to what you feel about yourself spiritually.
— Ramtha
Copyright © 2003 JZ Knight
*For information on Ramtha and Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, please contact: Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, P.O.Box 1210, Yelm, WA 98597, or call 1.800.347.0439, 1.360.458.5201. http://www.ramtha.com
JZK Publishing,
A Division of JZK, Inc.
P.O. Box 1210, Yelm, WA 98597, USA. Tel: Editor: jaime@ramtha.com
www.jzkpublishing.com
Bringing Light to Those Without Electricity: The Solar Light Project of Naljor Prison
Dharma Service
“We live like kings in the West, rich beyond the wildest dreams of many of the world's less fortunate. Not to give something back is a sign of spiritual and moral poverty.” - Jeffrey Swainhart
Naljor Prison Dharma Service is a nonprofit humanitarian organization founded in 2001. Through our
service, teachings of compassion and nonviolence and a 29-page self-help resource directory are provided to men and women in prison throughout the United States. We also offer the Personal Development Sponsorship Program, supporting the personal and spiritual development and continuing education of prisoners who have no family or friends on the outside. In addition, Naljor Prison Dharma Service combines its efforts with international organizations, implementing humanitarian projects to assist those in need throughout the world.
Through our most recent Solar Light Project, we have been providing high quality solar powered LED flashlights to villagers, living without electricity, in Tibet, Afghanistan and India. We have provided these solar lights free of charge to the Tibetan Children’s Village in India (www.tcv.org), the Shem Women’s Group in Tibet/China (www.shemgroup.org), and to Dr. Steven Boyer of Green Village Schools in Portland, OR for his work of building schools in the villages of Afghanistan (www.greenvillageschools.org). The solar flashlights we provide are a safe, clean, free, efficient, and environmentally responsible form of illumination that offer great benefit for those in developing countries without access to electricity for adequate lighting.
Two Billion People in the World Live Without Access to Adequate Light
There are approximately two billion people living in villages around the world who still rely on kerosene lanterns, candles, and single-use battery flashlights for light at night. These types of light are expensive, dangerous, and very harmful to the environment. They also have a negative impact upon people's health, education, and security. The fumes from kerosene lanterns are highly toxic, especially for children, and single use batteries are expensive and toxic to the environment. In addition, candles do not provide enough light for a child to study by. Fumes from kerosene lamps in poorly ventilated houses are a serious health problem in much of the world where electricity is unavailable. It is estimated that people who rely on kerosene inhale the equivalent of two packs of cigarette smoke per day! In addition, kerosene lamps are a serious fire hazard in the developing world, killing and maiming tens of thousands of people each year.
According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (LBNL), the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in the developing world comes from dirty, hazardous, and expensive fuel-based sources such as kerosene for lighting. LBNL states explicitly that the only real way to meet the increasing lighting energy demands is to replace fuel based lighting with solid state (LED) lighting systems.
Our Solar Light Project
The solar powered flashlights we provide to the poor are just a small offering of compassion and assistance to those in need. However, these solar torches provide wonderful assistance in many ways to people living in villages without electricity. Just a few important examples are that a light such as this provides an opportunity for children to read and study at night. This is crucial for education in developing
countries where most children spend all day working to support their families and can only study at night. In addition, these solar lights benefit the elderly as well as farmers who must tend to their animals and crop irrigation at night. A rechargeable solar light of this nature, which never needs batteries, is a priceless tool in the hands of those who need it the most!
The Solar Lights We Provide
The solar powered flashlights we are providing to villages have a small solar panel embedded in the handle. These lights never need replacement batteries, they are highly durable and waterproof up to 80 feet, they provide 30 hours of light on a single 8 hour charge from sunlight, and can sit in a drawer or in the house for 3 years and still be ready to use with a full charge. These solar flashlights can be recharged by the sun over and again for years!
Compassion In Action: How You Can Assist the Solar Light Project
This is a very exciting and worthy humanitarian outreach project. If you will, please consider offering a tax deductible contribution to this Solar Light Project of Naljor Prison Dharma Service. At a cost of only $5.00 per solar flashlight, a small contribution of only $20 will provide solar lights for 4 families. A $100 contribution will provide solar lights for 20 families! With your assistance we will continue to provide solar powered flashlights to the Tibetan Children's Village in India, to Green Village Schools in Portland, OR who helps build schools in Afghanistan, and to Shem Women's Group in Tibet. With enough support, your compassion and generosity will enable us to locate additional organizations we can provide these solar lights to as well.
If you would like to assist the Solar Light Project with a tax deductible contribution, you may send a check or money order (made out to Naljor Prison Dharma Service - Solar Light Project) to the address below.
You may also call directly and use your credit card for a secure contribution, or go our website and use the secure Paypal donation link on our Solar Light Project page. All contributions are legally tax deductible. Naljor Prison Dharma Service is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization registered with the IRS.
Brief report from Tsomo Jyid of Shem Women's Group in Tibet from her
journey to Erdi Village, Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, to provide the villagers with the solar powered flashlights we sent to their organization:
“With the name list in my hand, I headed out visiting each family, interviewed each of them for a short time and taught them how to use the flashlight. I also demonstrated how solar flashlights are different from regular battery powered flashlights. By distributing the flashlights, I learned that flashlights are essential for Erdi villagers due to their inconvenient electricity supplement. I found it especially benefitted the old people and shepherds in Erdi village, because in this case whenever they want to go out the flashlight will come on handy for it doesn't need battery and can be powered by sunlight. In addition, these flashlights were also good for those farmers among the Erdi people. Sometimes if they want to go out irrigating their farmland during night the flashlight will definitely do a lot of help. Above all the villagers were very happy with it.”
Translation of a “thank you” letter to Naljor Prison Dharma Service from the Erdi Village government:
“Dear the donor, today through Tsomo Jyid we received the solar flashlights that are the same as the sun itself. Besides that it has many features as it is small, bright and will come in handy whenever we need
them. Its quality is also reliable, and it is very easy for us to use. All in all, it benefits all the villagers, especially those elders who are not capable of moving around in the darkness. Here Erdi Village Government of Erdi Township will represent all the families to say thank you to all of you. Later we hope your concern, kindness and helps will still come to us. Thanks sincerely!”
Please visit our website for more information about Naljor Prison Dharma Service and our Solar Light Project.
Naljor Prison Dharma Service
Neil Steven Cohen / Executive Director
www.naljorprisondharmaservice.org
PO Box 1177, Mount Shasta CA 96067
(877) 2277-6075 / (530) 918-4200
NOBODY KNOWS HOW DRY WE ARE
By Tom Engelhardt
Utne Reader
March/April 2009
It turns out that you don't want to be a former city dweller in rural parts of southernmost Australia, a stalk of wheat in China or Iraq, a soybean in Argentina, an almond or grape in northern California, a cow in Texas, or almost anything in parts of east Africa right now. Let me explain.
As anyone who has turned on the prime-time TV news these last weeks knows, southeastern Australia has been burning up. It's already dry climate has been growing ever hotter. “The great drying,” Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery calls it. At its epicenter, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever this month at a sweltering 115.5 degrees, while temperatures soared even higher in the surrounding countryside. After more than a decade of drought, followed by the lowest rainfall on record, the eucalyptus forests are now burning. To be exact, they are now pouring vast quantities of stored carbon dioxide, the green house gas considered largely responsible for global warming, into the atmosphere. In fact, everything's been burning there. Huge sheets of flame, possibly aided and abetted by arsonists, tore through whole towns. More than 180 people are dead and thousands homeless. Flannery, who has written eloquently about global warming, drove through the fire belt, and reported:
“It was as if a great cremation had taken place” I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself” I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was different from anything seen before.”
Australia, by the way, is a wheat-growing breadbasket for the world and its wheat crops have been hurt in recent years by continued drought.
Meanwhile, central China is experiencing the worst drought in half a century. Temperatures have been unseasonably high and rainfall, in some areas, 80% below normal; more than half the country's provinces have been affected by drought, leaving millions of Chinese and their livestock without adequate access to water. In the region which raises 95% of the country's winter wheat, crop production has already been impaired and is in further danger without imminent rain. All of this represents a potential financial catastrophe for Chinese farmers at a moment when about 20 million migrant workers are estimated to have lost their jobs in the global economic meltdown. Many of those workers, who left the countryside for China's booming cities (and remitted parts of their paychecks to rural areas), may now be headed home jobless to potential disaster. A Wall Street Journal report concludes, “Some scientists warn China could face more frequent droughts as a result of global warming and changes in farming patterns.”
Globe-jumping to the Middle East, Iraq, which makes the news these days mainly for spectacular suicide bombings or the politics of American withdrawal, turns out to be another country in severe drought. Americans may think of Iraq as largely desert, but (as we were all taught in high school)the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the “fertile crescent,”are considered the homeland of agriculture, not to speak of human civilization.
Well, not so fertile these days, it seems. The worst drought in at least a decade and possibly a farming lifetime is expected to reduce wheat production by at least half; while the country's vast marshlands, once believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, have been turned into endless expanses of baked mud. That region, purposely drained by dictator Saddam Hussein to tame rebellious “Marsh Arabs,” is now experiencing the draining power of nature.
Nor is Iraq's drought a localized event. Serious drought conditions extend across the Middle East, threatening to exacerbate local conflicts from Cyprus and Lebanon to Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel where this January was reported to have been the hottest and driest in 60 years. “With less than 2 months of winter left,” Daniel Pedersen has written at the environmental website Green Prophet, “the region has received only 6%-50% of the annual average rainfall, with the desert areas getting 30% or less.”
Leaping continents, in Latin America, Argentina is experiencing “the most intense, prolonged and expensive drought in the past 50 years,” according to Hugo Luis Biolcati, the president of the Argentine Rural Society. One of the world's largest grain exporters, it has already lost five billion dollars to the drought. Its soybeans -- the country is the third largest producer of them -- are wilting in the fields; its corn -- Argentina is the world's second largest producer -- and wheat crops are in trouble; and its famed grass-fed herds of cattle are dying -- 1.5 million head of them since October with no end in sight.
Dust Bowl Economics
In our own backyard, much of the state of Texas -- 97.4% to be exact -- is now gripped by drought, and parts of it by the worst drought in almost a century. According to the New York Times, “Winter wheat crops have failed.Ponds have dried up. Ranchers are spending heavily on hay and feed pellets to get their cattle through the winter. Some wonder if they will have to slaughter their herds come summer. Farmers say the soil is too dry for seeds to germinate and are considering not planting.” Since 2004, in fact, the state has yoyo-ed between the extremities of flood and drought.
Meanwhile, scientists predict that, as global warming strengthens, the American southwest, parts of which have struggled with varying levels of drought conditions for years, could fall into “a possibly permanent state of drought.” We're talking potential future “dust bowl” here. A December 2008U.S. Geological Survey report warns: “In the Southwest, for example, the models project a permanent drying by the mid-21st century that reaches the level of aridity seen in historical droughts, and a quarter of the projections may reach this level of aridity much earlier.”
And talking about drought gripping breadbasket regions, don't forget northern California which “produces 50 percent of the nation's fruits, nuts and vegetables, and a majority of [U.S.] salad, strawberries and premium wine grapes.” Its agriculturally vital Central Valley, in particular, is in the third year of an already monumental drought in which the state has been forced to cut water deliveries to farms by up to 85%.
Observers are predicting that it may prove to be the worst drought in the history of a region “already reeling from housing foreclosures, the credit crisis, and a plunge in construction and manufacturing jobs.” January,normally California's wettest month, has been wretchedly dry and the snowpack in the northern Sierra Mountains, crucial to the state's water supplies and its agricultural health, is at less than half normal levels.
Northern California, in fact, offers a glimpse of the havoc that the extreme weather conditions scientists associate with climate change could cause,especially when combined with other crises. In a Los Angeles Times interview, new Secretary of Energy Steven Chu offered an eye-popping warning(of a sort top government officials simply don't give) about what a global-warming future might hold in store for California, his home state.Interviewer Jim Tankersley summed up Chu's thoughts this way:
“California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming... In a worst case... up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture. 'I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen,' [Chu] said. 'We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California.' And, he added, 'I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going' either.”
As for East Africa and the Horn of Africa, under the pressure of rising temperatures, drought has become a tenacious long term visitor. For East Africa, the drought years of 2005-2006 were particularly horrific and now Kenya, with the region's biggest economy, a country recently wracked by political disorder and ethnic violence, is experiencing crop failures. An estimated 10 million Kenyans may face hunger, even starvation, this year in the wake of a poor harvest, lack of rainfall, and rising food prices; if you include the drought-plagued Horn of Africa, 20 million people may be endangered, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Recently, climatologist David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment, published a study in Science magazine on the effect of extreme heat on crops. They concluded, based on recent climate models and a study of past extreme heat waves, that there was “a 90% chance that, by the end of the century, the coolest temperatures in the tropics during the crop growing season would exceed the hottest temperatures recorded between 1900 and 2006.” According to the British Guardian, under such circumstances Battisti and Naylor believe “[h]alf of the world's population could face severe food shortages by the end of the century as rising temperatures take their toll on farmers' crops... Harvests of staple food crops such as rice and maize could fall by between 20% and 40% as a result of higher temperatures during the growing season in the tropics and subtropics.”
Not surprisingly, it's hard to imagine -- perhaps I mean swallow -- such an extreme world, and so most of us, the mainstream media included, don't bother to. That means certain potentially burning questions go not just unanswered but unasked.
The Grapes of Wrath (Updated)
Mind you, what you've read thus far represents an amateur's eye view of drought on our planet at this moment. It's hardly comprehensive. To give but one example, Afghanistan has only recently begun to emerge from an eight-year drought involving severe food shortages -- and, as journalist Christian Parenti writes, it would need another “five years worth of regular snowfall just to replenish its aquifers.” Parenti adds: “As snow packs in
the Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges continue to recede, the rivers flowing from them will diminish and the economic situation in all of Central Asia will deteriorate badly.”
Nor is this piece meant to be authoritative, exactly because I know so relatively little. Think of it as a reflection of my own frustration with work not done elsewhere -- and, by the way, thank heavens for Google University. Yes, Googling leaves you on your own, can be time-consuming, and tends to lead to cul-de-sacs (“Nuggets end 17-year drought in Orlando”), but what would we do without it? Thanks to good ol' G.U., anyone can, for instance, check out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's Drought Information Center
<http://www.drought.noaa.gov/ <http://www.drought.noaa.gov/> or its U.S. Drought Monitor <http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html <http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html> >, or the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center<http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/seasonal_drought.ht <http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/seasonal_drought.ht> ml> and begin a self-education.
Now let me explain why I even bothered to write this piece. It's true that,if you're reading the mainstream press, each of the droughts mentioned above has gotten at least some attention, several of them a fair amount of attention (as well as some fine reporting), and the Australian firestorms have been headlines globally for weeks. The problem is that (the professional literature, the science magazines, and a few environmental websites and blogs aside) no one in the mainstream media seems to have thought to connect these dots or blots of aridity in any way. And yet it seems a no-brainer that mainstream reporters should be doing just that.
After all, cumulatively these drought hot spots, places now experiencing record or near-record aridity, could be thought of as representing so many burning questions for our planet. And yet you can search far and wide without stumbling across a mainstream American overview of drought in our world at this moment. This seems, politely put, puzzling, especially at a time when University College London's Global Drought Monitor claims that 104million people are now living under “exceptional drought conditions.”
