Haiku

You must have heard about the haikus of the Zen masters of Japan. They are examples of objective art. One of the famous haikus of Basho...and Basho is a genius, but he is not writing through the mind. Whatever he is writing is growing within him in his silence like a flower, and he gives it as a gift to the world.

Listen deeply to this haiku. You have to visualize it; then only will you be able to feel its freshness, its beauty, and its penetration into your own being. Just visualize:

An ancient pond.

A frog jumps in.

This sound.

Just these three lines...not even lines.

If you visualize it, you will find yourself sitting by the side of an ancient pond...a frog jumps in. You will hear the sound of the frog jumping in, and after the sound, an immense silence. That silence is the message. Basho is trying to give you the message which he has lived, felt, and he feels a responsibility that it should reach to anybody who is in search of it.

Osho: The Razor's Edge, Chapter 22

that feeling of falling apart

"I didn't even know what reality was... then these lines came into my head and something said don't stop writing. I started to write my lines, they're called poems but in reality they are lines for me to hold onto, my hanging-on lines, it was real to me, it was a parting gift from Tina. Whatever happens just follow the writing and I might be able to find some kind of center. Whatever my future is... to see how long I get to participate... she gave me the lines to follow... so I won't fall completely... that feeling of falling apart, it doesn't go away."

- John Trudell, from the 2005 Heather Rae documentary, "Trudell."

The Atlantian Cataclysm - Catastrophic floods are a part of the Armageddon software

Limitless energy access was common knowledge in the advanced culture of the human race which ended during the Atlantian Cataclysm, and slowly digressed with every 2,160-year cycle thereafter. This periodic digression of surface floods and weather cataclysms are connected to the bringing in of the Moon during the Atlantian Cataclysm, an artificial satellite used to run artificial magnetism and as an operating control base for the invaders.

Catastrophic flooding, earthquakes and volcanic activity have been a major tool of the NAA to bury, hide and destroy ancient artifacts, structures and buildings that reflect an established human culture, as well as the remaining evidence of advanced technologies of human civilization. Curiously while writing this NASA has set out several propaganda news pieces on the history of moon wobbles and catastrophic flooding destroying the Earth surface, suggesting we brace for impact.

It may be noted that in the NAA violent religion propaganda, they are especially fond of pushing narratives around catastrophic floods said to be the result of humans angering the Gods. Catastrophic floods are a part of the Armageddon software the NAA like to use to trigger collective humanity’s previous traumas around flooding, as certainly every person on this planet has the horrible flood memory in their subconscious. As recent as the late 1800’s major global flooding occurred yet the historical evidence of this catastrophic event was totally erased from public knowledge, while the Controllers pushed for mass immigration into the United States. Millions of people that entered the United States at the turn of the century would not remember the previous culture or history, while newer buildings and cities were planned on top of the buried evidence of our past.

History is rewritten by the victors; the children are educated to believe the new falsified accounts of history. The same NAA playbook for engineering the Great Reset is happening right now; to intentionally displace populations for mass diaspora, destroying local culture, targeting children with false history and control ideology, introducing disease pandemics, engineer a false flag event or war, destroy and censor public records and public discourse, incite mass terrorism and confusion through media, invent classifications to anger and further divide the people, soft kill those that don’t comply, rinse and repeat.

-the-lost-knowledge-of-human-civilization

Tears of Humanity

Yaggi from Finland recently posted a piece of my writing on his web-log: Tears of Humanity. Read his post on 'The Middle Road' here.

I look forward to reading more of this blog.

Wild oregano oil and its many health benefits

Wild oregano oil and its many health benefits

It's very exciting to also know that oregano oil can treat a whole array of health problems that can often be very serious. In an article by Dr Josh Axe, he shared that there are over 800 (actually the number at the time of writing this article it is now well over 1000) pubmed studies showing the benefits of carvacrol (the healing part found in oregano oil), and 583 studies on oregano oil for things such as:

Bacterial infections
Fungal infections
Parasites
Viruses
Inflammation
Candida
Allergies
Tumors

The NF Empathy Shift

Why I (INFJ) sometimes feel so restless, why I sometimes feel like people are sucking me dry, clinging to me, hooked on to me and why sometimes people have such high expectations of me?
This piece of writing explains why!

Although NFs (intuitive feeling) especially the male NF, become restless if others (including mates, children, or parents) are dependant, NFs have in their own personalities characteristics that promote this dependancy. They pride themselves on being sensitive to others and caring about them. It is almost impossible for NFs to be unaware of others psychological needs. Yet the NF becomes restless when these ties begin to bind, as they do when the amount of emotional input becomes a psychological overload for the NF. At this point the NF can seem cruel, insisting unexpectedly that the other "stand on his own two feet." This shift in attitude is usually abrubt and the person who heretofore believed that he was very special in the eyes of the NF now finds himself apparently rejected. The NF does not mean to be unkind; he or she is simply disconnecting a relationship which can no longer be handled - in spite of the reality that the NF created this dependant relationship through expressions of empathy and unique understanding. Building empathic relationships is second nature to this temperament, a master of the art of intimacy. But as those around the NF want more and more attention, more and more expressions of this unusual appreciation, more and more signals of deep affection, the NF becomes restless and resentful of pressures to deliver what had seemed promised: the ideal love, the perfect friendship, complete understanding, and total acceptance.

