Saturday, July 26, 2008

Basics - Mirrors Used to Explore How the Brain Interprets Information - NYTimes.com

Basics - Mirrors Used to Explore How the Brain Interprets Information - NYTimes.com

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Cool new FREE divination tool!

Today a client asked me how she might get more of her own information, and I 'got' that she was supposed to use Flickr -- no joke! -- and look at images related to her question and see what they had to tell her.

(Flickr is a very cool photo sharing site. The photos are so awesome that Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of pictures and video, is about to scour it to find photos to sell.)

Here's what to do:

- Go to Flickr

- Type a quality, or whatever you're thinking about into the search box, and

- Look at the issues it serves up to you. Try sorting by 'most interesting' -- because it is a lot more strange than 'most relevant'. What do the images have in common? What keeps coming up over and over? Does a particular image speak to you? What do the images 'say' to you?

I tried it right after I got off the phone. First I tried 'rest & vacation' and all I got was beaches. I do know that I need to go to the beach. But of course, vacation and beach are synonymous for lots of people. So then I tried 'writing' because I felt I had nothing to say today. And it came up all beaches again! Guess what I'm doing tomorrow? :)

Let me know what happens when you try it, okay?

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Cyborgs Prove Telepathy Is Desirable

That headline is a little tongue in cheek, but here's what I mean:

When wireless headsets for cell phones were new, I began to see people having very animated conversations with... no one... on street corners all over the country. I thought perhaps we had a burgeoning epidemic of psychotics! And then I realized that they had these gadgets on, and they were using technology to talk to very real other people, who were not physically present.

Hmmm.... talking to beings that are not physically present... that reminds me of something... oh, right, telepathy. Telepathy is direct mind to mind communication with another physical being. (Mind to mind communication with a non-physical being is called channeling.)

Somehow, telepathy is the psychic ability that freaks people out, even when others, like clairvoyance, and even channeling, don't. I think everyone is afraid of other people really knowing what they think. Honestly, if everyone was telepathic, one of two things would happen. Either society would become very compassionate, because all people would instantly know other people's pain, or people would clean up their thoughts in a hurry! And since thoughts are things and influence physical reality, reality would get a lot nicer in either case. So if you're one of those people who is freaked out by telepathy, would you please just let that fear go? But I digress.

I don't know about you, but seeing odd metallic growths coming out of people's skulls just above their ears, makes me think of Star Trek. Didn't they call those part human, part machine beings, cyborgs?

Here's what I think. I think we all come from one consciousness, and in non-physical reality, we are telepathic. And part of us remembers this when we take on bodies, and that's why we feel so lonely here on earth, where it seems we are separate. So we all aspire to telepathy, even as we fear it. And we aspire to it so much that we resort to being cyborgs, wearing wireless ear pieces for our wireless phones to communicate with other very real beings.

One day, if each of us accepts our abilities, maybe we won't need the phones!

Bulletin: I actually like writing!

When I was a kid, my Dad read all my 'compositions' for English class, to make sure they were okay. (He was a part time professional writer, with a syndicated newspaper column and eventually, 2 books, so he had cred). He didn't stint with the red pencil, either, and I hated writing.

It didn't get a lot better after that. He wasn't around, but I still had the hangover of all that criticism. I think I was an engineering major in college partly because I wouldn't have to write too many papers.

But it's decades later, and after sending out my Thhursday emails for several years now, I can actually say that I enjoy writing them. Sometimes, I know exactly what I'm going to say, and sometimes, like today, I just had this very vague idea. But when I write, or more accurately, as I move my ideas around electronically, the ideas begin to coalesce into sense that I didn't know I had, and I learn something. This is actually fun!

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Everybody’s Business - Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics - NYTimes.com

I don't usually write about things economic, but I'm fascinated by them, and have been since I was in college (this explains all those macro- and micro-economics courses and the statistics and game theory). So here is an article by Ben Stein (love him or hate him, at least he's an original thinker) that combines the 'people' side of things with his training in economics:

Everybody’s Business - Lessons in Love, by Way of Economics - NYTimes.com

Friday, July 11, 2008

Psst... your 'green friends' have something to tell you!

My talk at the West Coast Dowsers’ Conference was called “How to Listen so Nature will Speak to You”, and was about how to connect in a particular way to anything, so that you could get psychic information from it. Actually, it was more of an experience than a talk, because I really believe that people learn by doing, not by listening. I did it twice. In each talk, the participants practiced first with each other, because people are so unsubtle, shared their experiences, and then went outside to listen to the plants. Did we get an earful!

The first time, about 35 people went out (I couldn’t because I was holding the space for all those people). When they came back, several people shared that the plant they spoke with was confused (What am I doing here? I don’t belong here. What is that hard stuff (asphalt)?) or that the plant said it was in the wrong environment, getting the wrong kind of water, or not enough water, or not getting the water in the way that it needed it. A couple of people reported that the trees were really angry — especially about the fires, because they knew about them. One reported that a redwood had told her it lost friends. (This talk was audio recorded, and when I get it, I’ll try to put it up on my website.) Someone reported that her plant really wanted us to wake up to what we’re doing!

The second time was much smaller (6 people) because I filled in at the last moment for someone who had a family emergency, and it was only announced once. But because it was smaller, I got to play, too, if only for a couple of minutes. When I went outside to ‘listen’ to a tree (definitely not a redwood,I think some kind of maple), I was surprised when it showed me flickering yellow and orange, and then red. Then I realized that what I was seeing was flames, so it clearly knew about the fires. It seemed concerned, but not particularly angry. I wondered how it knew this, and it showed me a beam of white light that went up from the top of the tree. Somehow it uses this to communicate with other trees. (I wasn’t there long enough to find out more.)

So next time you’re in nature, slow down, pick a tree or another plant to connect to, ad see what it has to say. You may be surprised!

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed: "Money Makes People Stupid, Parts XXVII

Some interesting results in a new study into how people behave in the presence of money. The gist: When money is visible and supervision intermittent, people change their participation for the worst in a hurry.

The Abundance Effect: Unethical Behavior in the Presence of Wealth

Abstract:
Three laboratory studies investigate the hypothesis that the presence of wealth may influence people's propensity to engage in unethical behavior. In the experiments, participants are given the opportunity to cheat by overstating their performance or by stealing money. In each study, one group is stimulated by the visible proximity of wealth. We find that the presence of abundant wealth leads to more frequent cheating than an environment of scarcity. Our third experiment also investigates the potential mechanisms behind this effect. Our results show that feelings of envy towards wealthy others lead to unethical behavior. Our findings offer insights into when and why people engage in unethical behavior.

More here.

Anyone who has ever worked on a trading floor won't be surprised. Part of the cause of rogue traders is abundant visible wealth, and only on-again, off-again supervision."