Scientists generally agree that, as climate change accelerates throughout this century (and no matter what happens from here on in, nothing will evidently stop some form of acceleration), extreme weather of every sort,including drought, will become ever more the planetary norm. In fact,experts are suggesting that, as the Washington Post reported recently, “The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions,because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems.”
Now, no one can claim beyond all doubt that global warming is the cause of any specific drought, or certainly the only cause anyway. As with the Texas drought, a La Niña weather pattern in the Pacific is often mentioned as a key causal factor right now. But the crucial point is what the present can tell us about the impact of a global pattern of extreme weather, especially extreme drought, on what will surely be a more extreme planet in the relatively near future.
If global temperatures are on the rise and more heat means lower crop yields, then you're talking about more Kenyas, and not just in Africa either. You're probably also talking about desperation, upheaval, resource conflicts, and mass out-migrations of populations, even -- if scientists are right -- from the American Southwest. (And in case you don't think such a thing can happen here, remember Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath or think of any of Dorothea Lange's iconic photos of the “Okies” fleeing the American dust bowl of the 1930s.)
Burning Questions
Right now, the global economic meltdown has massively depressed fuel prices(key to farming, processing, and transporting most crops to market) and commodity prices have generally fallen as well, including food prices.Whatever the future economic weather, however, that is not likely to last.
So here's a burning question on my mind: We're now experiencing the extreme effects of economic bad “weather” in the wake of the near collapse of the global financial system. Nonetheless, from the White House to the media, speculation about “the road to recovery” is already underway. The stimulus package, for instance, had been dubbed the”recovery bill,” aka the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and the question of when we'll hit bottom and when -- 2010, 2011, 2012 -- a real recovery will begin is certainly in the air.
Recently, in a speech in Singapore, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, suggested that the “world's advanced economies” -- the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan -- were “already in depression,” and the “worst cannot be ruled out.” This got little attention here, but
President Obama's comment at his first press conference that delay on his stimulus package could lead to a “lost decade,” as in Japan in the 1990s (or, though it went unmentioned, the U.S. in the 1930s), made the headlines..
If, indeed, this is “the big one,” and does result in a “lost decade” or more, here's what I wonder: Could the sort of “recovery” that everyone assumes lies just over a recessive or depressive horizon not be there? What if our lost decade lasts long enough to meet an environmental crisis involving extreme weather -- drought and flood, hurricanes, typhoons, and firestorms of unprecedented magnitude -- possibly in some of the breadbasket regions of the planet? What will happen if the rising fuel prices likely to come with the beginning of any economic “recovery” were to meet the soaring food prices of environmental disaster? What kind of human tsunami might that result in?
Once we start connecting some of today's drought dots, wouldn't it make sense to try to connect a few of the prospective dots as well? After all, if you begin to imagine what the worst might look like, you can also begin to think about what might be done to mitigate it. Isn't that more sensible than looking the other way?
If the kinds of hits regional agriculture is now taking from record-setting drought became the future norm, wouldn't we then be bereft of our most reassuring formulations in bad times? For example, the president spoke at that press conference of our present moment as “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” On an extreme planet, no such comforting “since the...” would be available, nor would there be any historical road map for what was coming at us, not if we had already run out of history.
Maybe the world we knew but scarce months ago is already, in some sense,long gone. What if, after a lost decade, we were to find ourselves living on another planet?
Feel free, of course, to ignore my burning questions. After all, I'm only an amateur with the flimsiest of credentials from Google U. Still, I do keep wondering when the media pros will finally pitch in, and what they'll tellus is on that distant horizon, the one with the red glow.
Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the American Age of Denial. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), a collection of some of the best pieces from his site and an alternative history of the mad Bush years.
http://www.utne.com/print-article.aspx?id=25495 http://www.utne.com/print-article.aspx?id=25495
Why Schools Should Remove Gene-Altered Foods from Their Cafeterias
By Jeffrey M. Smith
Before the Appleton Wisconsin high school replaced their cafeteria's processed foods with wholesome, nutritious food, the school was described as out-of-control. There were weapons violations, student disruptions, and a cop on duty full-time. After the change in school meals, the students were calm, focused, and orderly. There were no more weapons violations, and no suicides, expulsions, dropouts, or drug violations. The new diet and improved behavior has lasted for seven years, and now other schools are changing their meal programs with similar results.
Years ago, a science class at Appleton found support for their new diet by conducting a cruel and unusual experiment with three mice. They fed them the junk food that kids in other high schools eat everyday. The mice freaked out. Their behavior was totally different than the three mice in the neighboring cage. The neighboring mice had good karma; they were fed nutritious whole foods and behaved like mice. They slept during the day inside their cardboard tube, played with each other, and acted very mouse-like.
The junk food mice, on the other hand, destroyed their cardboard tube, were no longer nocturnal, stopped playing with each other, fought often, and two mice eventually killed the third and ate it. After the three month experiment, the students rehabilitated the two surviving junk food mice with a diet of whole foods. After about three weeks, the mice came around.
Sister Luigi Frigo repeats this experiment every year in her second grade class in Cudahy, Wisconsin, but mercifully, for only four days. Even on the first day of junk food, the mice's behavior "changes drastically." They become lazy, antisocial, and nervous. And it still takes the mice about two to three weeks on unprocessed foods to return to normal. One year, the second graders tried to do the experiment again a few months later with the same mice, but this time the animals refused to eat the junk food.
Across the ocean in Holland, a student fed one group of mice genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and another group the non-GM variety. The GM mice stopped playing with each other and withdrew into their own parts of the cage. When the student tried to pick them up, unlike their well-behaved neighbors, the GM mice scampered around in apparent fear and tried to climb the walls. One mouse in the GM group was found dead at the end of the experiment.
It's interesting to note that the junk food fed to the mice in the Wisconsin experiments also contained genetically modified ingredients. And although the Appleton school lunch program did not specifically attempt to remove GM foods, it happened anyway. That's because GM foods such as soy and corn and their derivatives are largely found in processed foods. So when the school switched to unprocessed alternatives, almost all ingredients derived from GM crops were taken out automatically.
Does this mean that GM foods negatively affect the behavior of humans or animals? It would certainly be irresponsible to say so on the basis of a single student mice experiment and the results at Appleton. On the other hand, it is equally irresponsible to say that it doesn't.
We are just beginning to understand the influence of food on behavior. A study in Science in December 2002 concluded that "food molecules act like hormones, regulating body functioning and triggering cell division. The molecules can cause mental imbalances ranging from attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder to serious mental illness." The problem is we do not know which food molecules have what effect.
The bigger problem is that the composition of GM foods can change radically without our knowledge. Genetically modified foods have genes inserted into their DNA. But genes are not Legos; they don't just snap into place. Gene insertion creates unpredicted, irreversible changes. In one study, for example, a gene chip monitored the DNA before and after a single foreign gene was inserted. As much as 5 percent of the DNA's genes changed the amount of protein they were producing. Not only is that huge in itself, but these changes can multiply through complex interactions down the line.
In spite of the potential for dramatic changes in the composition of GM foods, they are typically measured for only a small number of known nutrient levels. But even if we could identify all the changed compounds, at this point we wouldn't know which might be responsible for the antisocial nature of mice or humans. Likewise, we are only beginning to identify the medicinal compounds in food. We now know, for example, that the pigment in blueberries may revive the brain's neural communication system, and the antioxidant found in grape skins may fight cancer and reduce heart disease. But what about other valuable compounds we don't know about that might change or disappear in GM varieties?
Consider GM soy. In July 1999, years after it was on the market, independent researchers published a study showing that it contains 12-14 percent less cancer-fighting phytoestrogens. What else has changed that we don't know about? [Monsanto responded with its own study, which concluded that soy's phytoestrogen levels vary too much to even carry out a statistical analysis. They failed to disclose, however, that the laboratory that conducted Monsanto's experiment had been instructed to use an obsolete method to detect phytoestrogens results.]
In 1996, Monsanto published a paper in the Journal of Nutrition that concluded in the title, "The composition of glyphosate-tolerant soybean seeds is equivalent to that of conventional soybeans." The study only compared a small number of nutrients and a close look at their charts revealed significant differences in the fat, ash, and carbohydrate content. In addition, GM soy meal contained 27 percent more trypsin inhibitor, a well-known soy allergen. The study also used questionable methods. Nutrient comparisons are routinely conducted on plants grown in identical conditions so that variables such as weather and soil can be ruled out. Otherwise, differences in plant composition could be easily missed. In Monsanto's study, soybeans were planted in widely varying climates and geography.
Although one of their trials was a side-by-side comparison between GM and non-GM soy, for some reason the results were left out of the paper altogether. Years later, a medical writer found the missing data in the archives of the Journal of Nutrition and made them public. No wonder the scientists left them out. The GM soy showed significantly lower levels of protein, a fatty acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid. Also, toasted GM soy meal contained nearly twice the amount of a lectin that may block the body's ability to assimilate other nutrients. Furthermore, the toasted GM soy contained as much as seven times the amount of trypsin inhibitor, indicating that the allergen may survive cooking more in the GM variety. (This might explain the 50 percent jump in soy allergies in the UK, just after GM soy was introduced.)
We don't know all the changes that occur with genetic engineering, but certainly GM crops are not the same. Ask the animals. Eyewitness reports from all over North America describe how several types of animals, when given a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice. In fact, the Dutch student mentioned above first determined that his mice had a two-to-one preference for non-GM before forcing half of them to eat only the engineered variety.
Differences in GM food will likely have a much larger impact on children. They are three to four times more susceptible to allergies. Also, they convert more of the food into body-building material. Altered nutrients or added toxins can result in developmental problems. For this reason, animal nutrition studies are typically conducted on young, developing animals. After the feeding trial, organs are weighed and often studied under magnification. If scientists used mature animals instead of young ones, even severe nutritional problems might not be detected. The Monsanto study used mature animals instead of young ones.
They also diluted their GM soy with non-GM protein 10- or 12fold before feeding the animals. And they never weighed the organs or examined them under a microscope. The study, which is the only major animal feeding study on GM soy ever published, is dismissed by critics as rigged to avoid finding problems.
Unfortunately, there is a much bigger experiment going on one which we are all a part of. We're being fed GM foods daily, without knowing the impact of these foods on our health, our behavior, or our children. Thousands of schools around the world, particularly in Europe, have decided not to let their kids be used as guinea pigs. They have banned GM foods.
The impact of changes in the composition of GM foods is only one of several reasons why these foods may be dangerous. Other reasons may be far worse (see http://www.seedsofdeception.com).
With the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and with the results in Appleton, parents and schools are waking up to the critical role that diet plays. When making changes in what kids eat, removing GM foods should be a priority.
Departments
22 Susun Weed: Wise Woman Herbal Instructions
24 Reviews By Michou Landon
Articles
10 The Summer of Love 2009
By Thomsa T. Moore
11 Surrendering to Love
By Gangaji
14 The Orion Project
and
Algae: The Ultimate Renewable Resource
The Summer of Love: 2009
By Tom T. Moore
June will again launch another SUMMER OF LOVE. This phrase will originally coined in the summer of 1967 when a flood of young people traveled to San Francisco to experience communal living, free medical services, and free love. There was a second Summer of Love in 1969, forty years ago this summer, climaxing (a little humor here) with the Woodstock Festival and Concert in August. If you ever watched the documentary, who can ever forget Wavy Gravy saying over the loudspeakers, “Good morning, what we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000 people!”
Forty years later people are still looking for that “special someone,” or if they’ve found them, many will tie the knot in June. About thirteen years ago I found that I could request Benevolent Outcomes for everything from the mundane, such as requests for a parking spot in front of a busy mall or restaurant, all the way up to the important things in my personal and business life.
So if you haven’t found that special someone to spend his or her life with you yet, you can say, “I request a Most Benevolent Outcome for the perfect mate (here you can substitute husband, wife, or partner) for me, thank you!” When you make these requests a most amazing thing happens—your Guardian Angel responds with assistance (they’re not allowed to assist you unless you ask). When you ask for something big like this, you may not see the results in one week, one month, or perhaps one year, but the wheels are set in motion for the two of you to meet, and most importantly, connect!
Of course, you’re not supposed to sit in your home waiting for that special someone to walk in the door, so get out and mix and mingle! Each time you leave your home, request a Most Benevolent Outcome (MBO’s I call them) to meet someone interesting wherever you go. And if you think you’ve met someone that you might be compatible with, say, “I request a Most Benevolent Outcome that this relationship is benevolent for me, thank you!” It will quickly end if it isn’t.
So in what ways can your Guardian Angel assist you? I asked my own Guardian Angel in meditation when this question was emailed to me.
Theo communicated, “We don’t normally give advice in love matters Tom. She should be receiving this advice in the form of intuition, inspiration or those “whispers in your ear” that each Guardian Angel for that person continually sends. What is her “gut feeling” about this person, Tom? How compatible does this person feel for her? When she asks these questions of herself, does she get a warm sensation in her belly? We are there to assist, but as I have said before, we cannot tell you directly to take this road or that road. You came to earth to learn how to do these things and to learn to recognize the feelings involved with such choices. So tell her and all your readers to open up and feel. You will notice something that tells you to go this way or that way, or yes on that decision or no on this decision. Again we are there to assist. Just open up your hearts and trust your feelings. Don’t try and override them.”
If the person really excites you and you decide to have sexual relations with him or her, I would suggest, as I wrote in my book, “I request a Most Benevolent Outcome that I remain safe and disease free with my sexual partner (you can substitute their name here), thank you!”
So now things have progressed to the point that you’re being married this summer. What an experience, but what planning and stress! My daughter was married last summer, and you would have thought that my daughter and wife were planning the Allied landing on the Normandy beaches. There are many different MBO’s you can request as you proceed on your planning—for finding the right wedding and bridesmaid dresses, choosing the right tuxes, choosing the right caterer, choosing the right location for the rehearsal dinner and reception, choosing the right florist, and the right person to officiate your wedding. Oh, and don’t forget requesting a MBO for your honeymoon to go smoothly and to be even better than you can hope for or expect! Get in the habit of requesting MBO’s for everything in your life.
Each step of the way, there are Benevolent Outcomes to request so that your life will be less stressful, more successful, and more Gentle! By requesting Benevolent Outcomes in your life, you will become more aware, the “veil” will begin to thin, and it raises your vibrational level—what a great benefit!
Have a great summer!
COPYRIGHT 2009
About the Author
Tom T. Moore is an international author and speaker. His book, The Gentle Way: A Self-Help Guide For Those Who Believe in Angels (ISBN # 1-891824-60-0, Light Technology) gives many more suggestions for requesting benevolent outcomes in your life. Visit his website at www.TheGentleWayBook.com.
Surrendering to Love
By Gangaji
Many people have trouble with the word love. Love, as most of us have known it, can be sentimental, potentially messy, and most definitely out of control. And yet, love is what we crave. There is often a love/hate relationship with the idea of love, most likely stemming from our experiences as children where we loved helplessly. We projected love out onto our loved ones—our mothers, fathers, brothers, or sisters—and at some point found our loved ones to be unreliable. We confused their actions with love and concluded that love was not trustworthy.
