A 40 day worldwide Spiritual Practice Period, promoted by A Winterfeast for the soul.
The mission of A Winter Feast for the Soul is to support individuals around the world in making a commitment to daily spiritual practice for forty days. A life grounded in daily practice is one that knows inner peace. It is that peace which translates into peace throughout our lives and ultimately to peace and healing for our planet.
We know that it only takes a few committed individuals to change the world. We are here to do that. Please join us this coming winter for
A Winter Feast for the Soul
a 40-day worldwide spiritual practice period for people of all faiths everywhere.
January 15 – February 23, 2009
I recommend you to try one of the meditations. They are very nice and very powerful. Even if you are new to meditation, you can follow along as best you can. Maybe you'll surprise yourself with how well you can do!!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Love is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe, And the Key to Your Personal Greatness
by Sheva Carr, CEO of FYERA.
This past Monday was Martin Luther King Day here in the States, and I was thrilled to discover this quote in my email inbox:
"The key to making nonviolence a way of life is to accept love as the guiding principle of all our relationships.
Pain and suffering comes into all of our lives; but only love can heal the wounds of the past. Only love can lift us up and make us whole and free.
If you let love rule your heart, there is no obstacle, no barrier, no problem you can't overcome. This is God's promise to every human being and it is the key to liberation for us all.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe and it is also the most available force, because everyone can tap into it."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr
light switch This is the essence of HeartMath, the essence of Fyera! “Love is the most powerful force in the Universe…” The heart is the strongest source of electricity in the body, with each heart cell a power generator, each heart cell its own “battery.” The heart is 60-80 times more powerful than the brain. When we love, and anyone can love, and everyone loves something (I have yet, anyway, to meet anyone who does not, even those most marginalized in our society), our love creates an ordered pattern in the heartbeat. This ordered pattern causes the brain, and everything else in the body, to entrain to its coherent signal. Much the same way incandescent light becomes focused around a common frequency when streamed into a laser, your love focuses every fiber of your being around a common point, and calls universal forces forth to organize around the spine of your clarity. You can literally measure your electrical radiance in hertz per millisecond (or the power output of the “batteries” in your heart) on the emWave PC, a power which dramatically increases in focus and strength in a state of love. What Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the heart, can now be measured and proven by a little device hooked up to your computer! That’s TRIPPY!
The average 40 watt light bulb in your living room, when turned into a laser, becomes a coherent force powerful enough to burn a hole through the sun from the earth. The average human being, like Martin Luther King, when turned into a laser through love, becomes a coherent force that transforms our world and taps into personal Greatness.
Another favorite Martin Luther King quote is one that I often refer to when teaching our Heart Blueprints Course:
"Not everyone can be famous, but everyone can be Great, because Greatness is determined by service."
When you love, you cannot help but serve, just by your presence. Service is not giving money to starving children in Ethiopia or skid row in LA, unless you love them. If you love them, that is service. And your love serves in both the presence and absence of other resources, because it is the most powerful force in the Universe. As Mother Theresa said, “It matters not what you do, only that you do it with love.” When you love, the blueprint of your maximum potential- your Heart’s Blueprint- has all the fertilizer it needs to grow to full bloom in the internal order in generates in you and around you.
heart eyes I am fascinated by genius, fascinated by human beings who have transcended their mediocrity and stepped into greatness. Human beings who live to their full potential and blossom the unfolding blueprint of the heart all the way, human beings like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King. This weekend I taught a retreat in which we took a field trip to a Museum with original works by Galileo, Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Thomas Edison, Einstein. These were my high school heroes, people who were Great because they looked at the same things everyone else saw (the stars, light, color, trains at a train station), but they saw something completely different because they saw through the eyes of the heart. As a result, they have permanently changed how we see the world, but most importantly each one in their own way changed how we see ourselves. Even those whose theories have since been enhanced, refined, or abandoned for other world views, have left a presence of innovation and creation that is undeniable and Great because they opened our mind’s to see beyond our conditioning and to look fresh with the heart’s eyes.
How do we, as individuals struggling to pay the bills, find the right relationship, get over a cold, get our kids to school on time, find the right diet in a sea of opposing advice, and just get through the day in tact, tap into our personal greatness?
world heart There is a simple user name and password with which at any time, and in any situation, we can login to the laser of our love, the grandeur of our greatness, even in the most mundane messes in life. The access code is care. Care is love in action. Care about someone else, care about yourself, it doesn’t matter, just care, because care creates order in your heart and mind and returns you to the state of love in which the forces of the Universe use you for their expression and service. Care turns the mundane into the magnificent. Care creates value.
