New Consciousness Review - Summer 2016

New

Consciousness SUMMER, 2016 |

Review

N C R E V I E W. CO M

The Realities

Creation

of The Missing

Element

Shamanism, Society & Politics I Know You Love Me –

Now Let Me Die

It's Never Too Late to Begin Again

REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES

health - SELF-HELP - metaphysics - CONSCIOUS LIVING - SPIRITUALITY

Find Your Path to Happiness Using Your Inner GPS Just as cars have a GPS that helps us get where we want to go, so do our bodies and souls. Too often, we ignore the life-directional system we were each born with, what Zen Cryar DeBrücke calls our Internal Guidance System (IGS). This book simply and easily teaches you how to tune in to this guidance, a system that wants you to be happy, successful, and stress-free. You’ll discover how you can leave painful memories behind, abandon destructive relationship patterns, follow the best course of action in every situation, and learn to experience the lifechanging guidance you were born to follow.

“Zen Cryar DeBrücke is a master who takes us by the hand and shows us that we all have deep wisdom within.”

— JACK CANFIELD “Zen Cryar DeBrücke offers us a unique perspective and powerful tools that can change our lives.”

— MARCI SHIMOFF, bestselling author of Happy for No Reason

Entrepreneur and teacher ZEN CRYAR DEBRÜCKE is a coach to a wide variety of enterprises and individuals. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. www.ZenInAMoment.com

www.NewWorldLibrary.com ALSO AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK

CONTENTS 7

13

36

45

5 From the Editor

METAREALITY

INSPIRATION

45 The Realities of Creation

by Jean Adrienne

7 The Missing Element by Debra Silverman 10 Your Emotions Are a Gateway by Zen Cryar DeBrücke 13 Spontaneous Transformation with Jennifer McLean 14 Light by Mary O’Malley 17 Does Spirit Talk to Ordinary People?

by Susan Shumsky, D.D.

47

47 Life on the Edge: Quantum Biology

by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili 49 Neimology Science

by Sharòn Wyeth OUR WORLD 53 Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom interview with Yuval Ron

21 Using Our Fears by Lise Bourbeau

59 The 8 Laws of Change: How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social transformation by Steven A. Schwartz

FEATURE SECTION ON AGING

61 Shamanism, Society & Politics by Nick Seneca Jankel

26 It’s Never too late to Begin Again with Julia Cameron

68 The Five Levels of Awareness by Cara Bradley

32 I Know You Love Me, Now Let Me Go by Dr. Louis Profeta

CONSCIOUS CINEMA

20 How to Be Here with Rob Bell

36 Boomers, their Subcultures and Aging with Dr. Bill Thomas 40 Awesome Aging by Janai Mestrovich

72 Want To Change Your Life?

by Brent Marchant 78 RISING STARS 82 REVIEWERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

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new

ConsCiousness SUMMER, 2016 |

Review

N C R E V I E W. CO M

New Consciousness

The Realities

CREATION

of The Missing

ElEMEnT

ShaManiSM, SociETy & PoliTicS i Know you love Me –

now lET ME DiE

Review it's never Too late to BEgin again

Bold Perspectives on Life, the Universe and Everything

REVIEWS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES

health - SELF-HELP - metaphysics - CONSCIOUS LIVING - SPIRITUALITY

Cover Personality: Debra Silverman Subscriptions New Consciousness Review is a quarterly publication covering media and people at the forefront of conscious awakening, particularly those whose perspectives provide tools and impetus for personal and global transformation.

Subscribe for free at http://ncreview.com/magazine and view the archives on www.ncreview.com Advertising For all advertising enquiries, call 503-892-3300 or email info@ncreview.com Submissions To submit your work for review or interview or to submit articles, email us at info@ncreview.com or visit our website for guidelines.

Publisher & Editor Miriam Knight CONTRIBUTORS Reviewers Cynthia Sue Larson, Miriam Knight, Krysta Gibson, Brent Marchant Feature Writers Brent Marchant, Jannai Mestrovich Contributing Writers Debra Silverman, Zen Cryar DeBrücke, Mary O’Malley, Susan Shumsky, Lise Bourbeau, Dr. Louis Profeta, Janai Mestrovich, Jean Adrienne, Sharòn Wyeth, Nick Seneca Jankel, Cara Bradley Production Design Natasha & Neboysa Dolovacki NewConsciousness Review PO Box 80547, Portland, OR 97280 Tel: 503-892-3300 Web: www.ncreview.com Email: info@ncreview.com

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FROM THE EDITOR

T

he nice thing about getting older is that you start to care less about what other people think, and more about how you feel. For me, high heels were the first to go, followed by certain constricting garments. Comfort matters! But while we may be loosening up on the physical side, we may be starting to feel the pinch in our day-to-day lives, so this is also a time for the liberation of our consciousness and our spirits.

Many of us have lost jobs or retired, and have had to reinvent ourselves – maybe a few times. As a society we don't really deal well with aging; we fight the idea as long as we can, but sooner or later the mirror, the scales, and the medical bills make plausible deniability implausible. Cosmetic surgery, fat farms, and 24-hour fitness may delay that fateful day, but like it or not, the younger generation coming up behind pushes us out onto the next stage of life.

A good part of our reluctance to admit to aging is due to the fear that we no longer have a purpose in life. If we have defined ourselves in terms of what we do, then who are we when we no longer do it? If you are part of the Boomer generation or older, you may be feeling increasingly marginalized and irrelevant, because contemporary Western society does not accord the same respect to elders that is found in Eastern and tribal societies. Respect, however, is one of those funny things that start within, which brings us full circle: to respect your self you need an ongoing sense of purpose, something to do that keeps your life-force charged up and feeds your spirit. The truth is, the real riches you have worked a lifetime to accumulate are not money, but experience, perspective and wisdom. They are among the few things that get better with age – but only if they are shared. Finding a new passion in life is the best antidote I have found to feeling old.

There are lots of things you can do with your time, energy and creativity, and especially your voice. You have earned the right to speak your mind for something that moves you; you could campaign for clean food, water and air; lobby to change the political system and elect good people to office; write books or social media posts; mentor kids; help your neighbors; grow a garden; clean a beach. One person can certainly make a difference, but many together are a force to be reckoned with. We in the third age have an advantage, because we are more likely to have the free time and resources; however, we need to be as passionate about promoting our values as the politicians and corporations are about amassing power and money, or we won’t be able to tip the scales.

It is time for Boomers to rumble, and call for the world to wake up to what was the promise of the 60’s. It IS about Love. Love is the beginning of evolving to a new state of harmony and compassion. It’s time to put on your sandals and step confidently into your next chapter and act! Remember: whether you think you can, or you can’t…you’ll be right.

Miriam Knight Editor & Publisher

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Find out why Sting, the English musician, singer-songwriter, activist, actor, and philanthropist, believes Debra Silverman and her book

The Missing Element

are on to something that can help us all.

INSPIRATION HEALTH COVER ARTICLE & REVIEW

The Four Elements

by Debra Silverman

The four elements are the source of all creation. Not only do they show up in the physical world as the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the life giving force called the sun, but they also show up on the inside. The fascinating application is inside the human psyche.

Sometimes I think the distortion of the elements in the outer world is merely a reflection of how we have handled our inner world.

O

ur emotional bodies are represented by the element of water, which tends to be, generally, withheld and toxic. Our mind is represented by the element of air, which tends to be scattered and polluted with random thoughts that have no order - like the wind gone wild. Our relationship with food - Earth - has become disrespectful and impatient, and our temper is represented by the element of fire and is far too often irrational and embarrassing.

I can’t tell you how many times in my career I’ve heard someone ask me, “How can I make a difference on our planet? How can I help the situations that seem to be overwhelming?” My answer is always the same - take care of the elements inside of you - in your heart, in your body, with your relationships, and in your mind, and watch the world change. That’s the fundamental basis of my work

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INSPIRATION HEALTH the hope that I can change the world from the inside out.

There is a growing number of people who are reading books (air), studying mediation (water), doing yoga (earth), and going to the movies (fire) in an effort to find the impetus for transformation - all without realizing that the actual change required must begin with a conscious decision. It’s not enough to read, eat, watch, or try – what’s required is an awareness around the power of your choosing to be the agent of change. Whichever one of these things you don’t do - read, eat healthy food, exercise, or meditate is your missing element. What I have found most difficult in my own work is helping and encouraging people to do the counter-intuitive thing, to go against their natural impulse and introduce something unfamiliar – to introduce their missing element into their lives.

What is your missing element, what are you resisting? Resistance is merely the indicator of a lazy ego. The ego doesn’t want to do what your soul is asking for. If you ask me, this human reaction is a bad design.

Debra Silverman works on an individual basis as well as in workshops to impart emotional wisdom through a simplified language that describes the qualities of Water, Air, Earth and Fire. She received an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University. She trained at York University and studied Dance Therapy at Harvard. www.debrasilvermanastrology.com

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By observing yourself and finding out what element you are missing in your own life it is my hope that you will in turn, enroll your agents of change, and start transforming on the inside out by introducing something new. For me as a mixture of air and fire I had to learn to it to was cleaning my closets and taking care of money and practicality. I was missing Earth. That’s what I resisted said the airhead. My life became balanced once I included the missing element.

Our planet, a beautiful mix of all the elements is in trouble, we’ve poisoned the water, polluted the air, pulled the raw materials from the Earth and fires rage on in all corners of the planet as it is tipped out of balance. There are 7 billion people on this planet – everyone you’ve ever known is here. The question is, will you play your role in the tapestry of life in respect of the elements? It will make all the difference in the world. Don’t ever underestimate the power of one in tandem with the right use of the elements. The world was created by the four elements and it will either be destroyed by our inability to dance with them or it will be healed – it’s our choice.

INSPIRATION HEALTH REVIEW

THE MISSING ELEMENT:

Inspiring Compassion for the Human Condition

by Debra Silverman, MA Findhorn Press

In a time of great turmoil on planet earth, a time where we are facing possible destruction of the planet, this book is about getting back to basics by getting in touch with our “elemental hands-on nature” - in other words each of us becoming who we truly are and living from the truth of our beingness.

D

ebra Silverman is a therapist and astrologer and presents the concepts of how each of us contain the energy of the four elements: water, air, earth, and fire. She helps us understand how each of these manifests in the human personality.

There is a brief test to find out which is predominant in your life right now - and it can change - followed by indepth discussion of each. She shows how these four personalities handle life situations, the challenges and lessons each faces, and how to best integrate and live our water, air, earth, and fire personalities.

She shows how to get more in touch with our Observer selves also known as the higher self or God-self and how to live from that aspect more often.

