10 PAINFULLY OBVIOUS TRUTHS EVERYONE FORGETS TOO SOON

Lara Starr | June 13, 2014

Photo Source: LiveLearnEvolve By: Marc and Angel

 

You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred different ways before it finally gets through to you?  The ten truths listed below fall firmly into that category – life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever reason, haven’t fully grasped.

This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

1.  The average human life is relatively short.

We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know.  It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step.  You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY!  Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of it either.  Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take action.  Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive.  Be bold.  Be courageous.  Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway.

2.  You will only ever live the life you create for yourself.

 

Your life is yours alone.  Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you.  They can walk with you, but not in your shoes.  So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense.

Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t.  Be productive and patient.  And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in.  This is your life, and it is made up entirely of your choices.  May your actions speak louder than your words.  May your life preach louder than your lips.  May your success be your noise in the end.

And if life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it.  Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown, and listen to your heart.  (Angel and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.)

3.  Being busy does NOT mean being productive.

Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect.  Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time.  We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should.

Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days.  Just take a quick look around.  Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin.  Busy people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time.  They’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc.  They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep.

  

Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations.  Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance.  But it’s all an illusion.  They’re like hamsters running on a wheel.

Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term.  We will inevitably, whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.

4.  Some kind of failure always occurs before success.

Most mistakes are unavoidable.  Learn to forgive yourself.  It’s not a problem to make them.  It’s only a problem if you never learn from them.

If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful.  The solution to this problem is making friends with failure.  You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner?  The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.  Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.

Bottom line:  Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will.  Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.  (Read The Success Principles.)

5.  Thinking and doing are two very different things.

Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.  Knowledge is basically useless without action.  Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals.  Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.

And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.

6.  You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive.

Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got.  The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative.  It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.”  It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your head.

Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep.  When you forgive someone you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self.  It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime, and everything to do with freeing yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim.

7.  Some people are simply the wrong match for you.

You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down.  You shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than amazing.

If someone makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure every time you’re with them, for whatever reason, they’re probably not close friend material.  If they make you feel like you can’t be yourself, or if they make you “less than” in any way, don’t pursue a connection with them.  If you feel emotionally drained after hanging out with them or get a small hit of anxiety when you are reminded of them, listen to your intuition.  There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self.  It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.

8.  It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours.

It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself.  You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.  So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you.  Know your worth, even if they don’t.

Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are.  Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU.  (Read Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It.)

9.  What you own is not who YOU are.

Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on who you are as a person.  Most of us can make do with much less than we think we need.  That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences.

You have to create your own culture.  Don’t watch TV, don’t read every fashion magazine, and don’t consume too much of the evening news.  Find the strength to fill your time with meaningful experiences.  The space and time you are occupying at this very moment is LIFE, and if you’re worrying about Kim Kardashian or Lebron James or some other famous face, then you are disempowered.  You’re giving your life away to marketing and media trickery, which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate you to want to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way.  This is tragic, this kind of thinking.  It’s all just Hollywood brainwashing.  What is real is YOU and your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears, etc.

Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just peripheral to what is.  “Get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, and keep on getting.”  And it’s sad, because someday you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been tricked.  And all you’ll want then is to reclaim your mind by getting it out of the hands of the brainwashers who want to turn you into a drone that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn’t important.

10.  Everything changes, every second.

Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason.  It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow.  You never know.  Things change, often spontaneously.  People and circumstances come and go.  Life doesn’t stop for anybody.  It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day.  It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives.  A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth.  Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event.  And these events are always happening.

However good or bad a situation is now, it will change.  That’s the one thing you can count on.  So when life is good, enjoy it.  Don’t go looking for something better every second.  Happiness never comes to those who don’t appreciate what they have while they have it.

Your turn…

What else would you add to this list?  What important life lessons do you often forget?  Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

 

http://www.the-open-mind.com/10-painfully-obvious-truths-everyone-forgets-too-soon/#eYmjMr8iarKldYk9.99

 

 

WHAT A SHAMAN SEE’S IN A MENTAL HOSPITAL

June 16, 2014 

The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé.  Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.
What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.”  The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm.  “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé.  These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness.  When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.

“I was so shocked.  That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village.”  What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop.  This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation.  As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture.  What a loss!  What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”

Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world.  In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated.  When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening.  The result can be terrifying.  Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane.  Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see.  “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says.  It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process.  “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people.  They were really fierce about that.  The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said.  He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.”  That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need.  Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer.  “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains.  “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”

The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world.  The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings’ attempts to merge were thwarted.  The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.

“The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer,” states Dr. Somé.

“Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody’s attention.  They have to try harder.”  The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized.  “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in,” he notes.

Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity.  Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive.  In the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them,” observes Dr. Somé.  The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.


Schizophrenia and Foreign Energy
 
With schizophrenia, there is a special “receptivity to a flow of images and information, which cannot be controlled,” stated Dr. Somé.  “When this kind of rush occurs at a time that is not personally chosen, and particularly when it comes with images that are scary and contradictory, the person goes into a frenzy.”

What is required in this situation is first to separate the person’s energy from the extraneous foreign energies, by using shamanic practice (what is known as a “sweep”) to clear the latter out of the individual’s aura.  With the clearing of their energy field, the person no longer picks up a flood of information and so no longer has a reason to be scared and disturbed, explains Dr. Somé.

Then it is possible to help the person align with the energy of the spirit being attempting to come through from the other world and give birth to the healer.  The blockage of that emergence is what creates problems.  “The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy,” he observes.  “When it is blocked, it just burns up the person.  It’s like a short-circuit.  Fuses are blowing.  This is why it can be really scary, and I understand why this culture prefers to confine these people.  Here they are yelling and screaming, and they’re put into a straitjacket.  That’s a sad image.”  Again, the shamanic approach is to work on aligning the energies so there is no blockage, “fuses” aren’t blowing, and the person can become the healer they are meant to be.

It needs to be noted at this point, however, that not all of the spirit beings that enter a person’s energetic field are there for the purposes of promoting healing.  There are negative energies as well, which are undesirable presences in the aura.  In those cases, the shamanic approach is to remove them from the aura, rather than work to align the discordant energies

Alex:  Crazy in the USA, Healer in Africa

To test his belief that the shamanic view of mental illness holds true in the Western world as well as in indigenous cultures, Dr. Somé took a mental patient back to Africa with him, to his village.  “I was prompted by my own curiosity to find out whether there’s truth in the universality that mental illness could be connected with an alignment with a being from another world,” says Dr. Somé.

Alex was an 18-year-old American who had suffered a psychotic break when he was 14.  He had hallucinations, was suicidal, and went through cycles of dangerously severe depression.  He was in a mental hospital and had been given a lot of drugs, but nothing was helping.  “The parents had done everything–unsuccessfully,” says Dr. Somé.  “They didn’t know what else to do.”

With their permission, Dr. Somé took their son to Africa.  “After eight months there, Alex had become quite normal, Dr. Somé reports.  He was even able to participate with healers in the business of healing; sitting with them all day long and helping them, assisting them in what they were doing with their clients . . . . He spent about four years in my village.”  Alex stayed by choice, not because he needed more healing.  He felt, “much safer in the village than in America.”

To bring his energy and that of the being from the spiritual realm into alignment, Alex went through a shamanic ritual designed for that purpose, although it was slightly different from the one used with the Dagara people.  “He wasn’t born in the village, so something else applied.  But the result was similar, even though the ritual was not literally the same,” explains Dr. Somé.  The fact that aligning the energy worked to heal Alex demonstrated to Dr. Somé that the connection between other beings and mental illness is indeed universal.

After the ritual, Alex began to share the messages that the spirit being had for this world. 

Unfortunately, the people he was talking to didn’t speak English (Dr. Somé was away at that point). 

The whole experience led, however, to Alex’s going to college to study psychology.  He returned to the United States after four years because “he discovered that all the things that he needed to do had been done, and he could then move on with his life.”

The last that Dr. Somé heard was that Alex was in graduate school in psychology at Harvard.  No one had thought he would ever be able to complete undergraduate studies, much less get an advanced degree.

Dr. Somé sums up what Alex’s mental illness was all about:  “He was reaching out.  It was an emergency call.  His job and his purpose was to be a healer.  He said no one was paying attention to that.”

After seeing how well the shamanic approach worked for Alex, Dr. Somé concluded that spirit beings are just as much an issue in the West as in his community in Africa.  “Yet the question still remains, the answer to this problem must be found here, instead of having to go all the way overseas to seek the answer.  There has to be a way in which a little bit of attention beyond the pathology of this whole experience leads to the possibility of coming up with the proper ritual to help people.

Longing for Spiritual Connection

A common thread that Dr. Somé has noticed in “mental” disorders in the West is “a very ancient ancestral energy that has been placed in stasis, that finally is coming out in the person.”  His job then is to trace it back, to go back in time to discover what that spirit is.  In most cases, the spirit is connected to nature, especially with mountains or big rivers, he says.

In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon, “it’s a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it.”  What is needed is a merger or alignment of the two energies, “so the person and the mountain spirit become one.”  Again, the shaman conducts a specific ritual to bring about this alignment.