Care has its kryptonite, however. When you care about what others think of you, or how you look, or what you’ll get out of the deal, that’s not care- that’s vanity and insecurity. The irony is that when we try to measure up against other great people in history, in the very act of measuring ourselves against or imitating something outside of us, we divest the currency of our attention from our own greatness and transfer it to an account with a lousy ROI called vanity. Vanity and insecurity define success by how the outside world sees things. By definition vanity is insecure, because its success or failure is measured outside of you, by something beyond your internal control. True success, and greatness, is an inside job. The heart experiences success as an expression of your real self, which is love. Love is a source of power, and it puts the power back inside you as the source of love. What do you love? Love what you love, more than you love getting love!
heart power In King’s quote he said that letting “…love rule your heart…is the key to liberation for us all.” Isn’t that interesting that letting your love rule you actually frees you? What love liberates us from is our small boxed in sense of who we are, our “personal identity” that imprisons our life force in a story of what we can and cannot do, or say or feel, how we can and cannot behave. Galileo was more fascinated with the workings of the Universe than he was with the personal identity (and even threat to his own life!) that his perceptions elicited outside him. When we get to the point where we care more about people (or something!), than we care about what people think of us, this is a moment when our love can override our vanity and our greatness can shine through. This is liberation. Learning to rely on your heart as confirmation of your value rather than accolades from outside, frees you to live beyond a made-up sense of identity about yourself in your mind or in culture, and to discover yourself and your value authentically as it shines through your love. This is to live your personal greatness, your heart’s blueprint.
I have come to see this in my own life almost like clockwork. When I care, my creativity flows easily. When I care whether other people perceive what I do as good or bad, I get stuck. When I write these HeartStart chapters out of care for you, the reader, that you have a better week for what you have read, they roll off my finger tips with ease. When I am tangled by the hopes you’ll like them, or they’ll be a great book one day, or I’ll get e-mails back congratulating me on what a great writer I am, I trip and stumble over my own words and cannot seem to get it right. Care creates flow, vanity creates blockages.
wood fire When my heart is preparing me for a new level of service or exploration, my vanities pop up like kindling for the fire to fuel and light the way. A sure fire signal that I am about to take another leap forward in my evolution is when the old chorus of insecurities start whispering in my ear- “You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’ve done nothing with your life. You’re…” fill in the blank. This inner critic is not bad. It’s simply showing me where I have created a fixated story about who “I” am, and is asking me if I am willing to put that story on a funeral pire bonfire of the vanities to light the way to see beyond myself and my little sense of “I.” Will I light the log of vanity on the fire for fuel, or will I buy into it and carry the burden of a heavy piece of wood with me everywhere I go? The heart helps me let go of the burden of who I am not.
President Obama’s story is a true inspiration to me in this regard. When he graduated from Harvard, he had the opportunity to accept a prestigious job in a law firm that would have sung out to many people’s vanity. It offered high pay, and would have given him status by external measuring sticks, etc. But he felt it would be a distraction from his desire to organize communities out of care for the people in them. He cared more about people than about what people thought of him. As a result, without any ambition to rise to this role, he has been awarded the mantle of one of the most respected positions in the world, as the President of the United States. What excites me about Obama’s win is not that he is the first African American President, but that he is the first president I have observed in my lifetime who has arrived at the White House not through personal ambition but out of care for people. He is the first person I have seen in the Oval office who is there not out of vanity, but out of personal greatness. That is radical.
As King said, “Not everyone can be famous…” and not everyone can be president, “but everyone can be great.” Take a moment to care more about life, than about who or what your care makes you or gets you. The irony is that when you do that, it makes you great, in whatever role your greatness is destined to play. Lazaris calls it grace. He says grace is doing what comes naturally to you as flight to a bird. Often the things that make you great seem so simple to you that you overlook them, because your greatness is in your grace, not your ego, not your trying to impress. Your greatness is in your heart.
The bottom line is that you are love. And when you love what you love more than you love GETTING loved (Isn’t it silly to try to “get love”?! Like trying to get what you already are!), then your greatness shines through. The good news is that this can be learned, it can be practiced, and you can get better at it. People see me now and think it came easily to live this way, but with humility I tell you it did not. I was a teenager with a temper. As a child my vanities fueled the show. I wanted to be the center of attention all the time, and when I did not get my way I was violent. At 13 I karate chopped my own bed in half in a rage (and I never took karate!). At 8 or 9 in a fight with my brother I smashed his head into our fish tank and desperately watched my fish die because the water drained out of the broken tank so fast. It broke my heart, growing up, that my sense of self importance overrode my love for my fish, my brother, the bed made by my father’s own hand. I did not have the tools and technology I have now to know that there was a simple shift, a simple way I could educate my body and mind obsessed with little me to focus instead on caring for what I loved. And that in fact, the peace of mind that I had hoped would come through getting my way would come instead from getting out of the way so my true care could come through. King is so right, so true. “The key to making nonviolence a way of life is to accept love as the guiding principle of all our relationships.Pain and suffering comes into all of our lives; but only love can heal the wounds of the past. Only love can lift us up and make us whole and free…”
Writer’s block? Finances not flowing? Relationships in the toilet? Stress? Come back to what you care about, let care be your compass, let love be your fuel, and nothing will stop you, nothing will stand in your way. “If you let love rule your heart, there is no obstacle, no barrier, no problem you can't overcome…”
If you would like support to live your life from this care, to tap into this Universal force called love, please join us for one of our programs.