This is not only an informative and inspirational book to read, the author’s style makes it fun and worthy of deeper study. The book also helps to better understand the other people in our lives so we can be more loving and compassionate to them as well as to ourselves.  Reviewed by Krysta Gibson Publisher of New Spirit Journal

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INSPIRATION HEALTH ARTICLE

Your Emotions Are a Gateway

An Excerpt from Your Inner GPS: Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction

by Zen Cryar DeBrücke

O

I

One of the ways I discovered to bypass the craziness of the mind — all the doubt and worry and fear that come up in response to the guidance you get from your IGS — is to go through the door of your emotions.

use emotions as a gateway to help people clear out their obsolete yellow yield signs. As I noted earlier, when we feel an emotion, we are experiencing a biochemical reaction produced by the mind, and the emotion may or may not be true. This biochemical reaction is very often based on historical evidence that your mind has created — that you have a reason to be fearful, that you have a reason to be angry, that you’re in love, that you’re happy, or that you’re disappointed. There are all kinds of ways in which our minds induce this biochemical feedback or emotion in our bodies, and they are based on stories from our past — on what we believe we’ve seen, heard, and felt, especially concerning the behavior of the people who raised us.

Very often our emotions are actually not in alignment and so do not open us. Instead, they were first trig-

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INSPIRATION HEALTH gered when we were younger and misinterpreted those thoughts that closed us. Your mind hijacks the sensation of closing (worry, fear, anxiety, and stress) and combines it with its own fabricated evidence to make you believe that it knows what the future holds.

It pro-jects as fact what it thinks is going to happen.

But in reality, it’s running a habitual program that is repeated over and over in similar situations. If you have done the “Discovering Your Closing Themes” practice on page 80, then you already know that repeating thoughts are currently operating in your life.

The practice I’d like you to try now is to write out your feelings. Any time you’re having an emotional experience — whether it feels positive or negative according to your mind — write what you’re feeling. Use the list of emotions provided on page 97 to help you isolate more precisely what you are feeling. Most people are unaware of how they feel, or they have a limited emotional vocabulary. In order to boost your emotional vocabulary, use the list. I recommend that you copy it from this book, or you can go to www.yourinnergps.org/emotionslist and download the list so that you can post it in several places for reference. The office, fridge, bathroom, and nightstand are good; your car, purse, and wallet are some other great places to access it quickly.

When you’re in the midst of, or just over, an emotional experience, sit down with a piece of paper, look at the list, and write out the top three things you’re feeling, such as “I’m feeling frustrated, I’m feeling disappointed, I’m feeling hurt.”

Then write out why you’re feeling those three emotions. Just let your mind tell you the story of why you feel the way you do. You don’t have to make it a long story. In fact, it is best if it’s just one or two sentences long.

The practice I’d like you to try now is to write out your feelings. Any time you’re having an emotional experience — whether it feels positive or negative according to your mind — write what you’re feeling.

Use the list of emotions provided on page 97 to help you isolate more precisely what you are feeling. you have written. Notice whether you are open or closed with each emotion and story.

What I have observed is that very often a negative emotional experience gets combined with a sense of closing caused by your IGS. This means what you’re thinking is not true. The thoughts that prompted the closing, if continued, will not bring you to a happy resolution. If you don’t get to the bottom of your thoughts and understand what is closing you, then your mind can actually drive you into a situation you don’t want. Keep this in mind: when you get upset, you can use your emotions as a signal that it’s time to stop and check your IGS.

“I’m feeling disappointed because this project was canceled, and it was very important to me. I’m feeling frustrated because it seems to me as if my manager is pulling out the projects that I really enjoy, and he seems to be doing it on purpose. I’m feeling hurt because I work very hard in this world and yet I don’t seem to get the recognition or the rewards that I deserve.”

One thing you’ll discover in doing this exercise is that some of those statements will open you. I’ll use the previous example to demonstrate how this may happen. You may get an opening sensation when you say you are disappointed; even though you feel disappointed, you will feel open. Then, when you tell your story about feeling frustrated, you will be closed. What closes you is the claim that the manager is specifically taking projects away from you. The closing means your manager is not undermining you on purpose, so you can drop that line of thinking and move on.

The next step — and this is where your IGS comes into play — is to drop into your listening and read back to yourself each of the emotions/stories that

The feeling of disappointment, then, is authentic for you, and you can own it: “I have a right to be disappointed. The sensation of opening I feel when I

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INSPIRATION HEALTH make this statement tells me that disappointment is an authentic emotion in this case.”

Do this exercise with positive emotions as well. You may be shocked at how many times you’re really excited about something while guidance from your IGS is actually telling you that it is not going to happen or is not true.

So it’s equally important to say, “I feel hopeful, I feel excited, and I feel joyous.” Then write, “Okay, why am I feeling hopeful?” and answer this question. For example: “I’m feeling hopeful because, for the first time, I’m being recognized by the particular person I’ve been wanting to notice me for a very long time.” Ask and answer the same question about feeling excited: “Why am I excited? I’m feeling excited because this person is noticing me, so maybe they want to date me. I’m totally attracted to them and know this is going to happen.” Then look at feeling joyous: “I feel joyous because they could possibly be my soul mate.”

Now once again drop into your listening and check your emotions and stories via your IGS. You may

feel an opening at the thought that this person has been noticing you, but you may close when you think this means you will begin dating. Go through each statement, one at a time. “This person is noticing me.” Open. Then look at the next part of the statement: “Maybe they want to date me.” Closed.

Oh, that’s not why they’re paying attention to me.

“They could possibly be my soul mate.” Closed.

You feel tightening, or anxiety, in your chest.

Maybe the scenario above seems far-fetched to you, or maybe it sounds exactly like what your mind does to you. Either way, we all have situations where our minds make up instant stories and then, immediately after that, invent ramifications for our future, whether positive or negative. This type of thought process happens so quickly that we often miss it. Then we begin living the story as if it were real, and our lives can go off track for a bit.

One purpose of your IGS is to clear out all the fictitious stories that your brain generates. This allows you to be very clear and effective in your life. One way to find the stories that close you is to do the following practice to address your emotions.

Zen Cryar DeBrücke is the author of Your Inner GPS. She is an internationally renowned teacher, speaker, and coach whose programs have helped people all over the world transform their personal and business lives for the better. Visit her online at http://www.zeninamoment.com.

Excerpted from the book Your Inner GPS: Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction. Copyright © 2016 by Zen Cryar DeBrücke. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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INSPIRATION HEALTH INTERVIEW

Spontaneous Transformation

J

Interview with Jennifer McLean

ennifer McLean is an internationally acclaimed author, healer, wellness entrepreneur whose fifth and latest book, Spontaneous Transformation – 7 Steps to Coping and Thriving in Extreme Times is a guide to her powerful healing technique, Spontaneous Transformation. Jennifer is also a popular speaker, business coach and the founder of McLean MasterWorks, a web-based organization that includes Healing with the Masters, Living Your Success Signature, and the MasterWorks Healing Membership Site. She is a spiritual catalyst who has helped thousands to shift into the highest levels of peace, abundance, flow and balance. Jennifer has authored two earlier critically acclaimed books, The Big Book of You, a motivational, poetic, spiritual and visual coffee table book filled with inspiration and valuable insight, as well as, The Credibility Factor, based on her credibility branding model.

Website URL http://www.spontaneoustransformation.com

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LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

INSPIRATION HEALTH ARTICLE

Light

Excerpt from What’s In the Way IS the Way

by Mary O’Malley As you reconnect with space and flow, you can know the third aspect of the meadow: light. In the Creation story at the very beginning of the Bible, it says, “And God said, let there be light!” And according to the Book of Genesis, this statement comes before the creation of the sun and stars.

W

e think of light as coming from the sun, but the leading edge of science is now saying that everything is made out of light. David Bohm, the grandfather of quantum physics, once said that matter is just frozen light.

In his book The Planetary Mind, Arne Wyller reports, “Almost all particles in the Universe are those of light.” He goes on to say, “Light is a vital ingredient in all atoms.” Since everything is made of atoms, it follows that everything — a cat, a tree, a rock, the human body — is made of light.

We have all met people whose eyes twinkle and whose presence radiates a sense of warmth. We often say they glow. That is what you begin to see when you rediscover the meadow of well- being within you and all around you. Everything shines from within, radiating the energy of its presence.

You may not see this, but when you get quiet enough, you can feel it.

Most of the time, you dim the radiance of your being by only pay-ing attention to the clouds in your

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INSPIRATION HEALTH mind. This is true of all human beings: most of us have dimmed our light. The more you are lost in the problem factory of your mind, the thicker the clouds are in and around your head, cutting you off from the radiance of your body and the pure joy of being alive. No matter how thick your clouds become, however, they never stop the truth of your radiance. And it is possible to shine again like you did when you were young.

Take a moment to shake one of your hands vigorously. Now stop shaking, close your eyes, and feel your hand. There is the flow of energy — the tingles, the aliveness. This is an artificial way to experience what it feels like when your energy is open and spacious. It feels good. It feels alive.

The ecstatic Persian poet Hafiz spoke directly to what we are talking about in his poem “My Brilliant Image,” as translated by Daniel Ladinsky in his book I Heard God Laughing:

One day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow.

I wish I could show you The Infinite Incandescence (Tej) That has cast my brilliant image!

I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The Astonishing Light

This is true of all human beings: most of us have dimmed our light. The more you are lost in the problem factory of your mind, the thicker the clouds are in and around your head, cutting you off from the radiance of your body and the pure joy of being alive. painted with halos around their heads is because they broke free from the clouds of struggle so their light could shine, and people recognized this light.

There is a saying, often attributed to Plato, that says: “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” We are all afraid of our own light. You need to forgive yourself for being so afraid of opening to Life. You were scared out of it when you were very young. But even though you have been afraid, you can learn the safety of opening again. You can, to paraphrase Jesus, learn not to hide your light under the bushel of your clouds.

This is the greatest gift you can give to humanity — to shine from within because you are open to Life.

Of your own Being!

“The Astonishing Light / Of your own Being” — what a wonderful phrase! You have so much energy within you that wants to be freed from the game of struggle so it can expand and dance, and when energy is free to flow, it shines. This is what you are hungry for — your own radiance. It’s no accident that when a great burden has been lifted or you feel very happy, you often say, “I feel so light!” It is also no coincidence that the word delight means “of the light.” Even pictures of saints point to what we are talking about. The reason most saints are

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There is a saying, often attributed to Plato, that says: “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

INSPIRATION HEALTH

You need to forgive yourself for being so afraid of opening to Life. You were scared out of it when you were very young.

But even though you have been afraid, you can learn the safety of opening again.

Mary O’Malley is an author, counselor and awakening mentor in Kirkland, Washington. Her book, What’s In the Way IS the Way, which recently came out in a new edition from Sounds True, provides a revolutionary approach for healing your fears, anxieties, shame and confusion, so you can live from a place of ease and well-being. www.maryomalley.com

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Carl Jung said, “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” You too can shine and know the joy of your own radiance. [ Take a moment and shake your hand again. When you stop, bring your attention to your hand and feel the tingles. As they fade away, expand your attention and feel the subtle tingles all over your body that come from the energy of Life. If they are hard to find, put your attention a foot away from your body and then slowly bring it closer. Notice the difference between the space around you and the actual experience of the energy of your body. That energy wants to expand and glow in joy. ]

INSPIRATION HEALTH ARTICLE

Does Spirit Talk to Ordinary People?

By Susan Shumsky, D.D.

“Out of heaven he made thee to hear his voice, that he might instruct thee.”

—Deuteronomy 4:36

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It is a rare gift to be called to hear the divine voice.

Few people believe that two-way communication with Spirit is feasible.