The NF is vulnerable to this kind of misunderstanding because of his extraordinary capabilities to introject. He can take into himself the point of view, the emotions, and the psychological state of another so completely that the other feels totally recieved. The other person may not realize that the NF does this in most relationships, and may be hurt on discovering that he is not valued as uniquely as he first thought. When the NF leaves each person, the NF no longer resonates to that person but relates to the person now present.

The Apollonian (NF) Mate

Please Understand Me - Character and Temperament Types - David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates

(n)ever finished

a life that is more detached from the general hive vibe

while writing creatively i am always channeling to some degree

I am still rather at a loss as to what to make of this compulsive, destructive behaviour, i am also aware of experience being important and desire being rife with illusion.

I feel somewhat slutty and dirty now after some encounters.

I feel i am abusing my body, mind and sanctity by this behaviour. I am ashamed partially but also rather intrigued. Feel for drama.

I pray that my body can be clean of all of this lust-filled nature but experience teaches us that it is a nature; an energy. I pray to be more balanced and respectful,

I also am trying to not be judgmental, so i was horny, well it is quite an experience to have no boundaries for awhile.

Now no more obsessions or fixations, healing of abuse, shedding of darker matter and health, healthy body.

It's all a matter of perception and where to draw the line, well i know now and thanks for the pleasure!

Mostly it seems futile but feels right, saying a prayer, asking for guidance or trying to numb myself out, the tides coming in, gotta move aside for the water.

ha those years in amsterdam, bittersweet as always i believe

The Fading Family / Life, Death, and Changing Attitudes

Unlike traditional religious holidays, sacralized Earth Day festivities likely will not celebrate the family or human fecundity. Around the world, the ties between parents, children and extended family are clearly weakening and thus undermining the bonds that have held human society together from the earliest times.

Increasingly the very idea of family is under assault, particularly from universities and media that openly criticize monogamy and the nuclear family while extolling a wide array of alternatives including polyamory and some form of collectivized childrearing. Columnist David Brooks of the New York Times, who last week fretted that "human beings are soon going to be eclipsed" by AI, also argued in The Atlantic in 2020 that "the nuclear family was a mistake." Brooks, no woke zealot, oddly echoed the group Black Lives Matter, which made opposition to the nuclear family a part of its basic original platform, even though family breakdown has hurt African American boys most of all. One prominent feminist, Sophie Lewis, advocates "full surrogacy" as a replacement for the traditional family.

To be sure, many children are being brought up without two parents. The number of children living in single parent households has more than doubled in the last 50 years. In the United States, the rate of single parenthood has grown from 10% in 1960 to over 40% today.

Rather than a nation of families, the United States is becoming a collection of autonomous human beings and childless households. The impacts of a weaker family, as Brookings Institution scholar Richard Reeves and others have noted, are felt most among poorer people, and particularly their offspring. "This is probably the best documented fact in sociology in America that no one wants to admit," observed demographer Mary Eberstadt.

The links between family dysfunction and crime have been clear since at least the 1970s. This breakdown has worsened as city leaders in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, New York and other urban centers now accept homelessness, open drug markets, and petty crime. This can be viewed as another aspect of anti-humanism, rejecting the notion that people are capable of productive and fulfilling lives. Instead of seeing people as members of a community with obligations to one another, it reflects a kind of live-and-let-die individualism that leads to isolation, despair, and anger.

The Friendless American

Family decline reflects just one aspect of an increasingly dehumanized social order. The U.S. Census Bureau has found that 28% of American households had just one person in 2020. In 1940, this number was just 8%. In a recent survey conducted by Cigna, researchers found that almost 80% of adults from the ages of 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely. In 2018, even before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, one study showed that 54% of Americans felt like no one in their life knew them well. The "atomization" of America, first examined 20 years ago by Robert Putnam in books such as "Bowling Alone," has been simply "speeding out in the wrong direction," warns journalist Jennifer Senior.

As the pandemic wound down in the spring of 2022 and many were looking to resume their lives as normally as possible, a survey of American adults revealed that many people found it harder to form relationships now, and one-fourth of adults felt anxious about socializing. The biggest source of anxiety, shared by 29% of respondents, was "not knowing what to say or how to interact." As social commentator Arthur Brooks notes, "Many of us have simply forgotten how to be friends."