Dr. Somé believes that he encounters this situation so often in the United States because “most of the fabric of this country is made up of the energy of the machine, and the result of that is the disconnection and the severing of the past.  You can run from the past, but you can’t hide from it.”  The ancestral spirit of the natural world comes visiting.  “It’s not so much what the spirit wants as it is what the person wants,” he says.  “The spirit sees in us a call for something grand, something that will make life meaningful, and so the spirit is responding to that.”
That call, which we don’t even know we are making, reflects “a strong longing for a profound connection, a connection that transcends materialism and possession of things and moves into a tangible cosmic dimension.  Most of this longing is unconscious, but for spirits, conscious or unconscious doesn’t make any difference.”  They respond to either.
As part of the ritual to merge the mountain and human energy, those who are receiving the “mountain energy” are sent to a mountain area of their choice, where they pick up a stone that calls to them.  They bring that stone back for the rest of the ritual and then keep it as a companion; some even carry it around with them.  “The presence of the stone does a lot in tuning the perceptive ability of the person,” notes Dr. Somé.  “They receive all kinds of information that they can make use of, so it’s like they get some tangible guidance from the other world as to how to live their life.”
When it is the “river energy,” those being called go to the river and, after speaking to the river spirit, find a water stone to bring back for the same kind of ritual as with the mountain spirit.

“People think something extraordinary must be done in an extraordinary situation like this,” he says.  That’s not usually the case.  Sometimes it is as simple as carrying a stone.

A Sacred Ritual Approach to Mental Illness

One of the gifts a shaman can bring to the Western world is to help people rediscover ritual, which is so sadly lacking.  “The abandonment of ritual can be devastating.  From the spiritual view, ritual is inevitable and necessary if one is to live,” Dr. Somé writes in Ritual:  Power, Healing, and Community. “To say that ritual is needed in the industrialized world is an understatement.  We have seen in my own people that it is probably impossible to live a sane life without it.”

Dr. Somé did not feel that the rituals from his traditional village could simply be transferred to the West, so over his years of shamanic work here, he has designed rituals that meet the very different needs of this culture.  Although the rituals change according to the individual or the group involved, he finds that there is a need for certain rituals in general.

One of these involves helping people discover that their distress is coming from the fact that they are “called by beings from the other world to cooperate with them in doing healing work.”  Ritual allows them to move out of the distress and accept that calling.

Another ritual need relates to initiation.  In indigenous cultures all over the world, young people are initiated into adulthood when they reach a certain age.  The lack of such initiation in the West is part of the crisis that people are in here, says Dr. Somé.  He urges communities to bring together “the creative juices of people who have had this kind of experience, in an attempt to come up with some kind of an alternative ritual that would at least begin to put a dent in this kind of crisis.”
Another ritual that repeatedly speaks to the needs of those coming to him for help entails making a bonfire, and then putting into the bonfire “items that are symbolic of issues carried inside the individuals . . . It might be the issues of anger and frustration against an ancestor who has left a legacy of murder and enslavement or anything, things that the descendant has to live with,” he explains.  “If these are approached as things that are blocking the human imagination, the person’s life purpose, and even the person’s view of life as something that can improve, then it makes sense to begin thinking in terms of how to turn that blockage into a roadway that can lead to something more creative and more fulfilling.”

The example of issues with an ancestors touches on rituals designed by Dr. Somé that address a serious dysfunction in Western society and in the process “trigger enlightenment” in participants.  These are ancestral rituals, and the dysfunction they are aimed at is the mass turning-of-the-back on ancestors.  Some of the spirits trying to come through, as described earlier, may be “ancestors who want to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren’t able to do while in their physical body.”

“Unless the relationship between the living and the dead is in balance, chaos ensues,” he says.  “The Dagara believe that, if such an imbalance exists, it is the duty of the living to heal their ancestors.  If these ancestors are not healed, their sick energy will haunt the souls and psyches of those who are responsible for helping them.”  The rituals focus on healing the relationship with our ancestors, both specific issues of an individual ancestor and the larger cultural issues contained in our past.  Dr. Somé has seen extraordinary healing occur at these rituals.

Taking a sacred ritual approach to mental illness rather than regarding the person as a pathological case gives the person affected–and indeed the community at large–the opportunity to begin looking at it from that vantage point too, which leads to “a whole plethora of opportunities and ritual initiative that can be very, very beneficial to everyone present,” states. Dr. Somé.