People are definitely not trustworthy, because in general, they are very busy protecting their story of who they think they are. Since they are mostly involved in their story, they can only give a certain amount of love before they start wondering, “Well, when do I get mine?” And since love has been identified as being connected with another person, this sets up a whole continuation of distrust around love. But love is not a person. Love is the individual, collective, and universal soul. Love is God. Love is truth. Love is beauty. Love is peace. Love is self. To know yourself, to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love.
Many people are aware of their resistance, and they want to surrender, but they don’t know how. The only actual barrier to surrender is in not seeing the underlying story you are telling yourself about the danger of surrendering everything to love. And the degree to which you hold back surrendering everything to love is the degree to which you suffer. The degree to which you try to maintain the story about who you think you are is the degree to which you feel isolated from love. Until you realize, “I want truth, which is love, more than anything,” you will experience yourself as separate from love. Love is the constant. Love is not an aspect of truth. Truth, God, and self are aspects of love.
What is the worst that could happen if you surrender to love? What we seem to fear the most is the broken heart. Yet the very unwillingness for the heart to be broken is the broken heart. The tragedy and the irony is that in order to avoid a broken heart, people live in a state of broken-heartedness. In the willingness to have the heart be broken a million, trillion, zillion times, true love is revealed.
Let the whole world break your heart every instant of the remainder of your life. Then this life can be lived in service to love. It does not mean you stay in abusive relationships. It means only to stay true to that which is always true to you, and
that is love. Anything else is a story. If the story is never investigated, your whole life is lived on the assumption that the story is real, and that your heart, your soul, and your love need to be protected. But that assumption is actually a denial of your heart, your soul, your love. It is a denial of self-love.
The great good news is that love is free and it has not gone anywhere. In all of these aeons that you have been hiding from love, love is still here, it is still open, it is still waiting for your commitment, still waiting for you to say, “Yes, I give my life to the truth of love. I vow to let love live this life as it will, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.”
Through honest self-investigation, it is possible to see why you may not be surrendering to love, and to see that you actually have the choice to surrender. It is a way to let the unconscious storylines become conscious, the unknown become known. Ask yourself this question: Why is it dangerous to surrender to love? Not why is it right to surrender to love, or why is it good to surrender to love, but why is it dangerous to surrender to love?
Let your individual consciousness drop down into the source of consciousness, into the space where all of the reasons and justifications for resisting surrender are seen simply as stories, as something made up that you can very easily let go of. Allow all of the stories, all of the defenses, to be seen for what they are. Are any of these stories worth keeping? What is the cost to your life?
The love that you search for everywhere is already present within you. It may be evoked by any number of people or events. A mountain can evoke this love. A sunset can evoke this love. But finally, you must realize you are this love. The source of all love is within you.
Announcing the Orion Project
A new non-profit research foundation named The Orion Project (www.TheOrionProject.org) has been created to develop new, out-of-the-box energy solutions.
Based near the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, The Orion Project has been founded to bring together highly accomplished scientists, researchers, inventors and thinkers who have expertise in advanced energy generation and propulsion technologies. Their goal is to develop bold new energy generation technologies within the next two years that will completely replace the need for oil, gas, coal and nuclear power.
It is known that, since the time of Nicola Tesla in the early 1900s, advances in energy generation and propulsion systems have been developed, only to be ignored, actively suppressed or forgotten. The Orion Project's Director, Steven M. Greer MD, notes that:
“In the past 18 years, our team has developed a database of scientific advances in new, clean tech energy systems that, if properly funded and supported, have the potential to completely revolutionize how we generate energy. These breakthroughs in physics- so-called Zero Point Energy, electro-gravitic propulsion and other systems- have, up to this point, been developed and hidden in illegally classified projects in the US, UK and elsewhere. The Orion Project has identified the most qualified brain-trust of scientists and inventors who understand this new science, and are ready to come together to help solve the energy and environmental crisis facing humanity today.”
The Orion Project has announced a $3 million capital fund raising campaign so that these promising clean-technology energy researchers can be brought together in one place to build the initial proof of principle prototype to help solve the energy crisis once and for all. This prototype will be designed to meet all the energy needs of a typical home or business while having a zero-carbon footprint using new electromagnetic and related energy breakthroughs.
Dr. Greer states that, “The world needs an immediate Manhattan-style project to find real energy solutions and deliver them to the people. Now the public can support this quest through a tax-deductible donation. If 100,000 people go to www.TheOrionProject.org and contribute $30 each in the next 60 days, we will be able to open this new energy research facility and bring together some of the best minds on the planet to help solve our critical energy needs. Now is the time to act - the Earth has waited long enough for humanity to come together to find a way to live in harmony with her and with abundance and peace for all of her children. This cannot happen with the zero-sum game of fossil fuel. Only these new energy sciences hold the key to unlocking the wonderful future that awaits us.”
For more information on The Orion Project and its specific scientific projects, or to request an interview with Dr. Steven Greer or Dr. Ted Loder, please go to www.TheOrionProject.org.
Algae: 'The ultimate in renewable energy'
Texas may be best known for “Big Oil.” But the oil that could some day make a dent in the country's use of fossil fuels is small. Microscopic, in fact: algae. Literally and figuratively, this is green fuel.
Plant physiologist Glen Kertz believes algae can some day be competitive as a source for biofuel.
“Algae is the ultimate in renewable energy,” Glen Kertz, president and CEO of Valcent Products, told CNN while conducting a tour of his algae greenhouse on the outskirts of El Paso.
Kertz, a plant physiologist and entrepreneur, holds about 20 patents. And he is psyched about the potential algae holds, both as an energy source and as a way to deal with global warming.
“We are a giant solar collecting system. We get the bulk of our energy from the sunshine,” said Kertz.
Algae are among the fastest growing plants in the world, and about 50 percent of their weight is oil. That lipid oil can be used to make biodiesel for cars, trucks, and airplanes.
Most people know algae as “pond scum.” And until recently, most energy research and development projects used ponds to grow it.
But instead of ponds, Valcent uses a closed, vertical system, growing the algae in long rows of moving plastic bags. The patented system is called Vertigro, a joint venture with Canadian alternative energy company Global Green Solutions. The companies have invested about $5 million in the Texas facility.
“A pond has a limited amount of surface area for solar absorption,” said Kertz.
“By going vertical, you can get a lot more surface area to expose cells to the sunlight. It keeps the algae hanging in the sunlight just long enough to pick up the solar energy they need to produce, to go through photosynthesis,” he said.
Kertz said he can produce about 100,000 gallons of algae oil a year per acre, compared to about 30 gallons per acre from corn; 50 gallons from soybeans.
Using algae as an alternative fuel is not a new idea. The U.S. Department of Energy studied it for about 18 years, from 1978 to 1996. But according to Al Darzins of the DOE's National Renewable Energy Lab, in 1996 the feds decided that algae oil could never compete economically with fossil fuels.
The price of a barrel of oil in 1996? About 20 bucks!
Government scientists experimented with algae in open ponds in California, Hawaii, and in Roswell, New Mexico.
But that involved a lot of land area, with inherent problems of evaporation and contamination from other plant species and various flying and swimming critters. Darzins said NREL switched from algae research to focus on cellulosic ethanol. That's ethanol made from plants like switchgrass and plant stover -- the leaves and stalks left after a harvest -- but not edible crops such as corn and soybeans.
Valcent research scientist Aga Pinowska said there are about 65,000 known algae species, with perhaps hundreds of thousands more still to be identified.
A big part of the research at the west Texas facility involves determining what type of algae produces what type of fuel. One species may be best suited for jet fuel, while the oil content of another may be more efficient for truck diesel.
In the Vertigro lab, Pinowska studies the care and feeding of algae for just such specifics. She said even small changes in the nutrients that certain algae get can help create a more efficient oil content.
And she said a knowledge of algae's virtues goes way back.
“Even the Aztecs knew it was beneficial; they used it as a high protein food,” said Pinowska.
The other common commercial use of algae today is as a health food drink, usually sold as “Spirulina.”
I'm too sexy for my pond
And who knew that single celled plants could be such “hotties” when it comes to sex? Kertz said it's a real “algae orgy” under the microscope.
Some algae reproduce sexually, some asexually, while many combine both modes. In some green algae the type of reproduction may be altered if there are changes in environmental conditions, such as lack of moisture or nutrients.
Intriguing details like that keep Kertz and other scientists searching for more and different algae. While dusty west Texas may not be the best hunting grounds, he said he is always on the lookout for samples in puddles, streams or ponds.
Locating algae processing plants intelligently can add to their efficiency. Locating algae facilities next to carbon producing power plants, or manufacturing plants, for instance, the plants could sequester the C02 they create and use those emissions to help grow the algae, which need the C02 for photosynthesis.
And after more than a decade hiatus, the U.S. government is back in the algae game. The 2007 Energy Security and Independence Act includes language promoting the use of algae for biofuels. From the Pentagon to Minnesota to New Zealand, both governments and private companies are exploring the use of algae to produce fuel.
But Al Darzins of the National Renewable Energy Lab said the world is still probably 5 to 10 years away from any substantial use of biofuels.
“There's not any one system that anyone has chosen yet. Whatever it is has to be dirt, dirt cheap,” said Darzins.
By Jeffrey M. Smith
Comanche County Chronicle, Elgin, OK, September, 2008 Straight to the Source
Institute for Responsible Technology, Spilling the Beans newsletter on GM Foods
by Jeffrey M. Smith, author of Seeds of Deception
http://www.organic
Susun Weed: Wise Woman’s Herbal Instructions
CHICKWEED IS A STAR
©2007 Susun S. Weed
Snowdrops and crocus flowers herald the spring. And if you look in between them, with luck, you'll see a bright green creeping plant low to the ground with little white starry flowers: chickweed, a good friend of mine.
I say she's a star, because her botanical name - Stellaria media - means little stars. And because she really stars at helping us when we need to gently dissolve something or to cool off inflamed tissues. Chickweed not only effects physical health, she is a psychic healer too. She opens us up to cosmic energies and gives us the inner strength we need to handle those energies.
Chickweed contains soapy substances, called saponins. Saponins, like soap, emulsify and increase the permeability of cellular membranes. When we consume chickweed those saponins increase our ability to absorb nutrients, especially minerals. They also dissolve and break down unwanted matter, including disease-causing bacteria, cysts, benign tumors, thickened mucus in the respiratory and digestive systems, and excess fat cells.
Yes, you heard me correctly, drinking chickweed infusion can eliminate fat cells. I put one ounce of dried herb (I weigh it) in a quart jar and fill it to the top with boiling water. I cap it tightly and wait for at least four hours, then strain and drink it, hot or cold, with honey or miso. What I don't consume right away, I store in the refrigerator. A quart a day is not too much to drink, but even two cups a day can help you shed those unwanted pounds. (Do remember though that subcutaneous fat, the kind you can pinch, is healthy for women, so don't get too thin.)
Chickweed's ability to break cells open helps it get rid of bacterial infections when applied as a poultice. It is every mother's favorite for dealing with children's eye infections (pink eye). I crush a small handful of the fresh herb until it is juicy, then apply it directly to the troubled eye or infected wound, covering the chickweed with a small towel to keep it in place. I leave the poultice until the chickweed heats up, which indicates to me that bacteria are dying. Then I remove the poultice and throw the plant material away. It is critically important to use fresh chickweed for each application so bacteria are not reintroduced. Generally symptoms will at least start to go away after the first application, but using several more chickweed poultices, once or twice a day for several more days, will insure full healing.
Our beautiful star is superb at dissolving cysts and benign tumors. She especially shines when it comes to getting rid of ovarian cysts. Since many doctors, frightened of ovarian cancer, are fast to suggest surgical remedies for ovarian cysts, having a safe and effective green ally can save us from major surgery. Using chickweed to dissolve a cyst or benign tumor is a slow process, and requires consistency. It also requires chickweed tincture made from fresh, not dried, plant material. You can buy the tincture already made. Or make you own: Fill any jar, large or small, with fresh chopped chickweed and 100 proof vodka. Wait six weeks and it's ready to use. A dropperful of the tincture taken 2-3 times a day for 2-16 months is the usual course.
I have seen chickweed dissolve ovarian cysts as large as an orange. One women used it to get rid of a dermoid cyst (which contains hair, bones, teeth, and fingernails); for that, she combined the chickweed with motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) and cronewort (Artemisia vulgaris) tinctures in equal parts. These three plants together are an ancient Chinese remedy for many "women's problems."
Chickweed loves the cool weather of spring and autumn; she hides when summer's sun is high. This gives her a great ability to cool things off for us when we are overheated. I believe that sub-clinical inflammations are responsible for many of the chronic problems we have, including joint pain, digestive upsets, blood vessel disease, memory problems, and even some cancers. Regular use of chickweed takes the heat out and allows optimum functioning.
Women with "hot" bladders - such as those interstitial cystitis, chronic cystitis, or a bladder irritated by childbirth or abdominal surgery - adore chickweed. She soothes and cools, removes bacteria, and strengthens the bladder wall. What a star!
But don't wait for a problem to get to know chickweed. She is delicious and ever so happy to jump into your salad bowl and share her star qualities with you.
Chickweed is loaded with nutrition, being high in chlorophyll, minerals - especially calcium, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron, phosphorus, and potassium - vitamins - especially C, A (from carotenes), and B factors such as folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, and thiamine.
No wonder old-time herbals recommend chickweed for "convalescents, weak children, the anemic, and the old". Chickweed infusion is also a blessing for those recovering from surgery. (Tinctures are not nutritious.)
I'm going to grab my scissors and my basket and go outside and pick a bunch of chickweed and make this yummy spring salad: 4 cups fresh chickweed, 2 cups fresh watercress or miner's lettuce, 1 cup fresh flowers, such as violets, and 2 tablespoons of finely-chopped wild chives. I dress it with olive oil, tamari, and whatever herbal vinegar strikes my fancy, or just plain apple cider vinegar.
NOW REMEMBER ROSEMARY
Mad Ophelia tells us: "There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance". In Shakespeare's day it was common knowledge that rosemary helped one remember. Today, as then, herbalists agree: "For weyknesse of ye brayne, sethe rosemaria in wyne and keep ye heed warme". The leaves of this tough, evergreen shrub, are valued for both medicinal and culinary uses. And, the powerful antioxidant vitamins found therein do help the brain work better.
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is an especially aromatic member of the mint family. When grown in dry, poor soils in hot areas, a little protected, but touched by the winds, rosemary rewards us with minerals, vitamins, and antiseptic, antibacterial volatile oils which extract easily into water, vinegar, alcohol, and fat. While evergreen, and thus usable at any time of the year, rosemary is considered most medicinal when flowering. A large pinch of dried rosemary in food acts as a preservative. A strong brew of the fresh or dried leaves makes a particularly effective wound wash
Old herbals hint that rosemary exerts its influence magically as well as physically. Burned as an incense, twined into a wreath, or grown in a pot, rosemary protects the house and those who live in it, especially the women. Added to the wedding bouquet, it insures fidelity. Tied with silk ribbons and given to the wedding guests, it spreads loving kindness.
"As for Rosmarine, I let it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and, therefore, to friendship …" said Sir Thomas More several hundred years ago, with a smile.