But it's young people who bear the brunt of the loneliness wave. Data from the American Enterprise Institute's Survey on Community and Society indicate that younger Americans are, in fact, considerably more lonely and isolated than older Americans. For instance, 44% of 18 to 29-year-olds report feeling completely alone at least sometimes, compared with just 19% of 60 to 70-year-olds. Perhaps most troubling, 22% of younger Americans stated that they "rarely" or "never" have someone they can turn to when in need. For older Americans, this number was just 5%.

So, what replaces human connections? The solution is increasingly expressed as self-love -- the notion that the individual, however flawed, needs to be celebrated above all other human connections. According to one recent survey, 44% of people believe self-love is an essential aspect of mental health. For some, like pop singer Lizzo, self-love means accepting even traits such as obesity, which are clear threats to basic health.

In this tech-dominant future, even the most pleasurable direct human contact is being supplanted by artificial stimulus. Many younger people are falling into what researchers have characterized as a "sex recession." There has been a significant rise in artificial sex and numerous reports have found that pornography consumption can negatively impact marital intimacy and reduce relationship satisfaction. Younger generations are having sex less often and experiencing far more relationship instability, leading to fewer marriages and more atomization. In Japan, the harbinger of modern Asian demographics, roughly a third of men enter their 30s as virgins and a quarter of men over 50 never marry. Nearly a third of Japanese in their 30s have never had sex.

Psychologist Maytal Eyal, writing in Time, quotes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggesting that that loving yourself is "the one foundation of everything." She also quotes Nicole LaPera, a clinical psychologist with 6.4 million followers, who claims "Self-love is our natural state," citing Miley Cyrus, whose recent hit "Flowers" proclaims, "I can love me better than you can."

Life, Death, and Changing Attitudes

As reflected in "self-love," anti-humanism rests on a beliefsystem that substitutes the sanctity of human life with a new ideology centered on the autonomous individual's wants and desires. This extends to changing views on the most basic events of human existence, birth and death.

Attitudes towards euthanasia are increasingly permissive and expansive. Today a majority of Americans (54%), according to Gallup, think that doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable. Ten states now provide euthanasia. Several others, including Massachusetts and Vermont, also want to expand the use of "end of life" procedures.

The United States is behind the curve on this issue. In Canada, euthanasia is being made available even to those not terminally ill. Some apply to be killed due to homelessness or depression; since the new euthanasia law went into effect in 2016, the numbers using it have grown ten-fold. Canadian medical professionals have been reported to urge terminally ill patients to end their lives earlier, in part to defray hospital expenses. There are even government plans to consider allowing assisted suicide for minors without parental consent.

These trends can be seen as well in some European nations, such as Switzerland, where people not terminally ill can orchestrate their own extermination. In Spain, one convicted murderer opted for suicide even before sentencing. Belgium allowed the assisted suicide of a 23-year-old woman with depression, something that has sparked considerable controversy. In Japan, it is widely discussed whether that rapidly aging population should institute euthanasia for the elderly, even those who are not sick or dying. Last year the country experienced twice as many deaths as births.

The shifts here and abroad reveal a diminishing value placed on human life. A Connecticut civil rights lawyer, a former strong supporter of liberalized euthanasia laws, reports how physicians advocated assisted suicide for patients with disabilities, even those able to live longer and thrive.

Similar attitudes toward life define the ever more contentious abortion debate. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, his platform was that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Today, the nation's most prominent abortion advocates - like their opposite number in the pro-life movement - leave no room for compromise. Pro-choice leaders often view abortion as an unchallengeable "human right." Just as the idea of limiting abortions for rape and incest, and placing very strict time limits, seems extreme to most Americans, the alternative view that has taken hold is that abortion idea is no longer something to be regretted, but celebrated. And this attitude has only intensified after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Full article: https://www.sott.net/article/482857-Woe-the-humanity-How-AI-fits-into-broadly-rising-anti-humanism

Self Healing

Human beings carry within themselves the seed of healing. Our choices affect us more than we realize, and it is because of this that we tend to place responsibility for our wellness in the hands of others. As beneficial as regular visits to a healer can be, we have the power to heal ourselves at will. When we dedicate a day to the pursuit of wellness, we can relax and renew ourselves in a nourishing and comfortable environment. A sincere desire to open ourselves to the highest realities of our physical and spiritual selves is the key to self-healing so that healing energy can flow into us unimpeded.

A self-healing day should address the vital needs of the self as a whole while directing healing energy where it is needed most. Solitude is an important part of the process as is the ability to take refuge in a space that is both beautiful and peaceful. Start your healing day by setting the intention that you are dedicating this time to healing yourself. Flowers, candlelight, incense, and music can guide our focus toward a more tranquil state. For a more intense session, try listening to music through headphones since tuning out can help you tune in. It is up to us to decide what we need to do to cultivate wellness in our lives. For some, it may be time spent in reflection. Others will turn to calming activities that help them remember their purpose, such as journal writing, being in nature, or studying. Our healing may even take a more direct form as we use color, sound, or crystals to balance and ground ourselves.

