Happy New Year, from my heart

I know that 2009 was a hard year for many people, and my heart goes out to all of you. I also know that 2010 can be a better year, for each of us individually, and for all of us collectively, if we all work together. I wish that for you, and for us, from the bottom of my heart.

As you think about the coming year, ask yourself a few questions:

- What are my fondest dreams?

- What can I do tomorrow (and every tomorrow) to make each of them come true?

- What gives me joy right now?

- How can I give myself some of that today (and every day)?
- How can I share with those around me, in ways that make life better for all of us?

I wish you joy beyond what you can imagine, and the realization of your fondest dreams, for 2010 and out into the future.

Learning from the Year End Review

As I write this, it's already 2010 in parts of the world. Wow! Where did 2009 go?

I ask myself that every year, beginning right after Christmas, and then do a kind of year end review. What were the highlights? What could I have done differently? What did I learn?

This year, just doing the review was a real learning for me.

I was tempted to call this a 'lost year', in the same way that financially, the 00's were a collective lost decade for the U.S. I worked really hard, and it seemed like not much happened from all that work. Recalling Thomas Edison, I did learn a lot of ways not to accomplish my goals. If anything, I'm in a worse financial position than a year ago -- but it's not terrible, and day to day, life seems much the same. I'm living in the same house, with the same husband, who has the same job as a year ago. My health is the same. I guess I have the blog to show for the year. (And for those of you who are considering blogging, it's a terrific way to remember your year, a kind of living journal and/or scrapbook, even if no one ever reads it.) And of course, though it's hard for me to remember, other people have what they learned from my classes, or private sessions, or just our interactions. So in a way, I guess I have a lot to show for the year, it's just that it's not mine.

And then I thought about what had happened to the people around me: one was killed, several others had death threats for various reasons, one began a nasty divorce, a couple lost their homes, others were unemployed for long stretches. And those were just my friends!

So now I'm really grateful for the sameness of last year. Maybe I was protected, or maybe all that work kept the wolf from the door. I don't know. But I do know that I'm really grateful for the health that I have, the roof over my head, the food in my belly, and the friends and family around me.

So I guess what they say is true: sometimes no news really is good news!

Another path to happiness: move to a sunshine state!

Turns out, sunshine states really are happiest

(Hat tip, Ellen)

Sha la la la la Live for Today...

There's a song from the 60's, by (I think) the Grass Roots, called "Live for Today". It's on my iPod, because I've always loved it. Turns out I should be living by it more:

Findings - The Psychology Behind Putting Off What Can Be Enjoyed Now - NYTimes.com

Your Gift

YOU have psychic abilities, whether you acknowledge them or not. Ignore them at your peril. Maybe you'll see yourself in this:

Last weekend, I went to a holiday party, given by one of my clients, an acupuncturist. Because I'd helped her pass her acupuncture boards, which she'd failed 3 times before, she kept introducing me enthusiastically as a clairvoyant and coach. That meant that all of my conversations centered on things psychic, intuitive and/or spiritual (which was actually fun for me!).

The conversation that struck me most was with Joe, a many-degreed, successful high tech engineer. Joe has those bright blue eyes that evidence great intelligence, as well as an Atlantean past (if you don't believe in Atlantis, just ignore that part), complete with psychic ability. (I see this sometimes, but only in blue eyes; with other color eyes, it just isn't immediately obvious to me.)

Joe was curious, no, fascinated with my psychic abilities, because he said he didn't have any. I told him that we all have some degree of psychic ability, but that it comes in different ways; the most common is what people call 'gut feelings'. Joe admitted that he had those, and joked about providing 'psychic tech support'. But then he said that he couldn't trust them much, as evidenced by his horrendous people judgment, which led to horrible relationships, both romantic and business, which led to very expensive legal problems. I could see the activity in his third eye, and told him he was clairvoyant, whether he knew it or not.

As we talked, Joe complained of knowing things that other people didn't want to hear, telling them, and being ostracized for it. A classic psychic's complaint! The problem is not knowing what you know. The problem is not knowing what other people don't know, or don't want to know. The problem is in knowing how, when and to whom it is safe to disclose what you know.

Joe told of downloads into his mind of information, which he described as a 3 1/4" floppy being inserted into the left side of his head. This is classic telepathy!

It turned out that Joe had always had this telepathy, but had had so many bad experiences as a child, that he had turned off his ability to access the information he got through it. Ignoring his deepest level of information left him incredibly vulnerable to people who could and would callously take advantage of him.

Your psychic abilities are your gift, no matter what form they come in. They might come as gut feelings (clairsentience), pictures of things (clairvoyance), the still small voice within (clairaudience), downloads of information (telepathy/channeling), or smelling or tasting things that aren't there (clairolfaction or clairgustation). No matter -- they are your birthright. Would you willingly blind your physical vision? If you are ignoring your psychic abilities, you are doing effectively that -- and your life is much the poorer for it.

You can change that -- right now! You can resolve to notice what you notice, and know what you know, even if you don't know how you know it. No matter what your abilities, no matter how developed (or not), you can practice -- and practice makes perfect. (And if you are ready and willing to claim your psychic abilities, as well as how to talk about them, send me an email (use the box in the top right corner), and I'll let you know when I'm teaching another psychic development teleclass.)

Wow! The unconscious mind does recognize numbers bigger than 2!

"In a series of recent imaging studies, scientists have discovered that a sliver of the parietal cortex, on the surface of the brain about an inch above the ears, is particularly active when the brain judges quantity. In this area, called the intraparietal sulcus, clusters of neurons are sensitive to the sight of specific quantities, research suggests. Some fire vigorously at the sight of five objects, for instance, less so at the sight of four or six, and not at all at two or nine. Others are most active in response to one, two, three, and so on."

More here.

Our Last Conversation

Monday morning started with a bang, or more accurately, a thud. The caller ID said it was my friend, Jillian, which was odd, because although we're good friends and have known each other half our lives, we're both really busy, and she never makes personal calls during the day. The first thing she said was, "Are you sitting down?" Ooh, this was going to be bad.

I said, "No, but I could be," and sat down on the bed.

She said, "Michelle's gone." I knew she meant 'gone' as in permanently. She died in a car accident on Saturday night. Jillian had called Sunday, but I never picked up the phone, and it's not the sort of thing you leave as a message.

Michelle was another friend of half a lifetime. When we met, I was just opening up psychically and spiritually. Michelle acted as my big sister, or my guide, assuring me that I wasn't crazy when I "knew" something I could not possibly have known consciously, suggesting books for me to read, even giving me a 'magic wand' at one point. I'm really grateful to her for making stepping onto the path so much easier and safer. I probably would still be who I am today had I not met her, but you never know.

Michelle and I had been very close, but when she moved to southern California about 15 years ago for her husband's job, we lost touch (remember, this was before email). Life happened: she had her second and third children, ran her successful executive search business in a way that empowered women, bought and sold at least one house, successfully fought breast cancer, eventually divorced the father of her kids, soldiering on as a single mom.

We ran into each other at a party of Jillian's about 2 years ago, and, in the way of true friends, again became as close as ever. It was different this time, though. Because I had developed so much, so she relied on me as one of her advisers. It was an honor for me to be able to help someone I respected so much.

Michelle had called me about 10 days previously, wanting me to look at some questions. She was worried about doing this on the phone, so she said she'd drive up here so we could hike and talk, and would call me in a day or two to let me know what time she'd arrive.

She never called, which really wasn't like her, super-responsible person that she was. So a week ago Saturday, I called her to see if she was still planning to come. She said no. Again, this was so not like her, but I accepted it, because I knew the pressure she was under.

She made a huge point of telling me how much she loved me, and how grateful she was to me for being there, and seeing things for her when she couldn't see for herself, when she couldn't even be there for herself sometimes. I told her how much I loved her, too, and how honored I felt that she let me see her. When we hung up, I thought, "It's going to be a really long time before we talk again... if ever." I wondered how many years it would be -- another 12 or so? I was really sad for the loss of our relationship, again.

When Jillian called, I was shocked, but I have to say, not surprised. And I thought back to the last conversation I had with Michelle -- and how glad I was that our last conversation had been one where we told each other how much we meant to each other.

The point is, you never know which conversation you have with someone will be your last. So take every opportunity to tell everyone in your life how much they mean to you.

The times, they are a-changin'

According to the latest Pew poll, 20% of Protestants & 28% of Catholics believe in reincarnation!

My favorite quote:

"For the first time in 47 years of polling, the number of Americans who said that they have had a religious or mystical experience, which the question defined as a “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening,” was greater than those who said that they had not."

Read this for more:

Op-Ed Columnist - Paranormal Flexibility - NYTimes.com

Entropy is where my reality meets yours...