“They pride themselves on being able to understand and analyze my work, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is only necessary to love.”
-Monet, on his critics
"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
This past Monday was Martin Luther King Day here in the States, and I was thrilled to discover this quote in my email inbox:
"The key to making nonviolence a way of life is to accept love as the guiding principle of all our relationships.
Pain and suffering comes into all of our lives; but only love can heal the wounds of the past. Only love can lift us up and make us whole and free.
If you let love rule your heart, there is no obstacle, no barrier, no problem you can't overcome. This is God's promise to every human being and it is the key to liberation for us all.
Love is the most powerful force in the universe and it is also the most available force, because everyone can tap into it."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr
light switch This is the essence of HeartMath, the essence of Fyera! “Love is the most powerful force in the Universe…” The heart is the strongest source of electricity in the body, with each heart cell a power generator, each heart cell its own “battery.” The heart is 60-80 times more powerful than the brain. When we love, and anyone can love, and everyone loves something (I have yet, anyway, to meet anyone who does not, even those most marginalized in our society), our love creates an ordered pattern in the heartbeat. This ordered pattern causes the brain, and everything else in the body, to entrain to its coherent signal. Much the same way incandescent light becomes focused around a common frequency when streamed into a laser, your love focuses every fiber of your being around a common point, and calls universal forces forth to organize around the spine of your clarity. You can literally measure your electrical radiance in hertz per millisecond (or the power output of the “batteries” in your heart) on the emWave PC, a power which dramatically increases in focus and strength in a state of love. What Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the heart, can now be measured and proven by a little device hooked up to your computer! That’s TRIPPY!
The average 40 watt light bulb in your living room, when turned into a laser, becomes a coherent force powerful enough to burn a hole through the sun from the earth. The average human being, like Martin Luther King, when turned into a laser through love, becomes a coherent force that transforms our world and taps into personal Greatness.
Another favorite Martin Luther King quote is one that I often refer to when teaching our Heart Blueprints Course:
"Not everyone can be famous, but everyone can be Great, because Greatness is determined by service."
When you love, you cannot help but serve, just by your presence. Service is not giving money to starving children in Ethiopia or skid row in LA, unless you love them. If you love them, that is service. And your love serves in both the presence and absence of other resources, because it is the most powerful force in the Universe. As Mother Theresa said, “It matters not what you do, only that you do it with love.” When you love, the blueprint of your maximum potential- your Heart’s Blueprint- has all the fertilizer it needs to grow to full bloom in the internal order in generates in you and around you.
heart eyes I am fascinated by genius, fascinated by human beings who have transcended their mediocrity and stepped into greatness. Human beings who live to their full potential and blossom the unfolding blueprint of the heart all the way, human beings like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King. This weekend I taught a retreat in which we took a field trip to a Museum with original works by Galileo, Copernicus, Sir Isaac Newton, Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Thomas Edison, Einstein. These were my high school heroes, people who were Great because they looked at the same things everyone else saw (the stars, light, color, trains at a train station), but they saw something completely different because they saw through the eyes of the heart. As a result, they have permanently changed how we see the world, but most importantly each one in their own way changed how we see ourselves. Even those whose theories have since been enhanced, refined, or abandoned for other world views, have left a presence of innovation and creation that is undeniable and Great because they opened our mind’s to see beyond our conditioning and to look fresh with the heart’s eyes.
How do we, as individuals struggling to pay the bills, find the right relationship, get over a cold, get our kids to school on time, find the right diet in a sea of opposing advice, and just get through the day in tact, tap into our personal greatness?
world heart There is a simple user name and password with which at any time, and in any situation, we can login to the laser of our love, the grandeur of our greatness, even in the most mundane messes in life. The access code is care. Care is love in action. Care about someone else, care about yourself, it doesn’t matter, just care, because care creates order in your heart and mind and returns you to the state of love in which the forces of the Universe use you for their expression and service. Care turns the mundane into the magnificent. Care creates value.