Juliette de Bairacli Levy repeats an old, old story about rosemary: When Mary and Joseph were fleeing with the infant Jesus, Mary placed her damp blue cloak on the rosemary bush to dry it. The rosemary, thus blessed, forever more has had blue flowers, and the absolute power to protect against evil. A sprig of rosemary hung by the door banishes all thieves; a bush of rosemary growing by the door allows only love to enter.
Rosemary is a traditional Christmas decoration - partly because it smells good, and partly because pruning rosemary back mid-winter makes it stronger and healthier. So don't hesitate to cut bunches of it for beauty. If you take your decorative rosemary down before it gets too dry, it can be used for cooking or as a smudge.
The dense smoke (smudge) produced by burning dried rosemary is equally favored in religious, mystical, and medicinal settings. When frankincense and myrrh - expensive and foreign resins - are in short supply, rosemary stands in for them in the church's - or the pagans - censors. During the plague years, and thereafter in many hospitals, the burning of rosemary reliably cleared the air and countered airborne infections. By extension, rosemary was given to mourners to protect them from contagion. It was laid in the coffin to preserve the body. And it was cast into the grave at the end of the funeral.
In England, a branch of rosemary was placed in the dock of the courts of justice as a preventative against jail-fever. To ward off moths, lay it in your woolen chest.
European ladies, princesses, and even queens used rosemary in many ways to enhance their beauty. They tied it into a cloth to keep fleas away; they smelled it to "keep youngly”; they soaked it in wine and used it to wash their faces so they would be "light and lovely"; they added it to their bath water so they would "wax shiny and be merrie"; and they stopped bad dreams by placing rosemary under the bed.
Modern ladies praise rosemary's ability to make their scalp healthy and dander free, and their hair lush, thick, and dark. To make a rosemary hair rinse, brew a full ounce of dried rosemary in a quart of boiling water overnight. After you've washed your hair, pour the dark, sweet-smelling rosemary liquid over your head, rubbing well into the scalp. Leave it be; no need to rinse it out. If you have very bad dandruff, add a tablespoon of borax per half cup of rosemary hair rinse just before use. Lavaggio, a hair tonic made from an Italian folk recipe that is 99% rosemary, is available for sale for those who don't want to do it themselves.
Recent research has found that the heart has memory cells just like the brain. No wonder rosemary is renowned as a heart tonic, too! The oldest recipes call for soaking several handfuls of fresh rosemary in a large glass of white wine for several days, then sipping the wine to ease palpitations, strengthen weak hearts, and heal broken hearts. Rosemary in capsules, or rosemary tincture in large doses, can raise blood pressure however, so I stick to tea or external applications.
Rosemary infused oil or ointment (not the essential oil, which can cause poisoning) eases the pain of arthritis, improves flexibility of the joints, counters and sometimes cures eczema, and hastens wound healing. If you don't have the oil, rosemary tea can be used instead.
Rosemary tea has a beneficial effect on the lungs and breathing. If you have a cold, rosemary tea is happy to help you feel better. Too tired and sick to do anything? Just throw a big handful of rosemary in canned chicken soup and heat. For best effect, let steep for an hour, then eat it. Ahhh. When imbibing rosemary tea, feel free to add honey*, especially if your throat is scratchy and sore.
Rosemary, like all its mint sisters, is antispasmodic, mildly so as a tea, more strongly in vinegar, and powerfully as a tincture. Not only does it relieve nervous pains and headaches, rosemary eases all digestive woes, from gas to gall bladder problems. A tablespoon or two of the vinegar on salad is an easy way to take this remedy. Because of the danger of kidney damage, I use small (1-5 drop) doses of rosemary tincture, and only occasionally.
As a seasoning, rosemary feeds the brain and helps prevent cancer. As a medicine, rosemary restores memory and improves digestion.
No wonder boxes made of rosemary wood are considered magical. As rosemary is only happy when commanded by a woman, its magic is most suited to the needs of women. Perhaps Pandora's box was made of rosemary wood. For sure, your life will be more magical when you remember rosemary.
*Note: Do not give honey to babies under 12 months old.
Susun is one of America's best-known authorities on herbal medicine and natural approaches to women's health. Her four best-selling books are recommended by expert herbalists and well-known physicians and are used and cherished by millions of women around the world. Learn more at www.susunweed.com
Books
Title: Alchemy of the Heart: Transforming Turmoil into Peace through Emotional Integration
Author: Michael Brown
ISBN: 978 1 897238 37 0
Namaste Publishing
Since publication of The Presence Process, Michael Brown has inevitable continued to refine and deepen his understanding and presentation, as evinced in his subsequent CD program A Walk Through the Presence Process and the periodic essays posted to his email subscribers and on his website, www.thepresenceportal.com.
Alchemy of the Heart consolidates these refinements and embellishments in book form, reorganizing the arc and emphasis of his insights somewhat, and presenting it in an incrementally digestible format. It sounds neither complimentary nor accurate enough to say it is “Michael Brown in sound-bites.” However, something of its structure definitely harkens to the daily meditation books that have proliferated in recent years, and perhaps more favorably, to the ACIM (A Course in Miracles) Workbook. Each essay picks up and advances the trail of the last. This encourages readers to pause and digest. It also cultivates a tendency for repetition, for better or worse.
Even while his argument asserts the necessity for experiential exploration and application to finding one’s way out of the dead-end of cogitative paths to “enlightenment,” Alchemy of the Heart emphasizes Being over Doing. (It actually prescribes “Non-doing,” which is, admittedly, a paradoxical concept to serve to a mind, which is by nature oriented to doing!) Thus it de-emphasizes the centerpiece 10-week “process” and practices for which his first book was named.
That said, The Presence Process itself, is likely a very valuable step for many. Without it, the evolutionary support offered in both books can risk becoming just another mental exercise.
I believe that Brown himself has said that folks will find this work when they are ready to undertake it. Hopefully, the capacity of awareness and will required to adequately appreciate and apply Brown’s insights and devices would be accompanied in the reader by the inclination and integrity to do so -- responsibly, honestly and compassionately. Certainly, as one advances, processes and practices can swiftly become crutches, distractions and hindrances.
Moreover, be assured that the key principles have not been abandoned. We are concisely reacquainted with the Seven Year Cycle, the Pathway to Awareness so eloquently introduced in The Presence Process, as well as with Consciously Connected Breathing. In addition, the author increases his use of his device for unlocking hidden meanings by dissecting key familiar phrases and words phonetically. This will appeal to some more than others, but it is a helpful, sometimes uncanny, tool for alchemizing the patina on our “trance-fixed” perceptions.
Having read and valued both books, The Presence Process impressed me as a more graceful read. However, there is plenty to be appreciated in Alchemy of the Heart, both in its differences and its reprises from its antecedent. We have all evolved since the first book. Reading the second provides worthy testament to that, as well as to an elasticity it shares with the first; that is, the promise that the insights it reveals will deepen as we do, with each read. In this respect, its incremental format of shorter, distinct chapters may make Alchemy of the Heart a more accessible candidate for re-visitation.
TwoTitles:
The Transparent Tarot
Created by Emily Carding
ISBN: 978 0 7643 3003 2
and Pirate Tarot
Authors: Carrie and Lucas Amodio and Liz Galindor” Harper
ISBN; 978 0 7643 3182 4
A couple of Tarot decks arrived at the door within days of each other, striking quite a contrast to one another. Tarot isn’t my strong suit, if you’ll pardon the pun; but it is a powerful tool in the hands of a seasoned reader; and, if the deck is thoughfully assembled and infused, even an open novice can find herself in a profound meeting with the wise, deep Self.
First to arrive was the Transparent Tarot, an elegant and modern set, which includes an eloquent guide book, the cards themselves, and a cloth in which to store and display them. The cards themselves are ingeniously designed to add a whole new dimension to their divination potential. They are made of sturdy transparent plastic; and the illustrations are simple and understated, so that when the cards are stacked or overlapped, the features of each card interact in ways that evoke whole new layers of interpretation. It allows the themes or cards with generally stable meanings and inhabiting traditionally prescribed positions to more readily influence and illuminate one another. The experience is creative and absorbing; and the creators of the deck encourage experimentation, such as adding cards to traditional spreads, or simply allowing the cards to dictate their own unfolding story in an alchemy with the querent’s psyche.
The inclusion of the white cloth (on which to spread the cards) promotes the clarity of the images, and not only supports the simple elegance of the deck, but enhances the sacred and sensual dimension of the experience, and reflects the thoughtfulness invested in the entire deck by its creators. The set conveys a delicacy and sobriety, a reverence, but the attitude of the accompanying text, as well as the simple, almost stick-figure drawings, also convey a freedom and flexibilty.
In contrast, the Pirate Tarot has a considerably less substantial “sacred” feel, seeming to beg not to be taken seralmost discouraging sobriety, rather like a Halloween costume. This even though he cards were originally devised as wood engravings -- and a wooden set actually is available, I gather -- but the glossy card deck has a jaunty, comic-book quality. The illustrations have a definite charm and style, certainly; and the wood-themed appearance has appeal. Yet, here, any hallowed Tarot shares the stage with a pragmatic, irreverent and swaggering gypsy milieu, in which the cards are presented as much as a light diversion of this world as an esoteric and austere oracle of another. The game of Tarot is what is emphasized here, perhaps, rather than the Game of Life.
The instructions enclosed are rather poorly written and presented on a single sheet of glossy paper, folded in 12 panels; and include only the sketchiest insights into the meanings of the individual cards. As much space is devoted to the games that can be (and historically have been) played with the deck. I’d say that this might make a good, versatile starter deck for a youngster, except that this adult couldn’t makes sense of the instructions for the game!
Both decks are enjoyable to peruse and to see how the Major Arcana are represented with the very different themes and intentions. Observing one’s response to each illustration can alone make for a rich and heady reading.
Title: A Particle of God
Author: Teddy Bart
www.O-books.net
ISBN: 978 1 84694 172 6
Failure is as imaginary as fame.
---Johnny Carson (as apparition)
from A Particle of God
Teddy Bart is a veteran Radio and TV talk show host from Nashville. He grounds the wisdom he wishes to convey in his novel, A Particle of God, in the world he knows. It is this fondness and admiration for, as well as his intimacy with, the world and the luminaries of broadcasting, combined with the importance of his message, that keeps us engaged. Well, that and the poignant and credible portrait he paints of his main character, radio personality Joey Robin, even when the character’s experiences land him soundly in realms most would deem incredible.
As times change and ratings slide, Joey Robin loses his position as a Memphis broadcasting fixture when he won’t agree to the now-common slide of standards demanded to spike controversy and ratings. Without a professional outlet for his passion, long simmering insecurities about career, his purpose, his worth, understandably boil up and threaten to drown him in self-pity. Then the fun begins; and while he isn’t as intransigent as some protagonists, it takes him a while to enjoy it!
The novel, a sweet and fast read, is flawed in many ways, but demonstrates an unseasoned (I assume) writer’s talent for observing and conveying human nature insightfully, and his potential, with experience, to craft a narrative with richer, more efficient prose, to match and demonstrate his depth of understanding for the subject matter. Mr. Bart has managed to make us care about a character quite morose when we meet him, partly because Robin’s predicament is one with which all too many of us is familiar.
To elaborate too much would deflate the value of reading the book. In brief, Bart’s quick, contemporary narrative conjures up a parable which examines potent cultural and existential themes: fulfilling one’s life purpose, what defines true success, and the distinction between true fulfillment and external recognition. These are crucial matters to make peace with amid the sometimes-crushing demands of our You are what you do (and how you appear) culture; and matters so many of us struggle with, even when we may “know” better! I dare say these themes are therapeutically exercised in the reader as s/he follows Joey Robin through his paces. Moreover, the light-hearted and high-powered help he gets will either may simultaneously spark in the reader envy and renewed faith.
So, even in spite of some patches of somewhat hackneyed prose, mixed metaphors, grammatical glitches, and some unclear plot passages -- especially during the last few muddled pages -- the spirit and wisdom of this little novel speak well for it, and speak well enough to the reader to sneak up and serve them a dose of valuable remembrance! Each of us is an essential Particle of God, but not every particle can or need be seen and recognized by every other particle. Enjoy the view from where you are…and wave (as I hear particles do).
Title: From the Bottom of the Pond
Author: Simon Small
ISBN: 978 1 84694 066 8
www.o-books.net
This book’s title, while poetically apt, may not entice as many readers who would appreciate the content, which, simple and profound, could be analogous with a Zen Pond. Even the full title, From the Bottom of the Pond: The forgotten art of experience God in the depths of the present moment, I believe, fails to convey the quiet clarity, authority and benefit of the book, whose message resonates beyond of the New-age-diluted words of its title.
Moving beyond that minor objection, I earnestly recommend gently diving below that surface matter into the still wisdom just beneath. The pond may be profound, but it is never over our heads. It seems to encourage wading in, savoring immersion, not strenuous aquanautics. Spiritual seekers can be prone to over exertion and analysis. The gift of this book is to call us back from that, like the sunlight calling the diver back to air.
This is actually book on contemplative prayer, written from the perspective of someone who has waded through the fizzy waters of the New Age and found home as an illumined Christian.
At only 77 pages, the book is an easy, satisfying contemplation of prayer itself, the gentle meditative form of prayer that connects to and cultivates all-pervasive Presence. It concisely synthesizes points you’ll find more elaborately dissected by countless others. Author Simon Small has clearly discovered or assimilated this wisdom organically, and has distilled it into an appreciable review, and an invitation to let the information and words go now, and live it, feel it, know it.
It is by stilling our own personal part of the pond that clarity spreads, and those around us find their footing on the bottom; and our hearts illuminate where earth and sky meet, and our minds witness report to (an from) Heaven.
Title: Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein
Author: Molly Dwyer
Lost Coast Press, 2008, www.cypresshouse.com
ISBN: 978-1-882897-93-3
At within shooting distance of 600 pages, this ambitious novel manages to be both meaty and ethereal. The plot is subordinate to, and supportive of, the themes, which are better perceived through soft focus, an intuitive osmosis, rather than the sharp teeth of intellectual comprehension. Fortunately, a weighty portion of the novel concerns personages who actually lived and whose lives are, albeit not quite so intimately and evocatively illuminated, documented elsewhere.
The story dreamily swims back and forth between present day character Anna and 19th century author Mary Shelley, whose distinct identities and times become blurred, to them as well as to us.
The exploration of the intimate relationships between Mary Shelley, her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the infamous Lord Byron anchor some of the more engrossing passages in the book. Although its portrayals don’t feel quiet as solid, the parallel journey of Anna-- on a mission both personal and scholarly, to discover why Shelley’s life and cohorts are literally haunting her -- can be equally compelling at times; and that story line helps to anchor Mary Shelley’s relevance in contemporary times. Her classic satire Frankenstein was a much misunderstood demonstration of the perils of imbalance between the feminine and masculine. It’s an urgent and cogent exhortation for our own era.
The ghosts haunting these pages will follow readers into their other daily activities, and will sing them like sirens back to the characters and the many consciousness-bending realities invoked within the book’s leisurely arc (toward what seems a rather rapid and tidy denouement).
Along the way, we are immersed in the passionate and intellectual milieu of the Shelleys, Byron, even Coleridge and Blake. Dwyer celebrates, animates and orchestrates an intimacy with these personages who were so ahead of the parameters of their time. We can’t help but join them in this defiance of time (both in the sense of their era and also the boundaries between past, present and future); it is thus meet ourSelves in the experience, out beyond time in the realm cosmic simultaneity, truth and the free-immortal human Spirit.