Ultimately, your wholesome intentions transform what might otherwise be a simple day of rest into a day of healing. Grant yourself permission to relax and savor the stillness. If you attune yourself to the calm around you, worldly distractions will be minimized and the unadulterated flow of your consciousness will reestablish itself in the forefront of your mind. The needs of the body, the heart, and the soul will then be revealed to you, empowering you to tap into the essential healing energy of the universe. The mechanism you use to channel this energy will be dependent on your shifting requirements, so each day of healing you enjoy will be unique. All will replenish you, however, allowing you to recreate yourself in a perfect image of health.

Source: DailyOM.com/readings

Suspense novelist Michael Prescott explores the non-fiction of life after death

Although Michael Prescott is best known as the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 22 suspense novels, he is also known for his blog dealing primarily with paranormal and life after death subjects. Over the past 20 years he has produced more than 1,600 blog posts with more than 50,000 comments by readers.

The end result is a departure from his fiction writing with his just-released The Far Horizon: Perspectives on Life Beyond Death, published by White Crow Books. He begins the book by examining some of the best evidence coming to us from psychical research and parapsychology over the past 138 years, since the organization of the Society for Psychical Research, then asking why, if it is so good, it is not more widely known and accepted. He offers four models of after-death consciousness, discussing each one in separate chapters. "In all four models, the space-time universe rendered by our subjective perception is the tip of the iceberg, with the other nine-tenths hidden from sight," Prescott explains. "Vast expanses of reality and vast realms of consciousness lie submerged beneath the surface, difficult for us to access. Difficult, but not impossible, as mystics, shamans, mediums, and psychics have attested throughout history."

As anyone who has thoroughly studied the evidence knows, much of it is vague, abstruse, convoluted, and often inconsistent with established religious dogma and doctrine, as well as with mainstream science. A very abstract picture of the afterlife emerges, one requiring much discernment. In effect, so much of it seems beyond human comprehension. Nevertheless, enough of it is discernible that the open-minded investigator can begin to see intelligence and clarity in the abstractness. Prescott (below) masterfully makes sense out of what seems like so much nonsense to many. As he states, it need not be "a baffling anomaly," but it can be seen as "a logical extension of our experience of reality here and now."

I recently put some questions to him by email.

I know you explain this in the book, but can you just briefly summarize how you became interested in the subject of life after death and what keeps you going on it?

The main thing was a kind of early midlife crisis in 1997 when I was 36 years old. Prior to that time, I'd been a complete skeptic with no interest in the paranormal or the afterlife. The only reading I'd done on the subject consisted of books by Martin Gardner and James Randi. I was also influenced by the skeptical opinions of Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, among others. I probably would've been a good candidate for membership in CSICOP, as it was then called, had I been more interested in the subject. But in '97 I began to question my entire worldview. This was, in part, because of an experience I had when trying to come up with the idea for a novel.

I'd hit a brick wall on the book, was very frustrated and depressed, and had pretty much given up, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I felt an intense urge to sit down at my computer and start typing. I proceeded to type out a ten-page synopsis of an entirely new story that was, in effect, being dictated to me. That synopsis turned into the novel Comes the Dark, the most esoteric and "literary" thing I've written.

This experience deeply intrigued me. It got me interested in the subconscious and the idea that the two hemispheres of the brain operate, to some extent, independently of each other. This, in turn, got me to look into the nature of consciousness, which led me in a somewhat spiritual direction. Probably as a result of this, I began to feel that my outlook on life was cramped and shallow - that I was missing the big picture.

And so I began to take the paranormal little more seriously. I proceeded gradually and cautiously, because at first I felt almost foolish reading about this stuff. I started with Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields, went on to evidence for ESP, and eventually crossed the Rubicon by looking seriously at life after death. That is something I never thought I would do.

On a percentage basis, with zero being total disbelief and 100 being absolute certainty with regard to consciousness surviving death, where would you put yourself 30 years ago and where are you now?

30 years ago it was zero. These days it's probably about 90%, or maybe 95% on some days.

What will it take to get you to 100%?

It will probably take actually dying! Or at least a near-death experience. There's only so far you can go by reading about a subject or talking with other people, or visiting mediums, or recording dreams, synchronicities, and premonitions, or meditating. I've done all those things, and they're certainly helpful, but they're not quite enough to get me to 100%.

If you had to pick three cases from the annals of psychical research, parapsychology, and consciousness studies, as most convincing, which ones would you choose?

I think the Bobbie Newlove case, involving the medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, is quite compelling. So is the R-101 case involving Eileen Garrett. A more recent case is the Jacqui Poole murder mystery. All three of these cases are covered in my book.