Care has its kryptonite, however. When you care about what others think of you, or how you look, or what you’ll get out of the deal, that’s not care- that’s vanity and insecurity. The irony is that when we try to measure up against other great people in history, in the very act of measuring ourselves against or imitating something outside of us, we divest the currency of our attention from our own greatness and transfer it to an account with a lousy ROI called vanity. Vanity and insecurity define success by how the outside world sees things. By definition vanity is insecure, because its success or failure is measured outside of you, by something beyond your internal control. True success, and greatness, is an inside job. The heart experiences success as an expression of your real self, which is love. Love is a source of power, and it puts the power back inside you as the source of love. What do you love? Love what you love, more than you love getting love!
heart power In King’s quote he said that letting “…love rule your heart…is the key to liberation for us all.” Isn’t that interesting that letting your love rule you actually frees you? What love liberates us from is our small boxed in sense of who we are, our “personal identity” that imprisons our life force in a story of what we can and cannot do, or say or feel, how we can and cannot behave. Galileo was more fascinated with the workings of the Universe than he was with the personal identity (and even threat to his own life!) that his perceptions elicited outside him. When we get to the point where we care more about people (or something!), than we care about what people think of us, this is a moment when our love can override our vanity and our greatness can shine through. This is liberation. Learning to rely on your heart as confirmation of your value rather than accolades from outside, frees you to live beyond a made-up sense of identity about yourself in your mind or in culture, and to discover yourself and your value authentically as it shines through your love. This is to live your personal greatness, your heart’s blueprint.
I have come to see this in my own life almost like clockwork. When I care, my creativity flows easily. When I care whether other people perceive what I do as good or bad, I get stuck. When I write these HeartStart chapters out of care for you, the reader, that you have a better week for what you have read, they roll off my finger tips with ease. When I am tangled by the hopes you’ll like them, or they’ll be a great book one day, or I’ll get e-mails back congratulating me on what a great writer I am, I trip and stumble over my own words and cannot seem to get it right. Care creates flow, vanity creates blockages.
wood fire When my heart is preparing me for a new level of service or exploration, my vanities pop up like kindling for the fire to fuel and light the way. A sure fire signal that I am about to take another leap forward in my evolution is when the old chorus of insecurities start whispering in my ear- “You’re fat. You’re ugly. You’re stupid. You’ve done nothing with your life. You’re…” fill in the blank. This inner critic is not bad. It’s simply showing me where I have created a fixated story about who “I” am, and is asking me if I am willing to put that story on a funeral pire bonfire of the vanities to light the way to see beyond myself and my little sense of “I.” Will I light the log of vanity on the fire for fuel, or will I buy into it and carry the burden of a heavy piece of wood with me everywhere I go? The heart helps me let go of the burden of who I am not.
President Obama’s story is a true inspiration to me in this regard. When he graduated from Harvard, he had the opportunity to accept a prestigious job in a law firm that would have sung out to many people’s vanity. It offered high pay, and would have given him status by external measuring sticks, etc. But he felt it would be a distraction from his desire to organize communities out of care for the people in them. He cared more about people than about what people thought of him. As a result, without any ambition to rise to this role, he has been awarded the mantle of one of the most respected positions in the world, as the President of the United States. What excites me about Obama’s win is not that he is the first African American President, but that he is the first president I have observed in my lifetime who has arrived at the White House not through personal ambition but out of care for people. He is the first person I have seen in the Oval office who is there not out of vanity, but out of personal greatness. That is radical.
As King said, “Not everyone can be famous…” and not everyone can be president, “but everyone can be great.” Take a moment to care more about life, than about who or what your care makes you or gets you. The irony is that when you do that, it makes you great, in whatever role your greatness is destined to play. Lazaris calls it grace. He says grace is doing what comes naturally to you as flight to a bird. Often the things that make you great seem so simple to you that you overlook them, because your greatness is in your grace, not your ego, not your trying to impress. Your greatness is in your heart.
The bottom line is that you are love. And when you love what you love more than you love GETTING loved (Isn’t it silly to try to “get love”?! Like trying to get what you already are!), then your greatness shines through. The good news is that this can be learned, it can be practiced, and you can get better at it. People see me now and think it came easily to live this way, but with humility I tell you it did not. I was a teenager with a temper. As a child my vanities fueled the show. I wanted to be the center of attention all the time, and when I did not get my way I was violent. At 13 I karate chopped my own bed in half in a rage (and I never took karate!). At 8 or 9 in a fight with my brother I smashed his head into our fish tank and desperately watched my fish die because the water drained out of the broken tank so fast. It broke my heart, growing up, that my sense of self importance overrode my love for my fish, my brother, the bed made by my father’s own hand. I did not have the tools and technology I have now to know that there was a simple shift, a simple way I could educate my body and mind obsessed with little me to focus instead on caring for what I loved. And that in fact, the peace of mind that I had hoped would come through getting my way would come instead from getting out of the way so my true care could come through. King is so right, so true. “The key to making nonviolence a way of life is to accept love as the guiding principle of all our relationships.Pain and suffering comes into all of our lives; but only love can heal the wounds of the past. Only love can lift us up and make us whole and free…”
Writer’s block? Finances not flowing? Relationships in the toilet? Stress? Come back to what you care about, let care be your compass, let love be your fuel, and nothing will stop you, nothing will stand in your way. “If you let love rule your heart, there is no obstacle, no barrier, no problem you can't overcome…”
If you would like support to live your life from this care, to tap into this Universal force called love, please join us for one of our programs.