The Shamanic View of Mental Illness
by Stephanie Marohn (featuring Malidoma Patrice Somé)
(Excerpted from The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia,
pages 178-189, or The Natural Medicine Guide to Bi-polar Disorder)

http://thespiritscience.net/2014/06/16/what-a-shaman-sees-in-a-mental-hospital/ 

 

THE 5 TIBETAN RITES OF REJUVENATION: 108 MOVEMENTS TO A MEDITATIVE MIND STATE

By Ethan Indigo Smith

It just so happens that one of the quickest and simplest sets of meditative movements and one of the easiest to integrate as your own, is also one of the most powerful. The Five Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation take about twenty minutes or so depending on how long you meditate, the longer the better of course.

There are many ways to do the Five Tibetans and the movements will benefit you in multiple ways also. As with all meditative movements, part of the reason people are adverse to beginning it – part of the reason we allow our ego to convince us we do not need to do such practices – is because we see that they take time. But remember meditative movements make time, they give you more energy and more efficiency.

The Five Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation were not designed as beginner yoga, nor are they, but the fact they only take twenty minutes or so makes them totally accessible to our busied mind and active lifestyle that prevents us beginner yogis from beginning. I have described some finer points of each in the following.

5 Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation

There are 5 movements done 21 times and 1 movement done, most frequently, 3 times, equating to 108 breath coordinated movements. Each of the Tibetans are followed by taking two breaths so as to balance out the energy just moved. The Sixth Tibetan is only performed after you are capable of doing 21 breath coordinated movements of the Five Tibetans and doesn’t have to be included otherwise. One can begin doing any number of each Rite that you feel comfortable with, but try to do an equal number of each.

The first Tibetan is simply spinning clockwise with the arms active to the sides. The first Rite is done clockwise in unison with the sun for the chakras are said to spin clockwise. When held up such activates and opens up the arms, shoulders and neck. Try going excruciatingly slow. The Five Rites strengthen and activate the abdominal area and neck. These areas are considered the most problematic and clogged in terms of energetic and chakra understandings too. The Rites open up the chakras.

Then take two breaths like Superman, that which devoted practice can turn you into. Hands are at your hips. Take a deep breath through your nose and exhale through your mouth with lips shaped in an O like Superman blowing out cold air.

The trick to the second Tibetan is to lift up and set down the legs and neck in unison. Each Tibetan is done in unison with the breath and as with all meditative movement, the inhale is tension/activation and exhale is relaxation/release. So each movement begins with inhale and returns with exhale. The easiest way to count is to count 1 on the inhale and 1 on the exhale, counting each twice so you are less likely to lose track.

A trick with the third Tibetan is to think about using your hands as support and about bringing bring your back so that it returns to being perpendicular or just slightly past perpendicular, a degree or two forward. Go slow.

The trick to the fourth Tibetan is to initiate the movement with your neck opening the throat chakra.

As you progress you will eventually be able to do the fifth Tibetan with opened joints and ligaments doing Hindi pushups where your face glides along just above the floor and then rises up, like a cobra, on the return/release.

Remember to breathe twice like Superman in between each Rite.

The 6th Tibetan

The trick with the sixth Tibetan is to not do it unless you can do 21 of each of the first Five. I find three of the sixth Tibetan is optimal and no more than five is advised. For more specifics on the Five Tibetan Rites check out 108 Steps to Be in The Zone

Previous articles by Ethan:

• The Brotherhood of Man: a Tibetan Perspective
• The Duality of Love and the Historical Criminal Discrepancy
• 108: The Key to Metaphysical Intuition
• The Matrix of Four Steps to Ascension: a Combined Ascension Process
• Political Formality and Truth
• The Matrix of Four Steps to Raising Consciousness
• Oligarchical Collectivism and the Four Steps to Learning Politics

About the author:

Writer Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before migrating west to Mendocino, California. The events of September 11, 2001 inspired him to write his first book, The Complete Patriot’s Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism. He has since written The Matrix of Four, The Philosophy of the Duality of Polarity on the subject of the development of individual consciousness, before expanding into the fiction realm with the controversial The Terraist Letters, a work which humorously contrasts the very serious issues of global nuclear experimentation promotion and global marijuana prohibition. His latest eBooks 108 Steps to Be in The Zone and Tibetan Fusion are available now on Amazon.com

Visit Ethan on Facebook.

http://wakeup-world.com/2013/06/13/the-five-tibetan-rites-of-rejuvenation/

SACRED KNOWLEDGE OF VIBRATION AND THE POWER OF HUMAN EMOTIONS

ABORIGINAL MAGIC

by Jani Farrell Roberts. c2000 An extract from her book "Seven Days: Tales of Magic, Sex and Gender."   In Australia I have come across many examples of influential Aboriginal female elders being labelled by Christian missionaries as "witches" or, if men, as "witchdoctors". For example, at Philip Creek in Central Australia, the missionaries in the 1970s labelled the traditional female practice of "love magic" or yilpinji as "witchcraft" and called its practitioners "witches". Some Aboriginal men had since used this missionary labelling against women, in order to diminish the power and influence of the women. (Bell p 162) Much the same may have happened in 18th Century England when the "Cunning Folk" who serviced many local communities with magic and were mostly male, disparaged the mostly female practitioners as "witches". (Ref Hutton latest 98)

The Aboriginal women's love magic employed songs and chants centred on the power of one's country or of nature. In these songs, they might use "country" as a metaphor for a loved one. They would sing of their longing for their country, their sorrow at its absence and their anticipation of seeing it again.