On a more general level, the cross correspondences provide very good evidence of mediumship that goes beyond so-called super-psi, but this is a whole series of cases, not just one. I don't talk about the cross correspondences in The Far Horizon, though, because the subject is too complicated to be quickly summarized.

Do you see a growing interest in this subject matter or has it pretty much flatlined, maybe even going in reverse?

My personal interest has somewhat flatlined, just because I've investigated it for so many years and it's no longer fresh to me. My book is kind of a summing-up. I wouldn't have written until I felt I'd gone pretty much as far as I could go.

For society, I think interest is increasing quite a lot. Unfortunately, there's not that much new research being done. As you know better than almost anyone, the heyday of research into the afterlife was the late 19th century and early 20th century, when there were some very prominent people involved, notably William James. I don't know of anyone today of similar prominence who is willing to stick up for this type of work.

Worse, there is very little funding. The quickest way to short-circuit your career in the sciences is to decide to study the paranormal, especially life after death. Very few people want to commit career suicide. I don't think this will change any time soon because the "scientific-government complex" is implacably hostile to such ideas. And most scientific funding, as well as publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals and tenure in academic institutions, is controlled by that complex. I'm talking about the US. Perhaps in other countries, there's more open-mindedness. I don't know.

Why so much resistance on a subject that seemingly should be welcomed by the masses?

I don't think the subject is resisted by the masses. When I bring up my interest in the paranormal and the afterlife with regular folks, I often find they've had experiences of their own that they want to share. But they keep these accounts to themselves unless they feel comfortable opening up.

The whole idea, however, is strongly resisted by the elites, who are thoroughly materialistic in their philosophy. Even very creative, intelligent people in the establishment - for instance, Elon Musk - seem boxed in by materialistic thinking. For instance, when Musk talks about the universe as a virtual-reality simulation, he appears to see it as being literally a program run on some extraterrestrial computer. That's a purely materialistic, and rather naïve, interpretation of an idea that can be interpreted in much more spiritual terms.

In my book, I go into the simulation hypothesis as one model of reality, but I make it clear that I'm not talking about a literal computer program. Instead, I'm speaking of an informational matrix that exists in a realm beyond the space-time universe we experience. It's essentially the same thing as Immanuel Kant's noumenal realm, as distinct from the phenomenal realm of direct experience. Or it could be compared to Plato's world of Forms, the true reality that we perceive only as shadows on a wall.

Unfortunately, materialistic tendencies intrude even into afterlife studies. We've seen attempts by people over the years to build a machine that can communicate with the dead. One such device, dubbed Spiricom, was the subject of John Fuller's book The Ghost of 29 Megacycles. While you never know what might work, I don't have a particularly high opinion of such efforts. For me, it's not about building a better mousetrap. We need to learn to adjust our consciousness, not improve our technology.

What is the key message of your book?

The key message is that life after death doesn't have to be compartmentalized in our thinking. We don't have to use one set of concepts or metaphors to understand the universe around us, and then come up with a whole new set of concepts and metaphors to make sense out of the afterlife. We can see both types of existence - our incarnational existence and our postmortem existence - as part of a continuum.

To do this requires grasping one essential fact, namely, that all experience is subjective. While I argue that there is an objective basis for our experience, this doesn't change the fact that experience itself is, by its nature, subjective. You can't have an experience without an object to apprehend and a subject who apprehends it, something to perceive and a mind that perceives. And as far as experience per se is concerned, perception is reality. It is impossible to detach one's perception of the event from the event itself, because the event exists, for us, only in our perception of it.

If we see reality in these terms, then postmortem reality simply involves a shift in focus — we redirect our attention from one level of experience to another. Or we alter our consciousness from one degree of perception to another. It amounts to the same thing.

We need to get away from the idea that, in dying, we are physically traveling to some other physical location that we call the afterlife. It is more like a change in perception - a broadening or widening of perception - which is why mind-expanding drugs can bring about experiences that have a lot in common with NDEs and OBEs.

In other words, it's all about consciousness, and if we see consciousness as existing along a spectrum of frequencies, then dying is no more than dialing up to a higher frequency. Which, of course, is another of the models I explore in The Far Horizon!

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. His forthcoming book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is released on January 26, 2021.The Far Horizon: Perspectives on Life Beyond Death by Michael Prescott is published by White Crow Books.

Poet Walt Whitman health tips unearthed

A trove of journalism by the great US poet Walt Whitman is being published online after lying in obscurity more than 150 years.

The 13-part series "Manly Health and Training" was written under a pseudonym for a New York newspaper in 1858.

It contains multitudes of tips on topics such as diet, sex, and hygiene.

The 47,000-word series, which survived only in a few libraries, was discovered in a digitalised newspaper database by a graduate student last year.

It is now being published by the online journal The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

US commentators point out that some of Whitman's health advice sounds surprisingly modern.