The journey is at once befuddling, thought-provoking, inspiring, and entertaining.
Our minds, endowed with a soaring, restless aspiration, can find no repose on earth, except in Love. -- Mary Shelley
Title: The Doubting Snake
Author: Bob Klein
ISBN: 978 1892198 08
Publisher: The Tai-Chi-Chuan School
www.movementsofmagic.org
In the “tradition” quickened by the Celestine Prophecy, Bob Klein offers us The Doubting Snake, a teaching fable in adventure format, which takes us to places at once far away, intimate, strange and familiar. He does so in a read so speedy that a reader could almost too easily consume it without digesting it adequately. One would hope, though, as with the snake who swallows his prey whole, the content will find its way to the inner spaces that most need its nourishment.
This is not a work crafted of intricate, poetic language; instead, a simple, expedient vernacular invokes poetic realities. The beauty is less in the style and more in lush regions, cultures and cosmologies it describes, and in the invisible realms it remarkably and simply illuminates. Hearing their nameless names intoned in this casual prose invites these realms to awaken where they are buried in the reader, under the concrete and ring tones of our dehydrated, superficial, inhumanly-paced modern existence.
The uncomplicated plot, engaging but not superlatively riveting, concerns a zoologist who stumbles into intrigue that finds him suddenly transplanted to the Panamanian jungle, caught between opposing realities and forces that purport to influence the very immediate fate of our technological civilization. Although the hero can seem a bit of a dolt sometimes, all perspectives are given insightful voice in the course of the book; and more appreciably, they leave room for the reader’s own convictions to coalesce or evolve.
The teachings are what make it worth reading; for those whose lives already run deep shamanic currents, it is good company. Accompanying the “hero,” as he learns to tune in to his own truths and tap the deep current connecting all phenomena, allows us to tune in as well. So, we’re in good company as we hear our own voice rise in the chorus.
The ending, while it struck me as anticlimactic, leaves the reader hanging -- and wide open for a sequel; this seems to parallel the impatience many experience in this time that feels like the imminent culmination of human life as we know it.
The warrior within each of us is invited to: Wake up; deeply see and listen; remember what reality is really made of; and honor, cultivate and harness our connectedness, consciousness, power, and history in order to reinvent our culture in a Golden Age. Not bad for a galloping little novel!
Title: From the Bottom of the Pond
Author: Simon Small
ISBN: 978 1 84694 066 8
www.o-books.net
This book’s title, while poetically apt, may not entice as many readers who would appreciate the content, which, simple and profound, could be analogous with a Zen Pond. Even the full title, From the Bottom of the Pond: The forgotten art of experience God in the depths of the present moment, I believe, fails to convey the quiet clarity, authority and benefit of the book, whose message resonates beyond of the New-age-diluted words of its title.
Moving beyond that minor objection, I earnestly recommend gently diving below that surface matter into the still wisdom just beneath. The pond may be profound, but it is never over our heads. It seems to encourage wading in, savoring immersion, not strenuous aquanautics. Spiritual seekers can be prone to over exertion and analysis. The gift of this book is to call us back from that, like the sunlight calling the diver back to air.
This is actually book on contemplative prayer, written from the perspective of someone who has waded through the fizzy waters of the New Age and found home as an illumined Christian.
At only 77 pages, the book is an easy, satisfying contemplation of prayer itself, the gentle meditative form of prayer that connects to and cultivates all-pervasive Presence. It concisely synthesizes points you’ll find more elaborately dissected by countless others. Author Simon Small has clearly discovered or assimilated this wisdom organically, and has distilled it into an appreciable review, and an invitation to let the information and words go now, and live it, feel it, know it.
It is by stilling our own personal part of the pond that clarity spreads, and those around us find their footing on the bottom; and our hearts illuminate where earth and sky meet, and our minds witness report to (an from) Heaven.
Title: Practicing Conscious Living and Dying: Stories of the Eternal Continuum of Consciousness
Author: Annamaria Hemingway
ISBN: 975 1 64694 077 4
www.nbnbooks.com (USA), www.o-books.net (UK), 2007,
The title Practicing Conscious Living and Dying might sound like the latest Americanization of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. However, Annamaria Hemingway’s book has blended first-person reportage of near death and out of body experiences, mediumship, and contact with and from the “dead,” to demonstrate how personal knowledge of an afterlife (a continuum of consciousness beyond embodiment) can cultivate more purposeful, peaceful life in the mortal world. True enough. There is much to inspire in these pages!
More and more people are having experiences that reveal or confirm life after death. However, for those who have yet to be blessed with first hand experience, this collection of accounts is poignant and compelling. Whether or not a reader is comfortable with the idea of a personality that survives the body in which it developed and expressed, the commonalities in the accounts are thought-provoking. The book gives us all the opportunity to relax and reassess what is most important to us, to realign with our hearts, if not some grand purpose, and realize that just showing up, being decent, appreciative and present in life, can have impact beyond our imagining.
This little volume is not just a collection of NDE case studies. Some are reports of near death experiences and what wisdom the subjects carry hence; others detail the events of a loved one’s life, death or communication from beyond and their profoundly tranformative impact on the narrator’s approach to life and influence on others.
The subject of each narrative has a distinct story, which illuminates a subtly different facet of the overall theme. However, the homogeneity of the voice in each first person narrative led me to inquire as to whether these were quoted reports or ghost written accounts. I believe that the accounts do reflect actually events, but that they may be paraphrased summaries composed by the Ms. Hemingway. (After all, some of the subjects are relatively visible people, among them, actor Larry Hagman.) I understand that a clarification on this point will appear in ensuing traditions. It would be a pity for credibility questions to undermine an otherwise inspiring read.
Title: Milton’s Secret
Author: Eckhardt Tolle and Robert S. Friedman
Namaste Publishing, 2008
ISBN: 978 1 57174-577 4
Ironic, isn’t it, that the essential wisdom eloquently conveyed in The Power of Now has been distilled into a package for children: the population, historically, most naturally connected to its truths and least in need of a primer? It’s regrettable that the anxieties of our culture could be encroaching upon the innocents so as to necessitate it; but it is hopeful that resources like this book continue to offer remembrance rather than ritalin and promote early and conscious application of that remembrance!
Milton (of the title) is a boy who is happy enough until accosted by a bully, after which time he is haunted by the spectres of “When” (past injury) and “Then” (future encounter). He is helped, by a wise adult and his wisdom of dreams, to learn how to return to the safe haven of the Now, by escorting his attention to first the “outside of the Now”, then the “inside of the Now.” Milton learns about presence and compassion; and importantly, with guidance, he comes to these realizations himself.
I confess that at first I was disappointed, wishing Milton’s Secret had carried a certain charm and contagion of other children’s books I knew. Despite the book’s expressive illustrations, what seemed to be a bland narrative failed to open up a rich world to get lost in. However, upon reflecting and summarizing this book for review, a simple brilliance in its teaching came into focus. This is an invitation to redirect our cultural dependence on alternate “once upon a time” realities and learn to abide richly, fluidly in the generously enchanting “Now.”
Ultimately, I recommend the book: a solid gift for kids on your list (as well as their parents). Since we don’t know which of the seeds we scatter in the impressionable soil of young hearts and minds will germinate, it is better to offer sane and nourishing seed. While my own expectations allowed me to be underwhelmed at first, the book’s gentle rain seeps quietly in.
The idea behind Milton’s Secret has rich potential; and so because a richer reading experience tends to promote the more enduring the impact, and thus, more deeply root its seeds of wisdom, my hope is that Milton’s Secret becomes the first in a series of books, which together synergize their full potential as engaging, enduring children’s literature that demonstrates the practical and pervasive and accessibility of the Now.
Title: Waiting for Autumn
Author: Scott Blum
Spring 2009, Hay House
www.hayhouse.com
Waiting for Autumn is a sweet, simple novel in purpose and in prose, yet endearing for any of us who have swam the moody river of spiritual unfolding, with its mind-bending and heart-melting twists and trajectory. Like so many contemporary narrative offerings with inspirational focus, it forgoes the structural and linguistic sophistication and flourish of classic literary craft for more streamlined conversational reportage that lets the wisdom conveyed ignite the reader’s recognition and engagement.
It may not be high literature, but it’s much better written than more than one blockbuster new age novel I could name. Moreover, its purpose and content do effectively illuminate truths about the human condition of spirits remembering that they chose to accept this mission, and, upon remembering, are compelled to affirm that choice (and even redouble their commitment).
Professedly semi-autobiographical, Waiting for Autumn is a modern narrative about one man’s waking up and the invitation we all receive to say “Yes!” It takes place in Ashland, Oregon, which serves as a benevolent character in the story and a nostalgic reunion for those of us who know and love the city as much as the protagonist, Scott (a recently transplant from L.A.). Scott has a lot of support, which fleshes out the multi-dimensional cast of characters; and with each experience of Scott’s that reminds us of our own, we are cajoled into acknowledging that in not being as alone as he thought he is not alone! That is, none of us are as alone as we once thought.
By the end of the book, I was interested enough in the characters and their story to be heartened that there is a prequel (Summer’s Path) available on the Hay House website, and that we may expect sequels to Waiting for Autumn, either on line or in print.
CDs, DVDs, Videos and Tapes
Title: Flow
Director: Irena Salina
2008 Oscilloscope Laboratories
www.flowthefilm.com
Title: Water
Directors: Anastasiya Popova
and Julia Perkul
2008 Intention Media/Voice Entertainment
www.waterthemovie.com
Two documentaries have been released this year about H2O, the medium of Life as we know it. Each film, with it’s own thematic focus and tone plunges us into remembrance that the phrase Holy Water is tautology.
Flow takes a macro view, focusing on keeping planetary water pure and free as a resource, whereas Water starts from the micro view, examining the barely fathomable nature and property of the substance itself, and expanding into the spiritual and environmental phenomena that grow from that.
Flow, with its more political tone, carries the ache and urgency of activist appeal without ever spilling irretrievably into shrillness. It focuses on the worldwide trend to treat Water, the planet’s own life blood, as a commodity, as well as the grassroots movements to counter this. As each viewer watches from within a sensory soup that is 70-90% water, we are all infused with a new appreciation for water: for its perennial role in our salvation, for human potential, and for its role in the salvation of water. These are indistinguishable. Where there is Water there is life, they say. Where there is life there is hope. Hope Springs Eternal.
Water focuses on the substance itself, purporting to be a scientific exploration of this pervasive molecule with miraculous memory. An international array of scientists and philosophers discuss and extrapolate the ramifications of water’s capacity to register, to remember, all with which it interacts, for better and for worse.
While it seemed a little light on cohesiveness, and while some of the terms used and “facts” and discoveries reference begged for meatier definition, explanation, and citation of origin, the power of the message, the treasure buried in the subject itself, redeems it. It a little clumsily, it points to a universal truth in every beating heart. This film, too, is a call to action and responsibility.
Both films inevitably steep us in profoundly spiritual realizations. What we do to and with water, we do to ourselves and everything else. However miraculous and endangered water is, so are we. Each with information that may be new to some, old to others, the two films are thought-provoking and inspiring, ultimately: A cool splash awake from complacency or demoralization, to mindful stewardship and to the interconnectedness of all Life, intelligence, and innocence, for which Water is a universal conductor.
DVD Title: Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes
in 30 Days
Producers: Aiyana Elliot and Leda Maliga
Circle 3 Media
www.Rawfor30.com
In this well-produced and absorbing documentary, we follow six diabetics (mostly Type II) through a month-long experimental retreat at The Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Arizona, where the cuisine is entirely raw or live and vegan. The objective is to reduce or eliminate their dependency on insulin and bring their blood sugar and other vital statistics into normal range. Proceedings are closely monitored by medical and support staff (directed by Dr. Gabriel Cousens).
The six participants vary in ethnicity, age and home state; what they share is a debilitating disease and this chance of a lifetime. We witness them discover friendships, wisdom, confidence, resources and a state of health and freedom of which their cultural and medical environments gave them no conception. All this from a wholesome, earth-friendly diet, a pastoral setting, fresh air and peer support. If it sounds idyllic and ideal, it is.
The results are, of course, astounding and compelling; and the journey we take with them is poignant and inspiring. The health benefits completely vindicate the experiment, even though viewers, the subjects and their mentors all know that grim challenges lie ahead, when these retreatants return to the formidable influences of family, work, media and convenience and comfort food.
The documentary succeeds as an honest and revealing portrait of human potential. It thus offers inspiration to anyone seeking to introduce changes in their lifestyle, diet, and planetary impact. The journey these folks go through isn’t “sugar-coated;” each is amply challenged, and one drops out.
More crucially, the film provokes a lot of deeper questions, which are left for other documentarians. Such questions might include:
How can such a regimen be actualized and sustained in daily life, without the sequesterment these individuals enjoyed?
How will the medical establishment respond, and how can that system embrace and implement this opportunity to correct its deathly course?
How can the economic and biochemical dependence on (nutritionally deficient or disruptive) fast food be overcome?
How can the cultural, biological, and psycho-emotional conditioning – all of which have phenomenal momentum – be reversed, reframed, or redeemed?
It would seem the world wakes up one heart, one pancreas, one palate at a time. Here we see a handful more realize: “Yes, we can.”
DVD Title: Jesus in India
Director: Paul Davids
Yellow Hat / Felicity Films, 2008
www.jesus-in-india-the-movie.com
It is better to aim at a Lion and miss than to aim at a Jackal and kill it.
--a proverb quoted my Edward T. Martin in Jesus in India
The subject matter is intriguing no matter what your position. There has been enough suggestion of it trickling into the West over the past century or so that more and more people think it plausible, even if unprovable, that during those lost years not chronicled in the New Testament, Jesus followed his divine calling all the way to the Far East, for both study and refuge.
The film is a chronicle of Edward T. Martin’s dogged (and blessed) quest to track down indisputable proof of this. Fair to say that it succeeds and doesn’t succeed. It is a very successful chronicle of a less successful quest. Many fascinating facts and tantalizing testimonies draw us down all sorts of alleys, grottos and promising tangents, bathing us in the many cultures and points of view concerned, even as conclusive resolution eludes us. Here too, the Divine will not show all its cards. And who can blame her; the claims and protestations of each person involved or interviewed reveal far more about human limitations than Divine Truth!
The tedium of all the questors’ apparent “dead-ends” parallels the challenges of each person’s spiritual journey, which, even as it lures us along with doses of Grace and revelation, seems to teach us that it’s all less about facts (understanding, power, control) than about Truth. All realized beings and true saints, in their way, have known and demonstrated that the way to God (or the way of God) is an intangible universal imposed on infinite roads.
As speakers on both sides of this argument cogently ask, “What does it matter whether he did or he didn’t?” Does this change your faith? Raising these arguably more important and enduring questions is what makes this film as success.
That, yes, and other attributes that recommen mend the film: It is intelligent, earnest (without losing humor), and tries to offer a balance of pro and con arguments. The production values are solid; it is a visually beautiful and satisfying tour through the rich spiritual images and cultures of the Silk Road, many of which are, ironically and ceaselessly, ravaged by ancient religious animosities.