“They pride themselves on being able to understand and analyze my work, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is only necessary to love.”
-Monet, on his critics
"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Happy Chinese New Year
Happy Chinese New Year! It's the year of the Ox!
According to my wonderful book on Chinese Astrology "Susanne White's Original Chinese Astrology Book"... "In these years, everybody has to buckle down and tote those barges. For those who resist work, Ox years can be disastrously infertile. Dictators flourish in the Ox years... Ox years are benevolent for farmers. Harvests are usually not attacked by beetle, flood, drought, or marauding animals. For once, the Ox himself is not at odds with his security."
So enjoy this new year and work hard in the coming year. Abundance will follow!!!
According to my wonderful book on Chinese Astrology "Susanne White's Original Chinese Astrology Book"... "In these years, everybody has to buckle down and tote those barges. For those who resist work, Ox years can be disastrously infertile. Dictators flourish in the Ox years... Ox years are benevolent for farmers. Harvests are usually not attacked by beetle, flood, drought, or marauding animals. For once, the Ox himself is not at odds with his security."
So enjoy this new year and work hard in the coming year. Abundance will follow!!!
St. Michael’s Guatemala Project – CALL FOR SUMMER 2009 TEAMS
Friends. I went on this summer project to Guatemala in 2006. I had a great 3 weeks hiking and living with mountain villagers and working on this project. You don't need alot of experience, mostly just a willingness to help out and be with people in another country. The following is from an email I got from Ila Abernathy, of Tucson, who is the brains and heart behind this 15 yr old project.
"Guatemala Project lists, Additional information for you: I will be attending a wedding in NC May 30 and so probably won't leave for Guatemala before June 11, possibly not until June 15. If at all possible, I'm also going to Guate for two weeks in March, to attend the annual Asamblea General and work on fiscal stuff. If a medical person could also go at this time, we could do some basic work in communities near Nebaj and possibly arrange for some followup treatment for children. Please get in touch with me immediately if you are interested in doing something in March.
Air fares on major carriers from Tucson presently are running in the + / - $800 range. We'll hope for price breaks. Continental fares from Phoenix, including taxes, are running much less."
ILA ABERNATHY (520) 623-3063
ilaa@mindspring.com
St. Michael’s Guatemala Project – CALL FOR SUMMER 2009 TEAMS
PRELIMINARY MEETING SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22, 3 - 4:45 P.M.
Woods Memorial Library, 3455 N. First Avenue
Volunteers interested in joining small teams to visit the rural Maya of the CPR-Sierra for 2 to 9 weeks, from mid-June through early August, are invited to bring their questions February 22, and / or to contact R.N. Sarah Roberts, (520) 577-1806, or Coordinator Ila Abernathy, (520) 623-3063, ilaa@mindspring.com. Spanish speakers and health professionals are particularly encouraged to participate in this collaboration with local Mayan health promoters.
Everyone helps courier supplies from the U.S. After in-country orientation, teams accompany Mayan health workers and the Coordinator on 2 to 4 week "giras" (circuits). All participants pay their own expenses.
St. Michael’s Guatemala Project is an ongoing, nonprofit, non-sectarian informal partnership with the Maya of the CPR-Sierra [Communities of Population in Resistance of the Sierra] that continues a relationship begun in 1993. Focus areas include community health and health education, advocacy, arts and culture, mutual learning, and commitment to indigenous self-determination. Presently the Project provides economic aid to 30 rural Mayan health workers and helps with other health needs.
For detail and photos, please visit www.cprguatemalaproject.org.
"Guatemala Project lists, Additional information for you: I will be attending a wedding in NC May 30 and so probably won't leave for Guatemala before June 11, possibly not until June 15. If at all possible, I'm also going to Guate for two weeks in March, to attend the annual Asamblea General and work on fiscal stuff. If a medical person could also go at this time, we could do some basic work in communities near Nebaj and possibly arrange for some followup treatment for children. Please get in touch with me immediately if you are interested in doing something in March.
Air fares on major carriers from Tucson presently are running in the + / - $800 range. We'll hope for price breaks. Continental fares from Phoenix, including taxes, are running much less."
ILA ABERNATHY (520) 623-3063
ilaa@mindspring.com
St. Michael’s Guatemala Project – CALL FOR SUMMER 2009 TEAMS
PRELIMINARY MEETING SUNDAY FEBRUARY 22, 3 - 4:45 P.M.
Woods Memorial Library, 3455 N. First Avenue
Volunteers interested in joining small teams to visit the rural Maya of the CPR-Sierra for 2 to 9 weeks, from mid-June through early August, are invited to bring their questions February 22, and / or to contact R.N. Sarah Roberts, (520) 577-1806, or Coordinator Ila Abernathy, (520) 623-3063, ilaa@mindspring.com. Spanish speakers and health professionals are particularly encouraged to participate in this collaboration with local Mayan health promoters.