In case you who don't remember high school chemistry, entropy is the tendency for ordered systems to become disordered. Combating entropy takes energy. And I feel like that's where most of my energy has been going for the last day or two.

In the last 24 hours, here's what I've done:

1. taken the cat to the vet to deal with his wounds (he apparently got into it with another cat)
2. picked up my husband when his car wouldn't start
3. found out how to track down a water leak, which my water bill shows has begun
4. bugged someone from whom I need information, who apparently can't be bothered to return my call
5. chased a tenant who isn't paying on time (good tenant for a long time, but now...)
6. set up my Intuition Development teleclass for Monday on MaestroConference -- along with a backup call on FreeConference, because last week, for HypnoCoaching, Maestro was just too busy to let my scheduled call actually happen
7. work on how to make up for the call Maestro wouldn't let happen
8. try to get Maestro to make a reasonable restitution for what happened (still waiting)
9. got a notice about another tenant who promised to repair the damage they'd done to my apartment several months ago -- and didn't

Now, I'm a big believer in "You create your reality through your beliefs," but I can't imagine what belief might have caused all this. In fact, when I'm acting as a real estate broker, I know that much of what I get paid for is to manage entropy. I suspect that entropy is created by the friction between 'my reality' and 'consensual reality'.

Consensual reality is actually the aggregate of each individual's realities. What if a million people want rain in a given metro area, and another million don't? (And btw, there is some evidence that human consciousness affects the weather in Serge Kahili King's 'Urban Shaman' and in a wonderful study on weather in Princeton around graduation by Roger Nelson, now of the Gaia Project.) Maybe it drizzles, or maybe there are patches of rain and patches of dry. My wish for rain comes up against your wish for dry, and neither of us gets exactly what we want.

So let's look at those 9 items again, from this perspective:

1. the cat wanted something that whatever other animal didn't -- and I accepted the fallout because I love the cat.
2. my husband manifested a car that wouldn't start because he doesn't want to go forward on something -- and I accepted the fallout because I love my husband.
3. water wears things away as it moves, eventually resulting in a leak -- and I accepted the fallout because (a) it's my property and (b) I'm mindful of our local drought.
4. I want the information, and it's higher on my priority list to get it than it is for the person who has the information to give it to me, so I take on the responsibility to bug her.
5. I care about getting the rent, so that I can pay the mortgage -- there are large negative consequences to me for not doing that, so I take on the responsibility to chase the tenant.
6. It was more important for Maestro to service their big clients than small ones like me, and since I want to provide a good service for my students, I take on the responsibility of setting up a back up.
7. I want my students to have an optimal experience, so I take on the responsibility to make up for what MaestroConference messed up.
8. I want MaestroConference to make up for what they are costing me in time.
   
9. It's my responsibility to manage my property -- and now I know that this tenant can't be trusted to live up to the lease by repairing their own damage.

So I have created most of these items, if not all, by a beliefs that (a) I'm responsible and (b) responsibility means taking action. Obviously, in most of these items, the other party has no such belief about responsibility, or at least not in these particular instances. And it's the friction between these beliefs, the friction between my reality and either another person's reality (the person who won't call me back) or consensual reality (water wears things down), that manifests in this way.

Manifesting Money, Part II

Yesterday when I took my shower, I noticed there was a really shiny dime on the floor of the tub. Weird place for a dime, huh?

I mean, it's not like a dime can fall out of your pocket in the shower. No one's cleaned the tub in about 10 days, sad to say, so it didn't fall out of a pocket that way. My husband and I are the only ones who use this bathroom, and I never keep change in my pockets anyway. When the tub isn't in use, we keep the shower curtain closed so as to dry out the liner to prevent it from molding, so it's unlikely that a dime fell out of one of my husband's khaki's pockets through the closed curtain into the tub.

So when he got home from work I told him about the dime, and he said, "When I was taking my shower this morning, holding the soap against my body with both hands, I heard a 'plink, plink', like a coin falling on a hard surface. But it was early, kind of dark, and I was in a hurry, so I never looked for anything." And that was the only way he could imagine that a shiny dime would be in our shower. I haven't got a better idea.

Are you choosing heaven, or are you choosing hell?

I was recently shown this image:

· Each person on Earth is standing in front of two doors.

· Through one door is evolution. This door leads to ‘heaven’ or paradise – all green fields & forests. In this reality, humanity solves its dilemmas, works with the Earth to create a peaceful, sustainable society.

· Through the other door is hell -- rigidity in an effort maintain the status quo. This eventually leads to disintegration, because change is inevitable. If you fight change, it happens anyway, just more slowly and more painfully. This is the door to ‘hell’ – a fiery reality, because fire sets free the energy trapped by photosynthesis in wood. (This is why hell is always seen as fiery.) The disintegration sets free the energy in these souls to be reused, to evolve. This is the reality envisioned by "Mad Max".

I was told that 70% of humanity has chosen which door he/she will go through, and 30% has not yet chosen. Of the 70% who has chosen, 2/3 has chosen to evolve, and 1/3 has chosen to disintegrate. That is, about half of humanity has chosen to evolve, about 30% has not chosen and about 20% has chosen the door of stuckness/disintegration.

It is very difficult to change your choice once you have chosen. It is possible, but you’d have to change who you are to choose the other door.

It used to be that you could only walk through the door after you ‘died’. The Earth is vibrating faster now, and this is no longer true, but people still think it is true. Now you are actually encouraged to walk through while you still have a body.

There are a variety of reasons why people don’t walk through a door after they have chosen. They wonder

* Is it real?
* It looks okay, but is it? I’m still scared.
* Who will I be after I’ve walked through the door? How will I act?
* What will the world look like to me after I've walked through the door?
* Will I leave others behind? What happens to them?
* Does the door close behind me?

I am unclear as to what happens as more and more people walk through their chosen doors. It looks like the earth eventually splits in a kind of mitosis, into a faster vibrating Earth (the evolving Earth), and a slower vibrating Earth (the disintegrating Earth).

The Earth which vibrates more quickly will seem like the fabled Paradise, more green, more comfortable somehow, than today’s world. It still has its problems, of course, but humanity has decided to work together to solve them. Apparently this decision alone goes some way towards solving the problems, because Gaia feels our intention and works very hard to heal herself.

The Earth which vibrates more slowly will seem like an even more screwed up version of today’s world. The problems which exist now will have gotten worse – more pollution, more disease, more inequity, fewer resources to go around. There will probably be geophysical catastrophes to hasten the disintegration.

If I’ve chosen to evolve, and my neighbors haven’t, do they disappear from my world, and I from theirs? Or do we just never see each other? I don’t’ know. What happens to their house in my world, if they disappear? I don’t know. I have the sense that some of the splitting comes from migrations, that people who choose to evolve have already moved to, or will move to, places like the Bay Area. Does this explain all of it? I doubt it.

How long does this take? I don’t know. But I do know this:

The process of the Earth splitting is awkward and uncomfortable. At some level, everyone feels the bi-directional pull, and it makes us uncomfortable. People who have chosen to evolve feel the urgency of the situation, see ways out of it, and are moving towards those solutions. They are frustrated by, and have little patience with, those who have elected to try to maintain the status quo. People who have chosen the futile effort to maintain the status quo are frustrated and frightened by the inevitable prospect of change.

You can already see the awkwardness in those people who are doing anything in their power to stop change, and how polarizing they are. A good example is white supremacists, who would like to turn back the clock to an imagined better day when the US was mostly white. First, as most of us know, this is simply not going to happen. Second, because the white supremacists know this at some level, they feel very threatened – threatened to the point that they feel their best recourse is violence. This violent streak offends many, in fact, many more than those repulsed by their views alone. It’s hard to be neutral about someone who is willing to be violent to you for not agreeing with them. Thus these groups are even more polarizing than their views alone would warrant.

While these white supremacist groups are one example, you can see many others: watch the health care debate going on on Capitol Hill, where those who oppose change are willing to lie to (temporarily) thwart change. Watch any sort of so-called fundamentalist religious group, whose leaders twist the words of holy writings (mostly written millennia ago) to support their own beliefs, and their own amassing of power.

This choice of evolution/heaven or disintegration/hell is playing out every day in ways large and small. Just watch the news!

Why Loneliness Can Be Contagious - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

Why Loneliness Can Be Contagious - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

Stop me if I've told you this before...

Apparently, it's normal to remember where you got information, but not to whom you gave it:

Mind - Memory Study Looks at Why We Repeat Ourselves - NYTimes.com

Giving to Others is Giving Health to Yourself

Taken with the last post, giving, which is part of our nature, can be seen as a pathway to health. And good health, happiness & success are a self-reinforcing triumvirate.

Well - Daily Giving Is Seen as a Healthful Treatment - NYTimes.com

Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help - NYTimes.com

Some Biologists Find an Urge in Human Nature to Help - NYTimes.com

People hear with their skin, too!