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his is indeed atypical. Anyone who even considers this possibility is placed into a unique category of uncommon individuals.

For example, were you raised in a family, religion, or educational institution where you learned that a deity or divine being could speak to you directly?

Few people reading these words can answer yes.

Many people believe that an infinite Creator exists.

Yet few believe that this Almighty being hears their prayers or answers them. Fewer believe that this divine being is accessible and can talk to them. Exceptional people are willing to allow Spirit to speak to them directly. But only rare, extraordinary individuals act on what the divine voice advises them to do. Do you want to be one of these people? If so, you are indeed unique and uncommon.

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INSPIRATION HEALTH We are taught from an early age that when we talk to God it is called “prayer,” but when God talks to us, it is called…”schizophrenia.” If you were to visit a psychiatric office today and report that God or Goddess speaks to you, what would be the reaction? You would be diagnosed with mental illness and walk out with a prescription for psychotropic drugs.

We often read about murderers—even mothers who slaughter their own babies—who claim that voices in their heads told them to commit murder. We hear of cult leaders who believe that God demands that their followers commit suicide. No wonder the widespread belief is that people who claim to hear the divine voice are insane.

We are conditioned to believe that the only people sanctioned to have authentic conversations with God are great prophets, saints, holy men (I emphasize the word men), and other holy beings who lived at least 2,000 years ago in some faraway land.

These holy men wrote one book—a book literally written in stone. After that book was written, apparently, God has gone mute—and has not spoken to anyone since. Right? Wrong.

I believe these holy men have not signed an exclusive contract with God. They have no special combination to a padlocked, hallowed safe with elite access. Some religious institutions would have you believe that they own the secret passkey and, without their permission, no one can walk through the doorway to heaven.

Billions of people are resigned to the idea that they cannot experience the divine presence directly— certainly not while they are still breathing. Sadly, such people eagerly await death, when they will enter the glorious gates of paradise and finally catch a glimpse of that presence. They never conceive that they could directly experience God in this body during this lifetime.

The widespread belief is that the Almighty’s blessing and grace are inaccessible without a middleman, such as a pastor, minister, priest, cleric, rabbi, guru, master, shaman, psychic, channeler, counselor, or priestess. Most of these go-betweens have the best of intentions. But, regrettably, either intentionally or unwittingly, some of them become little more than hucksters masked in a veneer of spirituality, hawking their wares to the masses.

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We are conditioned to believe that the only people sanctioned to have authentic conversations with God are great prophets, saints, holy men (I emphasize the word men), and other holy beings who lived at least 2,000 years ago in some faraway land.

Such intermediaries have no incentive to help people hear the divine voice directly. To use an analogy from the world of sales, if their customers were to contact God directly, then these retailers would soon be out of business, for their clients would “cut out the middleman” and “go direct.”

However, it is my experience, and the experience of tens of thousands of people who have used the methods taught in my books or classes, that everyone can hear the divine voice directly, and that it is within them. It is the voice of their own higher self.

It is their divine intuition.

The Pearl of Great Price At the risk of giving away the “pearl of great price”— the most precious secret of the ages—in this article, I will tell you right now how you can hear the divine voice. This gift comes with no strings attached. You will not be required to convert to a religion, join a cult, venerate a guru, empty your bank account, or sacrifice your firstborn child. I will tell you right now how to “go direct.” So here goes—a simple way to listen to the “still small voice” of divine intuition, right here and now, absolutely FREE: Just sit down in a chair, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, get quiet, still, centered, and balanced within yourself. Continue to take several deep breaths until you attain a state of inner

INSPIRATION HEALTH peacefulness. The deep breaths will take you into a deeper meditation. Then breathe normally. Relax into the center of your being.

Next, do something that most people never do during meditation: ASK. Herein lies the entire secret: ASK. Ask a question, ask for guidance, ask for inspiration or healing.

Then take another deep breath and do what I call the “Do-Nothing Program.” That means, do nothing, nothing, and less than nothing. Then the “still small voice” will speak to you in your heart. In my latest book Awaken Your Divine Intuition, you can learn this do-nothing method, called Divine Revelation®.

So the key to hearing the divine voice is to ASK. The trouble is that we forget to ask. Or we think we cannot or should not ask. We think we are unworthy to ask. Or we believe God is too busy for us and has much more important things to do. Is God too busy for you? Could the Creator be too busy for anyone? If you believe God is too busy to pay attention to you, then you have a very limited idea of what God is.

God could never be too busy. The Almighty is not bound by time, space, or circumstances. God cannot

get tired or overworked. God does not only pay attention to “important” people and things. Everyone and everything is important to the Creator. God does not play favorites. God is not available to only a select few so-called “holy” people. God is everywhere present and always available to anyone who asks.

You can learn this do-nothing method, which I call Divine Revelation®, of hearing the voice of God and receiving divine messages effortlessly, clearly, and precisely. The entire premise of Divine Revelation is “Ask, and it shall be given you.” How to attain the requisite state of awareness, how to ask, and how to receive the message clearly are what you will learn in my books.

Some people have one 10-minute spiritual experience, and then spend the rest of their lives talking about it. Dozens of best-selling authors have built their entire careers upon that one time when a divine being appeared or spoke to them. However, Divine Revelation is about experiencing Spirit whenever you want—at will. After you have learned how to hear the divine voice, you will receive spiritual experiences as often as you desire. You can call upon a deity, a divine being, or your higher self, and ask a question, ask for guidance, or ask to experience God, and then receive the answer or experience immediately, whenever you want—day or night. Just ASK.

Dr. Susan Shumsky has dedicated her life to helping people take command of their lives in highly effective, powerful, positive ways. She is a best-selling, award-winning author of 13 books, foremost spirituality expert, pioneer in the consciousness field, highly-acclaimed, greatly respected speaker, and has taught spiritual disciplines for nearly 50 years. She studied with enlightened masters in secluded areas, including the Himalayas and the Alps. For 22 years, her mentor was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was guru of the Beatles and guru of Deepak Chopra. Dr. Shumsky served on Maharishi’s personal staff for 7 years. She founded Divine Revelation®, a technology for contacting the divine presence, hearing and testing the inner voice, and receiving clear divine guidance. Her website is www.drsusan.org.

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INSPIRATION HEALTH INTERVIEW

HOW TO BE HERE

R

An Interview with Rob Bell

ob Bell is a bestselling author, filmmaker, musician, international teacher, and highly sought after public speaker at the forefront of contemporary Christian thinking. His books include The New York Times bestseller Love Wins, along with What We Talk About When We Talk About God, and more. At age 28 he founded Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, and under his leadership it was one of the fastest-growing churches in America. In 2011 he was profiled in Time Magazine as one of their 100 most influential people. Rob was featured on Oprah’s 2014 Life You Want Tour and has spoken at events all over the world.

In this delightful interview he discusses his new book, HOW TO BE HERE (HarperOne), whyich offers a practical and thought-provoking guide to finding your path in order to live a richer and more fulfilling life. Sharing wisdom gleaned from his own personal experiences, and interweaving biblical lessons, insights from other thought leaders, and plain common sense, Rob Bell shows readers how to examine their lives and determine what truly drives them—and he gives them the tools they need to find joy in every moment and lead a more satisfying life. https://robbell.com

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LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

INSPIRATION HEALTH ARTICLE

How can we use our fears to better ourselves?

By Lise Bourbeau

Fear is a feeling that occurs when one becomes aware of a danger or threat.

As a result, the brain reacts instantaneously by sending the proper signals to the physical body so it’s in a position to face the dangerous or threatening situation.

F

irst the brain sends a message to the suprarenal glands that immediately secretes adrenaline.

This hormone is responsible for releasing the body’s glucose supply, which allows the body to react appropriately. The resulting effects are a much greater physical strength needed to defend ourselves, a very active brain to decide quickly, etc. This extra energy can even help some people to avoid dying from a heart attack.

There are two types of fear: the real fears and the unreal ones.

Real fears Here are a few examples:  A big dog rushes out and jumps on you;  A car is heading straight for you or your child;  A person raises his arm to hit you;

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INSPIRATION HEALTH

It’s natural and useful to be fearful when facing a dangerous situation. It allows us to react accordingly, to have the necessary strength and reflexes to protect ourselves quickly.

Unreal fears Unfortunately most fears experienced fall in the unreal category, as they aren’t ensuing from any real danger. They are rather the consequence of our human imagination not being used properly.

The brain can’t differentiate between a real fear and an unreal one. In both occasions it reacts as described above. However, because there is no real threat, the adrenaline secreted becomes a sort of poison that flows through the entire system because no amount of physical effort is exerted to consume it. As for the suprarenal glands, the more they are put to use, the more they tire, wear out and they eventually won’t respond as quickly in case of real danger. The body will no longer have the sufficient amount of glucose – or energy – necessary to face a real danger appropriately. This explains why a person gets panicky or becomes powerless when facing a dangerous or threatening situation.

The human imagination should be used to make us feel good and not to feel bad by creating all

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The brain can’t differentiate between a real fear and an unreal one. In both occasions it reacts as described above. kinds of unfounded fears. How do we develop such fears? Our imagination is part of our intellect and is influenced by our mental beliefs, which were mostly created during our childhood following some painful experiences whether they were experienced, observed or learned. In all cases, we have associated these experiences with pain and have developed the fear that they might occur again.

Here are a few examples of unreal fears at the physical, emotional and mental levels, which cause no real danger and again, were all created by one’s imagination.

INSPIRATION HEALTH Unreal fears at the physical level:  Fear of an animal (dog, spider, mice, etc.) when no real threat exists;  Fear of water, storms, darkness, etc.

that seem to be the cause of the majority of the beliefs and fears we harbour: Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, treason and injustice.

When your fears overwhelm you, you no longer are the master of your own life.

Here are several examples to show you when your fears have the better of you:  They make you experience negative emotions like anger, deception, frustration, etc. because you blame yourself or somebody else for something.  You doubt or mistrust yourself or someone else.  When you lie, there are many possible fears at work: The fear of being reprimanded; of not being loved and respected; of being at fault; of showing your vulnerability; the fear of authority.  You gives excuses all of the time, because you want somebody else’s understanding and approval.  You want to have the last word.  When you easily feel attacked and you’re on the defensive.

Unreal fears at the emotional and mental levels:

 You prevent yourself from buying, doing or saying something.

 Fear of being laughed at, of appearing ridiculous;  Fear about one’s future, of lacking money;  Fear of being sick, of dying;  Fear of making a mistake, of failure; It’s important to remember that each time we let some fear overwhelm us; we nurture the belief system sustaining it. This is how it gains strength over time and how the fear of experiencing pain and being hurt is ever more present and strong. Obsessive thinking can be the resulting effect, which then can trigger what is known as phobias. A phobia feeds itself upon a person’s energy, which explains the lack of energy seen in people suffering from it.

The greater the fear is, the bigger the emotional wound. Here are the five most important wounds

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It’s important to remember that each time we let some fear overwhelm us; we nurture the belief system sustaining it. This is how it gains strength over time and how the fear of experiencing pain and being hurt is ever more present and strong.

INSPIRATION HEALTH Fear does have a positive side to it.