Bell wrote: "Yilpinji is achieved through a creative integration of myth, song, gesture and design against a background of country. The circle, the quintessential female symbol, finds expression in the body designs, the rolling hands gesture and patterns traced out by the dancing feet... Ownership of myth and the rights to perform certain rituals provide the power base for the women's claims. ... in yilpinji the women (describe their social world and ) attempt to shape their world." P 173-5 Bell. For example, a woman who wants rid of a husband because he is playing around, may ask her group to perform yilpinji to help make him leave her. Yilpinji, love magic, is invariably based in the empowering link with land possessed by everyone in Aboriginal culture.

Aboriginal women might also attempt to help restore a person to health by gifting them with something that carried their own energy. This could be a gift of blood or body secretions from under the arms or from the eyes. (P161). Some senior healers, known in Central Australia as ngankayi, worked in a different way. They were believed to have special abilities in the removing of foreign bodies from the sick person's body. (which Western medicine might partially agree with - calling these foreign bodies germs or bacteria) Blood from a person causing an injury in a fight might be kept by the victims and later used in a revenge magical attack. Aboriginal people believe that they live in a world full of Ancestral Dreamtime energy and, as part of this world, they have access to this energy.
At Mapoon the missionaries wrote of "Awari (Lizard) or better known as old William, the witch doctor and rainmaker. The other is Namatu (Crocodile) .. Namatu's bearing is dignified ... he takes a leading part in the midnight councils and is held in esteem by all. Under these circumstances it seems strange that although he has been greatly influenced by the preaching of the Gospel... he has never openly confessed Christ." (P51 M.book 2)

The anthropologist Professor Robert Tomkinson, in a marvellous study of the Jigalong Aboriginal community in Western Australia entitled: "The Jigalong Mob: Aboriginal victors of a desert campaign" (1974), told of how Aboriginal people kept their religion intact despite the missionaries trying to suppress it since "the missionaries view the Aborigines as the children of he devil and the antithesis of Christian virtues". Tomkinson's work is very different in kind from that of the first Professor of Anthropology in Australia, A. K. Radcliffe-Brown who was a student of Emile Durkheim. He wrongly reported that in Aboriginal culture the world of the sacred is reserved to men while women had no religion, only "magic." 

Through my work with Aborigines I learnt to much respect the magical way both the women and men worked with nature, drawing on the strength of the earth that cared for them and which they in turn cared for and honoured. Without any drama I had felt I was becoming more and more immersed in this same magic - not by joining in Aboriginal rituals but by simply associating with them, taking part in their fight for land rights and learning to become more and more sensitive to the energies within this vast ancient landscape. It was not my continent by birth right but it was part of the earth that birthed me. I fell in love with her as I got to know her better. My conviction also grew that was that what I was learning from Aborigines was akin to the oldest traditions of my own people of the British Isles.

Aborigines had their own words for healers and magic work. Since they knew the word "witchcraft" from missionaries who translated it into their language as meaning "a worker of harmful and evil magic", those who held fast to the Old Ways might well deny their spiritual work was anything to do with this missionary defined word "witchcraft.". This is also true among other "missionised" indigenous peoples. Many of today's Sami in northern Scandinavia hold the work of their shamans to be sacred and will thus deny it has anything to do with "witchcraft". (The influence of bible translating societies on tribal societies has been documented and deplored by such human rights organisations as Survival International in its book: "Is God an American?")

http://www.witch.plus.com/7day-extracts/Aboriginal-witchcraft.html

WHAT LITTLE GIRLS WISH DADDIES KNEW

December 14, 2013 by taralee73

I’m spending the morning waiting for my car in the repair shop. Four men in flannel (I missed the flannel memo) and I sit around smelling tires and inhaling exhaust fumes while an enchanting little fairy is in constant motion around her daddy. She climbs on him, giggles, turns around, and then she’s back to twirling on the tile.

She’s bouncing and spinning around in her pink frilly skirt. Her black cable knit tights are sagging around her tiny knees, and her puffy coat makes her arms stand out further than is natural. To top off the ensemble is a shiny crystal tiara. It’s been tacked down to her head with what appears to be about 60 haphazard bobby pins.