All our senses work together, so there is something intuitively obvious about this, but it still seems strange:

Observatory - People Hear With Their Skin as Well as Their Ears, Study Says - NYTimes.com

Social Medicine/Public Health

2 points here: First, health and happiness (and success, too, btw) are self-reinforcing -- if you have more of one, you tend to have more of another. And there are many studies to support this.

Second, since this is true, and since my friend's happiness affects mine, then my friend's health affects my happiness, which affects affects my health. This is a great reason for universal health care. Perhaps this is why there are so many first world countries that are happier than the US. -- they have universal health care, and so they are healthier, so they' re happier.

Social Medicine - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

More reasons to keep exercising

Anyone who exercises regularly will tell you that they 'feel better' for having done it. I know I'm happier when I walk than just about any other part of a normal day. And the benefits are much greater than that -- actual brain changes:

Phys Ed: Why Exercise Makes You Less Anxious - Well Blog - NYTimes.com

Be thankful for the crap in life!

It's getting to be Thanksgiving, a wonderful American ritual, which originated with the Pilgrims holding a feast to thank the natives for their help, without which they would not have survived in the New World. It's common to say a round of very specific thanks before today's feasts. So I started thinking about thankfulness and gratitude.

People talk a lot about gratitude, and for good reason. Since energy follows thought (this is teh Law of Attraction), and your gratitude increases your attention to those things for which you are grateful, then you get more of those (presumably positive) things.

There is a case to be made for being thankful for the crap, as well. Why? Here are a few reasons:

The crap uncovers beliefs you have, which no longer serve you, which you can then heal, so you no longer attract the crap. For example, if you believe that learning has to be hard, you'll attract lots of difficult situations to learn from. This is a belief! If you choose to believe that "learning is easy" or (my personal affirmation) that "I learn through awareness and joy", then life will get easier almost immediately. Try it and see!

The crap uncovers vows or agreements you've made, which you can then heal, so you no longer attract the crap. If, for example, I vowed, either in this lifetime or in another one, "to never be rich", perhaps because the rich people you saw were evil, then you'll always have money problems in this lifetime. Vows can be identified and broken! Break this one and you're likely to have a more positive relationship with money.

The crap helps you locate places where you have disempowered yourself in your own life. If you were brought up always to respect authority, then you will give your power away, always trusting those with external power, such as political power, even when it is against your best interests. The Republican party consciously took this strategy with uneducated whites, especially in the South -- these were people who were brought up to respect authority, whether it had on clerical garb, a police uniform, or a business suit. The Republicans spoke to them in an authoritative voice, and got them to elect representatives who then voted to ship their jobs offshore. (Don't believe me? Please read John Dean's "Conservatives without Conscience".)

It's important to realize that you have give control of some aspect of your life, however small, to someone else -- and then to take it back, to make conscious choices about how you will govern this aspect of your life. You may, in the end, make the same choices you would have in the past, but by making them consciously, you have the freedom to re-choose if the original choices don't work out too well.

A 'negative' event often opens up room for change, for better things to come in to take its place. As with my friend, Joe, last week, divorcing to end a bad marriage opens up the space for a new, better relationship to eventually take its place.

You can look at excrement as crap, or you can be grateful for it and use it as fertilizer!

Telephone Telepathy

For many years, I've suggested to my students that they try guessing who's on the other end of the phone as a way to improve their psychic ability. (Of course, I do it, too!) Turns out that telephone telepathy is one of the most common forms of psychic ability. Watch the video -- then make it a practice yourself!

Manifestation & meaning

I've known my friend, Joe, for about 9 months now. He's a good guy, an ex-Marine, living in the Bay Area, who gushes about his kids given half a chance. He also has psycho-kinetic abilities and converses with some high level discarnate beings. You can tell when he gets angry, because you can sense a steely rage, but I've never seen him do anything but walk away from a fight.

He called about 10 days ago, from AZ, where he was visiting his parents (his Mom had injured her foot, and Dad needed some help), frantic to know where his kids were. His wife, Helen, not American by birth, and with many ties still in her home country, had apparently just announced to him that she had left him, taken the kids, and refused to tell him where they were.

It looked to me like they were fine, and still in the Bay Area, but clearly, this was going to be a very ugly divorce: Helen would do anything necessary to get what she wanted, including perjure herself, falsify evidence, steal from him, hide money, etc. I kept hearing to tell him that 'this is the best thing that could have happened to you'.

The next day he found an attorney, and asked about filing kidnapping charges. But it turned out that Helen had gotten a restraining order, which she hadn't mentioned, based on a fight she and he had 8 years ago, which didn't involve the kids. That makes her hiding the kids completely legal. She kept wanting to know when he'd be back at the house. He wondered if she were trying to trap him into violating a restraining order he'd never been served with.

He drove back here from AZ, only to find the rental house that they'd lived in cleaned out of anything valuable, with a mess left. His wife, who'd been paying the rent, as he had been laid off recently, had not paid it. He was about to be evicted, so he needed to quickly get packed, find a new place and move. As he was going through his stuff, he came upon these:

Obviously, these used to be handcuffs. I say 'used to be' because they are now in 2 separate pieces, and they can't be put back together. You can tell from the photo (maybe not on the internet, but blown up, on my computer) that the serial numbers from both halves match. Joe swears that the last time he saw them, when he put them in the bottom of the file drawer he was cleaning out, they were in one piece. These cuffs are made so that those pins sticking out from the left side go into the slots on the right. The barbs on the pins (and the barbs and pins are machined out of one piece of metal) fit into little indentations you can't see inside the slots. The barbed pins must be fitted into the slots of each side, and then the tops welded to the bottoms of each side, so there is no earthly way to get those suckers apart without major tampering. There are no signs of tampering. You can't see any in the photo, and I examined them myself -- not even a scratch.

Clearly, no one on earth did this. Quite a manifestation!

I take the message to be that he is free of her -- or at least will be soon -- and that all her shenanigans will lead to naught, that she won't be able to entrap him.

In Pig Cognition Studies, Reflections on Parallels With Humans

When I look for an animal in someone's third chakra (power center), sometimes I see a pig. I have always seen this as a good thing, especially about intelligence. Here's proof:

Basics - In Pig Cognition Studies, Reflections on Parallels With Humans - NYTimes.com

Are dreams real?

On Sunday night, or more correctly, sometime early Monday morning, I had a dream where I was teaching a class. The class went as usual, which meant that during the part where the students were reading each other, I had some free time. Normally, I'd stay and sort of check in on how folks were doing, but this time, I went out to my car to see if everything was ready for the meeting I had after the class. My trunk was open and someone had stolen my laptop, which meant that I no longer had the necessary info and had to cancel the meeting. The good news was that I ad backed everythign up, and wasn't even upset.

Clearly, what was important to me about the dream was not what happened in class, so when I woke up I didn't really remember that part.

Here's the funny thing:

On Monday afternoon, I got the following email from a woman who was in one of my classes a couple of years ago:

"Last night I had a dream and you were a character. You came up behind me.. I was in some kind of classroom setting... you looked at me seriously... the classroom became silent... you put one of your hands on my right back shoulder and the other on the front.. I let out some tears and I remember feeling a release, yet without a conscious focus on what it was or why... then you disappeared and the class continued..."

So were our dreams just the fragments of what we can remember in normal waking consciousness of an alternate reality (the astral plane?) that we both shared?

Can you clean water with your intention?

Yes, water and living things give off small amounts of light (their auras?). Yes, you can photograph this -- with special equipment. And yes, intention can change the light given off by water. Check out the photos here:

Results of the Clean Water Experiment:Of glowing light and alchemy | The Intention Experiment

5 Surprising Reasons to Love Rain

Winter (aka the rainy season) has just begun in northern California, so I though I'd share some unexpected reasons to love rain:

1. Rain helps you breathe freely - My Dad, the allergist, was fond of pointing out that rain washed pollen out of the air, so asthmatics could breathe better. I'm sure it washes pollution out of the air the same way.
   
2. Rain cleanses your aura - All moving water gives off negative ions, and negative ions clean your electromagnetic field, aka your aura.
   
3. Rain relaxes you in several ways:

• Negative ions have been shown to relax people - it's part of why people love being by the ocean or by rivers, and again, rain is moving water, so it's giving off negative ions.
  
• The white noise of falling rain relaxes you.
• Humans have been programmed through history to relax in the rain. Pre-historic hunters couldn't hunt much in the rain -- the game was holed up somewhere trying to stay dry. Traditional farmers couldn't work well in the wet fields when it rained. So we have a lot of history of staying inside our caves, huts or homes when it rains and just hanging out. That would lead our bodies to relax naturally.