It helps us become aware of what we really want in a certain situation but are too scared by the “possible” consequences imagined by our ego. Therefore, the most intelligent way for us to react to our fears is to you use them in order to become aware of the desire that is blocked.

The fear of making a mistake (unreal mental fear) could prevent you from taking risks, seeking new things or ideas, or being creative, and so on.

Here are some simple questions you can ask yourself to identify your desire: 1.

What is this fear preventing me from having, doing and being?

For example, if you’re afraid of dogs (an unreal physical fear) and freeze when around one, this might prevent you from moving ahead.

Another example: the fear of making a mistake (unreal mental fear) could prevent you from taking risks, seeking new things or ideas, or being creative, and so on.

Each time someone says “…prevents me from…» it really means “I want to… or I desire that …”.

2.

hat kind of unpleasant circumstance could W happen to me if I allowed myself to …?

In the example of the dog, you could ask yourself: What kind of unpleasant circumstance could happen to me if I allowed myself to move ahead in my life like I want, if I showed courage instead of staying put?

Possible answer: If I went ahead with my life and showed courage, I would choose the profession I like, but this entails displeasing my parents. I would run the risk of being considered as an ungrateful and selfish person, especially after all my parents did for me.

In the example of the fear of making a mistake, the question would be: What kind of unpleasant circumstance could happen to me if I took some risks, if I tried new avenues, if I was more creative?

Possible answer: I could make a mistake. Some people might think that I am incompetent and I can never achieve anything in my life.

Remember one thing: You are trying to avoid doing or being something by fear of being judged by others. Know that some people already judge you of the exact thing that you fear, so why prevent yourself from fulfilling your desire?

3.

Is what I believe in well-founded? Is it true?

By asking yourself this question, you will realize that most of the time your fear is ill founded. It might be real at times but it sure isn’t the case all the time!

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INSPIRATION HEALTH Example: Is it really true that if I allowed myself to move ahead in my life like I want, my parents would think I was an ungrateful and selfish person?

4.

And if what I fear really happens, can I face that?

5.

Acceptance

The fearful part inside you (the ego) is convinced that it’s helping you and is actually contributing in avoiding the worst for you. Therefore, it’s important to accept it and not to resent it, because it only wants the best for you. Thank it and inform it that you are now able to handle whatever consequence might arise.

Handling your fears in such a way will help you regain mastery over your life. You will no longer allow your belief system to influence you to the point where you don’t feel free to be your true self.

We all are here to learn how to become our true self again. This is the reason why it’s so important that we face our fears, instead of acting as if they didn’t exist. By rediscovering ourselves, we regain the energy which was spent maintaining our fears and we can put it to a much more creative use.

Lise Bourbeau is a world-renowned author that has written 24 books. Ever since she founded her school in 1982, her teachings have been helping large numbers of people to make concrete changes in their everyday lives and achieve improved quality of life. The Listen to Your Body School is the largest personal growth school in Quebec and has run workshops in over 20 countries and in 10 languages. www.lisebourbeau.com www.listentoyourbody.net

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Be patient and tolerant with yourself throughout this process because some of your fears may be deep-seated. By tackling them one by one, the process of managing them will become much easier.

The deep-rooted fears request more compassion from you since they are the result of an acute emotional wound that happened during your childhood. You simply need to give yourself some time.

The less fears you have, the more you will have faith in yourself, which will give rise to a greater life.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING INTERVIEW

It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again Julia Cameron Interview by Miriam Knight

Miriam Knight: Julia Cameron is an award-winning writer, best-selling author, artist, and one of the most beloved teachers in the world of how to live a creative life. She has written more than 30 books, including her perennial best-seller on the creative process, The Artist’s Way. Today we will explore her latest book, It’s Never Too Late To Begin Again, Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond. Welcome, Julia.

Julia Cameron: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Miriam Knight: Well I, for one, thank you for this book. The title alone is inspiring, and although I’m probably never going to retire, some 10,000 people a day do retire in this country. I think finding meaning in one’s life is challenging at any time, so tell me why you think that reconnecting with one’s creativity is the answer to a good retirement.

Julia Cameron: Well, I think that when people retire, they are often at wit’s end about what to do next. They may have had a dream of, “When I retire I will try X.” But then, when they get to retirement, they find themselves stymied and unable to

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FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING go forward. And I found over my years of teaching that my most poignant students were those who were newly retired and searching for the path or what to do next.

Miriam Knight: Well, certainly, finding meaning in one’s life is just so challenging at any time but particularly after retirement. How did you come up with the process that you put forward in your book?

Julia Cameron: Well, I’ve been teaching for 30 years, and I found myself putting forward ideas that I thought would help people. And I found that it was doing the basic Artist’s Way template that led me into steps to help people with retirement.

Miriam Knight: And the basic Artist’s Way template starts with morning pages. How did you actually develop that approach?

Julia Cameron: Well, morning pages came to me, I would say quite bluntly, as inspiration. I was a Hollywood screenwriter, and I had a movie for Jon Voight that--he went from calling it brilliant to suddenly I couldn’t find him on the phone.

And I retired to a town called Taos, New Mexico, which is a little mountain community, and I lived in a little adobe house at the end of a dirt road. I would get up every morning and I would stare at the Taos Mountain, which is a spiritual mountain, and I would think, “What should I do next?” And I would think, “Well, I’ll just try writing a little bit.”

I began writing three pages of morning writing every morning. I found when I did, that I was led into sort of new adventures and new ways of looking at things, so I thought, “There’s something to these morning pages.” And that became the beginning of my Artist’s Way teaching.

Miriam Knight: Now, you say that it should be sort of stream of consciousness. Is there something that you use to pump prime this flow of words?

Julia Cameron: No, actually I find that when I say to people, “I want you to write three pages of stream of consciousness,” that very often they find the first page and a half pretty easy, and then they bump into an invisible wall. So I say, “Now, keep writing.” When they keep writing they discover

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I’ve been teaching for 30 years, and I found myself putting forward ideas that I thought would help people.

And I found that it was doing the basic Artist’s Way template that led me into steps to help people with retirement. what I call pay dirt, and they begin to sort of dig more deeply into their psyches.

Miriam Knight: I’ve actually been trying this practice since I started reading this book in preparation for our interview, and I have to say I’ve found it amazing. So, you started this in your original book, The Artist’s Way. How many years ago was that?

Julia Cameron: I published The Artist’s Way in 1992, and since publishing it, some 4 million people have worked with the book, so that’s quite a long time and quite a large audience of people who were willing to experiment with the tools.

Miriam Knight: How does this book differ from the original Artist’s Way program?

Julia Cameron: Well, when I wrote The Artist’s Way, I found myself introducing people to the concepts that I felt would be useful to them. So, we had people digging into their own consciousness. And when I wrote this book I thought, “Well, I think we should talk about some concepts that haven’t been dealt with in The Artist’s Way,” for example, giddiness. Very often when people retire they experience a sense of giddiness, and they don’t know quite where to go next. And I found that I wanted to explore a sense of “now what?”

Miriam Knight: One of the next tools that you introduce in the book is called the artist’s date. I just love that. Explain that to our readers please.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING Julia Cameron: Yes, exactly.

The second tool was something that I called the artist’s date, which was a once-a-week solo expedition to do something that was fun or interesting to sort of fill our souls.

Julia Cameron: Well, when I wrote The Artist’s Way, I said there are two basic tools: they are morning pages, which are three pages of longhand morning writing about absolutely anything, and you do that every day. The second tool was something that I called the artist’s date, which was a once-a-week solo expedition to do something that was fun or interesting to sort of fill our souls. And I found that when people did artist’s dates they often came back and said, “Oh, now I get it,” that they had a sense of the benevolence of the universe that came to them from doing something as simple as assigned fun.

I also found that when I assigned the tools, people would eagerly undertake the work of the morning pages, but they would find themselves balking at trying artist dates. I think that it was because they intuitively sensed that if they took an artist date, their consciousness was going to contact them with a lot of dreams.

Miriam Knight: Give us some examples of artist’s dates.

Julia Cameron: Well, I live in Santa Fe. So, I might go to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, or go to a glass-blowing studio and find myself making paperweights. Or you could go simply to a flower shop and enjoy the many different kinds of flora.

I love going to children’s bookstores for artist’s dates because I find that a children’s book usually has just about the amount of information you want on any new topic.

Miriam Knight: That’s wonderful--a digestible bite.

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Miriam Knight: I loved the tasks that you assigned. Let’s explain that this book is actually intended to be a 12-week process. Julia gives you tasks to fulfill over each week--and questions to review your progress at the end of each week, so, you’re holding people accountable for adhering or not adhering to the process. I can sense the experienced teacher behind all this.

Julia Cameron: Thank you very much. Yes, I do think this book reflects my 30 years of teaching.

Miriam Knight: It certainly does. So let’s get onto the next element, which is the memoir. Tell us about that.

Julia Cameron: Well, a lot of times when I say to people, “Now, I want you to look back over your life for clues as to what you want to do next.”

People will say, “Julia, my life was so boring.” And I’ll say, “I don’t think so. I want you to try writing a memoir.” So I will have 10 questions at the end of each week, that are coaxing people to try and recall simple things, like a smell that was particularly potent for you during this period”

I also found that when I assigned the tools, people would eagerly undertake the work of the morning pages, but they would find themselves balking at trying artist dates. I think that it was because they intuitively sensed that if they took an artist date, their consciousness was going to contact them with a lot of dreams.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING Miriam Knight: So you have us divide our age into 12 and then review one chunk of years each week, going sequentially through your life. I found that that made it a much more manageable task than sitting in front of a blank computer screen or piece of paper. Oh, and you are a great enthusiast of writing longhand. Why is that?

Julia Cameron: Well, one of the things we’ve discovered, courtesy of UCLA, is that when you write longhand you open up far more neural pathways.

And so, I ask people to write longhand because they will have a greater sense of discovery. And I find that when people write on the computer it’s as if they’re in a car going 75 miles an hour, and they’re whizzing along the freeway. And they go, “Oh, oops, was that my exit? And then, when I ask them to write longhand, it’s as if they’re going about 30 miles an hour. And they are going along the freeway, and they go, “Oh, here comes my exit. Oh, look, a convenience store.”

Miriam Knight: It’s the slow writing movement, kind of like the slow eating movement. Now, what do you say to people whose childhood was very traumatic, and they just don’t want to revisit it?

Julia Cameron: I coax them. I say, “Now, amid all the trauma, there were also good things. So what I want you to do is to recall both.” And I find that actually people who have traumatic childhoods have more of a desire to write the memoir; they want to sort of even up the score, and so they are in effect tattling. And when they tattle on the trauma in their childhoods, they find freedom.

I ask people to write longhand because they will have a greater sense of discovery. And I find that when people write on the computer it’s as if they’re in a car going 75 miles an hour, and they’re whizzing along the freeway.

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Miriam Knight: There is an interesting relationship between the pages and the memoir. How does that work?

Julia Cameron: Well, when you write pages, you’re dealing with your current life, so you are writing, “This is what I like, this is what I don’t like, this is what I want more of, this is what I want less of.” And you’re directly addressing the present tense part of your life.