"Let the main part of the diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else," one entry reads - a exhortation that both The New York Times and Time Magazine say would be endorsed by today's paleo-diet advocates.

Whitman also recommended the general use of the comfortable shoes "now specially worn by base-ball players" - trainers, as we would call them today.

He also warned against the ravages of desk jobs. "To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler, the same advice. Up!"

Whitman is regarded as one of America's literary giants, but for many years he scraped a living as a journalist, and achieved success as a poet late in life.

He began writing "Manly Health and Training" for The Atlas, a small New York newspaper, after the flop of Leaves of Grass - a collection now recognised as his masterpiece.

Ed Folsom, editor of The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, told the New York Times that some of the journalism echoes the themes of self-improvement and homo-erotic love that are central to the poet's work.

BBC

from the archives

at the core 
there is no right or wrong 
only silence
no words, no violence, 
no reason for writing or fighting

Supermodel Doutzen Kroes voiced her anti-jab stance on Instagram: I will not be forced to take the shot. I will not be forced to prove my health to participate in society. I will not accept exclusion of people based on their medical status.

The past few months have been very peaceful without social media :)

A part of me wanted to escape into my family bubble and leave everything up to faith. That part of me believes in the power of consciousness, that whatever you give energy to will grow. So I tried to ignore the negative and focus on the positive. But at this point I can no longer turn a blind eye to the injustice that is happening right in front of us.

Other people have given me hope and strength with their courage to stand up for our rights. They touched my heart and inspired me to do the same. So although my hands are shaking while writing this, I feel it is time to choose courage over comfort and speak my truth:

I will not be forced to take the shot. I will not be forced to prove my health to participate in society. I will not accept exclusion of people based on their medical status.

Freedom of speech is a right worth fighting for but we can only solve this united in peace and love!

Pass on the torch of hope and love and speak your truth. ❤️

https://www.instagram.com/p/CT7uQ2CsgzS/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

10 simple ways to move into more freedom, peace, knowledge

As I was writing these 10 tips I remembered that I had done a post like this before and I looked it up and it just happens that I wrote that post on exactly this day in 2012!

So exactly 4 years ago I wrote a similar post to this (10 simple calming tips for the shift) ...made me quite happy and look how far we have all come...truly amazing!

Here are the new 10 tips in no particular order:

1) Stop watching television! Stop the programming and mind-control of the mainstream media and fake celebrity. Protect your mind from the garbage. Use youtube or streaming instead.

2) Eat organic food; is better for nature, environment, animals, your body and it tastes better too.

3) Get at least one houseplant; learn to take care of something that's alive. Plants naturally detox homes and living spaces, relax you and they communicate with you too. Tune into nature.

4) Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines and other print media; we have the internet now; stop the clutter and waste. These are all forms of programming and use up resources and money, do you even read them?

5) Use supplements like Spirulina and Turmeric to detox the body of heavy metals and other toxins, there are hundreds of healing plants, get knowledgable on the foods that heal.

6) Never go to McDonalds, Burger King or any of these fast food places again, extremely low vibrations and toxic to body, mind and soul.

7) Turn off the wifi before you go to sleep. Wifi interferes with dreams and restoration, holds u in a lower programmed state. Research this.

8) Buy some gold and silver and use cash, just as a way of not complying 100% with the system and as an investment.

9) Develop a spiritual practise; meditation, reiki, yoga, prayer or anything that helps you to connect to your higher self and the truth vibrations. The benefits are endless.

10) Donate energy, be of service to others; you could donate money or your time, giving = receiving, just try it, you will see.

Can you think of any good tips for the freedom timelines? Add them below in the comments...

Shamans: 'Astronauts of inner space'

Shamans: 'Astronauts of inner space' -- Science of the Spirit -- Sott.net:

The trances and healing powers of shamans are so widespread that they can be counted a human universal. Why did they evolve?

Shamanism is as varied as those who practice it. Its practitioners range from indigenous lineages who have passed down their craft over thousands of years to the modern 'plastic shamans', who represent no specific culture but have adapted shamanism to meet the demands of metropolitan markets. However, there is a common theme to shamanism wherever it is practised: the use of spiritual (or shamanic) trance to facilitate journeys to a non-ordinary reality. Here, in this non-ordinary reality, the shamans do their work. According to the historian of religion Mircea Eliade writing in 1951, shamanism is the 'technique of ecstasy', involving the purposeful invocation and use of dreams and visions to solve problems.

By this definition, shamanism is the landscape of the spirit-journey, populated by good and evil spirits and the souls of the deceased and yet-to-be-born. It is the place where mountains speak and Grandmother Skeleton points out which plants to eat when the dry season lasts too long. In this form, shamanism is everywhere in the old ways of humans. Every tribal culture - alive or dead - has some broker of spiritual capital. The Indonesian Mentawai have their sikerei. The Inuit have their angakok. The Columbian Desana have their paye. The Mongolian Buryat have their böö. The American Sioux have their heyoka.