Neuroscience Insights into Culture & Prejudice

As we've known in NLP for a long time, you can change your own automatic reactions:

"The work... also suggests that even though most of our reactions are fast and automatic, we still have free will and control.

"Many of the studies presented here concerned the way we divide people by in-group and out-group categories in as little as 170 milliseconds. The anterior cingulate cortices in American and Chinese brains activate when people see members of their own group endure pain, but they do so at much lower levels when they see members of another group enduring it. These effects may form the basis of prejudice.

"But a study by Saaid A. Mendoza and David M. Amodio of New York University showed that if you give people a strategy, such as reminding them to be racially fair, it is possible to counteract those perceptions."

Op-Ed Columnist - The Young and the Neuro - NYTimes.com

How to Be Miserable

This is the perfect statement of what NOT to do:

Manifesting Money -- or, Be Careful What You Ask For

This might sound over the top, even for me, but I swear, every word of this is true:

I really enjoy cooking. I like working with my hands, I love seeing a successful result from the work -- and I love eating the fruits of my labor (pun intended)! So last Saturday afternoon, I had a marathon cooking session (chicken broth, wild rice & vegetable soup, polenta, a huge chopped salad, 2 beer-can chickens, healthy refried beans, and chocolate bread), to turn the farmers' market's bounty into meals for a week. As you can imagine, this took about 4 hours -- and I was having a great time!

I was in the kitchen alone for the entire time, with all the doors closed. The door to the back deck was closed because it was really blustery, the door to the dining room was closed because my husband was working in there, and didn't want to hear the noise of me banging around in the kitchen, and the door to the hall was closed because if it's open when I cook, our overly sensitive smoke alarm goes off.

My husband and I were the only ones in the house.

My clothes had no pockets. I was in and out of the refrigerator constantly, in particular, using the vegetable bins which are at the bottom of the fridge. This meant that I saw the floor in front of the fridge regularly, and it was empty (okay, a little dirty, but empty).

After about 3 hours of cooking, there was a $20 bill, neatly folded in fourths, sitting on the floor directly in front of the refrigerator!

I questioned my husband -- had he been in there the one time I went to the bathroom? No. And furthermore, he asked how the twenty looked on the floor. I told him in fourths, and he said, 'couldn't have been me -- I fold my bills in half', pulling a wad of greenbacks out of his pocket to show me.

There is a skirted sofa in the kitchen, next to the fridge, but even if there had been a twenty under there, how would it have gotten out? Remember there was no real air motion, because all the doors were closed. There is nowhere else a $20 bill could have hidden.

So I conclude that somehow I manifested the twenty!

Why would this be?

Well, my guides have been telling me for some time to chill, to quit working so hard (I've noticed that it does not seem to produce any significant result). And when I thought back, I realized that for several years (though I stopped a couple of years ago), I had done the following affirmation:

"By being who I am, and doing what I love, I now prosper beyond my wildest dreams."

Perhaps, by doing this affirmation, I was precluding succeeding by working hard! Because if you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work. For me, doing sessions with people and teaching classes doesn't feel like work, at least not often. But all that marketing stuff -- definitely work! So maybe, by working hard at things I don't love, I preclude the kind of prosperity which I simultaneously affirm.

I guess the question is this, does an affirmation preclude what is not consistent with it, e.g. 'by being who I am and doing lots of things I hate, I now prosper beyond my wildest dreams'? I'm beginning to think so. After all, I was having a great time, cooking, which in my book is kind of f*#cking off, and there was the $20.

I have to admit that the idea that, having done that affirmation, working hard is a bad idea -- really challenges me. (I grew up with that old Protestant work ethic.)

Now, how do I manifest a $10,000,000 cashier's check? :)

How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

If we weren't looking for patterns where we didn't know they existed, how would science ever appe?

Mind - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - NYTimes.com

Placebos are becoming more effective. How? - Telegraph Blogs

Amazing! And the comments are just as interesting as the article:

Placebos are becoming more effective. How? - Telegraph Blogs

Work: What's passion got to do with it?

There is some great advice in here for anyone considering a job or career change:

Shortcuts - If Not Passion for the Job, at Least Warm Feelings - NYTimes.com

The Meta-Message

You may or may not have noticed that I've been a bit scarce on email, on FB, on this blog, for the last couple of weeks. There's a good reason for that, which I'll get to in a minute.

First, have you ever had someone tell you what should have been great news in a spectral tone of voice? Or had someone tell you they were fine, while sounding horribly depressed? Did you take the words seriously? Or did you believe the tone of voice? If you're like most people, you paid more attention to the tone than to the words.

In NLP (aka neurolinguisitics), the non-verbals, e.g. tone of voice or body language, are sometimes referred to as the 'meta-message'. The meta-message is the overall vibe that extends beyond the verbal message. Let me suggest that the meta-message is the message.

What you may not know is that the meta-message exists for artistic communication and for electronic communication. The reason a piece of art, whether that's a painting, a poem or a song, conveys a mood is partly the mood the artist was in when he or she created the piece.

Several years ago, I was at a talk given by a wonderful man, an MD turned holistic healer after a quadruple bypass literally opened up his heart. His presentation included a guided meditation, which ended with a recorded song, which he had commissioned from a gifted singer-songwriter. Although the song was lovely, and the words were uplifting, all I could hear was the pain in the singer's voice. Wrong meta-message! It left me with exactly the opposite feeling to what was intended.

And so it is with writing, even if it is published electronically. Last week, I wrote most of a piece on '3 Ways to be 'Up' in a Down Market', I guess because I needed it, and figured if I needed it, so did others. But even though it was well-written, I was not 'up'. I knew that if I hit the 'publish post' button while in that state of mind, the meta-message was going to be 'how to let things get to you'! So I didn't publish it, and in not publishing it, I had nothing to send to my email list.

The message here is pay attention to your feeling states, and don't reach out to people on a large scale when your feeling states don't match your message. If you are someone who must reach out to large numbers of people on a regular basis (you're a teacher, a sales rep, or even a healer), you must learn to manage your feeling states so that your meta-message supports your message.

Sometimes, though, all of us need to just let our natural feeling states be, and turn inward to clean up our own issues. That's what I did -- I took some time, took my own advice, and that of my guides, and worked through my issues, at least enough that my meta-message is positive again.)

The 4 Kinds of Prayers

"...when you come right down to it, there are only four basic prayers. Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!”

Rabbi Marc Gellman, quoted in the NY Times

Entangled Minds: Skeptic agrees that remote viewing is proven

Entangled Minds: Skeptic agrees that remote viewing is proven

For a scientist (whose work I admire and use) to argue that you need higher standards of proof for remote viewing than other areas of science is just absurd.

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Reality : NPR

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain ... And Your Reality : NPR

What happened to the economy -- and what it portends for the future

From the Boston Globe:

"Minsky called his idea the “Financial Instability Hypothesis.” In the wake of a depression, he noted, financial institutions are extraordinarily conservative, as are businesses. With the borrowers and the lenders who fuel the economy all steering clear of high-risk deals, things go smoothly: loans are almost always paid on time, businesses generally succeed, and everyone does well. That success, however, inevitably encourages borrowers and lenders to take on more risk in the reasonable hope of making more money. As Minsky observed, “Success breeds a disregard of the possibility of failure.”

As people forget that failure is a possibility, a “euphoric economy” eventually develops, fueled by the rise of far riskier borrowers - what he called speculative borrowers, those whose income would cover interest payments but not the principal; and those he called “Ponzi borrowers,” those whose income could cover neither, and could only pay their bills by borrowing still further. As these latter categories grew, the overall economy would shift from a conservative but profitable environment to a much more freewheeling system dominated by players whose survival depended not on sound business plans, but on borrowed money and freely available credit.

Once that kind of economy had developed, any panic could wreck the market. The failure of a single firm, for example, or the revelation of a staggering fraud could trigger fear and a sudden, economy-wide attempt to shed debt. This watershed moment - what was later dubbed the “Minsky moment” - would create an environment deeply inhospitable to all borrowers. The speculators and Ponzi borrowers would collapse first, as they lost access to the credit they needed to survive. Even the more stable players might find themselves unable to pay their debt without selling off assets; their forced sales would send asset prices spiraling downward, and inevitably, the entire rickety financial edifice would start to collapse. Businesses would falter, and the crisis would spill over to the “real” economy that depended on the now-collapsing financial system."

Whole article here.

This is what it means for you:

• We are going back to much more of a 'pay as you go' economy. You know, the one you grew up in if you're over 40.
  
• Retail sales (remember, 70% of the economy is consumer spending) are going to be at a much lower level for a long time, first because people have to pay off their debt, and then because they'll have to save to buy things, because credit is and will be harder to come by.
  