Everyone helps courier supplies from the U.S. After in-country orientation, teams accompany Mayan health workers and the Coordinator on 2 to 4 week "giras" (circuits). All participants pay their own expenses.
St. Michael’s Guatemala Project is an ongoing, nonprofit, non-sectarian informal partnership with the Maya of the CPR-Sierra [Communities of Population in Resistance of the Sierra] that continues a relationship begun in 1993. Focus areas include community health and health education, advocacy, arts and culture, mutual learning, and commitment to indigenous self-determination. Presently the Project provides economic aid to 30 rural Mayan health workers and helps with other health needs.
For detail and photos, please visit www.cprguatemalaproject.org.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Elephant-Dog friendship in Tennessee
I need to go see this place. I think it may only be a couple of hours from Nashville. Wow, elephants in Tennessee!!
Watch CBS Videos Online
Watch CBS Videos Online
Monday, January 19, 2009
Widgets
Today the 20th of January, 2009 was pretty special. It was moving day in Washington, D.C. Everyone seemed to be pretty caught up in the historic moment. I know I was!
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Grateful Dead Tour 2009
Check it out kids. Who wants to rally in Greensboro, N.C. on April 12th????
Video practice for Obama!
Tour info
Video practice for Obama!
Tour info
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Flying Norwegians
This looks unbelievable to me. See what you think. Man can fly like a bird!
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Freewill Astrology
I enjoy astrology and my favorite column for it is the weekly FREEWILL ASTROLOGY by Rob Brezsny. I find it quite insightful and with a sense of humor along with it. Below is his forecast for the week of December 25, 2008. It applies to the coming year. For me, Virgo, my task ahead has to do with liberation,through the use of attention, awareness, and discipline. I'm jiggy with that! And if you read some of the other horoscopes, not your own, you will find valuable insights in each and every one.
So good cheer and good tidings to you in the year to come. Have an astrologically great year!
_____________________________________________________________________________
From http://www.freewillastrology.com
Horoscopes for week of December 25, 2008
ARIES:
Most people spend their entire lives immersed in three modes of awareness: waking, sleeping, and dreaming. But there are many other modes that have been explored down through the ages by the pioneers of consciousness. Some of them aren't very interesting to me -- like those sought out by people who use cocaine or methamphetamines, for instance -- while others are states I aspire to inhabit, like lucid dreaming, deep meditation, and a visceral perception of the fact that love is the fundamental law of the universe. I bring this line of thought to your attention, Aries, because I believe that in 2009 you will have excellent opportunities to open up your mind to levels of consciousness that are beyond the basic three. No drugs are necessary to take advantage -- only a driving curiosity to tune in to realities that are currently outside of your field of vision.
TAURUS:
In the original Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1787, each black slave living in America was counted as three-fifths of a person. Seventy-eight years later, the Thirteenth Amendment conferred the missing two-fifths on all who had up until then been regarded as partial humans. I predict that a comparable milestone will come for you in 2009, Taurus. Where in your life have you been marginalized or perpetually unfinished? What fragmented role have you been compelled to play? What situation has prevented you from being all you can be? You will have an excellent chance of completing the circuit in the coming months.
GEMINI:
According to the novelist John Gardner, there are just two kinds of stories in literature: you go on a journey, or a stranger arrives in your world. According to my analysis of your destiny in 2009, you will reap rich rewards by including both of those plotlines in your life story. So let the brainstorming begin, Gemini: What's the best journey you could choose for yourself -- a journey that will educate, challenge, and delight you? And what can you do to attract the best kinds of strangers into your world -- strangers who will educate, challenge, and delight you?
CANCER:
To get ready for 2009, I invite you to fantasize in depth about the fertile alliances that might be possible for you to cultivate in the coming months. These lively, inspiring bonds could be with people you haven't met yet. They could be with acquaintances you barely know but would like to know better. And they could be with friends, collaborators, and loved ones you're already intimate with but want to become even closer to. The coming year has the potential to bring revolutionary advances in the quality and intensity of your relationships, so it will be smart for you to work hard on making that happen.
LEO:
"What do I long for?" should be a core question for you -- always, of course, but especially in 2009. Are you adventurous enough to look beyond the status symbols your ego is attached to and the transitory wishes that constantly flit through your imagination? If so, you'll prime yourself to establish a root connection with your soul's deepest yearnings. And when you're in daily touch with those primal motivators, the obstacles in your life will seem less overwhelming; the lies you tell yourself will dissolve; and you will consistently have crisp intuitions about what your next move must be. Life may not necessarily be a breeze, but it'll be profoundly magical.
VIRGO:
When I predict that liberation will be one of your primary tasks in 2009, Virgo, I'm not speaking about it in the usual way. The definition I'm working with is one that the writer David Foster Wallace articulated: "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." I hope you'll be moved to add other nuances and flourishes to that approach as you experiment with it liberally in the coming months.