When you write the memoir, you’re casting back over life that has been lived, and I find that the two tools work in conjunction. What happens with the morning pages is that you are in effect miniaturizing your censor, because there’s no wrong way to do morning pages. But, your censor, your inner critic, will perk up and say, “Oh, Miriam, you’re being so negative.” And you say to your censor, “Thank you for sharing.”

And you keep right on writing. And that process of miniaturizing the censor is something that translates over to writing the memoir. So, you start writing the memoir, your censor perks up and starts criticizing you, and you say to your censor, “Thank you for sharing, but I think I’m going to just keep writing.”

Miriam Knight: I should point out that you describe many, many ways in the book of expressing creativity. It doesn’t have to be writing or painting. It can be baking!

Julia Cameron: Yes, absolutely. I think what we’re after is we want people to realize that whatever form their expression takes, it can be viewed as creative – we had people redecorating their houses, moving their furniture, repainting a kitchen chair a more vivid color. We have people adding window boxes. We have people say, “Gee, I wish I had a pet.” And having a pet can be a very potent form of healing.

Miriam Knight: So, this isn’t just about being creative. This is actually about living well beyond retirement or as you move into the next phase of your life.

Julia Cameron: Yes. What I say is that we’re practicing creativity and that our life, in effect, becomes our work of art.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING Julia Cameron: Right. Thank you for sharing Plato.

We have a mythology in our country that artists are fearless, and they’re born knowing that they’re artists.

And so then, if I say, “Well, you feel some fear,” does that mean you’re not an artist?

And the answer is no.

Miriam Knight: That’s like what Don Miguel Ruiz would say, that you are the artist of your life.

Julia Cameron: Yes, exactly.

Miriam Knight: Now, do you think that everybody can be creative, and what are the biggest blocks to creativity?

Julia Cameron: I have never taught a student who didn’t have some form of creativity. So, I think, yes, everyone is creative, and we all have what you might want to call an inner child that’s longing to play. Now, the most common blocks to creativity tend to be a sense of fear. We have a mythology in our country that artists are fearless, and they’re born knowing that they’re artists. And so then, if I say, “Well, you feel some fear,” does that mean you’re not an artist? And the answer is no. Artists are people who have learned to live through their fears. And we don’t necessarily have artists who are born knowing they are artists. We may have people who realize far later than birth that they have a creative yearning. : Yes. I found that there were many times when I would be reading along, and I would suddenly hit what I call pay dirt. It would be a wonderful expression like, “Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?” Nietzsche.

Miriam Knight: That’s wonderful. One of my favorites that I am going to plagiarize is, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” And that was Plato! That was such a surprise.

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Miriam Knight: And how about this quote from George Eliot, the delightful female writer who wrote, “It’s Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been.” That resonated so much with me, Julia, as did your title, It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again, because as we age we feel it’s all behind us.

How does this perception impede rediscovering our creativity? How do you best overcome it?

Julia Cameron: Well, I think this is where we--I sound a little bit like a fanatic because I say, “Start writing morning pages.” And when people write morning pages, they discover that they had many interesting thoughts and ideas, and they begin to become fascinated by themselves. I think--you’ve probably discovered this already, if you’ve been working with them a little bit, that what they do is they cause you to fall in love with yourself. And when you fall in love with yourself you become again quite visible.

And so, I think that morning pages are sort of the greased slide to visibility. They will connect you to a sense of meaning. And what I find is that when people do morning pages, and they start to fall in love with themselves again--that they have a heightened sense of adventure. And many times people who retire say, “I have all these vast savannas of time and nothing to do in it, and I’m worried.” And I say, “Well, if you do morning pages,” you’re beginning to put structure into their life, because people lose their structure when they lose their jobs.

And I say to them, “Now, I want you to write morning pages every day.” And it begins to become something that gives them a sense of safety.

Miriam Knight: Right. You also are a big proponent of taking a walk.

Julia Cameron: Well, this is something I found-when I wrote The Artist’s Way it was 1992. And I wrote, “Do morning pages, take artist’s dates.”

And then, all the way in week 12, the very last week of the course, I said, “P.S. exercise.”

So, in the teaching that I’ve done in the years since then, I found that exercise is a much more important component of the creative awakening than I had

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING realized. So, I assign people two 20-minute walks.

Twice a week take yourself out for a walk. And what I find happens is that when people are walking they integrate the insights, the intuitions, the hunches, the breakthroughs of the other two tools.

Miriam Knight: I was delighted to read in your book that not only are you asking questions of yourself, but you’re getting answers from “somewhere.” Tell us about that.

Julia Cameron: Well, one of the things that I believe is important to do is to ask for guidance, and trust that you’ll receive it. So, when I write, very many times at night I will write LJ for little Julie, and then I’ll say, “Please guide me.” And then, I’ll listen and write down what I hear. And very often what I hear is a sort of calm, gentle, supportive voice. And I find that the guidance is reliable.

Miriam Knight: So, when you talk about Little Julie, are you assuming that that’s your inner child, your higher self?

Julia Cameron: Yes. Miriam Knight: And have you done more extensive channeled writing?

Julia Cameron: Well, I write prayer books. I have written five prayer books. And I find when I sit down to write a prayer that I feel myself in contact with a larger source. I have a prayer book called Prayers to the Great Creator, and it’s 650 pages long--many, many prayers. And I read those prayers at night, and I think, “Who wrote that?”

Miriam Knight: How wonderful. I never knew that. Are you writing another one at the moment?

Julia Cameron: I just finished a book, which I call, Life Lessons. And it’s short, bullet-length prayers, and I found myself saying to myself, “Gee, I wonder if these prayers are too brief. They are very condensed.” And I turned the book into my publisher, and I said, “I’m worried that the prayers might be a little too brief.” And he said, “Oh, Julia, this is the age of Twitter.”

Miriam Knight: What about our concept of God? Does that play a role here?

Julia Cameron: Well, I think that--I have been told that morning pages are “the portal to faith,”

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Very often what I hear is a sort of calm, gentle, supportive voice. And I find that the guidance is reliable. and that as we begin to write morning pages we are, in effect, sending out a signal as if you’re on a life raft in the middle of the ocean, and you’re asking to be rescued. And you say, “This is what I like, this is what I don’t like, and here’s exactly where I am, and here’s exactly what I feel.”

And when you are accurate in describing how you feel, you realize that there is a larger force that is striving to contact us back. And this is where the artist’s dates come in. And you begin to feel a sense of optimism. Often when people start the work they have a punitive God concept – they believe that God is judgmental, harsh, stern, perhaps all-knowing but perhaps not very forgiving.

And then, as they work with the tools, they begin to realize, “Oh, here is something optimistic,” and they start to shift their God concept. So by the time people have been working with the tools for 12 weeks they have a great sense of solidity and safety, and a sense that their higher power is perhaps much more accessible than they had previously realized.

Miriam Knight: Julia, what final thought or urging would you leave with our listeners? I know: morning pages…

Julia Cameron: You’re exactly right. I would tell people to do morning pages. I would say, “Just try three pages daily, longhand writing, and you will have a spiritual awakening.”

Miriam Knight: Thank you, Julia. Well, I recommend this book for anyone actually – you don’t have to be retired, especially if you’re looking for more juice in your life, or to connect to your creativity, this is the book to get: It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again, Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond, by Julia Cameron, and her website is www.Juliacameronlive.com.

Please link book title to: http://amzn.to/1qcheuT

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING ARTICLE

I Know You Love Me — Now Let Me Die

by Louis M. Profeta MD

In the old days, she would be propped up on a comfy pillow, in fresh cleaned sheets under the corner window where she would in days gone past watch her children play.

S

oup would boil on the stove just in case she felt like a sip or two. Perhaps the radio softly played Al Jolson or Glenn Miller, flowers sat on the nightstand, and family quietly came and went. These were her last days. Spent with familiar sounds, in a familiar room, with familiar smells that gave her a final chance to summon memories that will help carry her away. She might have offered a hint of a smile or a soft squeeze of the hand but it was all right if she didn’t. She lost her own words to tell us that it’s OK to just let her die, but she trusted us to be her voice and we took that trust to heart.

You see, that’s how she used to die. We saw our elderly different then.

We could still look at her face and deep into her eyes and see the shadows of a soft, clean, vibrantly innocent child playing on a porch somewhere in the Midwest

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FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING during the 1920s perhaps. A small rag doll dances and flays as she clutches it in her hand. She laughs with her barefoot brother, who is clad in overalls, as he chases her around the yard with a grasshopper on his finger. She screams and giggles. Her father watches from the porch in a wooden rocker, laughing while mom gently scolds her brother.

We could see her taking a ride for the first time in an automobile, a small pickup with wooden panels driven by a young man with wavy curls. He smiles gently at her while she sits staring at the road ahead; a fleeting wisp of a smile gives her away. Her hands are folded in her lap, clutching a small beaded purse.

We could see her standing in a small church. She is dressed in white cotton, holding hands with the young man, and saying, “I do.” Her mom watches with tearful eyes. Her dad has since passed. Her new husband lifts her across the threshold, holding her tight. He promises to love and care for her forever. Her life is enriched and happy.

We could see her cradling her infant, cooking breakfast, hanging sheets, loving her family, sending her husband off to war, and her child to school.

We could see her welcoming her husband back from battle with a hug that lasts the rest of his life.

She buries him on a Saturday under an elm, next to her father. She marries off her child and spends her later years volunteering at church functions before her mind starts to fade and the years take their toll and God says:

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We could see her taking a ride for the first time in an automobile, a small pickup with wooden panels driven by a young man with wavy curls. He smiles gently at her while she sits staring at the road ahead; a fleeting wisp of a smile gives her away.

“It’s time to come home.”

This is how we used to see her before we became blinded by the endless tones of monitors and whirrs of machines, buzzers, buttons and tubes that can add five years to a shell of a body that was entrusted to us and should have been allowed to pass quietly propped up in a corner room, under a window, scents of homemade soup in case she wanted a sip.

You see now we can breathe for her, eat for her and even pee for her. Once you have those three things covered she can, instead of being gently cradled under that corner window, be placed in a nursing

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING home and penned in cage of bed rails and soft restraints meant to “keep her safe.”

She can be fed a steady diet of Ensure through a tube directly into her stomach and she can be kept alive until her limbs contract and her skin thins so much that a simple bump into that bed rail can literally open her up until her exposed tendons are staring into the eyes of an eager medical student looking for a chance to sew. She can be kept alive until her bladder is chronically infected, until antibiotic resistant diarrhea flows and pools in her diaper so much that it erodes her buttocks. The fat padding around her tailbone and hips are consumed and ulcers open up exposing the underlying bone, which now becomes ripe for infection.

We now are in a time of medicine where we will take that small child running through the yard, being chased by her brother with a grasshopper on his finger, and imprison her in a shell that does not come close to radiating the life of what she once had. We stopped seeing her, not intentionally perhaps, but we stopped.

This is not meant as a condemnation of the family of these patients or to question their love or motives, but it is meant be an indictment of a system that now herds these families down dead-end roads and prods them into believing that this is the new norm and that somehow the old ways were the wrong ways and this is how we show our love.

Our end-of-life psyche has slowly devolved and shifted and a few generations have passed since the onset of the Industrial Revolution of medicine. Now we are trapped.