• We are actually experiencing deflation now. We all know real estate prices are down, sharply in many locations. But you know all those 'sales' at stores, even grocery stores? Those are deflation in action. Here's a personal example: I bought my first GE toaster oven around 1977. I think I paid $29 for it. It broke and I bought a new one, sometime in the early 90's -- I think I paid $49. It broke and I bought a new one around 2001, again $49. It broke and I'm going to Target later today to buy a new one -- 'on sale' at $15. Looks like pretty much the same model I've had, over and over again.
  
• In deflation, people hang on to their cash. This makes sense, because you can buy an asset cheaper later than you can buy it now. Yet another reason for lower consumer spending.
• This may not change for a generation or more. My grandparents were adults, raising their families during the Great Depression. My parents, who were kids then, were part of the 'save before you spend' crowd, and I am too, because they trained me well. People who got caught in a debt trap this time around, and their children, will remember this painful lesson for a long time.
  
• You have to give people a REALLY good reason to buy something now, because they'll begin to expect that they can get it more cheaply later. Or it has to be something for which they're desperate.
• What are people desperate for? Food, shelter, and clothing (although most of us have enough clothing to last us a few years). And end to their physical suffering, i.e. health care (though I understand that even Kaiser Permanente's business is off). A way to stretch a dollar. A way to make more dollars to pay for food, shelter and clothing. Transportation to get to those places where they make the dollars. After that, it's all 'nice to have'. So how do you relate what you do to one of these things?
• When people need things, they're more likely to turn to the underground economy -- paying in trade (I have a friend in rural OR who gets paid for some of her services in pot, which she then uses to pay other tradespeople), or in untraceable green cash.
  
• People are more likely to buy things used -- that's part of the rise of craigslist and eBay. Flea markets will be busier, too, because people still like to handle the merchandise.
  

Is Happiness Catching? - NYTimes.com

Really great article and not just about happiness:

Is Happiness Catching? - NYTimes.com

My favorite findings:

- the more friends you have, the likelier you are to be happy
- your spouse's weight will affect yours less than your best friend's weight will

Feeling inadequate? Don't know why?

This explains it:

Mind - When a Parent’s Love Comes With Conditions - NYTimes.com

Are Some People Hard-Wired to Fail in Financial Markets? | The Big Picture

I'm posting this because of all the great links to brain science info:

Are Some People Hard-Wired to Fail in Financial Markets? | The Big Picture

Global Cooling? YOU Can Help!

Remember the old saying, 'everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it?' I'd like to suggest that you CAN do something about it.

There are lots of anecdotal reports of people changing the weather, through some combination of conscious intent and meditation. Here's one that happened to me on Mt. Shasta 2 years ago:

The group was meditating in a huge meadow, with a densely overcast sky. The air was completely calm — not a pine needle stirred. When we finished meditating, most people had felt raindrops (I didn’t feel them; I was either deep in meditation or asleep. However, rain will normally rouse me, and there were no wet spots on my clothes, so maybe it rained around me!) and the sky above us was completely clear in probably a quarter mile diameter circle! The surrounding sky, however, was still thickly overcast. Then, as we watched, the clouds formed an unmistakable heart shape in the center of the clearing directly above us, ringed by open space and then the original clouds.

Here are two more:

• A friend of mine, an amazing chi gung practitioner, tells of having the intention to protect her Minnesota home from an approaching twister, then going into the basement with her family to wait it out. When she emerged, the neighborhood was a disaster zone -- except for her house, which was in perfect condition, except that a piece of gingerbread trim she'd never liked had been pulled cleanly off the house.
• Dr. Valerie V. Hunt, Professor Emeritus of Physiological Science at UCLA, in her book, "Infinite Mind", writes of almost being stranded for the winter in Tibet by an early blizzard. Apparently, after the first blizzard there, you can't fly out until spring. She and a companion went into meditation, with the intention of clearing the weather. A hole was created in the storm and she flew out.

In the book, "Urban Shaman", Serge Kahili King, a huna practitioner, writes of successful group meditations to change the path of hurricanes.

Roger Nelson, designer and director of the Global Consciousness Project, did the following study while he was at Princeton University:

Every year, Princeton has extensive festivities around Commencement, which include a huge reunion of graduates. Typically, the University population (which has grown to 7500 graduate and undergraduate students, plus about 1000 faculty, in recent years) swells by 15,000 people or more.

Dr. Nelson used University records & the National Climatic Data Center to get the precipitation data for the town of Princeton and 6 surrounding communities on 4 of these festive days, for all the years which had all this data available, the years 1950 - 1986. The 4 days were the days of

• the P-rade, which is a parade of alumni, including the graduating seniors (Saturday - outdoors),
  
• Baccalaureate (Sunday - indoors),
• Class Day (Monday - outdoors), and
• Commencement (Tuesday - outdoors),

There was a significant difference in rainfall between Princeton and the surrounding communities for the days of the outdoor festivities, which are the days on which people typically wish for good weather. Dr. Nelson notes "...a trend toward less rain, less often, is quite persuasive on Saturday, Monday and Tuesday, but on Sunday, the day of Baccalaureate, no clear tendency is evident... A look at actual weather data seems to suggest that precipitation tends to stay away from Princeton for the P-Rade, and Class Day, and Commencement, to a somewhat unlikely degree." That is, a large group of people wishing for good weather tends to bring it! And I can personally vouch for the fact that, even when it rains on those days of outdoor festivites, the rain generally will hold off until after, or stop for, the festivities themselves.

So with all the agonizing about global warming, why are we not consciously intending global cooling? I'm not suggesting that it's the only thing we should be doing, certainly conservation, etc. are all still important. But what if this could help? And what could it hurt to add global cooling to your daily mediation or your prayer list?

Here's what I ask for every day:

"May the climate be turned back quickly, easily and gently, to that of 1950, in the best interests of all species."

Why 1950? Because my guides tell me that that is the farthest back we can go and still have everything remain in balance.

Will you join me?

Greetings from Mt. Shasta!

So much happened that it's unbelievable! I'm just back from the somewhat grandly, but also aptly, named "Ambassador to the Universe" training, held by CSETI, up on Mt. Shasta.

Before we got there, I got the message that if you ask for something with a sincere, open heart, which is in the highest good of all, it can only be granted.

Sunday night, we met at a private house on the side of Mt. Shasta, which the staff had rented for their accommodations. It's an amazing log home, whose 40x20 living room has a 18 foot ceiling, and then we sat outside the house for our stargazing.

Apparently, group cohesion with positive intention draws the star visitors. So on the first night, when the group is still forming, there's not a lot of activity. But not this time! My guess is that at least 40% of the group had been to one or more of these trainings, and including a Bay Area contingent of 8 people who have done group work on our own.

Activity began almost immediately -- 'flashbulbs' going off in the sky, 'shooting stars' that moved up instead of down, 'satellites' that aren't on the satellite charts. 'Satellites' that blink on and off. Mysterious colored lights in the trees in the field on the side of a mountain where there is no electricity. (For more of the basics, see this post from 2007, as well as this, this and this from 2008.)

In addition, I could feel that some beings were doing massive attunements so that the group would interact smoothly with each other and with the beings. Several other people apparently got the same message, because we talked about it.

The sheer volume of activity was overwhelming. Two years ago, you'd wait minutes, sometimes many minutes between sightings. The activity was more constant last year, but nothing like this year, when it was absolutely constant -- something was literally happening every second, and often several things were happening simultaneously.

This year, what was new for me was the activity of the radar detectors. Five people had brought standard car radar detectors, along with battery packs so that they could operate several miles into a National Forest, where there is obviously no electricity -- and no radar. The radar detectors would start to make noise, almost at random (more on that later). Here's the really strange part: while all of them had the same bands, two radar detectors, sitting just a few feet from each other, would go off simultaneously -- on different bands! The only explanation we can come up with is that the star visitors are using them as communication devices, and that different star visitors would use different bands.

And then one night, all of us heard a radar detector with a very distinctive chirp, kind of like the Mexican Hat Dance (de-de-doop, de-de-doop, de-de-doop) coming from the northeast part of our 50 person circle for probably 10 - 20 seconds. But no one in that quadrant of the circle had a radar detector!

Another night, I was facing west, and it looked like the Big Dipper had an extra star in its handle. I stared at it for several minutes, and,, not being an astronomer, it took me a while to realize that there shouldn't be a star where this was. As I was pondering how odd that was, it blinked out! At the next break, I mentioned it in the vicinity of one of the radar detectors, which chirped its assent. Yes, that was a craft!

I saw some pretty cool things in meditation, too:

• One group of star visitors showed me how they become one being. That one being is the craft they use to travel interdimensionally. They agree on what they're doing, and then they smoosh together, so that all the nervous systems become one nervous system, all the digestive systems become one digestive system, etc. I wish I could describe this better, but honestly, it's so hard to wrap my mind around it that I can't.
  