The message of the film seems to be that whether Jesus traveled or even died in the Far East is far less relevant than the message he espoused. However, if evidence surfaced that could actually prove his presence in these places and his respect for these cultures, it might strengthen his message of Peace, tolerance, universal divinity, personal responsibility, and the awesome glory of creation’s simultaneous diversity and unity.
2007 www.Acacialifestyle.com
Check out on their website Acacia Lifestyles’ range of recent DVD releases dedicated to Yoga and other body awareness practices. Each will have appeal and value to overlapping sections of a growing, awakening audience. We review three of them below.
The production quality and care to aesthetics in each of the several programs we’ve watched is admirably lush. However, I often took issue with a lamentable, even disruptive production style: editing and music choices quite often at odds with the original focusing or grounding intention of the practices presented.
It is a pity that even in presentations where the ostensible goal is integration of the being and attenuation of unhealthily busy mental dominion, the style chosen evokes not equanimity and simplicity, but the dizzy, conventional, ADHD world from which it might better provide respite. This, to me, constitutes unnecessary, faddish pandering on the part of Acacia (as, I confess, is using the term “workout” for the practice sequences demonstrated).
While lamentable; it does not entirely counteract the beneficial potential of the programs (nor obscure the poise and expertise of their presenters). They still serve quite adequately, over all, as introductions or refreshers for the hip audience they appear to target.
Title: Transform yourself with Jivamukti Yoga
Artists: David Life and Sharon Gannon
American yoga luminaries and founders of Jivamukti yoga, David Life and Sharon Gannon offer a 60-minute Ashtanga-based “workout.” The presentation is atmospheric and fluid, featuring accompaniment by an ensemble of Indian instruments.
The program features a choice of audio instruction tracks by either David or Sharon (individually), which guide the home participant through a series of postures of a skill level and pace not really appropriate for a beginner.
It’s a moderately rigorous flow, with interludes of helpful information during moments of rest, in which the voice over introduces the next category of poses and their primary benefits.
While attention was given to the aesthetic of the visual presentation, which enhances the rhythmic, perpetual, river-like flow of the practice, the audio voiceover supports any moderately seasoned practitioner in focusing on his/her own, inward practice, without constantly breaking that thread of attention to consult and synchronize the action on screen.
Title: Yoga to the Rescue: Feel Good from Head to Toe
Artist: Desiree Rumbaugh
Yoga to the Rescue is especially suitable for the beginner, and not just yoga novices, but anyone requiring a fresh approach to common physical complaints and to common poses, so as to reawaken simplicity and responsibility in his/her practice. The instruction is dense in a way that will enable viewers to hear new information with repeated viewings. This information is practical and valuable.
The music, true to fashion, is upbeat, but not particularly conducive to dropping in and gently listening to the body. Alas, while one has the option of playing the “workout” with or without the instruction track, one does not have the option to hear the instruction without the music track -- Too bad.
The editing is also plagued by the vogue technique of cutting back and forth between the direct address of the speaker and a side view of her addressing the unseen camera frame-right. This is off-putting, subtly reinforcing a sense of separation, rather than Union – the definition and purpose of yoga practice.
There is plenty of benefit to be had from the program; I would simply recommend the content more than the form.
Title: QI GONG:Fire and Water
Artist: Matthew Cohen
Matthew Cohen has assembled two graceful practice routines, each to emphasize or evoke a contrasting elemental energy: Fire and Water. They are both very effective and offer much for a practitioner to grow into.
Cohen (and a lovely companion who provides a feminine and Asian countenance to the program), perform the practices upon desert rock formations with dramatic 360 degree vistas that invoke the balancing elements of Earth and Air. (The landscape makes no attempt to resemble the landscapes from which the various martial arts tapped here originate.)
Viewers attempting to join him in practice will appreciate that Cohen’s presentation is relatively uncluttered, and he provides no more than necessary instruction, with a few points about each move’s particular intention or benefit sprinkled sensitively throughout.
I can only take marks off, again, for editing choices (unrelated to the content itself) and certain music choices, which combined with the editing, can be more than a little jarring to anyone for whom the preceding content has had desired effect!
DVD Title: Soul Masters: Dr. Guo
and Dr. Sha
Director: Sandra Deir
www.soulmastersmovie.com <http://www.soulmastersmovie.com/> , www.drsha.com <http://www.drsha.com/>
Dr. Zhi Gang Sha has been steadily gaining visibility in the past couple of years, attracting a devoted following of talented students and healers. Others, who have not resonated with his approach, vocabulary or public presentation, are encouraged to give a second look in the form of this refreshingly affecting documentary on Dr. Sha and his own Master, Dr. Zhi Chen Guo.
The program follows students of Master Sha to the clinic of his renowned teacher, Master Guo, who was recognized for his critical contribution to containing the SARS epidemic. After watching him and some of his grateful patients, anyone with chronic illness may be galvanized to find their way to his doors.
In addition to their commonalities, the film also demonstrates the distinctions of emphasis in the work of the two doctors, who are both Qi Gong masters and accomplished Medical Doctors.
While the film touches on what some might find quite esoteric stuff, it is presented to be accessible, even intriguing, to the relatively uninitiated, and it is a film made to be shared.
DVD: Secrets of the Soul
2007AliveMind Media
www.secretsofthesoul.net
Everybody talks about the soul. But what is it? And when we own to not knowing with absolute certainty exactly what it is, do we not still have a sense or belief about it, a personal definition? And even, or especially, when that opinion is just borrowed (intellectually or through cultural osmosis), do we consider that our operational definition is likely somewhat unique to each of us – that the assumptions of others are equally and importantly distinct?
Secrets of the Soul begins to address these questions. The DVD features a pair of hour-long documentary-style programs, edited for television broadcast, which look at man’s investigation through two lenses: the mystical in The Searchers and the scientific in the Investigators. Each program can only scratch the surface, and The Searchers achieves more satisfying traction, in my opinion. However, both programs are interesting and not without merit. Each question begets more questions, which invites the viewer to clarify his own sometimes-invisible assumptions. What’s more I found the segments comparing and clarifying the distinction between and within major cosmologies to be particularly well stated and valuable.
The piece would be good for a local spiritual film circle or fellowship discussion group, or perhaps more poignantly, a means of lubricating understanding among family or community members alienated by differing beliefs. At the least, Secrets of the Soul is a couple of informative hours positively spent. At best, it is an audio-visual olive branch.
Title: Archangel Miracle
Artist: Patrick Bernard
Devi Communications, Inc.
www.patrickbernard.com
Those familiar with Patrick Bernard’s work, both musical and written will no doubt avidly welcome his newest opus: Archangel Miracle.
The song cycle is structured like a formal Oratorio, with words in Hebrew and Latin. While I confess that the melodies did not at first move me personally as much as some his previous releases, the supersensory affects proved much deeper, keenly validating the statement on the back cover:
This music helps the listener to make the conditions of reception ready for the assistance and intervention of the Shining Ones, Angels and Archangels, who direct healing, enlightening and renewing frequencies of God-Light to the World.
It may be that the best praise I can offer is: Amen.
The instrumentation and arrangements share much with the rich (synthetically generated) choral and symphonic sounds of his early, epic offerings (like in Atlantis Angeles and Solaris Universalis). The frequencies invoked, however, are unique to this work.
Even if the music does not win the ear at first, the listener is encouraged to let it play through for some repetitions. What draws one is more spiritual than emotional. One may notice a mysterious greater beneficence in one’s life and being well before one finds oneself chanting along (and perhaps eventually leaving Mr. Bernard in the car while inviting the company of Angels of whom you may not even have heard into the melee of the market or office!) It is when we carry these seed sounds (on our tongue or in our hearts) out of our private sonic cathedrals into our secular pursuits that the sacred harvest is sewn…and reaped.
I believe Archangel Miracle is just that, and it is a labor of great love and service for which I thank the artists as well as that which works through them.
Ramtha Predictions Now Coming to Pass: Earth Changes — The Days That Are Here
Prepared by Ramtha's School of Enlightenment for Mount Shasta Magazine
The Days That Are Here
"These times are the greatest of all times in your recorded history.
"Though they are difficult and challenging times, you chose to live here during this time for the purpose of the fulfillment that it would bring you."
"All of you have been promised for e'er so long that you would see God in your lifetime, yet lifetime after lifetime you never allowed yourselves to see it. In this lifetime, most of you will indeed."
"You will see a magnificent kingdom emerge here, and civilizations will come forth that you had not even the slightest notion existed. And a new wind will blow, and love, peace, and joy in being will grace this blessed place, the emerald of your universe and the home of God."
— Ramtha
Early 1980s
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, The White Book, Revised and Expanded Edition. Yelm: JZK Publishing, 2004.)
Earth Changes
"The Earth is going to change. It is going to change in many ways. The nature of the Earth and its magnetic field is shifting because the Earth is in agony. It is a living being. It has been destroyed by a cancer, and the cancer is civilization, ignorance, and religion. Religion, as I told you, is the emptying of the human being from their God and their divinity and giving to them the Earth under the guise of economics to destroy it."
— Ramtha
July 1992
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, Assay IV, July 12, 1992. Copyright © 1992 JZ Knight)
Melting of Arctic Ice and Waters Rising
"Into that which is termed the melting of the polar caps, the hole in the stratum and the warming up in the next four years will be much quicker than your scientists will tell you. The melting of the great caps of snow is already occurring and will raise the water level to two hundred feet."
— Ramtha
November 1987
(Excerpt from: Ramtha in Seattle, November 14, 1987. Copyright © 1987 JZ Knight)
Greenland Ice Sheet on a Downward Slide
Science Daily: October 22, 2006
"For the first time NASA scientists have analyzed data from direct, detailed satellite measurements to show that ice losses now far surpass ice gains in the shrinking Greenland ice sheet."
Violent Hurricanes
"In these days to come, one should leave that which is called the beaches and seek higher ground, seek dry ground, away from the oceans."
"You will find storms that unleash a violence that you have never seen before. They are coming in profound fury because it is the only way that nature, in its endeavor to heal its wounds, can clean the air up and wash away the debris so that it can heal. Those are the things that are coming on your east and your west. And those storms are going to become more unpredictable. In the days to come, nature will heal its wounds so it can go on. It will get rid of that which is hurting it."
— Ramtha
May 1986
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, Change — The Days to Come, May 17-18, 1986. Copyright © 1986 JZ Knight)
Solar Flares
"You are going to see huge spots on your sun with huge flares, the likes of which your scientists have never seen before. This is the cycle and the time of the sun and with it comes drastic weather changes that are now effectively working against you who are unprepared for it."
— Ramtha
May 1986
(Excerpt from: Ramtha in Denver, May 17-18, 1986. Copyright © 1986 JZ Knight)
NASA Issues Solar Storm Warning
NASA: March 10, 2006
NASA issued a Solar Storm Warning that will reach its peak by 2010-2011.
Dire State of the Oceans
"Let me tell you, you can make change but there are some things that only geological time or supernatural help can take care of, and one of them is your oceans. You cannot clean up your oceans. What are you going to clean them up with? Do you have a vacuum cleaner that big? How about a sieve, do you have one that large? Do you have enough chemicals to throw into the seas to counteract what you have thrown in there? That would kill all the life and make it sterile. Then it will take another hundred million years to get lifeforms going as you know them today. What are you going to do? Do you fish-eaters still like to eat your fish? If you do, you are eating your dung."
— Ramtha
August 1988
(Excerpt from: UFO Interdimensional Understanding: Making Contact, Yucca Valley Retreat. August 11-14, 1988. Copyright © 1988 JZ Knight)
Beach Closings and Advisories
Natural Resources Defense Council: August 2, 2007
"Pollution-related closings and health advisories at U.S. beaches were more numerous than ever in 2005, according to NRDC's annual report on beachwater quality...This year's report highlights another disturbing trend: Most municipalities have failed to identify and control sources of bacteria and other pollution tainting water near beaches. In 2005, 75 percent of closing and advisory days stemmed from monitoring that revealed high levels of bacteria associated with fecal contamination," quoting the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Epidemic of Deadly Viruses
"And while this is going on, the plagues are consuming the masses that proliferate themselves in the marketplace. The plagues are mutating at such a rapid rate that when you get it, three days later you are dead."
"In the end it will be nature that will have rule and dominance, and that is already in the workings."
— Ramtha
September 1993
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, September 16, 1993. Copyright © 1993 JZ Knight)
Update on Multi-State Outbreak of E. coli
Center For Disease Control: October 6, 2006
"Among the ill persons, 102 (51%) were hospitalized and 31 (16%) developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS)."
"Three deaths in confirmed cases have been associated with the outbreak."
Poisoned City Water
"Very shortly you are going to hear about water contamination and you will hear about whole populaces infected with that which is termed strange viral diseases.
"They will trace it to part of the water supply. They will point the finger and call it local contamination, but they will not do that until the local populace has been sufficiently infected."
— Ramtha
January 1993
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, January 4, 1993. Copyright © 1993 JZ Knight)
Contaminated City Water Killed Over 100 People
CNN News, September 2, 1996
"The United States has a reputation for high standards in its water systems; it wasn't until a parasite slipped through the cracks in Milwaukee and killed more than 100 people that water systems managers started to take a closer look at how they monitored their product."
Put Up Food and Water
"I said to my people to put up food and have a well so that you have plenty of water. You should learn to plant seeds, grow and harvest your own food without chemicals, and then prepare food storage for at least two years and more."
— Ramtha
April 1993
(Excerpt from: Ramtha, April 14, 1993. Copyright © 1993 JZ Knight)
Two Former Presidents Urge Americans to Get Prepared
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush are airing in joint public-service commercials suggesting all American families prepare themselves for and be able to respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks.
More info (DHS). Visit here to see the emergency kit suggested by the former Presidents for every vehicle and home.
Lessons from Mother Nature
"Observe the ants. They are divine. Let them teach you something emotionally about being prepared. In nature when you live like this, liken unto the ant, you are living in harmony with that which is termed God and the enigma called life. I ask you this: How much food do you have in your pantries? How long will it last, two days, three weeks? If you have not provisions for two years, you are going to run perilously short."
— Ramtha
May 1986
(Excerpt from: Change — The Days to Come, May 17-18, 1986. Copyright © 1986 JZ Knight)
Sovereignty and Preparedness...
"The important issue of preparedness I taught many years ago is that I asked for all of the people who would listen to put up food and to become sovereign and to have lots of water but to have it out of the ground, and to put up food for all of those concerned in your life, and to be sovereign — utterly sovereign — to save your clothing and to put it up, and to work towards a point that regardless of what would happen with the world you could continue to sustain yourself. Now that is not a new teaching. That happened many years ago in your time. But it is still important because the times that I spoke about are already here and are unfolding."
— Ramtha
September 1993
(Excerpt from: Taking the Journey Inward, September 16, 1993. Copyright © 1993 JZ Knight)
For information on preparedness and to learn the tools we need to see us through the days that are already here, please contact Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, P.O. Box 1210, Yelm, WA 98597, or call 1.800.347.0439, 1.360.458.5201, or visit us online at www.ramtha.com for a list of workshops and events near your location. Become a Remarkable Life!℠
Copyright © 2007 JZ Knight. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of JZ Knight and JZK, Inc.
Is a 'Sixth' Extinction Looming?
By Ed Stoddard, Reuters
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — Seemingly oblivious to the large group of crocodiles resting on a nearby sandbank, four rare black storks sun themselves in South Africa's Kruger National Park.