LIBRA:
"I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." That was Michelangelo talking about how he approached his work as a sculptor. He didn't build the statue, in other words, but got rid of the unnecessary stuff that was surrounding it. I suggest that you try this approach in 2009. You have the potential to create a great thing -- maybe even two great things -- by chiseling away the extraneous material that's obscuring their unique beauty.
SCORPIO:
In 2009, don't just tune in to your hunches now and then. Be more diligent and intense than that. Check in with your intuition at least three times a day on all 365 days of the year. Be precise in the questions you pose it. Gather its clues craftily. Have fun as you joke and play with it. Conscientiously experiment with the suggestions it provides. This will be the year you can establish a steady, reliable connection with your inner voice. Be devout in your dedication to the cult of your intuition!
SAGITAURIUS:
Want to supercharge your luck in 2009? Get yourself some vivid new superstitions. The more outrageous they are, the more likely it is they'll generate lots of crazy sweet karma. You might want to draw inspiration from pro football player John Henderson, for instance, who swears he can trick destiny into working in his favor if his trainer smacks him in the face before each game. Former hockey player Bruce Gardiner might also be a worthy role model. To rev up his good fortune, he always shoved his hockey stick into a toilet prior to skating out onto the ice. JUST KIDDING, Sagittarius! In fact, I hope you will make 2009 your least superstitious year ever. Let's drink a toast to lucid logic, impeccable objectivity, and cool, clean reason! Add some compassionate sarcasm and loving satire into the mix, and you will generate lots of crazy sweet karma.
CAPRICORN:
The most expensive bat mitzvah in history took place at New York's Rainbow Room in November 2005. David Brooks, a billionaire defense contractor, spent $10 million on his daughter's rite of passage. Among the stars he hired to perform at the bash were Aerosmith, Tom Petty, Nelly, and 50 Cent. Promise me, Capricorn, that if you get wealthy in the coming year, you won't blow your money on ridiculous "luxuries" like that. Here's a secret: The more high-minded you are in cultivating your dreams, the greater the likelihood is that you'll get richer quicker.
AQUARIUS:
Imagine you're driving down a very wide highway that's 50 lanes across even though there are no lines dividing one lane from another. Speed limit signs aren't posted, and some vehicles are zipping along in zigzag paths at over 100 mph while others crawl along like old-lady turtles. Now and then you've got to weave your way through a congested area where many on-ramps all feed into the road simultaneously. You haven't seen an off-ramp yet, and you're not sure where to get off anyway. I figure, Aquarius, that 2008 had some resemblance to the scenario I just described. Luckily, I predict that no later than your birthday, you will find an off-ramp and exit onto an uncluttered backroad with great scenery.
PISCES:
"How do you slay the dragon?" journalist Bill Moyers asked mythologist Joseph Campbell in an interview. By "dragon," he was referring to the dangerous beast that symbolizes the most unripe and uncontrollable part of each of our lives. In reply to Moyers, Campbell didn't suggest that you become a master warrior, nor did he recommend that you cultivate high levels of sleek, savage anger. "Follow your bliss," he said simply. Personally, I don't know if that's enough to slay the dragon -- I'm inclined to believe that you also have to take some defensive measures -- but it's definitely worth an extended experiment. Would you consider trying that in 2009?
So good cheer and good tidings to you in the year to come. Have an astrologically great year!
_____________________________________________________________________________
From http://www.freewillastrology.com
Horoscopes for week of December 25, 2008
ARIES:
Most people spend their entire lives immersed in three modes of awareness: waking, sleeping, and dreaming. But there are many other modes that have been explored down through the ages by the pioneers of consciousness. Some of them aren't very interesting to me -- like those sought out by people who use cocaine or methamphetamines, for instance -- while others are states I aspire to inhabit, like lucid dreaming, deep meditation, and a visceral perception of the fact that love is the fundamental law of the universe. I bring this line of thought to your attention, Aries, because I believe that in 2009 you will have excellent opportunities to open up your mind to levels of consciousness that are beyond the basic three. No drugs are necessary to take advantage -- only a driving curiosity to tune in to realities that are currently outside of your field of vision.
TAURUS:
In the original Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1787, each black slave living in America was counted as three-fifths of a person. Seventy-eight years later, the Thirteenth Amendment conferred the missing two-fifths on all who had up until then been regarded as partial humans. I predict that a comparable milestone will come for you in 2009, Taurus. Where in your life have you been marginalized or perpetually unfinished? What fragmented role have you been compelled to play? What situation has prevented you from being all you can be? You will have an excellent chance of completing the circuit in the coming months.