• A star craft that looked like a garlic bulb with an elongated top. I kept hearing a couple of other people talk about seeing (with their exernal sight) a craft that looked like a tear drop, and after a while, I realized that what I was seeing internally was what they were seeing externally. So I asked, and sure enough, their 'tear drop' was much wider at the bottom than a tear drop would be.
• The garlic bulb shaped craft had these articulated legs, like goose neck lamps, with pod like feet which automatically leveled the craft when it sat on the ground. When I thought about the similarity between this and the Lunar Module, something said, "Where do you think they got the idea for that, anyway?"
  
• I went into the garlic-shaped craft in my mind. And found myself in a huge hallway, being greeted by a gentleman who ushered me into a ballroom. What I 'got' from that is that what looks like a small craft on the outside isn't necessarily. These things don't operate by time-space standards that we do. [Others confirmed this for me, as well.] So maybe each of those orbs in the photo at the top is a craft!
  

Laugh of the Day

Many years ago, my credit card processing bank was the Bank of Beverly Hills. They dropped me, with only 30 days notice because I was too risky a merchant, despite having never had even one bad charge. This was a hardship, because many processors won't take merchants who do work over the phone, called audiotext, which lumped me in with sex lines.

Today I noticed that the Bank of Beverly Hills been shut down by the FDIC earlier this year. Ironically, I'm still in business!

Yet Another Reason to Meditate

One of the things meditation is best known for is reducing stress -- blood pressure, cortisol levels, etc. Turns out that elevated stress levels actually make it more difficult to cope with that stress, as you are less likely to actively make decisions and more likely to do things you have always done, by rote. As they say, one definition of insanity is continuing to do the same things, and expecting a different response. Here's the whole article:

Basics - Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop - NYTimes.com

Entangled Minds: Intuition Through Time: What Does the Seer See?

Turns out that seeing the future may be more than abstract -- Radin used eye pupil dilation and other measures of the eye to check for presentiment, and sure enough...

Entangled Minds: Intuition Through Time: What Does the Seer See?

Yes, your audience matters!

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: Listener's facial expression alters speaker's language

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: The surprising links between anger and time perception

BPS RESEARCH DIGEST: The surprising links between anger and time perception

More on the chemical experiment none of us agreed to

What's really in your shampoo | Salon

Meanings of chakras 8 - 12

Over the years, I have learned a number of different interpretations of these chakras, but this list makes the most sense to me:

• 8 - trust
• 9 - aloneness (i.e. the ability to be comfortable alone)
• 10 - responsibility
• 11 - wisdom
• 12 - power to manifest in the physical world
  

Another benefit of meditation: Decreased Social Anxiety

More than just relaxing, meditation helps improve self-image of anxiety sufferers, Stanford Research:

Even Psychics Needs Psychics!

Everyone who does readings for other people, whether professionally or as a hobby, knows that the hardest person to read for is -- yourself! Why? Because you're emotionally involved. While you care about doing the best job for a client, and you care for their happiness, you're pretty neutral about what you see -- and in fact, the more neutral you are, the more accurate you are, in general.

It's hard to be neutral about what you see for yourself. So even though you see what you see, it's a really good idea to check with other psychic, kind of like a physician goes to another physician when they're sick.

I had the need/opportunity to do that this week. I called a friend, who is a channel, to help me with a personal growth issue. But saying that I could 'see' pictures better than he, he made me do the reading myself! :) Of course, his guides confirmed my pictures, and channeled some information about them, that I would not have gotten.

What I saw was really interesting. Although I read other people's chakras all the time, I had never so much as tried to read my own. First I tried focusing on each chakra inside my body. That didn't work, because I became surrounded by the color of the chakra. Then I tried mocking up my body outside me, and looking that way. That just made me dizzy. It's odd that I would try these things, too, because it isn't what I do with other people. This is an example of 'it's hard to read yourself'.

What I do with other people is to mock up a screen in front of my third eye, and ask for the information to be placed there. Well, that's what worked for reading myself, too. And having seen my own chakras, not just the seven in the body, but also the 5 that are outside it, I feel much better about my spiritual progress, and understand some things, which used to seem random, as part of a larger pattern. So now I understand the value of the chakra reading for my clients -- even before we get to their questions!

For the meanings of the seven chakras in the body, look here. For the meanings of chakras 8 - 12, look here.

FWIW, I LOVE doing readings for other psychics! It's really easy for me, because the more open you are, the easier it is for me to connect to you. And then I get to learn something, too -- I learn something in every reading.

No More Sacrifices, No More Blessings, No More Prayers!

Until I was 10, my family went to an Orthodox synagogue for the High Holy Days each year (and only for the High Holy Days -- my parents really weren't into it). I clearly remember sitting upstairs in a balcony with the women, as worship is sex-segregated in Orthodox shuls. I always sat next to my grandmother, who could read Hebrew (very unusual for a woman of her age). She read the prayer books in Hebrew, turning the pages with the service, and I would follow along in English.

I was amazed to read, over and over again, "I am a jealous God, I am a wrathful God, I am a vengeful God", along with detailed descriptions of exactly what sacrifices were required, as well as how they would be prepared, for example (and this is a vague memory), seven unblemished kids, and seven ephahs of flour, to be burned on the altar, along with seven ephahs of wine, to be poured out before the altar. (An ephah is about a bushel.)

Though no one ever talked to me about this, I understood the sacrifices as a pagan rite of a desert people (circa 5000BC) who lived in a harsh environment, and just wanted to have enough to eat to live through the year.

In "The Gift of the Jews", Thomas Cahill makes the point that the cultural innovation of the Jews was seeing all the desert gods around them as aspects of one supremely powerful GOD. This was apparently the main change -- so all the petty, jealous gods didn't lose their characteristics, they just became agglomerated into One. Hence the jealous, vengeful, wrathful GOD.

Please note that the word, 'sacrifice', is derived from a combination of the Latin words 'sacer', meaning 'holy', and facere, 'to make'. So sacrificing literally means making sacred. The Romans were sacrificing to their gods, too. So when you sacrifice, you are making a holy covenant with a vengeful, wrathful, jealous GOD. I'll give you these seven kids, see, and you'll make sure that my goats make 15 more goats, and they all live, okay, GOD? (The word might have come about at the same time as the Jews were beginning to venerate the ONE or perhaps as many as 5 millennia later.)

Similarly, the word, 'blessing' comes from the Old English word, 'bledsian' (before 950AD, or at least 7 centuries after the height of the Roman Empire). It means to consecrate, or make sacred, with blood. Sounds suspiciously like blessings come from blood sacrifices, doesn't it? You keep the wrathful GOD happy by spilling blood...

Fast forward another millennium or so, to a time when many of us don't believe in appeasing an angry god outside of ourselves, but rather that GOD is All That Is, so that you can't be separate. So why are we still 'making sacrifices'? Why are we still asking for blessings, for ourselves or for others? Why are we still 'praying', which comes from the Latin, 'precari', to beg?

We need a new language for uniting with All That Is, to create in joy, love and peace. Anyone care to help? Please post here!

Modern Love - Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear - NYTimes.com

This is clarity, and staying centered, and the knowledge that you can't fix someone else, in action:

Modern Love - Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear - NYTimes.com

Does this explain why my stepson doesn't see the trash he leaves on the kitchen counter!

The long and short of how men and women see | Mail Online

(hat tip Ray)

Ever made a bad decision, even though part of you knew better?

You know how it is -- you take a job, even though you have a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. Or you get into a relationship, even though that still, small voice inside says, "No!" Or you say 'yes' to a project, even though a red light flashes internally.

It doesn't have to be that way! You can learn how to access your own intuition, your own psychic abilities, and test them in a low stress atmosphere, so that you learn to trust that feeling, that voice, that vision. It's easy, it's fun, and it's coming to a telephone near you.

I've been doing psychic readings as an expert intuitive for over 25 years. In that time, I've teased apart the building blocks of intuition. After you know what these building blocks are, you'll begin to identify what your special gifts are, and how they manifest for you. You'll also learn an undetectable method of using your hands to get information anywhere, any time, under any circumstance.

Once you know these things, you can practice -- the class provides safe opportunities to practice. You'll also learn how to practice on your own, so you can build the self confidence to trust your intuition when it really counts -- for the job offer, the relationship, the project.

The class meets twice a month for 5 months -- and the first month costs only $1!

To learn more, click here. Space is limited, so if you already know this is for you, call me now at 888-4-hollis to sign up.

Good News: Science is Now Taking Intuition Seriously

The good news is that science is now taking intuition seriously; the bad news is that it is taking a war to do it.

What they are mostly investigating here is clairsentience, or the gut feeling of knowing something that you can't put your finger on. Turns out it's very valuable for sensing danger, which makes sense, because all animals need it, or they'll be eaten.