She’s probably four years old. So little, so vulnerable. She doesn’t seem concerned about it as she sings about teapots and ladybugs in her black Mary Janes. I feel myself tear up as I watch her. I tear up as I watch him watch her. She could not possibly know at four what impact this man, his character, or his words will have on her for years to come. And, maybe he doesn’t know either.

So, to all the daddies with little girls who aren’t old enough yet to ask for what they need from you, here is what we wish you knew:

1. How you love me is how I will love myself.

2. Ask how I am feeling and listen to my answer, I need to know you value me before I can understand my true value.

3. I learn how I should be treated by how you treat my mom, whether you are married to her or not.

4. If you are angry with me, I feel it even if I don’t understand it, so talk to me.

5. Every time you show grace to me or someone else, I learn to trust God a little more.

6. I need to experience your nurturing physical strength, so I learn to trust the physicality of men.

7. Please don’t talk about sex like a teenage boy, or I think it’s something dirty.

8. When your tone is gentle, I understand what you are saying much better.

9. How you talk about female bodies when you’re ‘just joking’ is what I believe about my own.

10. How you handle my heart, is how I will allow it to be handled by others.

11. If you encourage me to find what brings joy, I will always seek it.

12. If you teach me what safe feels like when I’m with you, I will know better how to guard myself from men who are not.

13. Teach me a love of art, science, and nature, and I will learn that intellect matters more than dress size.

14. Let me say exactly what I want even if it’s wrong or silly, because I need to know having a strong voice is acceptable to you.

15. When I get older, if you seem afraid of my changing body, I will believe something is wrong with it.

16. If you understand contentment for yourself, so will I.

17. When I ask you to let go, please remain available; I will always come back and need you if you do.

18. If you demonstrate tenderness, I learn to embrace my own vulnerability rather than fear it.

19. When you let me help fix the car and paint the house, I will believe I can do anything a boy can do.

20. When you protect my femininity, I learn everything about me is worthy of protecting.

21. How you treat our dog when you think I’m not watching tells me more about you than does just about anything else.

22. Don’t let money be everything, or I learn not to respect it or you.

23. Hug, hold, and kiss me in all the ways a daddy does that are right and good and pure. I need it so much to understand healthy touch.

24. Please don’t lie, because I believe what you say.

25. Don’t avoid hard conversations, because it makes me believe I’m not worth fighting for.

It’s pretty simple, really. Little girls just love their daddies. They each think their daddy hung the moon. Once in a while when you look at your little gal twirling in her frilly skirt, remember she’ll be grown one day. What do you want her to know about men, life, herself, love? What you do and say now matters for a lifetime. Daddies, never underestimate the impact of your words or deeds on your daughters, no matter their age.

http://tarahedman.com/girls-daddies-knew/

SEVEN TRAITS OF HIGHLY MAGICAL PEOPLE

23 August 2013, by Carolyn Elliot

1. You know you’re magic.

This is the big one. In their heart of hearts, everyone is magic. But most folks just don’t know it. It’s very sad, and it’s not their fault. They’ve had the awareness beaten out of them one way or another. Our society in general is very anti-magic.
Magic people always have a mission. And part of that mission is to help folks still stuck in the clay (that’s my way catchy of saying “folks still stuck in naive materialism and unaware of their innate magic-ness”) understand that magic is real and within them, too.
So basically, if you know you’re magic, you’re ahead of the game. Which means you don’t really need this article – but look, it’s the internet and we’re just having fun.

2. Synchronicities happen for you – a lot.

And they tend to speed up when you spend a lot of time on meditation, art, ritual, intentional movement or prayer. Sometimes these synchronicities are just cute or silly, but often they’re life-changing and dramatic.
The biggest synchronous thing that can happen to a magic person is to meet another magic person. Or a whole enclave of them. It’s thrilling. It’s overwhelming. It’s love.
When lots of synchronicities are going on, I like to say “the jewel net is moving.” Why?

Because we’re all jewels in an infinitely connected web of silken joy.  

And sometimes the net shifts and folds in on itself and we run smack into a whole bunch of other jewels. And it’s great.

3. You’re sensitive to seasons and lunar cycles.

The more magic you are (and remember, being magic is mainly a matter of… knowing that you’re magic!) the more the energies of light and the two big cosmic lamps in our region (the sun and moon) affect your business.
You might find that you can’t sleep on full moon nights (all that energy, so ramped up!) and that you go through epic mythopoetic cycles of emotional birth and death as spring turns to summer turns to fall turns to winter.