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We now are in a time of medicine where we will take that small child running through the yard, being chased by her brother with a grasshopper on his finger, and imprison her in a shell that does not come close to radiating the life of what she once had.

A day does not go by where my partners don’t look at each other and say, “How do we stop this madness?

How do we get people to let their loved ones die?”

I’ve been practicing emergency medicine for close to a quarter of a century now and I’ve cared for countless thousands of elderly patients. I, like many of my colleagues, have come to realize that while we are developing more and more ways to extend life, we have also provided water and nutrients to a forest of unrealistic expectations that have real-time consequences for those frail bodies that have been entrusted to us.

This transition to doing more and more did not just happen on a specific day in some month of some year. Our end-of-life psyche has slowly devolved and shifted and a few generations have passed since the onset of the Industrial Revolution of medicine. Now we are trapped. We have accumulated so many options, drugs, stents, tubes, FDA-approved snake oils and procedures that there is no way we can throw a blanket over all our elderly and come to a consensus as to what constitutes inappropriate and excessive care. We cannot separate out those things meant to simply prolong life from those meant to prolong quality life.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING

When it’s finally over and the last heart beat blips across the screen and we survey the clutter of bloody gloves, wrappers, masks and needles that now litter the room, you may catch a glimpse as we bow our heads in shame, fearful perhaps that someday we may have to stand in front of God as he looks down upon us and says, “what in the hell were you thinking?”

Nearly 50 percent of the elderly US population now die in nursing homes or hospitals. When they do finally pass, they are often surrounded by teams of us doctors and nurses, medical students, respiratory therapists and countless other health care providers pounding on their chests, breaking their ribs, burrowing large IV lines into burned-out veins and plunging tubes into swollen and bleeding airways.

We never say much as we frantically try to save the life we know we can’t save or perhaps silently hope we don’t save. When it’s finally over and the last heart beat blips across the screen and we survey the clutter of bloody gloves, wrappers, masks and needles that now litter the room, you may catch a glimpse as we bow our heads in shame, fearful perhaps that someday we may have to stand in front of God as he looks down upon us and says, “what in the hell were you thinking?”

When it comes time for us to be called home, those of us in the know will pray that when we gaze down upon our last breath we will be grateful that our own doctors and families chose to do what they should instead of what they could and with that we will close our eyes to familiar sounds in a familiar room, a fleeting smile and a final soft squeeze of a familiar hand.

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Dr. Louis M. Profeta is an emergency physician practicing in Indianapolis. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Patient in Room Nine Says He’s God He was born in 1964 and grew up in Indianapolis, received his medical degree from Indiana University School of Medicine and residency in Emergency Medicine from the Univ. of Pittsburgh. Dr. Profeta is a frequent guest on television and radio. He currently practices Emergency Medicine at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his contributions to community health and community activism.

Feedback at louermd@att.net is welcomed.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING INTERVIEW & ARTICLE

The New Revolution in How We Look at Aging and Elderhood

D

r. Bill Thomas is an internationally recognized expert on aging, who went from being an emergency room physician to the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. He is producing radical changes in how we take care of ourselves as we approach the end phase of life, and successfully challenging and even disrupting long-accepted attitudes people hold about getting older, helping millions of people help themselves. He co-created The Eden Alternative, an international nonprofit, and The Green House Project, both models to revolutionize nursing home care. In addition to teaching, speaking, and consulting internationally, he is currently conducting a 30-city tour around the U.S dubbed the “Age of Disruption 2016 Tour� to rally communities around a new and highly disruptive understanding and approach to growth and aging. More on his website: https://drbillthomas.org/

We interviewed Dr. Thomas about his latest book, SECOND WIND: Navigating the Passage to a Slower, Deeper, and More Connected Life LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

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FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING

Tips on Changing Aging from Dr. Bill Thomas

D

Dr. Thomas teaches that there is a better way and explains how people can reframe their attitudes so they can experience a heightened sense of meaning and expanded opportunity with age.

“A

ging is better now than it has ever been in history. The problem is that our society has a deeply flawed idealization with youth, and we’ve forgotten how to grow old with grace, style, and purpose.”

“There are things you can do,” he says, “that help you gain a greater appreciation of the world and a new way to enjoy the liberation, re-imagination and excitement that can be derived when you embrace ‘life after adulthood.’”

Here’s a sample of some of the ideas and actions he recommends: 1.

Protect your kids and elders from the cult-like-addiction and devotion to youth.

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FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING Push back against the encroachment of inverted values on kids’ and elders’ turf. Let the kids be kids and let the elders grow old gracefully. Say no to standardized tests in kindergarten. Don’t worship youth as perfection.

2.

Ignore the Anti-Aging Gurus and Quackery.

Toss the creams, supplements, and elixirs.

Say no to botox, human growth hormones and other expensive and even dangerous snake oils that gives you nothing but false hope. Resist the pressure and don’t succumb to the ideas that the young need to act like adults, and older adults need to look like teenagers.

3.

Look in the Mirror and Embrace Yourself.

Love yourself the way you are. Don’t accept the idea that aging is defined solely as a matter of decline. Rejoice in the fact that lots of things get better and improve with age. Enjoy that fact that there is less stress, less anger, less demands and less strife.

4.

Slow down and focus on quality time. Stop letting your time-saving gadgets, apps, and technology take over the natural rhythms in your life. Turn them off. Turn the volume down. Get away from them. Go outside. Take a walk every day. Meditate. Have a conversation with a loved one. Break the pandemic

Ignore the Anti-Aging Gurus and Quackery. Toss the creams, supplements, and elixirs. Say no to botox, human growth hormones and other expensive and even dangerous snake oils that gives you nothing but false hope.

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Get involved somewhere – anywhere you can spend time helping others. Enjoy the fact you have abundant time to devote to others in an effective way.

hurry sickness. Use your time wisely and focus on maximizing quality family time.

5.

Choose how you spend your time. Think about how you spend each day. Choose to do less things you don’t like or enjoy. Choose to do more things that you like to do. Don’t say yes, when you want to say no. Say no and do what you want to do instead. Spend more time with the people you enjoy and less time with the people you don’t.

6.

Volunteer Your Time to Help Others. Get involved somewhere – anywhere you can spend time helping others. Enjoy the fact you have abundant time to devote to others in an effective way. Give yourself to help others and you will strengthen the bonds between you and other people in your community.

7.

Take up a new hobby or an old one you abandoned. Spend more time doing something you really love and are fascinated with.

Experience the wonder and joy of trying new things and developing skill and even expertise that comes with building competency.

Explore your potential. Set yourself free to get good at creating the things that give you great pleasure. Share your creations with others frequently so that you look forward to more unique and special opportunity to share what you create.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING 8.

Call your elders more frequently. If you don’t have one, get a surrogate, no matter your age. Reach out, communicate and engage with more elders more frequently. Realize that the time you spend with them is a gift beyond measure. Seek out and learn more ways to make their time interesting and enjoyable. Learn to appreciate and benefit from the time you have to talk to them, guide them and exchange much needed wisdom.

The reason we need to outgrow youth is that when we are young we have very little competence to exchange. It is the juvenile’s obsession with competence that traps so many older people in lives they no longer want to lead, doing work they no longer want to do.

9.

Protect Your Play Time. Don’t let the cult of adulthood wreak havoc on your play time.

Liberate yourself and experience the joy and energy that results from spontaneous, unstructured play. If you need help figuring this one out, find a child to guide you. If you are with your elders, break out a game of cards, checkers, or Monopoly. Everyone lives better when they have enough unstructured playtime.

10. Organize and attend a croning* party! Get

together with other men and women and spend time showcasing the things you appreciate, sharing your knowledge crafts, creations and accomplishments, bestowing respect, honor and dignity on each other. Instead of allowing society to marginalize you and other because of your age, come together and celebrate your coming of age. Cham-

Liberate yourself and experience the joy and energy that results from spontaneous, unstructured play. If you need help figuring this one out, find a child to guide you. If you are with your elders, break out a game of cards, checkers, or Monopoly.

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pion one and all to become a “crone” as an act of empowerment.

* Croning: A celebration or ceremony for women honoring wisdom and the unique gifts of age.

11. Reimagine Your Life: The reason we need to

outgrow youth is that when we are young we have very little competence to exchange. It is the juvenile’s obsession with competence that traps so many older people in lives they no longer want to lead, doing work they no longer want to do. Aging, rightly understood, offers us vast new worlds for exploration because, unlike the young, we can choose to value either competence or possibilities and we have the right to change our mind about which is more important to us-- any time we like. It is aging that gives us the power to reimagine life.

More information is available at www.ChangingAging.org

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING ARTICLE

AWESOME AGING

PASSION

by Janai ‘Grandma Boom’ Mestrovich

J

I

Jumping onto the trampoline at the gym with my 4-year-old granddaughter took the coach by surprise. At 67 and six months out of total hip replacement surgery, I am doing everything I ever did.

n fact, I was in the Ashland Christmas parade as the Christmas Fairy six weeks post surgery. People ask how I do what I do.

Passion for human potential.....mine and yours. That’s my response. Without passion for life I would not be so motivated and determined. The very second I hit the floor very hard in a TRX 6 a.m. Class running very fast between cones, my first thought laid the foundation for my healing process. “I accept this has happened.” Immediately afterwards, I focused on thoughts of gratitude. “I am grateful to live in a time when something can be done to help me.”

More thoughts of continual gratitude, keeping energy flowing through my heart, in-between hip go-

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FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING

ing in and out of socket. That was excruciating but I kept my human potential vigil active. “I am grateful to be an outrageous grandma.” “I am grateful to live in Ashland, Oregon.” Meanwhile, I pulled myself to the wall in the gym, walked with help to my car, drove myself home and called my physical therapist. She was able to come give a diagnosis 7 ½ hrs. later and call 911.

From the onset I knew I would heal completely, quickly, thoroughly. I did. It was painful. I reminded myself the pain was temporary, a sign of strengthening and to suck it up while dedicating total healing in honor of being able to help others because of my success. Self-pity was not an option. I live alone so challenges such as getting dirty laundry to the first floor involved problem solving such as pushing it down the stairs, one step at a time, with my grabber that also doubled as an assistant in dressing myself I began driving 1 ½ weeks post surgery. At three weeks post surgery I figured out how to carry two flats of raspberries on my walker so I could make preserves. Canning using a cane and a walker was quite the undertaking. But I did it. And I felt so alive even though it was very tiring. I was happy!

Working with energy, Qi Gong, positive attitude/thoughts, being self-disciplined doing the

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strengthening exercises, doing problems solving all day, every day to get through the day, slowing down in time and being patient were essential tools. Remembering to be grateful constantly and never allowing negativity to take over and impede the healing process were mainstays in my healing world.

From the onset I knew I would heal completely, quickly, thoroughly.

I did. It was painful. I reminded myself the pain was temporary, a sign of strengthening and to suck it up while dedicating total healing in honor of being able to help others because of my success. Self-pity was not an option.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING 95 Year Old Co-Author of G-Spot Shares Her Passion As I look around and see the light in others’ eyes who are baby boomers, it is always obvious who feels alive and who is experiencing a slow process of thinking life is behind them. My friend, Dr. Alice K. Ladas, co-author of the G-SPOT, isn’t your run of the mill 95 year old. She’s vibrant, exciting and living life to its fullest with undying passion about her own human potential.