The ability to notice patterns at an unconscious level is very important. The ability of one's eyes to see things that they aren't looking at is important, too. Certain areas of the brain are involved, and some people's work better than others'. So, yes, clairsentient ability is probably going to be normally distributed in the population, just like most abilities.

Here's the whole article:

Brain Power - In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable - Series - NYTimes.com

Finally! Scientists take the aura seriously

Now that scientists can take photos with very sensitive cameras, which can record light at 1/1000 the brightness that it would have to be for you to see it, they are looking at auras! And talking about how they might be useful medically. See the photos and read all about it:

Humans Glow

[ht Paul]

THe NJ I know and love

Now that's the NJ I remember growing up in! I grew up near the Jersey Shore, and often went to the beach (every day for whole summers, in fact) near Deal and Elberon.

2 N.J. Mayors Arrested in Broad Inquiry on Corruption - NYTimes.com

And fwiw, we always knew that when someone died in a light plane or boating accident, it wasn't really an accident.

Can Meditation Change Your Brain And Affect Your Genes?

Drum roll, please! And the answer is

YES!

From Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald: Can Meditation Change Your Brain And Affect Your Genes? on HuffPo:

They used an fMRI scan (functional magnetic resonance imaging) during what is called an affect labeling task. So they had people do this task where they have to label someone's emotional expression (e.g. fearful or surprised). There are certain parts of the brain that are known to be involved in doing that task, particularly the prefrontal cortex modulating the emotional center which is the amygdala. When they did this study they found that the more mindful people were, the more activity in the frontal cortex quieting down the emotional center.

In other studies, mindfulness is shown to change brain activity and even structure with practice. For example, Sara Lazar's research found that the structure of parts of the brain differed in long-time meditators compared to non-meditators. There are now many studies supporting brain changes with various sorts of meditation, including mindfulness meditation.

PF: Are you speaking about neuroplasticity?

SS: Yes, the capacity of the brain to change as a function of experience. And as a geneticist, I'm really interested in epigenetic phenomenon, that is, the capacity of our genes to change in their expression as a function of experience. Meditation seems to do that as well! There is one really great study where a set of about 15 genes were shown to differ (in expression) as function of a type of meditation. Those genes are ones involved in the stress response. And I'm sure there will be more studies like that.

What's really cool about that, from my background in genetics, is that it illustrates that a mind state that we can self-induce can regulate gene expression - turn gene expression up or down.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence about mindfulness that I think is sufficient today to say: Try it, it's likely beneficial, harmless, free, and relatively simple.

Why girls go in twos and boys hunt in packs - Times Online

Neuropsychology is giving us some amazing insights:

Why girls go in twos and boys hunt in packs - Times Online

Do you remember agreeing to be part of a vast chemical experiment?

I sure don't. Yet I am, and we are, living in the midst of a vast chemical experiment that none of us ever agreed to.

I was part of the first generation of kids to grow up in and around swimming pools. My family jokingly referred to me as 'the fish', because I spent as many hours as I could in the community pool each summer, being on a swimming team, learning how to dive, playing Marco Polo, and on and on.

At the age of 23, I was one of the first cases of what is today called Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (I was so early, it didn't even have a name). 10 years later, I was told by an MD, who was also trained in Chinese medicine, that "there's always an adrenal problem" in CFIDS.

25 years later, John Gray ("Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"), who is amazingly widely read, and very knowledgeable on many subjects, told me privately that adrenal problems are always the result of thyroid dysfunction (hypothyroidism), because when the thyroid doesn't work, the adrenals step in to do the work, work for which they aren't intended, and burn out. Further, he said these cases almost always have to do with exposure to chlorine (swimming pools), and/or fluorine (fluoridated water), which displace iodine, which is critically necessary to adequate functioning of the thyroid.

So did spending all that time in the pool create the CFIDS 15 years later? I'll never know for sure.

And now we have these two studies, which link air pollution to lower IQs:

Education Week: Kids' lower IQ scores linked to prenatal pollution

Smog Linked in School Study to Lower IQ Scores

Every time you gas up, heck, every time you time you drive, you're adding to the vast chemical experiment, since most of the myriad of compounds unleashed were never tested in any way for safety. Scrubbing Bubbles? That stuff goes down the drain and into our water. Hair spray? Goes into the air we all breathe. And the residue gets washed down the drain and into our water. Nail polish? There are fumes when you use it, and when you later clip your nails, the polish goes into the waste bin, which decomposes into who-knows-what that percolates into our soil and ground water. The drugs you take? I'd guess that whatever isn't absorbed by your body gets flushed down the toilet and into our water, too.

So think each time you use a chemical product: the brain you save may be your own -- or your kids'.

7 Ways to Avoid Getting Sucked In to Other People's Dramas

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a situation, that doesn't really concern you, where there is a lot of anger, or fear, or even sadness, going around? Perhaps you've been invited to dinner by a couple whose marriage is falling apart, and the air crackles with the intensity of silent recrminations. Or maybe two of your colleagues, both of whom you like, can't stand each other, and they each come crying to you. Or perhaps an acquaintance, not someone you are close to, has just been diagnosed with cancer, or a friend's sibling (whom you've never met) just died. Emotion swirls around you, but it isn't of your making, and really, it doesn't concern you, except in John Donne's sense:

"No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Well, I was in one of those situations this week. (Sorry, I can't talk about it, but I promised I wouldn't.)

I kept hearing my guides say, "It serves no one for you to get caught up in their drama", which is, of course, true. If I get caught up in these others' drama, then I am not available to support them, and I feel lousy, too. It also serves no one for me to feel sorry for them, because that actually prevents their healing. (Don't believe me about that last? Take my Intuition Development telecourse, and you'll learn through your own experience that it's true.)

So what can you do to avoid getting caught up in other people's dramas? Here are a few ideas:

• Get out of the situation! Literally. Remove yourself from physical proximity to the actors in the drama as much as possible. If you can't help, and often the actors in the drama don't want help, why stay? Whom would it benefit?
  
• Keep reminding yourself that it is not your drama, and that it serves no one for you to get sucked in to it.
• Visualize yourself as standing at the fulcrum of a see-saw -- You stay neutral while they have all the ups and downs.
• Ground -- and pull up earth energy through you for more protection. Use this energy to fill your aura.
• Put your shields up. Remember all the energetic protections you have learned -- thicken the edges of your aura, put a shield in front of your second chakra, etc. (Again, check out the Intuition Development telecourse for more.)
• Ask your guides/angels for protection -- they can remember to protect you even when you can't.
• Turn down the volume of the feeling -- if you feel something in your body, notice where that is, and then literally turn down the intensity of the feeling, or move the feeling out of your body.

Remember, these methods of protecting yourself are not either/or. You can use all of these more or less simultaneously, if necessary.

Lavender Planting

Yesterday morning, I walked by a lovely lavender bush just 3 houses down from mine. Now, I walk by this bush almost every day, and don't really notice it. As I admired her (seems like a 'her' to me), I had the thought that I'd like to cut the lavender flowers to have in the house. But my conscious mind kicked in, saying, "You barely know these neighbors, and even though they obviously aren't cutting the flowers, it's a little forward to ask." So I didn't.

This morning, as I walked by, a man was digging up the plants nearby, and asked me if I'd like the lavender plant! He explained that my neighbors are removing these plants (including, sadly, a magnolia tree), to widen their driveway. I immediately said that I'd like the flowers, and then agreed to take the plants as well! So they will very shortly be gracing my front walk, where a couple of mine had died and needed to be replaced.

I wonder, did the lavender plant the idea in my mind? (Pun intended.)

What You Resist, Persists

The old saying, "What you resist, persists" is now borne out by research:

Mind - Why the Imp in Your Brain Gets Out - NYTimes.com

This is also evidence of the NLP dictum to only speak in the positive. The usual example is "don't think of a purple elephant!" What happens for you? You think of a purple elephant, because you have to make the picture to get rid of it.

If I say, think of a red rhinoceros, what happens? You think of a red rhino, not a purple elephant. So if you want someone not to think of something, direct them to something else. The easy way to accomplish this is, eliminate the word 'not' from your vocabulary.

Ladies, get your beauty (okay, health) sleep!

Lack of sleep is more dangerous for women than men, claim scientists - Telegraph

Unshakeable self confidence is in the genes, claim scientists - Telegraph

Unshakeable self confidence is in the genes, claim scientists - Telegraph

Apparently, the ability to perform under pressure is, too.

Be happy, see more!

From Facebook | Marci Shimoff's Notes:

Did you know that people who are more positive and optimistic have better peripheral vision? That’s right; a recent study shows that happier people actually see MORE! When you have more positive emotions, your choices are broader; you’ll see more options and perceive more possibilities. If you have more negative emotions, you’ll have narrower vision.