But the real danger to these elusive birds, which resemble colorful sentinels with their striking red beaks and legs set against glossy black feathers, is not the razor-sharp teeth of the crocodiles who lie just a few yards away.
It is the teeth of chainsaws thousands of miles to the north, where old growth forests — habitat vital to the bird's survival — are being mowed down.
The black stork is one of many species which scientists fear could follow the dinosaurs down the road to extinction because of human activities such as logging, farming and building dams.
Many credible scientists fear that the sixth mass extinction in the planet's long history is unfolding — a doomsday scenario dismissed as alarmist by some.
A recent U.N. report, prepared ahead of a summit next month in Johannesburg on the environment and poverty, warned that 12 percent, or 1,183 bird species, and 1,130, or nearly a quarter of all mammal species, are regarded as globally threatened.
A Sixth Extinction
Mass extinctions have occurred five times in the four billion year history of life.
They are loosely defined as moments in geological history when half or more of all marine species — which today are preserved in fossils — die off in a short period of time. (Terrestrial life is also not believed to fare well during these periods).
According to one book on the subject, "The Sixth Extinction," by Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, the grim reaper first visited Earth on this vast scale 450 million years ago.
The second mass extinction took place 100 million years later, giving rise to coal forests. In the Triassic period 250 and 200 million years ago, two mass extinctions snuffed out countless species.
Then, 65 million years ago, scientists believe the dinosaurs were killed off when a giant meteorite collided with Earth.
Scientists say the sixth extinction will have been brought about entirely by people.
"In the next 50 to 100 years there is a good possibility that there could be a mass extinction of species which is human-induced," said Dr. Susan Lieberman, director of the Species Program for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
"We are heading for a crisis. And we have to act now if we are going to avert this," she told Reuters.
Leakey and Lewin estimate that perhaps 50 percent of all species will become extinct in the next 100 years. Others take a more measured view but agree that a crisis is looming.
Bjorn Lomborg argues in his controversial recent book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," that we could lose about 0.7 percent of the planet's species over the next five decades — an estimate far below many but one which he says is "not trivial."
Most scientists concede that the number of recorded extinctions to date is far less than the "so many lost each day" estimates cited in the more alarmist literature.
The Committee on Recently Extinct Organisms says at least 70 species of fish, birds and mammals have disappeared since 1970.
The WWF says 81 freshwater species of fish are recorded to have become extinct in the last 100 years. The majority, 50, were endemic to Africa's Lake Victoria and vanished because of the introduction there of the voracious Nile perch.
Biologists say that countless species which have never been discovered — notably in tropical rain forests and marine ecosystems — have probably become extinct already.
Black Storks and Wild Dogs
The black stork and wild dog, two species in Kruger which nobody disputes are endangered, sum up the threats to many.
The black stork's global population is about 7,000 to 9,500 nesting pairs, according to Latvian ornithologist Maris Strazds.
The biggest population, about 4,500 to 6,000, is found in Europe, mostly in Poland, Belarus and Latvia.
Unlike their more gregarious and numerous cousin the white stork, which often nests on farmhouses in Eastern Europe, the shy and reclusive black stork prefers to decamp far from the madding crowd in the quiet of old growth forests which are being targeted for exploitation.
"Latvian black storks nest in pine trees which are on average around 200 years old. And trees of that age are very much in the sights of loggers," said Strazds, whose name is Latvian for thrush.
Strazds said laws mandate a 50 acres logging ban around their nests, but land owners often simply cut their trees down and plead ignorance to the presence of the birds.
"The Latvian black stork population is bound to fall to some 500 pairs (from about 900 pairs) because of logging...but if we do not observe nest protection rules, it could fall rapidly to 20-odd pairs in two decades or so," he said.
Habitat destruction by people is probably the primary cause of species decline.
The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that forests, which cover around a third of the world's land surface, have diminished by 2.4 percent since 1990.
The biggest losses have been in Africa, where 130 million acres or 0.7 percent of its forest cover has vanished in the past decade. Luckily for Kruger's black storks, their home habitat is at least protected.
Another Kruger resident, the wild dog, highlights the age-old persecution of predators by farmers.
Also known as the "painted wolf" because of the splashes of vivid color across its coat, the wild dog is the second rarest carnivore in Africa after the Ethiopian wolf.
A highly social animal that hunts in packs, its numbers have been reduced to an estimated 5,000 — mostly in parts of southern Africa and Tanzania — mainly because of shooting and poisoning by farmers worried about their livestock.
But even in a conservation stronghold such as Kruger, its numbers are dwindling.
"The number of wild dogs here is down to under 200 now from over 400 a few years ago, and we really don't know why," said Kruger zoologist Gus Mills.
This is a cause for concern because, given their reputation with farmers and their small numbers, it seems doubtful they could survive for long outside protected or very remote areas.
Other Threats
There are other threats to species besides habitat loss and persecution, including global warming and pollution.
Humanity's soaring population, especially in developing countries, is seen as putting added pressure on land and scarce resources, to the detriment of the other species we share the planet with.
The WWF's most recent Living Planet Index (LPI), based on population trends of hundreds of species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish, has fallen 37 percent over the past 30 years.
"...Current human consumptive pressure is unsustainable," it says.
Conservationists hope historians do not look back five decades from now and see it as a missed opportunity to avert what could be the greatest loss of life on the planet since the death of the dinosaurs. (Additional reporting by Martins Gravitis in Riga)
What Happened 12,000 Years Ago That Killed So Many Animals?
By Linda Moulton Howe
November 13, 2002 Seattle, Washington — Tonight at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology, scientists gathered to discuss what killed off so many large mammals of North and South America at the end of the last ice age about 12,000 years ago, the end of the Pleistocene. At least 35 genera of animals in North America alone were wiped out, including the huge saber-toothed cat, woolly rhinos, woolly mammoths, mastodons, giant skunks, giant rabbits, camels and horses. Using modern DNA analysis, bodies and bones found freeze-dried are being explored for signs of unusual disease. Did a deadly virus or bacteria infect and kill the animals? Or did a growing human population throughout the world exterminate species after species in its search for food and hides?
One anthropologist who does not think either disease or humans are responsible for the extinctions is Dr. Donald Grayson, Professor of Anthropology, University of Washington in Seattle. He thinks it was global climate change, specifically rapid warming, that caused some kind of wide scale trauma that certain animal and plant species could not survive. If global climate change, why did an animal like the woolly mammoth, that had lived for hundreds of thousands of years through previous climate changes, suddenly die out? Why did so many other smaller animals prevail? What exactly happened to end the ice age and begin the warming trend that has lasted for 12,000 years and is now accelerating under the influence of human civilization's greenhouse gas emissions? Just how vulnerable to extinction is earth life when this planet undergoes rapid climate change?
Interview:
Donald Grayson, Ph.D., Prof. of Anthropology, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, Washington: "If you look at the radiocarbon dates we have for the extinctions, we can show that only about 15 of 35 extinct species even survived after 12,000 years ago. The rest were completely gone before the 12,000 year mark.
Also, if you look at the radiocarbon record for extinctions in Europe, it turns out that different animals became extinct towards the end of the ice age at different times and in different places. It could well be exactly the same thing was happening in North America. In other words, not all these extinctions happened all at once. If that's the case, then the kinds of explanations that we need to look at are going to be quite different. In fact, one of the amazing things about this big debate over the extinctions is that people have chosen their explanations based on the assumption that there was a major wave of extinctions at 11,000. But that wave, while it may have occurred, has never definitively been demonstrated to actually have existed.
Is there anything in the physical evidence, whether it's in permafrost or ice in which these animals have been found preserved, that would give insight about what might have happened if there was some sudden event that caused the devastation of several species?
Donald Grayson: There are 3 major causes that are being debated for these extinctions in North America and some of these causes are also looked at in Old World Europe as well:
- climate change;
- advent of human hunters in North America around 11,500 years ago, argued by David Meltzer, Southern Methodist University;
- spread of a virulent disease. That last one is a relatively new hypothesis proposed by Roth MacPhee, American Museum of Natural History.
The well-preserved remains of now-extinct mammals that are now available can be used to test probably any of these hypotheses.
If disease of some unusual nature is not found, then could climate volatility have caused the destruction of so many animals? And if so, could it happen now when we are challenged by global warming and its future consequences?
Donald Grayson: You bet. If you look around the landscape today and see populations of animals going extinct, it is hard today to be able to specify exactly what aspects of change in their environment drove those extinctions. That means that if it was climate at the end of the Pleistocene that caused these extinctions, it can be very difficult to determine precisely what aspects of climate change it was. And we also know, and this has become very obvious in the last 15 to 20 years, that different animals respond to climate change in different ways. That means that if we are going to figure out what aspects of climate caused these extinctions, then we need to look at the animals one at a time.
For an example of wide variations in the time line of extinctions, there is a small rabbit from the southern parts of North America. Paul Martin, argues that the small rabbit was driven to death by human hunters around 11,000 years ago. But we can't even show that this animal survived the late glacial maximum 18,000 to 22,000 years ago! So, there are a lot of chronological mysteries here as well. I think it is a mistake to assume that everything did go extinct at around 11,000. But even if it did, 11,000 years ago was a time of major climate change. You see extinctions not only in North America, that people have been blamed for, but also in Europe where people have never been blamed for it.
A huge animal called the Irish Elk went extinct in Ireland at about the same time as the North American extinctions happened, even though in Ireland there were no people at all. So, whether there were people present or not as with the Irish Elk or whether people had been preying on an animal for tens of thousands of years like reindeer in southern France these extinctions occurred.
What you are implying is that something about 12,000 years ago did happen that affected the planet's Northern Hemisphere. Why do you think the climate's warming could have caused the disappearance of so many different species throughout North America?
Donald Grayson: I have no idea. There have been a number of arguments made and none seem to explain not only the extinctions in North America, but also the roughly contemporary extinctions in the Old World. And there were also extinctions in South America and Australia. The extinctions in Australia seemed to be 15,000 to 20,000 years earlier. Some are now arguing that the Australian extinctions may have occurred as early as 46,000 years ago.
So, there are mysteries all over the place! None of these things have been well explained.
Donald Grayson: There were 35 genera of animals that went extinct in North America, but there were also lots of things that survived as well. Reindeer survived. Musk ox survived. Elk survived. Bisons survived. Lots and lots of small animals survived. Only one kind of tree is known to have gone extinct. So, lots and lots of things survived. The extinction event, if we can call it an event, was selective in what it removed.
Why would so many large animals have been wiped out?
Donald Grayson: It's the large things that tend to be most prone to extinction just in general. There are lots of reasons for that. Large animals tend to reproduce more slowly, they have fewer offspring per given period of time. They make heavier demands on their environment than do small things. So, for instance, toward the end of the ice age in North America, there was a small animal called the Yellow Cheek Bull. The Yellow Cheek Bull today lives in the Arctic and sub-Arctic, way far north. During the ice age, it was found as far south as Tennessee. Towards the end of the Pleistocene, its southern populations disappeared. But it did just fine in terms of the longevity of the species itself. It is still very much around. That's the kind of pattern you expect to see in climate change. Large mammals reproduce slowly and because they make such heavy demands on their environment, they don't have the same ability to track and change with environmental change as the small mammals.
But the mystery is that there were a lot of species that went extinct in a small period of time and you and other scientists would like to understand what exactly happened that would cause catastrophic destruction?
Donald Grayson: You bet. We can show that 15 of these animals went extinct between 10 and 12 thousand years ago. That is a huge loss. So even if there were 15 losses in that period of time, we are talking about a major extinction event.
One thing worth remembering is that the cause of these extinctions has been a scientific issue since the early 1800s. That is, we are now entering the 3rd century of debate over the causes of these things. Darwin, in 1859, when he was talking about extinctions in general said what I think is still an appropriate thing to say. He said, 'There is no reason to be surprised that we can't explain extinctions of this sort because in fact we are hard put to explain extinctions any time, no matter when they appear." He pointed out the fact that during some periods of time, some animals appear to be more abundant and during some other periods of time, they tend to be less abundant. It is very difficult to look around the landscape today and understand why a particular animal has in recent times in front of our very eyes disappeared from the landscape.
It seems very relevant as we enter the 21st century.
Donald Grayson: No question.
There is now an accelerating extinction rate of species that some scientists say we haven't seen since 65 million years ago, the end of the dinosaurs. The extinctions are linked to global warming and loss of biodiversity as civilization spreads. So, to understand what might have happened at the end of the last ice age might give us some insight about where we could be headed in this warming century.
Donald Grayson: I agree entirely. And I'll come back to reindeer. When reindeer went extinct in France 11-12 thousand years ago, several things were happening. There was general atmospheric warming, so reindeer were living on a much warmer landscape and there was vegetation change. If you look at the far north today, one of the animals that is of great concern in the far north under conditions of global warming is in fact reindeer. And I think it is critically important for us to be able to understand what happened in the past, why reindeer went extinct in the deeper past so as to be better able to predict what might happen to them under conditions of global warming in the future.
Essentially with reindeer what happened is that their southern boundary moved northwards. So, while they are no longer found in France, they are found in Scandinavia and all across the far north. The question you can validly ask: if global warming proceeds far enough, and the southern boundary of the reindeer continues to move further north, how further north is it going to go? Is it going to go too far north for them to survive?
Which is the same issue with polar bears now as well.
Donald Grayson: You bet.
How close could we be to those kinds of extinctions now as earth warms so quickly?
Donald Grayson: Sure, how close we are, I don't think anybody knows. That we could be coming close is the reason for the tremendous concern over global warming among biologists who are interested in the welfare of the earth's biodiversity.
When does Homo sapiens become threatened in its own survival on a planet in which climate could change so rapidly?
Donald Grayson: I don't have an answer to that and I don't know anybody who does have an answer to that. But it's a good question. People are pretty plastic in their behavior and their adaptations. That doesn't mean we are necessarily in for a fun time, but no one has the answer to what is going to happen to us.
Do you see any specific connection between climate change and the ice age extinction of so many species?
Donald Grayson: Assuming that Ross MacPhee's disease argument is wrong, he may not be, but it's hard for me to see a disease vector causing extinction of so many large mammals at the same time and causing the re-arrangement of so many small mammals on the landscape that happened at the end of the Pleistocene in North America. Further, there is no reason to believe that people were the cause of these extinctions. Then we are only left with one possible explanation and that's climate change. The real challenge for the future is figuring out what aspects of climate change caused these extinctions. And to do that, I'm convinced we're going to have to analyze data one animal at a time."
© 2002 by Linda Moulton Howe, Reporter and Editor. All Rights Reserved. earthfiles.com
Two Scientists Have Detected A Large-Scale Redistribution Of Mass Within The Earth System, Beginning in 1998!
The Hutton Commentaries (THC) has been saying from the beginning that a shift in the poles of Earth's rotational axis can only be caused by a significant shift of mass somewhere within our planet. Now, two scientists studying data on Earth's gravity field have found evidence of just such a mass shift that began in 1998. This is the year in which Cayce readings 3976-15 and 378-16 said that a forty-year-long period, from 1958-1998, marking the beginning of predicted Earth changes would come to an end. Then, in 1998 and beyond there would be "the changes wrought in the upheavals and the shifting of the poles."