When asked about her passions, Alice shares, “My children and grandchildren. The relationship of us humanoids to the rest of life on earth and to life in the cosmos. Preserving and improving democracy in the USA which seems to be slipping. Reversing the population growth on planet earth through education. I am a grandmother for reproductive rights world wide. Improving my professional skills and learning from the younger generation in my co-housing community in Santa Fe. Playing music, singing, musical theatre (I wrote the lyrics and libretto for one and recently appeared in minor roles in Anne and the Sound of Music). How to stay healthy and functional myself and help others to do so. Running after my two year old granddaughter is the most tiring and exciting thing I do.”

She further expresses her views on sexuality. Pleasure is important at all phases of life. Sexual leisure is one vital pleasure connecting me with others and me with myself.”

What I observe over and over is the life force of individuals being well nourished as they age when creativity, passion and innovation are active forces running through their lives. Dull aging eyes are sedentary and have given in to a downward spiral.

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What I observe over and over is the life force of individuals being well nourished as they age when creativity, passion and innovation are active forces running through their lives. Dull aging eyes are sedentary and have given in to a downward spiral.

Preconceived Notions Determine our Aging being Awful or Awesome Recently, I was speaking to a group of those who have aged beyond 60 years. Some in the audience could not be convinced that aging was anything but awful and nothing to look forward to. I felt sad for them. Their eyes did not shine brightly, nor did they feel positive or optimistic about their day.

The University of Virginia has done some recent research indicating that preconceived notions determine what one’s aging process will be like. It is hard to change a groove or way of thinking when it has been done in the same way for thirty years or more. Possible to do, yes. But for many, not probable.

FEATURE SECTION HEALTH ON AGING

Even though I was not able to have grandparents who played with me, at 67 years I now have grandchildren who I play with. I am considered an outrageous grandmother, doing dress-ups, getting on the floor with my grandchildren, playing crazy games, and more.

When I was a child I wished my grandparents would not just sit and watch TV or do something besides just be in the house. I wanted someone to play with me. That didn’t happen. I kept thinking there had to be a different way to be old. In my self-help memoir, The Grandma Boom Chronicles...More Alive at 65! I explain in detail how I decided to change the course of my destiny by creating a new reality for aging.

Research also indicates that an aging person who is creative and innovative can have a happy, healthy aging process. There is a choice, regardless of what surgery has occurred or who has died in the family or friend circle. There is always a choice.

Even though I was not able to have grandparents who played with me, at 67 years I now have grandchildren who I play with. I am considered an outrageous grandmother, doing dress-ups, getting on the floor with my grandchildren, playing crazy games, and more. What I have done is heal the past while creating a new grandparenting model for my grandchildren in the roadmap for their lives and future aging process. I have entered into the reality I wanted as a child only I am the giver grandparent instead of the receiver child. What’s funny is that I am receiving every bit as much as my grandchil-

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dren are receiving. And I get to be happy exercising my inner child with them.

I’ve come up with a saying to remind myself with the passing time that reminds me I am in a latter life chapter. It makes me laugh and keeps me walking a chalk line filled with passion for my own human potential. “I am not dead until I am.” And my new hashtag is #earthisheaven@67.

LIVE! Janai Mestrovich, aka Grandma Boom is an international speaker, Self Help Consultant and has taught at the University of Oregon and SOU. She is the author of “The Grandma Boom Chronicles...More Alive at 65!” and a number of children’s books. Her expertise in holistic education and holistic aging has received awards and recognized by educators, politicians and human potential leaders. Janai lives in Ashland, Oregon, and writes the Awesome Aging Blog online at http://blogs.esouthernoregon.com/awesome-aging/ Her website is: www.grandmaboom.com

Have you ever played with imagining what you would wish for if you found Aladdin’s lamp and the Genie inside? You have the ability to create in several, if not many, different realities. We aren’t just limited to the physical world anymore. Here are tools from nine experts to help you make your dreams come true.

Jean Adrienne Creating in the Reality of DNA

Leslie Amerson

Emotional Mastery ~ Emotional Freedom

Julia Griffin

Your Inner Presence, The True Self

Laurie Huston The Power of the Heart

Linda Minnick

Don’t Worry – It’s just YOUR Perception!

Maureen St Germain

Finding Your Spiritual Connection

Kathleen Kanavos

How Dreams can create a great love life Reality

Suzanne Strisower Multi-dimensional Aspect of Being

Lynn Waldrop

The Mind & The Body

TESTIMONIAL: “The Realities of Creation offers fresh...and differing...insights into the creation process. It opens up a world of all possibilities and addresses all perspectives. If you don’t get it in one chapter, you’ll get it in another!”

DeeWallace, Actor, Author and Healer

www.RealitiesOfCreation.com

METAREALITY REVIEW & INTERVIEW

The Realities of Creation

by JEAN ADRIENNE with LESLIE AMERSON, JULIA GRIFFIN, LAURIE HUSTON, LINDA MINNICK, KATHLEEN O’KEEFE KANAVOS, MAUREEN ST. GERMAIN, SUZANNE STRISOWER, and LYNN WALDROP Have you ever wished for a magic key to the future of your dreams? Well, one size may not fit all, but the nine smart and plugged-in ladies who contributed chapters to the realities of creation have produced a bright and shiny bunch of keys for you to try.

W

ith the lines between physics and metaphysics becoming increasingly blurred, the various approaches to manifestation and creation offered in the book are sounding more and more plausible.

Why shouldn’t we be able to change the expression of our DNA through attention and intention, as Jean Adrienne suggests? The science of epigenetics has already demonstrated how genes can be turned on and off by the environment, including stress which is a function of our perception. Why shouldn’t we all be able to connect with our higher self and enlist its help and advice at will? Dowsers, mediums and clairvoyants do it all the time. Maureen St. Germain shows us how. Why couldn’t the heart help us to create our soul’s desire when it has an electrical signal 100,000 times stronger than the brain? Since ancient times dreams were considered a supernatural

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METAREALITY communication; thousands if not millions of people have reported precognitive dreams that have solved problems or saved their lives. How about mastering the art of lucid dreaming?

and down to earth explanations of various aspects of cosmic connection and manifestation, and practical guidance on how to implement them in your life. Warmly recommended.

These are just a few of the areas covered in this delightful book, in which the authors give rational

ď‚Ą Reviewed by Miriam Knight

INTERVIEW

Jean Adrienne is the developer of the InnerSpeak TM Breakthrough Coaching and Therapy process, as well an author, radio show host, world traveler and entrepreneur. Her books include Power Tools, Reframe Your World: Conscious Living In The New Reality and Soul Adventures. Her website is JeanAdrienne.com.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

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METAREALITY REVIEW

Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology

by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili

Reviewed by Cynthia Sue Larson on “The Reviewers Roundtable” on NCR Radio

T

This book might sound a little bit daunting, but I think everybody has something that they can get out of it because this is actually the brilliant debut of quantum biology.

J

ohnjoe McFadden is a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey. He’s written lots of textbooks and he’s been heavily involved in noticing that there’s something going on in biology that processes everything from DNA and things that we think of as very basic, such as the flight of birds and so forth, and the way smells and our sensory apparatus works in our body. All of these things actually have a very quantum quality to them.

He teamed up with Jim Al-Khalili, who is an academic author and broadcaster. He’s a theoretical physicist, and he was one of the few people that

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METAREALITY

Quantum effects are interesting in the sense that they are seemingly mysterious. didn’t laugh at Johnjoe McFadden early on, because McFadden’s research really goes back quite a long ways. He was noticing through his work in the field of biology, that there’s a body evidence building both within the fields that he was studying directly, as well as in the work of other researchers.

For example, things like photosynthesis in plants are demonstrating really remarkable properties in quantum physics such as quantum coherence and the ability to transport energy. Birds, for example, are able to improve their navigational system thanks to quantum physics as well.

A lot of the previous assumptions, and the reason he’d been laughed at before by a lot of scientists, was that people assumed that quantum phenomena only happened on the quantum scale. People that know me know that this is one of my areas of interest because I know that’s not true. What Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili demonstrate in this book is really, as I said, this debut of this whole new field of quantum biology. What I love so much about the book is the painstaking attention to detail when they describe the history of what went on.

Even some of the things where people originally had laughed at them. They mention Seth Lloyd at MIT thinking, “This sounds ridiculous,” and saying things to that effect, but then Seth Lloyd was willing to keep an open mind and test mathematically to see if some of the claims of these scientists, that quantum effects were actually happening in warm, wet, noisy biological environments, could be true.

Seth Lloyd actually did help to prove the case that, indeed, mathematically, this photosynthesis example is a very solid case of a quantum random walk.

Quantum effects are interesting in the sense that they are seemingly mysterious. They seem very different than what we think of when we think of classical physics where an apple falls out of a tree

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and we think we know what’s going on with force...

It sounds a bit like magic because there can be instantaneous occurring. Quantum particles can tunnel right through solid barriers as if they’re not there at all. They seem to communicate with themselves and be in cahoots across great distances as if time and space don’t matter. There can be this interconnectivity. They do seem to respond to consciousness, so when you observe things it makes a difference. Even if you’re going to observe something in the future, it affects what’s happening now and what happened in the past. There’s just this remarkable synchronicity, and symphony, actually, of interrelated parts moving together, that there is order from order.

One of the things I love about this book is the description of Erwin Schrödinger, who originally did present the idea that biological life is dependent on quantum processes at a very fundamental level.

He was one of the first ones to say that, and then it was only later ... I think people tend to keep going back to classical physics. They feel safe there, that includes scientists, because it seems like we can understand that. When we move into this realm of spooky action at a distance and interconnectedness and everything moving together, that gets a little bit strange for a lot of scientists. I see that we’re on this edge right now of a massive change.

I also love the fact that there appears to be a prominence, actually, of quantum logic in the natural world. Instead of thinking quantum physics is something we only do when we have to and it only applies to certain select areas, it actually seems like just the opposite is true and that everything at its very core is quantum, which can explain the remarkable unlikeliness of this entire universe to begin with.

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE REVIEWERS ROUNDTABLE:

METAREALITY ARTICLE

Neimology Science

®

By Sharón Lynn Wyeth Author Malcolm Gladwell stated, “I wrote Blink because I began to get obsessed, with the way that all of us seem to make up our minds about other people in an instant - without doing any real thinking.»

D

o we make up our minds about others because of first impressions or does it go deeper than that? Are we subconsciously picking up something held in a person’s name, which is not recognized consciously, such that we have an immediate impression of who the person is?

Currently there is a new science on how to interpret names which studies the placement of the letters in a name and how the letters interact with each other to reveal hidden secrets about one’s character. The ability to analyze any name originated from coupling acute observation skills with a mathematically trained mind which excelled in identifying patterns.

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METAREALITY

The question was, can this system of interpreting names work in other languages than English? The answer was yes, with a few tweaks for some languages. Accent marks, umlauts, and other diacritic marks used with names needed to be interpreted.