The implications of that are pretty amazing: positive emotions open us up!

And now for a little black humor

Part 1 -

A new advertising slogan?

"Dying to quit smoking? Try Chantix!"

Part 2 -

What's missing from this list? Karl Malden, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays

Here's my thinking:
Karl Malden - 1950's - I'm the tough guy
Ed McMahon - 1960's - I'm the jovial uncle
Farah Fawcett - 1970's - I'm the gorgeous girl next door
Michael Jackson - 1980's - I'm bad
Billy Mays - 2000's - I'm selling LOUDLY

10 Coach's Tips for Getting Yourself to Do Something You HATE

We all have things we need to do that we don't want to do. As a coach, I know many of them. I found myself having to put a few to use this morning to get myself to do my bookkeeping (which I hate), and I thought I'd share them with you.

1. Chunk it down -- Break it into smaller pieces, so it doesn't look so huge. For me, this means saying, I'll just balance one electronic checkbook today.
2. Time delimit it -- This is a variation of 'chunk it down': you're chunking by time instead of by the task. For example, I'll just work on this for one hour each day.
3. Set up a reward system -- Reward yourself for doing a set amount of the chore, or accomplishing some goal. The rewards have to come often enough to keep you motivated, but not so often that they mean nothing, or that you get nothing done. For example, for each hour I spend working on the project, I get a 10 minute break.
   
4. Set up accountability -- This can be a partner (including a coach) to whom you must report, or it can be a negative consequence for not doing what you promised. There is economic research to show that this works very well. Perhaps a $100 check to someone else's favorite charity?
   
5. Remind yourself of the natural negative consequences of not doing it -- for example, if I don't do my bookkeeping (ever), my taxes never get done and I end up with a huge IRS problem. Make this look bigger and bigger, and you'll get it done.
6. Find a way to make it pleasant -- Can you play music while you do it? Listen to the radio? Watch TV? (I actually listen to daytime TV, which makes me feel like I'm at a coffee klatsch, instead of doing a chore.)
7. Set up a regular time to do it -- if it's not a one time thing. So I'll just do the bookkeeping at a set time each day. This, btw, is particularly good for exercise, because your body gets used to it, and the day will begin to feel wrong if you don't exercise when you're used to doing it.
   
8. Do it with a friend -- This one doesn't apply to bookkeeping, so I'll use a different example. Years ago, I was bemoaning the need to clean out my garage to a friend, who confessed the same need. We decided to do it together, one Saturday at her garage, and one at mine. And that actually made it fun! It went more than twice as fast, and working with someone who is emotionally neutral about the task makes it easier. (I didn't see that ugly umbrella stand as a gift from her long dead aunt, I just saw it as unused and really hideous. That made it much easier for her to give it away.) Plus we exchanged some charity pile items, so working in my friend's garage felt a bit like Christmas to me, as working in my garage did for her.
9. Delegate it -- You can pay people to do many things! (Honestly, delegating bookkeeping hasn't worked too well for me, so if you've had a good experience, let me know.) And even if you can't afford to pay someone, you might be able to trade with a friend. I was a horrible typist (and am still working on those keyboarding skills -- many blessing to spell check programs), so in college, I used to hem a friend's pants in exchange for her typing my papers.
10. Remove the underlying resistance -- There's generally a deeper reason why you don't want to do something, and if you remove that, the resistance goes away, and you just do it. If you'd like to do that, please call me, because shifting a deeper level issue is unique to the person and the issue, one size does not fit all.

And then, just do it!

On (Not) Being a Fan

I really don't get the whole idea of being a fan of someone. I don't mean fan, as in I-really-enjoy-that-music, which I certainly do. I appreciate talent and skill, especially when they come together, in any field, from singing to dancing to figure skating to waiting tables or knitting, all of which can be an art form. I honor and respect anyone who really masters these or any other skills, which is what elevates them from craft to art.

No, I don't get being a fan (short for 'fanatic'), as in I-love-everything-she-does-have-to-have-the-CD-immediately-willing-to-camp-out-in-line-for-tickets-to-every-concert-buy-the-tee-shirt-follow-her-on-Twitter-and-cut-my-hair-like-hers. I don't get it, and I never have. When I was 5 or 6, my Mom (bless her heart) took my toddler sister and me to see the movie, "A Hard Day's Night". I didn't get why all those teenage girls were screaming their heads off. Yes, the Beatles were the hottest thing on Earth, but they weren't even in the theater -- it was a movie.

So when Michael Jackson died, I said as much to my sister, now a very wise woman, who replied, "People see God through these very talented people." Okay, that I get. I do really get that Michael Jackson was channeling energy, at least some of the time, and that that experience can be called 'seeing God'. In an interview on ABC news, Martin Bashir asked him what he thought when he danced, and he answered words to the effect of "I don't think; you can't think, because that ruins it; you just have to be the music". Umm, doesn't that sound like channeling music through the body? And wow, was he a superlative dancer.

I think this second type of fan creates a number of problems, both for the fan, and more obviously for the channel, aka celebrity. It seems to me that if you're a fan, you're probably not honoring your own ability to channel, or to touch God, or have God flow through you, or however you want to say it. What a waste, for the fan and for the world!

The problem for the celebrity/channel is that fans don't discriminate between the person, who is just as human as anyone else (which is probably why one of People magazine's most popular features is something like "Celebrities are Just Like You and Me"), and the channeled energy, which is special. So the channels get treated like deities, and can lose touch with reality, especially if their adulation began quite young, before they even knew who they were. Wouldn't that at least partly explain the meltdowns of Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and of course, Michael Jackson?

Thomas Jefferson on Walking

"The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise."

That pretty much says it for me!

Brain scans show how hypnosis can paralyze a limb - USATODAY.com

Brain scans show how hypnosis can paralyze a limb - USATODAY.com

Try this at home!

Have you ever felt like someone else's negativity really sapped your energy? It's true -- and you can demonstrate it yourself with kinesiology.

In the last year, I've seen two great lecture/demonstations that use kinesiology. The first was by Donna Eden ("Energy Medicine"), and the second, just last week, by Jack Canfield ("Chicken Soup for the Soul", and many more). They were so wonderful -- clear ad easy to do -- that I want to share them with you, and encourage you to try them at home.

First, a description of kinesiology in case you don't know about it. Version one requires 2 people, the tester and the one being tested (or Testee). The Testee puts one arm, generally the non-dominant one, directly out from his/her shoulder at shoulder height. This can be done directly forward from the shoulder, with palm facing center, or directly out to the side, with palm facing front. I've seen it done both ways. The tester asks the Testee to resist, and then pushes down on the Testee's arm, to see how much force the person can resist.

Version two requires only 1 person, and an appropriately sized weight (this method courtesy of Donna Eden). You determine your appropriate weight by finding one that you can lift with your arm outstretched at shoulder height when thinking a true thought, but can't lift when thinking a false thought. Yes, this really works! For me, as well as 2 other women with whom I've done this, it's a 9 pound weight. [Go to a gym or sporting goods store and try different weights till you find the right one for you.]

Both Eden and Canfield began with things I'd seen before:

• Testee thinks a positive thought (and can resist tester's push easily)
• Testee thinks a negative thought (and can't resist)

Here is one of Donna Eden's new twists, whcih she says proves that energy automatically goes from the strong to the weak:

• Testee is part of a couple, and is strong. Testee can resist push.
• Testee's partner is weak (upset, ill, etc.), and can't resist push.
• They hold hands. Testee can't resist push -- but Testee's partner can!

She also has Testees who are weak (can't resist push) do simple interventions, like walking a few steps backwards, and then they can resist! Unfortunately, you have to be able to see clairvoyantly to know which intervention will work, though you can try them all until one works.

Here is the first of Jack Canfield's new twists, designed to show group effects on an individual:

• He has 4 random people join the Testee in a line, holding hands
• All think a positive thought, and the Testee can resist a push.
• One of the line up, but not the Testee, thinks a negative thought. The Testee, who is still thinking a positive thought, as are all 3 others in the line, can't resist a push.
  

So it's important that people with whom you are working (or living, etc.) are aligned, or you're going to significantly weaken their effectiveness.

Here's the second, which shows that protecting your energy field really does work:

• The Testee stands alone on the stage and thinks a positive thought. Testee can resist a push.
• The audience thinks something negative about the Testee. Testee can't resist a push.
• The audience thinks something positive about the Testee. Testee can resist a push.
  
• Testee puts up energetic protection around his/her energy field.
  
• The audience thinks something negative about the Testee. Testee can resist a push.

If you work in an unfriendly setting, or need to deal with negative and/or hostile people in other parts of your life, and would like to learn how to put up energetic shields, call me at 888-4-hollis (888-446-5547).