4. You have very vivid dreams.

Magic people have at least partially developed aetheric bodies. This means, at the very least, that one or more of their chakras (Rudolf Steiner liked to call them “lotus flowers”) are open and active.
Maybe you’re a magic person with a giant, pulsing, highly-empathic heart chakra. Or maybe your third eye is open and you have an easy time seeing the visionary fluid dance of all things.
At the highly developed end of the spectrum, magic people have fully-formed aetheric bodies that can freely navigate the astral planes.
But having your aetheric sense perceptions open, even a little bit, means that you can see more vividly in the nighttime dream world than others can. So, you got that goin’ for you. Which is nice.

5.  When you fall in love, it’s psychedelic.

Forget a loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou. When a magic person falls in love (very probably with another magic person), it’s more like a sheet of acid, a gallon of mushroom tea and thou. And I’m not saying that actual drugs are involved.
I’m saying that the intensity of dopamine and oxytocin rushes, in magic brains, tends to produce more than just sexy-cozy-attachment.
They tend to also unleash psychic perception (you can read your lover’s thoughts – like, for reals – not just “I was thinking of you!” “I knew you were thinking of me, baby. ‘Cause I was thinking of you!“), encounters with your lover in the nighttime dream world, ecstatic sex that ruptures the boundaries of your identity, and other fun stuff.
Also, be careful with all that. It can get hairy if your lover happens to be one of those not-really-very-stable-or-sane magic people. Of which there are quite a few.

Magic people fall in love and it’s all like, whoah.

6. You have an abundance of prana.

Or creative energy. Or genius, or whatever you want to call it.
Wilhelm Reich called it “orgone.” Kant called it “Geist.” Emerson called it “Soul.” Mezmer called it “animal magnetism.” It’s sexual energy which transmutes into different feeling-tones when centered in different chakras and channels in the body.
In other words – even though it’s sexual energy, your abundant prana doesn’t necessarily feel “sexy” (although it probably does in spring and summer). It might just feel buzz-y or space-y or urgently creative.
You get seized with the need to write that poem, plan that ritual, record that song, make those spicy ginger fudge brownies. It’s implacable.
Also, no matter what you look like, folks tell you that you’re “hot.” And they mean it. You are. You radiate the light and heat of the cosmos. You’re a star, you magic darling!

7. You love to spread the magic around.

Your chief motive for making art, cooking great food, tending your garden, whatever – isn’t to be rich or famous. Though that could be cool.
If you’re magic, your biggest motive is to spread the magic around, because you just can’t stand not doing it. The magic is so fun, so beautiful, so warm, so true.
This means that it drives you a little crazy when you can totally see the magic in someone, and they can’t see it in themselves.
It drives you maybe even more crazy when you can totally see the magic in the world, and the world at large seems to not tenderly care for and appreciate its own magic.
So, you put effort everyday into doing stuff that increases the sum-total of magic and wonder and joy and love and delight in the world.
You turn up the volume on everything gorgeous so it can’t be ignored.

In conclusion,

You’re magic and I am too, and I love you.



Carolyn Elliott really digs metta meditation and weird poetry. She’s the author of Awaken Your Genius: a 7 step guide to uncovering your creativity, which will appear next fall from North Atlantic Books / Evolver Editions.  She blogs over at Awesome Your Life, and facilitates a Facebook Group (which you’re welcome to join) called The Dreamer’s Tantra, devoted to dreaming ourselves awake.

http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/04/16/7-traits-of-magical-people/

ABRAHAM HICKS – IF HE LETS THE STREAM CONTROL CONDITIONS

MANDALA: THE SACRED ART OF TIBETAN BUDDHISTS

Bhavika October 7, 2008
 

An art that has been carried on for centuries, symbolising the universe and believed to create a positive environment. I am referring to the Tibetan Buddhist sacred art of Mandala (means circle in Sanskrit), which is made by monks from millions of grains of dyed sand or paint. A bit similar to Rangoli made by Hindus.

Monks spend days to make this intricate masterpiece, with utmost care and precision, as you will see in the pictures below. Mandalas are believed to assist in purification and healing and represent the Buddhist value of compassion, so the process of making one, as you will find out, involves few rituals, even while destroying the design.

The process of making a mandala starts with an opening ceremony, when the monks will pray and chant to sanctify the place, then draw the detailed design from the center outwards on a wooden platform.




Monks start filling the circular design using metal funnels called ‘chak-pur’. The vibrations of the chak-pur being grated with a metal rod causes the sand to flow like liquid.



Apart from sand even powdered flowers, herbs, stones, or grains are used. In ancient times, powdered precious and semiprecious gems were also used.



