Sunday Family Humour 20th Feb
Personal Advancement
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16 Coloured by the actions
When we have mislaid something, our mind conditioning kicks in, and determines how long it will take us to find the lost object. Sometimes we never find it.
As we improve, objects are lost less often, as we become more mindful, and more organised. When objects are lost, they become more serious, because we begin to notice that we have been mindless, which is more important than the mislaid object.
Suddenly we realise that we really are responsible in all ways for everything that happens to us.
I had read those words a hundred times, and could never understand how it worked, and therefore never truly believed it.
Slowly, I think I worked it out.
Placing ourselves in our mind’s eye as if we were a body is what creates the problem. Whenever we picture ourselves doing anything, we see a body. However, we have already learned that we are more than just a body.
Now, instead of a body, I picture myself as a rainbow-coloured bubble that can stretch, mould, bend, and twist. This bubble, me, has electro-magnetic properties, which change from time to time and mood to mood.
Everything else that has materialised on this planet is also a rainbow coloured Electro-magnetic bubble, but the more gross objects like rocks and earth reflect only a small section of the spectrum. All human beings have many slightly varying colours, and can be seen to be all the same (a bubble), yet all different, like a snowflake.
Imagine yourself, your bubble, you, as it slides along the main street, being attracted to this, and disgusted by that, and moulding to fit between other bubbles travelling in different directions.
The vision is not a difficult one, and with just a little practice, we can superimpose this type of vision over the physical things that we see around us. We are able to see the effects of one energy on another, and to see how the arrival and leaving of a person affects the remaining group. We are also able to see how the reactions of one person are "coloured" by the actions or words of another.
Experiencing these bubbles enables us to see the shade of bubble that indicates the mood and intention of the person travelling inside the bubble. We begin to gain the ability to read the aura of others.
Yoga and Earthing – Wellness Inspired Practices
By David Gelfand
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
Whether you’re in class, getting onto your yoga mat, or just getting home from work, it’s not uncommon to overhear someone talking about “getting grounded”.
In practice, grounding is a mechanism seen on three levels. It’s 1) a physical connection to the earth beneath you, 2) a shift in mental focus, allowing you to center your thoughts, and 3) whatever else brings your mind and body to ease in the here and now.
Grounding yourself is a mechanism by which you’re able to stabilize your energies, center your mind, and focus on the moment. As a result, you’re able to take a deep breath, step back, and focus on you for that very moment – no matter the time and place.
Let’s Start with Yoga
Incorporating the practice of grounding into your life can be done any number of ways, but one of the most recognized and impactful is through the practice of yoga. Through certain yoga poses, this sort of grounding presents your body and mind with the opportunity to release anxieties and physically root yourself to the earth.
The root chakra, in particular, is based entirely on how our bodies are connected to the earth and acts as a natural energy pathway. Through the root, base chakra (pulling from the earth through the feet and into the lower spine), the body maintains an entry point for universal energies and sustains a healthy foundation for your bodily function.
It’s not surprising that, with this concept in mind, Chinese tradition holds a heavy focus on strengthening and sustaining this root point. Earth Qi represents the patterns of energy and the earth’s magnetic field that we are surrounded by. Many exercises that are meant to strengthen the body and mind, including yoga, are done barefoot. A central practice within Chinese tradition includes the growing of a “root”. The Kidney 1 point (also known as the “yong quan point”) involves the opening of a conduit and connection between the earth’s surface and a person’s feet/body.
With yoga as a grounding mechanism, you’re forced to rely on both your mental focus and connection to the earth in order to sustain a balance. A few poses that are particularly helpful in grounding (both mentally and physically) include:
Mountain Pose
Tree Pose
Downward Facing Dog
Child’s Pose (an all-time favorite)
For more information on the health benefits of yoga, please see: How Yoga Heals The Diseased Heart.
To learn about the practice of yoga, check out: The 5 Tibetan Rites of Rejuvenation: 108 Movements to a Meditative Mind State.
The Earth Connection
If yoga isn’t always an option given your hectic schedule, don’t worry – there are other options. What’s most important to remember is that grounding is what works for you. Just because the downward dog is what grounds your neighbor, that doesn’t mean it’s the only option out there.
While grounding is partly psychological, it’s also physical and can be done very easily by stepping outside. Our bodies desperately yearn for a healthy connection to nature and to the earth. This connection is what nurtures us, it keeps us alive and energized. More importantly, this connection with nature reminds us what an immaculate world we have around us. As humans, we spend far too much time insulated in our synthetic environments and disconnected from the outside world. This disconnect poses significant risks to our health and wellbeing.
Establishing that root, absorbing the earth’s energies and grounding yourself is done most easily when barefoot.
Recent studies and medical professionals have begun to identify the scientific benefits of this Earthing practice. By creating a direct connection to the earth (going barefoot), your body is able to absorb the Earth’s limitless supply of free electrons. These electrons, studies suggest, act as antioxidants by stabilizing and neutralizing harmful free radicals associated with inflammation, injury and/or toxicity.