The sheer magnitude of our shamanic ancestry means one of two things: either shamanism originated once prior to the human diaspora some 70,000 years ago and has been preserved since, or it has arisen independently countless times in premodern human cultures. If we consider that preagricultural human societies are each experiments in how to run a village, with each competing in the evolutionary market of survival and reproduction, then we must ask: what good is shamanism?

The answer is a lesson in both the psychology of problem solving and the construction of meaning. In order to get there, we first have to understand what the prominent explanations of shamanism are in contemporary anthropology. These explanations all rely upon a common set of psychological and evolutionary principles, and these principles in turn explain the adaptive value of shamanism.

Read more here.

the write riddle

I must write what I know, but I know not what to write. I don’t know what to make of this life.

One moment I feel joy to be part of this world and another moment I fall apart on the floor and I know tears. For many years I have known sorrow and war.

Is this what I know?

I must write what I feel, but I don’t feel right.

Sometimes I take delight in simple things but later on I‘m afraid about future states of mind that are unkind.

This must be what living is like for me. These are the eyes with which I see.

Are these my hands with which I write?

I must write what is real but what is there at the core?

There are stories about people, images of moments, emotions and more.

Who am I? What am I here for?

I am here to write about something real knowing then that I cannot write.

At the core there is no right or wrong only silence, no words, and no violence. No reason for writing or fighting.

Nothing exists at the core.

Does nothing real exist?

These last few days I have felt a deep sadness. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore.

Theories of consciousness and reincarnation

Theories of consciousness and reincarnation

Theories of consciousness range from the purely scientific - that personal consciousness, as we know it, is a mechanism of unique neural connections molded by genetics and experience - to the spiritual, which argue the existence of a non-corporeal component to life: the soul. Still other thinkers - like Roger Penrose - theorize that consciousness and human creativity may require a new science altogether; that, as Penrose and Hameroff (2014) put it, "consciousness results from discrete physical events; such events have always existed in the universe as non-cognitive, proto-conscious events, these acting as part of precise physical laws not yet fully understood."

For the layperson, however, theories raise more questions than they answer, offering little comfort in confronting the essential human questions of "what makes me me?" and, more poignantly, "what happens to to me when I die?" The latter question is arguably the real question of consciousness, as it comes as a result of recognizing the presence of one's own subjective cognition/individual consciousness and the realization that said consciousness erodes and eventually ceases with the end of physical life... or seems to. It's an existential black mirror; the dark side of Descartes' "I think, therefore I am." Without a cohesive understanding of or agreement on the mechanics and laws of consciousness, that question can't be answered. It cannot even be presumed to have an answer awaiting after death, for if death is the absolute negation of consciousness - if you cease to be when you cease to think - then there is no "finding out" after we die: there's just the vacuum of not-being, a state of statelessness.

In the midst of these theories, however, are those that believe in a kind of recycling of consciousness: that individual selves may be reincarnated in new bodies, sometimes retaining scraps of memory - and even physical features - from the lives they lived before. One of the most prominent proponents of that theory was Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychiatrist who worked for five decades at the University of Virginia's School of Medicine, where he founded the Division of Perceptual Studies, which studies "phenomena related to consciousness clearly functioning beyond the confines of the physical body, as well as phenomena that are directly suggestive of post-mortem survival of consciousness." Beginning in 1960, Stevenson traveled the world investigating thousands cases of reincarnation, documenting his findings and eventually writing several books on the subject, including his groundbreaking work Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation and the massive, two-volume Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. The book documents 200 different cases of children - often from very remote areas of the world - who had memories and birthmarks that corresponded with those of deceased people whose lives they claimed to have lived before. Some, who claimed to have died violently, had birthmarks or physical defects where the deceased had suffered a mortal injury, while others suffered from phobias relating to their past death.

https://www.sott.net/article/411642-Theories-of-consciousness-and-reincarnation

Celestial Speed-Up

Read this excellent article about the Mayan Calendar and the current and coming evolution: http://mayasoma.wordpress.com/2009/10/18/celestial-speed-up/

November 8,2009 begins the 6th night of the creation phase of the Galactic Era. All the prophets of the Mayan Calendar are predicting a global calamity of the old economic systems on Earth in this next Gregorian Calendar year 2010. But deep down, we knew this, didn’t we?

Do you think the banking industry, Wall Street or the real estate market are now playing ethically because of their little shake-up? Enormous bail outs, dow jones climbing up and up, unemployment decreasing?

Somewhere inside, our gut instincts must be alerting us to the lies of the media and the disastrous conclusions of 5000 years of unnatural living. I remember mentioning that each era had a few challenges and set-backs. One of ours will be an economic collapse demanding fair & fail proof restructuring, the writing is on the wall.

“This fall is the real beginning of the great changes on Earth" (Barbara Hand Clow).