GEMINI:
According to the novelist John Gardner, there are just two kinds of stories in literature: you go on a journey, or a stranger arrives in your world. According to my analysis of your destiny in 2009, you will reap rich rewards by including both of those plotlines in your life story. So let the brainstorming begin, Gemini: What's the best journey you could choose for yourself -- a journey that will educate, challenge, and delight you? And what can you do to attract the best kinds of strangers into your world -- strangers who will educate, challenge, and delight you?
CANCER:
To get ready for 2009, I invite you to fantasize in depth about the fertile alliances that might be possible for you to cultivate in the coming months. These lively, inspiring bonds could be with people you haven't met yet. They could be with acquaintances you barely know but would like to know better. And they could be with friends, collaborators, and loved ones you're already intimate with but want to become even closer to. The coming year has the potential to bring revolutionary advances in the quality and intensity of your relationships, so it will be smart for you to work hard on making that happen.
LEO:
"What do I long for?" should be a core question for you -- always, of course, but especially in 2009. Are you adventurous enough to look beyond the status symbols your ego is attached to and the transitory wishes that constantly flit through your imagination? If so, you'll prime yourself to establish a root connection with your soul's deepest yearnings. And when you're in daily touch with those primal motivators, the obstacles in your life will seem less overwhelming; the lies you tell yourself will dissolve; and you will consistently have crisp intuitions about what your next move must be. Life may not necessarily be a breeze, but it'll be profoundly magical.
VIRGO:
When I predict that liberation will be one of your primary tasks in 2009, Virgo, I'm not speaking about it in the usual way. The definition I'm working with is one that the writer David Foster Wallace articulated: "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day." I hope you'll be moved to add other nuances and flourishes to that approach as you experiment with it liberally in the coming months.
LIBRA:
"I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." That was Michelangelo talking about how he approached his work as a sculptor. He didn't build the statue, in other words, but got rid of the unnecessary stuff that was surrounding it. I suggest that you try this approach in 2009. You have the potential to create a great thing -- maybe even two great things -- by chiseling away the extraneous material that's obscuring their unique beauty.
SCORPIO:
In 2009, don't just tune in to your hunches now and then. Be more diligent and intense than that. Check in with your intuition at least three times a day on all 365 days of the year. Be precise in the questions you pose it. Gather its clues craftily. Have fun as you joke and play with it. Conscientiously experiment with the suggestions it provides. This will be the year you can establish a steady, reliable connection with your inner voice. Be devout in your dedication to the cult of your intuition!
SAGITAURIUS:
Want to supercharge your luck in 2009? Get yourself some vivid new superstitions. The more outrageous they are, the more likely it is they'll generate lots of crazy sweet karma. You might want to draw inspiration from pro football player John Henderson, for instance, who swears he can trick destiny into working in his favor if his trainer smacks him in the face before each game. Former hockey player Bruce Gardiner might also be a worthy role model. To rev up his good fortune, he always shoved his hockey stick into a toilet prior to skating out onto the ice. JUST KIDDING, Sagittarius! In fact, I hope you will make 2009 your least superstitious year ever. Let's drink a toast to lucid logic, impeccable objectivity, and cool, clean reason! Add some compassionate sarcasm and loving satire into the mix, and you will generate lots of crazy sweet karma.
CAPRICORN:
The most expensive bat mitzvah in history took place at New York's Rainbow Room in November 2005. David Brooks, a billionaire defense contractor, spent $10 million on his daughter's rite of passage. Among the stars he hired to perform at the bash were Aerosmith, Tom Petty, Nelly, and 50 Cent. Promise me, Capricorn, that if you get wealthy in the coming year, you won't blow your money on ridiculous "luxuries" like that. Here's a secret: The more high-minded you are in cultivating your dreams, the greater the likelihood is that you'll get richer quicker.
AQUARIUS:
Imagine you're driving down a very wide highway that's 50 lanes across even though there are no lines dividing one lane from another. Speed limit signs aren't posted, and some vehicles are zipping along in zigzag paths at over 100 mph while others crawl along like old-lady turtles. Now and then you've got to weave your way through a congested area where many on-ramps all feed into the road simultaneously. You haven't seen an off-ramp yet, and you're not sure where to get off anyway. I figure, Aquarius, that 2008 had some resemblance to the scenario I just described. Luckily, I predict that no later than your birthday, you will find an off-ramp and exit onto an uncluttered backroad with great scenery.
PISCES:
"How do you slay the dragon?" journalist Bill Moyers asked mythologist Joseph Campbell in an interview. By "dragon," he was referring to the dangerous beast that symbolizes the most unripe and uncontrollable part of each of our lives. In reply to Moyers, Campbell didn't suggest that you become a master warrior, nor did he recommend that you cultivate high levels of sleek, savage anger. "Follow your bliss," he said simply. Personally, I don't know if that's enough to slay the dragon -- I'm inclined to believe that you also have to take some defensive measures -- but it's definitely worth an extended experiment. Would you consider trying that in 2009?
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