We present evidence here that the "upheavals" may have begun in the inner Earth between 1998 and 2002, where the liquid outer core meets the overlying plastic mantle. This is the core-mantle boundary, or CMB. Upheavals along the CMB may have been detected by means of precision satellite-ranging measurements conducted since 1979. Interpretations of the voluminous measurements between 1979 and 2002 have been published by two scientists, Christopher Cox and Benjamin Chao, in the August 2 issue of Science magazine (p. 832). Here follows their reasoning and their conclusions.
The Measurements
Earth's equatorial diameter is about 27 miles longer than its polar diameter. This slight pumpkin-like shape results from axial rotation and large-scale mantle convection. This so-called "dynamic oblateness" (symbol J2) can be measured by laser-ranging techniques to show increases or decreases over time. If J2 decreases over time, then scientists infer that mass must have been redistributed from equatorial regions to higher latitudes. (Relative to the size of the Earth, however, any such mass distribution is assumed to be quite small). If J2 increases over time, Earth's mass may be inferred to have moved from the polar regions toward the equator.
An explanation of the major aspects of the Cox and Chao results was published at the same time in Science, in the Perspectives section by A. Cazenave and R. Nerem (p. 783-784). They wrote:
"Changes in J2 were first measured 20 years ago by Yoder et al., who used satellite laser ranging to show that it was decreasing linearly. Several investigators later confirmed his observations. Changes in J2 with time have now been monitored for more than 25 years with satellite laser ranging. Cox and Chao show that, contrary to expectation, in recent years, J2 has started to increase.
"The earlier decreasing trend in J2 meant that Earth was becoming less oblate. This observation can be largely explained by postglacial rebound - the viscous relaxation of Earth's mantle that began when polar ice caps started to melt at the end of the last glaciation 18,000 years ago. Postglacial rebound still continues today. Seasonal oscillations of J2 have also been observed. They are caused by the redistribution of air mass in the atmosphere and of water mass among the atmosphere, oceans, and continental water reservoirs.
For most of the past two decades, J2 has been steadily decreasing. But in early 1998 it suddenly started to increase substantially, indicating a large-scale mass redistribution from high latitudes to the equatorial regions.
Possible Causes Of The Change
What caused this change? Cox and Chao considered several possibilities. Two potential candidates remained: large-scale movements in the oceans, and mass transport in Earth's fluid outer core.
Motions of the ocean that can affect J2 are difficult to analyze with present modeling precision. The strong El Nino event that occurred in late 1997 to early 1998, however, might have produced sufficient meridional mass transport of ocean waters to affect J2, although the authors seems skeptical. As for the role of Earth's outer core, Cox and Chao say:
"Judging from the large magnitude and relatively rapid evolution of the observed J2 changes, one possible cause could be net material flow driven by the geodynamo in the fluid outer core and along the core-mantle boundary. There is evidence of a substantial geomagnetic jerk in 1999. Such jerks have been associated with flow acceleration in the top of the core, in addition to long-term magnetic dipole changes. Could they be related? To date, no correlation has been demonstrated between the geomagnetic observations and the observed J2 . However, a review of geodynamo simulation results indicates that the core models can possibly explain J2 changes ....depending on the modeling assumptions."
Overlooked by Cox and Chao is the seminal work of Woods Hole geophysicist, Carl Bowen on the mass anomaly structure of the Earth. As presented in a review article, "Gravity of Inner-Earth Upheavals," Bowin has postulated that very large mass anomalies lie deep in the Earth, "explained, as a first approximation, by topography at the core-mantle boundary." Furthermore, relief at the CMB consists of masses that are perhaps 100 times greater in magnitude than those of Earth's principal surface features, like island arcs, mid-ocean ridges, and the Azores-high area. Thus, movements of these masses along the CMB can have a profound effect on Earth's spin-axis stability.
Is The Geodynamo Cause of The J2 Anomaly Related To Pole Shift, As Evidenced By Chandler's Wobble Between 1998 And 2000?
If the discovery of the J2 anomaly is to have any significance as a precursor of pole shift, its signal ought to show up in some component of the wobble of Earth's axis (Chandler's wobble). We looked for such evidence and here is what we found:
By examining the motion of the Chandler's wobble for the period between January 1996 and December 2000, it appears that during December 1998 the normal, relatively smooth motion of the wobble path is abruptly deflected; and it takes about 20 months to recover and resume its normal wobble path. By decomposing the circular motion of the pole into X and Y components the anomalous characteristics can be more easily seen.
Probing For Convergences Between Geophysical Events And Readings Predictions
Is it possible that there might be a true correlation between Earth's surface geological events, the Chandler wobble anomaly, mass movements at the CMB, the post-1998 "upheavals", torrid-area volcano eruptions, and the great mass transfer of 1998 - 2001 detected by Cox and Chao?
Edgar Cacye readings state that the record chambers containing the history of Atlantis would be opened only "when there was the returning of those into materiality, or to the Earth's experience, when the change was imminent in the Earth; which change, we see, begins in '58 and ends with the changes wrought in the upheavals and the shifting of the poles...." Consider, then, that these upheavals may have begun, in a modest way, in 1999.
During October 1998 — October 1999 Hutton noticed an extremely unusual cluster of 17 light earthquakes (M4.5-4.9) and 23 moderate quakes (M5.0-5.5) that occurred in the high Arctic, north of Severnaya Zemlya, centered approximately at 85.7N and 81.4E. This cluster has now been tied to submarine volcanism in the Arctic by German researchers. C. MŸller and W. Jokat (EOS, June 13, 2000, p. 265). They measured more than 200 earthquakes between January and August, 1999, that originated along the submerged Gakkel Ridge. They state that, "The detection of this earthquake swarm and the evidence for its volcanic origin is the first direct evidence of recent volcanic activity in the high Arctic," that is, of upheavals in a portion of the northern polar region close to the North Pole. This may coincide, whether by coincidence or not, with the Cox-and-Chao-identified movement of mass from the Earth's equatorial region toward the polar regions.
As for further possible 1999-2000 surface geophysical expressions of the mass shift detected in 1998-2001 consider this. Three significant earthquakes that seem to fit the "upheavals" mentioned in 378-16 occurred during the December 1998—July 2000 interval shown on Figure 2. Northwest Turkey was shaken by an M7.4 earthquake on August 17, 1999. The magnitude of the tremor tied that of the 1912 Turkey temblor for the strongest quake of the last century in that country. Horizontal offsets along various segments of the North Anatolian Fault approached 16 feet and vertical upthrusts of up to seven feet were noted. Perhaps 20,000 people were killed and considerable earthquake damage occurred in Istanbul. Then, on November 12, 1999, an M7.1 quake occurred 70 miles east of the August shock, on the same fault, producing additional vertical crustal changes.
Finally, on September 21, 1999, the largest earthquake of the last century in Taiwan struck near Chi-Chi. Extensive surface ruptures occurred along 53 miles of the Chelungpu fault. A maximum horizontal displacement of 32 feet was among the largest fault displacements ever measured in modern earthquakes. The Tachia River was cut by a 25-foot vertical upheaval that created a new waterfall.
Cayce reading 3976-15 states that "there will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the torrid areas, and there will be a shifting then of the poles."
Also beginning in 1999, there seems to have been a significant increase in the eruption of torrid-zone volcanoes, such as Galeras (3/99), Poas (late '99), Arenal (10/99), Mt. Cameroon (6/99), Taal (9/30/99), Telica (8/11/99).
In 2000, many more erupted: Rabaul (early 2000), Fuego (7/26/00), Pacaya (3/2/00), Colima (11/4/00), San Cristobal (2/28/00), Popocatepetl (4/18/00), Mayon (2/28/00), Soufriere Hills, Montserrat (3/20/00), Nyamuragira, (1/31/00), and Guagua Pichincha and Tungrahua (both 4/18/00).
Lastly, note that the broader interval of mass motion identified by Cox and Chao (early 1998 through 2001) begins with the great antarctic Balleny Sea earthquake (M 8.2). The interval also encompasses the intense series of strong, major (M7.2 and M7.8) and great (M8.0 and M8.1) quakes in the New Britain, New Ireland, and eastern Papua New Guinea region of November 16 and 17, 2000. And finally, we must note two other prodigious quakes: 1) the January 26, 2001, M7.7 reverse-fault upheaval in the Kachchh region of India (felt over an area more than 16 times that of the M7.8 1906 San Francisco earthquake), and 2) the great (M8.1) earthquake in southern Peru on June 23, 2001.
Conclusion
Predictions of post-1998 upheavals and torrid-area volcanic eruptions in two readings seem to be occurring in a modest way. If more significant upheavals commence we may expect shortly thereafter the shifting of the poles. Pole shift will lead to significant Earth changes worldwide, many of which are described in various Cayce readings.
Whether or not these recent geophysical activities correlate with the large scale reorganization of Earth's mass field noted by Cox and Chao, or with Chandler's wobble anomalies related to mass movements at the core-mantle boundary, requires further evidence to prove.
What is tantalizingly clear, however, is that measurable changes in Earth's mass distribution — that may be precursors of larger motions leading directly to pole shift — did in fact begin to occur almost exactly as predicted, around 1998.
Alternative Electricity for your Remote Home
If you are a soverign entity, utility lines are probably not available at your remote home-site. You are a candidate for natural electricity sources. Safe and free energy already on your site, from sunlight, wind, or falling water, can produce home electricity for most electrical needs, without the cost of extending power lines, and with no monthly power bill.
SOLAR ELECTRIC MODULES convert sunlight directly into electricity with no moving parts, no maintenance, no fuel, and no pollution. This is the most environmentally friendly way to produce power. Solar electric modules last decades, and offer a 20 to 25-year warranty on power. Best of all, you will help show the world a better way.
SMALL HYDRO POWER brings water downhill in a 2" to 4" plastic pipe, to jet through a nozzle and spin an alternator 24 hours a day. You get more power for less cost than from any other source. You need a stream flowing over 10 gallons per minute, and elevation drop of 20 to 100 feet.
WIND POWER can be effective, but only on a site with average wind speed over 10 mph. Wind can work along with solar generation to provide more uniform power input.
Having an ENGINE GENERATOR as backup provides total security for extended bad weather.
An Independent natural power system typically produces just 10% to 25% of the electricity consumed by a utility powered American home. That is about 1 to 5 or at most 10 kilowatt hours of electricity on a sunny day.
Rather than major life-style changes, we learn to consume a small percentage of the power others use. Here is how:
The amount of power a solar electric system collects depends on the natural energy resources at your location and on how much equipment you install to gather that energy. How much benefit you receive from that energy depends on careful selection of lights and appliances that use about 1/4 as much power, for radical energy efficiency, and on your conservation habits. This means using special lights, refrigerators, and freezers that use about 1/4 as much power as typical models do. It means using natural gas or propane for major heat production in cooking, water heating, clothes drier, and home heating. (It's best to include passive solar home design and wood heat where possible).
What You Can Do
Most household appliances and lights use only a little electricity, easily supplied by the sun, wind and, micro-hydro. Solar electric homes convert most of their power to 120 volt AC to use as needed for household appliances and lights. Most common are lights, water pump, TV-VCR-Satellite, computer, stereo, vacuum cleaner, kitchen appliances sewing machine, power tools and office equipment. Even high wattage appliances like microwave oven, hair drier, toaster and clothes washer consume little power because their actual running time is short. Various water pumps, including deep well pumps up to 1/2 horsepower, are used. Special design electric refrigerators and freezers save energy in a solar home; gas and small DC powered refrigerators are also used.
At one time just five kilowatt hours per day ran our business, shop, and home. The business used three or four computers all day, lights for 5 workers, photocopy machine, postage machine, phone, fax, and paging system, business communication radio, electrical workbench, one room evaporative cooler, a small window air conditioner, and central vacuum system. The home included lights, microwave oven, range hood, juicer, refrigerators, freezer, TV, satellite, VCR, 2 stereos, clothes washer, deep well pump, compost toilet fan, vacuum cleaner, fans, electric lawn mower, electric roto-tiller & electric weed eater, plus a mechanical shop building full of power tools.
What You Can Not Do
No Major Electric Heat Producing Appliances: Electric heat, electric hot water, electric cook stove, electric heated clothes drier, and air conditioner account for 80 percent of typical monthly electric bills. It is absolutely not practical to operate major heating appliances with electricity. These use from twenty to one hundred times the power your TV uses. Other fuels produce heat at a much lower cost. Use wood or propane fueled furnaces; propane cook stoves and water heaters; use gas fired clothes dryers (or just a rope in the sun). Building homes with passive solar heat design saves heating fuel for the rest of our life. Read our energy efficient appliance section for more information on ways to use less power.
Avoid Most Large Refrigerators and Freezers: Standard, non-Energy Star rated refrigerators have poor insulation and run long hours every day. Most still use well over 1.5 kilowatt hours per day, over 450 kilowatt hours per year. Careful shopping can turn up a few models using less power. Special electric refrigerators and freezers designed for solar powered homes use much less power, and are shown in our Refrigeration section. These highly insulated units can save 50% of the energy consumed by most ordinary refrigerators. Your savings in total cost of your power generating equipment are greater than the added cost of efficient appliances. Propane refrigerators are another good option.
Air Conditioning: is too energy intensive to be practical, other than a window unit in a very large solar power system. Evaporative cooling- swamp coolers work well in non-humid areas.
Design For Low Energy Needs
Lights and appliances are carefully selected for lowest power consumption, so you can get the most benefits from the fixed amount of power available. When visiting a well designed solar electric home, you might not even notice the difference until someone tells you.
Install extra wall switches to cut off power from phantom electric loads, that is, things like stereo, TV, garage door openers, and office equipment which consume power full time, even when not used. Wire doorbells, wireless phones, and motion sensor lights to low voltage DC electricity from the battery, so they use little or no power when idling. Use motion sensor and timer switches for outdoor lights. Use heating systems that distribute heat without needing pumps or blowers. Cooling is evaporative instead of air conditioning. Learn how to operate your home to get the most benefit from the fewest kilowatt-hours.
1. Design the whole house (water, heat, power) for low energy use. Use propane or other fuels, never electricity, for all major heating appliances. This means the furnace and room heaters, kitchen range or stove, water heater, and clothes dryer should use propane, oil, natural gas, wood, thermal solar, whatever; but NOT electricity. Also choose convection furnaces or vented heaters that require no electricity to operate or distribute their heat. Use evaporative coolers instead of air conditioning.
2. Carefully select very special low energy lights and appliances. Solar electric homes use special electric refrigerators and freezers that do the job using only 1/4 as much power. (Some use gas refrigerators). Prices are more than conventional appliances, but savings in the cost of the energy system are greater than the appliance cost because fewer solar modules and batteries are required. Many of these special appliances and lights are available from the BackwoodsSolar.com catalog.
3. Eliminate waste of energy due to appliances, and to human carelessness. Use timer switches for outdoor lights and maybe in children's rooms, and shut off lights when they are not directly being used. Learn where your energy is going and see if each load is necessary. For example, even when switched off, some appliances draw power all the time, (Stereo, TV, VCR, some office equipment, garage door openers etc). These particular items, called phantom loads, should be disconnected completely by a wall switch or switched outlet strip, when not in use. Backwoods' wiring planning page has more tips on setting up the house to need less energy.
After meeting those three measures, a practical and affordable solar electric system (or wind, or micro-hydro or a combination) can provide electricity for your home.
www.backwoodssolar.com
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