Maya Soma

Ayahuasca — The Fashionable Path of Awakening?

“Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.” These words were spoken by Krishnamurti in 1929 as he dissolved the global spiritual organization that had formed in order to promote him as the new Messiah. As I witness the growing popularity ayahuasca, I hope we do not turn this medicine into a Messiah that has to come to save us. Although I see ayahuasca as a powerful tool of individual and planetary awakening, I am also seeing it evolve into a spiritually-sophisticated brand that we wear and glorify. As any trend becomes more popular, authentic original impulses are replaced by unconscious conformity: we follow trends as unquestioning groups, rather than as conscious free-willing individuals.

The New Yorker recently published an article on ayahuasca, calling it the “drug of choice for the age of kale”. The author narrated her only ayahuasca experience, in a Brooklyn yoga studio, next to a “thumping dance club”. The article makes no mention of the rich cultural diversity of ayahuasca traditions or the countless stories of ayahuasca-assisted personal transformation. However, I thought her association of ayahuasca with kale was spot-on. Ayahuasca may be answering the call for a global paradigm shift, yet it also fulfills an obsessive craving for wellness, detox, and healing. Plant medicines can be powerful catalysts for healing, when approached with individual and social self-awareness, and these two forms of awareness – of ourselves and of our society – are difficult to cultivate when we do what the cool kids are doing. What we can do is learn to discriminate between self-expression and imitation, and between the authentic desires of our hearts and the chatter of our minds. Are we acting from our core or simply being blown around by the cultural zeitgeist?
When to take ayahuasca?

These distinctions are absolutely necessary. Powerful tools can be misused and have damaging effects. My original inspiration for writing this article was a botched iboga ceremony that left me so traumatized that I was forced to accept that 1) there were some highly irresponsible and reckless shamans/healers out there and 2) there were highly irresponsible and reckless individuals like myself naively attending ceremonies without proper awareness. I’ll save the details for a future article, but I will share that I experienced an abyss so unbearably painful that my only wish was for it to end, without caring what came after this end. I understood the torment of suicide. These realms of consciousness are real. I share them here not out of masochism, but to emphasize the importance of preparation, discrimination, and intuition.

We can sharpen our skills by coming back to the basics: set and setting. Set – why am I here? And how do I really feel in my heart of hearts? Setting – do I feel safe? Do I trust this environment and the people around me? It is crucial to critically evaluate the shaman by their “fruits”: what type of life has this person created for themselves? How do they relate to their family and partner? How do they relate to their assistants and workers? Have the workers been there a long time? Are they happy to work there? These questions reveal a lot about what kind of person the shaman is, and therefore what kind of shaman they are.

We also need to de-romanticize our understanding of shamanic traditions. We crave for more natural, organic lives, for health, and for wisdom, so it is not a surprise that we fantasize about Amazonian tribes and their psychedelic brews. But our colorful projections have consequences and can reinforce racist, neocolonial dynamics. Not all medicines are appropriate at a given time or compatible with a given person. Indigenous peoples are born into tribes, whereas Westerners self-select into their tribes. Not all shamans heal; some throw curses; others do both. And I have yet to meet a shaman who calls themselves a shaman. Shaman is a word from Siberia popularized by Western anthropologists to categorize a wide variety of seemingly related spiritual practices.

Our interaction with indigenous medicines is not a one way street – with us simply “gaining wisdom” from them. As any quantum physicist or modern anthropologist will tell you, observation entails participation. It’s a two way street: the massive influx of ayahuasca tourists to the Amazon impacts local economies, culture, and healing traditions. In addition to our own healing, we need to remember that indigenous communities have their own healing to do. Are we operating as co-creators or are we imposing ourselves on them? Am I giving as much as I am taking? And where is all this ayahuasca coming from? This is not a question of shame, but of awareness.

The reality of indigenous peoples is not a Jungle Book fairy tale. Their cultures are steadily declining in the face of consumerism, missionary activity, and the rape of nature by oil pipelines and industrial super-farms. Ayahuasca tourism is a booming industry in much of the northwest Amazon and its reality is more nuanced than we like to think. Explore the backstreets of Iquitos, Peru and see for yourself the shadow side of the Western appetite for healing.

Please don’t mistake my words for pessimism. The intention that infuse these words is for renewed awareness and courage. Charles Eisenstein writes that “no optimism can be authentic that has not visited the depths of despair…no despair is authentic that has not fully let in the joy.” The world is not ending. It is only changing, as all things change. Stop, breathe, be gentle. May all beings be happy and peaceful.

by Félix de Rosen

Félix de Rosen is a free spirit who aims to catalyze conscious planetary evolution. His long-term vision is to organize sacred arts festivals and create spaces of trust, spontaneity, and transparency. He was born in France, grew up in the US, and is learning how to let go and relax. He is currently based in California.