Various industries have begun to take notice as well, creating various Earthing products to maintain this sort of connection, producing earthing or grounding products designed to help our bodies regain natural balance and stability on a molecular level. In particular, earthing shoes have recently entered the realms of medical study and footwear production.
Can There Be Communication After Death?
February 18th, 2022
Guest writer for Wake Up World
In my recent book Extraordinary Awakenings, I described how bereavement can be a catalyst personal transformation.
In the aftermath of bereavement, it’s not uncommon for people to undergo an intense form of post-traumatic growth. They may even change so radically that they feel as if they’ve become a different person – someone with a wider sense of perspective, a new sense of purpose and meaning, a sense of connection to nature, and deeper relationships.
In some of the cases, an important element of the transformation is a sense that the bereaved person was still in contact with the friend or relative they lost. For example, a woman called LeeAnn had a close friend who was murdered while working as a nightclub bouncer.
A few months later, LeeAnn was at home when, in her words,
All of a sudden, the room filled with this golden light. There was a sense of peace that was overwhelming…Then I saw Bruno in his human form. My eyes were closed, but he was standing there, surrounded by blue colors and light. He said to me, ‘You keep asking for me to come back. Don’t ask that — this is where I’m supposed to be.’1
Such experiences may sound bizarre, but they are common. In 1971, a Welsh doctor named William Dewi Rees became intrigued by some of his elderly patients commenting that they had sensed the presence of their deceased spouse. He followed this up with a systematic study of 293 widows and widowers in his group practice. Dewi Rees found that almost half (46.7 percent) of the widows and widowers had had a “hallucination” (in his term) of their spouse.2
One of the most interesting findings of Dewi Rees’s study was that only around a quarter of his participants had talked about their experiences before. This suggests a high degree of reluctance which might even have extended to Rees’s study itself, meaning that his figure of 46.7 percent of patients may be an underestimate.
More recent studies (which also might be affected by reticence, of course) suggest that as many as three-quarters of bereaved people have sensed the presence of a deceased loved one.3
The experiences occur in a variety of forms. Besides seeing the deceased person, it may be a strong feeling that they are nearby, watching or helping. It may be a sensory experience of smelling or hearing — for example, smelling their perfume, being touched by them, or hearing them call out. Less directly, people may feel that deceased friends and relatives are contacting them through animals or by symbolic means. In many cases, the experiences occur regularly so that people feel the deceased partners or relatives are still with them.
Interpreting Reports of After-Death Communication
The simplest explanation would be that these experiences are wishful thinking, self-delusion, or hallucinations. However, some after-death communications are difficult to dismiss in this way since they involve deceased people passing on messages which were later found to be relevant, or information that was later confirmed.
In one study of 1,667 after-death communications by the researcher Ken Vincent, around a fifth were found to be “evidential” in this sense, with three different types of evidence.4 First, there were experiences in which a person sensed or saw (often in a dream) the death of a person and found out shortly afterward that they had died.
Second, some experiences provided evidence that was later confirmed. In one example that was offered to me, a grandmother had a vivid dream in which she was having tea with the other grandmother of her grandchildren, who had died recently. The other grandmother warned her that their granddaughter was in danger from her violent boyfriend. After some trepidation, she spoke to her granddaughter. She admitted that her boyfriend had made death threats to her, and she split up with him shortly afterward.
LeeAnn’s experience above was also evidential in this sense. After her initial encounter, LeeAnn heard Bruno speak to her, asking her to text a message to his brother. She was reluctant to do so, as Bruno’s family were Mormon, and she wasn’t sure how they would react. But Bruno persuaded her and dictated the text to her.
Bruno’s brother called her immediately and said:
The text answered questions from thoughts and conversations that he had that day, when he was alone and was speaking out loud to Bruno and to God. He said the words were so specific he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they came from Bruno.
Thirdly, Vincent found that in some cases the experiences happened to more than one person. He provides the example of a young woman and her fiancé, who both saw a vision of her dead grandfather.
Potential Explanations
If these experiences can’t all be explained in terms of self-deception or hallucinations, what are we to make of them?
Some researchers have suggested that they could be explained in terms of psi powers such as telepathy or clairvoyance. For example, in the first case above, it’s possible that the grandmother unconsciously suspected that her granddaughter was being abused, and her unconscious mind created a dream scenario to relay the information to her conscious mind.
In LeeAnn’s case, perhaps she had telepathic contact with Bruno’s brother, sensed the questions he was asking, and created a response to them in her mind, which she texted to him.
However, in my opinion, these explanations seem tenuous and convoluted. LeeAnn told me that she isn’t aware of possessing any psi abilities, so it seems unlikely that, on this isolated occasion, she just happened to show the kind of powers that would allow her to transfer images to her roommate and to read questions from Bruno’s brother’s mind.