The design consists of various deities with the principle deity in the centre of it, so mandala also serves like a meditation tool. Traditionally, mandalas are destroyed shortly after its completion, in a ritual ceremony.



The monks ask for blessings of the deities, and as they chant the mandala is slowly wiped off to serve a reminder of impermanence of life, a Buddhist teaching. The sand is then collected and dispersed into the sea to spread its healing power to the world, you know the the power of thoughts on water molecules, it transforms into beautiful designs.

http://fractalenlightenment.com/798/artwork/mandala-the-sacred-art-of-tibetan-buddhists

'LIFTING THE SKIRT' WITH AMANDA SAGE'S ART

Bhavika March 1, 2013

‘Empowering’ was the first word that popped in my head when I went into/entered the visionary world of artist Amanda Sage. Based in Los Angeles, Amanda aims to create portals that open to the infinite possibilities of being and expressing, to help remember and re-discover who we really are, where we originate from and where we are headed.

One of the main reason I love visionary art is because of the experience of losing yourself into multiple dimensions blended to perfection to narrate a cosmic story on a single canvas. Through her art, Amanda seeks to challenge the viewer to question and evolve out of ignorance and dissolve the conditioning by the society.

Fractal Enlightenment got in touch with Amanda to know more about her art, inspiration, her experience with the pioneer of visionary art – Ernst Fuchs – and what lies ahead.

Visionary artist Amanda Sage

“I feel driven to explore and push the boundaries of what I see and understand and at the same time seek balance and beauty through my art. I would say that the path has defined the result and that visionary art choose me.

As a child I remember seeing colored energy fields around people, and I feel that through painting I am remembering and looking even deeper,” she said.

The Shaman

Her adventurous spirit carried her to Bali, then on to Vienna, Austria to study classical painting with Michael Fuchs, resulting in becoming a long time painting assistant to Ernst Fuchs. “At times it was the most difficult thing that I knew. When I was working with him, he was like a slave driver who expected me to be painting or doing something for him all the time. 

At the same time though, there was so much genius wrapped into many of the projects, and I really had to learn to be flexible. The level of unwavering commitment that he has for his art and vision was inspiring to say the least. And most of all how he would always look at his work with fresh eyes and challenge himself and the viewer.”

Ana Suromai – Women have been lifting their skirts for centuries to ward off evil and enhance fertility. This symbolic act is also found in mythologies of various cultures, specifically in those of ancient Egypt, Greece, Persia, Ireland, Africa, Indonesia & Japan

One of her most talked about piece is ‘Ana-Suromai,’ derived from the Greek word meaning ‘to lift the skirt’. According to Amanda, this painting is an outcry a visual denouncement of the corrupt system that has brought our world to a state of chaos, based on greed, war profiteering, and the mindless consumption by the masses. “It symbolizes the awakening of our personal power, shocking one into introspection as this system is in the process of crumbling.” This painting was unveiled at the 2011 Burning Man Festival in the Nevada Desert.

The Oracle

If you look closely you will find that an egg is a recurring symbol in many of her paintings, Amanda explained, “I consciously began using an egg in 2006 after going on a vision quest to find the perfect form that I could put anything in and feel completely safe to explore and unfold within. 

This form appeared to me in a painting titled ‘Dreams,’ where a mystical snake held an egg in its mouth. I see it now as a window or doorway into infinite realms of reality.”

Gateway to the Emerald Kingdom

Often developing these ideas takes a lot of effort and one is always confronted with having to make a choice. She explained, “When I am painting, I often find peace, and/or a battlefield that whisks me into a problem solving world…Even as I go down dark, destructive paths looking for the light, the pressure of those places drives me to see where I want to go even clearer. Sometimes you have to get lost to find yourself.”

Mind

Its always difficult for an artist to be able to pick one painting that reflects their journey on this path, but Amanda gave it a shot.

”The painting that speaks the most of the dream I care so deeply about is ‘Regeneration’. It is deeply personal and reflects a journey that I am on and discovering.”

Regeneration – “It has an overall uplifting vibration about it and is about celebration, healing and love.”

Seeking inspiration from various visionary artists like Frida Kahlo, Leanora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Salvador Dali, Mati Klarwein, Robert Venosa and Alex Grey, Amanda has played a prominent role in the growing visionary art movement through exhibiting, teaching and participating in major festivals.

Spirit visionary art

She is set to open the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art along with her colleagues this fall. “Besides I have a new series of paintings to embark on as I also explore and travel the world as a witness on a grand quest to support the blossoming of planetary consciousness,” she explained.

Orphic Awakening

http://fractalenlightenment.com/14341/artwork/lifting-the-skirt-with-amanda-sages-art