Name interpretations, based simply on how a name was spelled, was researched and developed over a 35-year period. The science was created utilizing the fields of psychology, sociology, philosophy, statistics and a myriad of other areas of study and disciplines. Its initial start in 1980 includes a period of fifteen years spent consciously searching for the patterns in the letter combinations in names and then matching those patterns with their corresponding vibrations. Also, three years of further testing the research was conducted in over seventy countries (including India, Russia, and China), spanning 6 continents.

Vibrations indicated behaviors, and behind those behaviors were thoughts and feelings. Lists of all observed traits that could be expressed as an adjective or adverb that could describe people with the same first name, but who had different middle and last names, were made. Commonalities were attributed to the first name and other qualities to their other names. Eventually attributes were broken down within a name and assigned to a specific letter, and later to the placement of the letter within the name. Ultimately, letter combinations were also observed to have their own qualities and characteristics.

Over time it became apparent that the first name represented the essence of who a person was, the middle name indicated behaviors that would come into fruition when the person was under stress, and the last name indicated the environmental

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influence. Other patterns soon emerged such as procrastination occurred when the middle name was a stronger name than the first name. Some letters tended to ground a person while others caused a person to be considered somewhat scatter brained. Other letters indicated humor while others discernment. When different letters were missing from a name, it indicated that those qualities, represented in the missing letters, were also missing in the personality.

Once the system was tried and tested on thousands of willing people, with a high accuracy rate based on an individual’s responses, the system was shared in over seventy countries over a three year period of time. The question was, can this system of interpreting names work in other languages than English? The answer was yes, with a few tweaks for some languages. Accent marks, umlauts, and other diacritic marks used with names needed to be interpreted. In English, the first vowel is the one heard when there is a vowel diphthong. In German, the second vowel is heard in a diphthong. Thus, the interpretation needed to have the vowels reversed to be accurate. Name interpretations were accurate in other languages with a few minor adjustments.

Name interpretations that are based on deciphering the placement of the letters in the name, and the patterns formed by combining different letters together can determine someone›s personality predispositions. In other words, what we think, feel, and how we behave can all be revealed in one›s name.

The behaviors represented in the first letter of the first name are what give us our first impression. An example of this is the letter ‹S› which implies the person is smart. The last letter in the first name is our lasting impression, or the first thing we will say when asked to describe an individual. When the last letter is ‹Y› it indicates that the person is a chameleon and can get along with anyone that s/ he wants. The key here is the desire to get along with others and to find common ground.

The first vowel in the first name reveals our communication style, what types of gifts we like to receive, how we show love for another, and our learning style. For example, people with a first vowel of ‹A› show their love by doing things for another person, usually by helping them with their work. Thus,

METAREALITY the task is either completed faster as two people were doing the work, or the quality of the completed task is better since ‹two brains are better than one›.

There are multiple ways of achieving similar qualities. For example, the letters ‹J›, ‹S› and ‘W’, in the first letter position of the first name, all indicate that continual learning is important to the individual. Yet, how they learn is different. People whose first name begins with ‹J› are intuitive and they just know things. Others consider these people brilliant. While, people whose name begins with ‹S› are school smart. They can learn anything once someone shows them the basics. However, ‹S›s prefer not to be micromanaged so once s/he has caught onto an idea, s/he prefers not to be told anymore, instead wishing to discover the rest on their own. In contrast to both the ‹J› and the ‹S›, people whose first name begins with ‹W› learn through experiences. They dislike making the same mistake twice believing in the age-old adage, that wise men learn from other’s mistakes while fools learn from their own.

Interpreting a name can indicate why some individuals require clutter around them, who will be the better athletes and who will be better at math, music or mechanics. Names also indicate who is more mentally oriented and who comes more from their heart.

Knowing how to interpret a name helps us communicate more clearly with other people in order to rapidly establish rapport. Interpreting a name involves studying the placement of the letters and how the letters interact with each other. Names give us clues about the other person, which in turn, saves time and energy in the complicated task of getting to understand another individual. Compatibility between two people can be determined by comparing two people’s names. Points of common interest are indicated, as are points of possible stress. The best part of interpreting a name is that the solutions to our challenges are there along with our potential problems.

The name a person uses indicates their personality traits, while within the birth name is their contract with the Divine which indicates one’s purpose, and why are one is here. We are here for many reasons, most importantly to learn to be of service

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Knowing how to interpret a name helps us communicate more clearly with other people in order to rapidly establish rapport. Interpreting a name involves studying the placement of the letters and how the letters interact with each other. to others by sharing our knowledge and to grow in consciousness. Once one knows how to read one›s name, one›s true purpose can be revealed.

In summary, each individual is born into this life with both talents and challenges. These gifts and challenges are indicated in one›s birth name, while the personality is indicated in the name the person uses on a daily basis. Talents help the person grow, which can help provide gifts for the rest of the world.

Challenges can provide a testing ground in order for the person to become strong and resilient and this can lead to having more empathy and compassion for others, as after experiencing hardships, one realizes that life may not have been easy for others as well. Every person born has something innately special to contribute to our world by sharing his or her natural born gifts.

So, when someone asks, «Who are you?» we reply with our name, as if that says it all. Indeed it does once you know how to interpret a name.»

Sharón Lynn Wyeth is the creator of Neimology® Science, the study of the placement of the letters in a name and what the letters reveal.

This system is explained in detail in her bestselling book, «Know the Name; Know the Person». You may contact her through her website: www.

KnowTheName.com

Inspired Sound Initiative Using Inspired Music and sounds of the spirit to celebrate diversity, educate for peace and heal the world.

MISSION

• To teach our children and elders harmony and peace.

• To use music, dance and story telling to deliver these teachings to schools, houses of worship, and venues in under-served communities in America and around the world.

• To build bridges and promote dialogue, understanding and forgiveness among opposing communities, ethnic groups and spiritual traditions.

“The point is, art never stopped a war and never got anybody a job.

That was never its function. Art cannot change events. But it can change people.” ~Leonard Bernstein

“CONTRIBUTE TO A HOPEFUL FUTURE” To learn more and to donate, go to http://inspiredsoundinitiative.org

OUR WORLD INTERVIEW

Miriam Knight interviews Yuval Ron about his book

Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom Miriam: Our guest is Yuval Ron, an Oscar-winning composer, Grammy-nominated musician, lecturer, Peace Activist, author and educator. He has lectured at Yale and Johns Hopkins and UCLA and MIT, and he has collaborated with neuroscientists to explore the connection between sound and the brain, and his healing music is used in clinics and treatment centers. His new book is called, Divine Attunement: Music as a Path to Wisdom. Welcome Yuval. How did you embark on this path, on music as a path to connecting people?

Yuval: Well, it started when I was in high school in Israel. I played guitar back then, and I noticed that whenever I would bring my guitar to a field trip or to a party, people would gather around me and it would create a circle. People would leave their differences behind, and people that were on the fringes were accepted. So, that’s how it started.

I didn’t make a big mental note of it at the time, but when I was 17, I traveled with my guitar and friends from my high school to the Sinai Desert and we met the Bedouins, the nomads. I saw the Bedouins sitting around the fire at night playing the oud, an ancient Middle Eastern lute that I’ve now been playing for more than 30 years. I

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brought my guitar and just tried to imitate what they were doing on the oud on my guitar. And once again, people who were traveling in the desert suddenly came and sat in a circle around the fire. There were tourists from Scandinavia, England, the United States, Jordan, and Israel.

And they were all coming to the fire and to the sound from a very far distance, because the sound in the desert travels for miles and miles. So, they

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came and sat around the fire. And in the morning, people came to me and said, “Oh, you’re the guy who played around the fire last night. You’re the guy.”

And so, I explored mysticism and the wisdom traditions in parallel to my musical exploration as a composer, and gradually I started combining the two.

And everybody wanted to know me, who I never met before, and some who I couldn’t even communicate with because they didn’t know English or Hebrew or Arabic, but we befriended because of the music.

I went to Boston to study music for films, and that led me to Los Angeles to compose music for television and films. I put my instruments aside, and focused on being a composer for 15 years.

In 2000, I was inspired to create an ensemble of musicians from the Middle East from different countries, Palestinians, Syrians, Turks, Armenians, Israelis, and I brought them together to become what later became the Yuval Ron Ensemble. In the beginning, it was called Yuval Ron and Friends.

And basically it was people that I met in Los Angeles at different parties, just in social gatherings, and we began playing music together.

I became interested in mystical teachings. First it was Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, which I started studying in Israel when I was 19; and then with a Chabad rabbi in Boston; and then in college I became interested in Buddhism and in Zen, and so then later it led to Sufism.

Again, just like in the desert when I was a teenager in Israel, the same thing happened in Los Angeles at parties in backyards - suddenly there was a Persian drummer sitting next to me. Suddenly there was a Palestinian singer singing next to me, a player--a kanun player from Jordan.

So, I started exploring wisdom traditions, like Judaism, Buddhism, Zen and Hinduism, and I found that they were all from the where I came from.

And we start just playing for fun in parties because my day job and my full-time career was focused on composing.

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OUR WORLD So, I looked around in the room one day in 2000 and I saw all these people from different countries of the Middle East who come from opposing camps, opposing nationalities, opposing religions, opposing ethnic backgrounds, and I saw that we could sit together and create harmony together. And we have perfect understanding beyond language, beyond borders, and we have love for the harmony that we create. We all appreciated it.

So I decided to take this out to the public, to put it on a stage and to use it as a tool to educate people about the history, about the traditions of the Middle East, and to use that as a demonstration of how we can create great beauty if we work together. So, that is the message that I bring with my work.

I looked around in the room one day in 2000 and I saw all these people from different countries of the Middle East who come from opposing camps, opposing nationalities, opposing religions, opposing ethnic backgrounds, and I saw that we could sit together and create harmony together.

Miriam: That’s such a beautiful story. What effects did you see of your music in some of these really tense areas in the Middle East?

cians, Jewish and Arabic musicians in Jerusalem who I know.

Yuval: That’s a great question that I’m being asked often by reporters. And I could spend a few hours telling you all the stories and experiences that I collected over the years. I can tell you a few of them.

And he received a Fulbright grant to go to Jerusalem. I remained in touch with him, and then he came up with a vision to create a choir of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, children in Jerusalem, and he called it the Jerusalem Youth Choir.

A few years ago I was the Artist in Residence at Yale Divinity School, along with my whole ensemble. We gave master classes and workshops and a concert. After the concert, a young student came to me, a really skinny, pale looking guy.

This has never been done. Can you believe that?

Nobody ever dared to even think and come with this vision, because Jerusalem is so segregated; because the people are so…they experience the hate, experience the anger. They are segregated physically. They’re segregated mentally. And here is a young skinny kid from Connecticut coming with an idea.

And he told me, “Look, I am a voice major in Yale University and I’m going to graduate next year.

And I came to your concert, and I’m really inspired to do something with my music but I have no idea what. I just know that I studied music in Yale.

And I want to go out of Yale and, because of your concert, I want to do something good in the world with my music. Would you help me figure it out?”

And I said to him, “Look, here is my e-mail. Here is my phone number. Let’s keep in touch. I’ll be happy to mentor you. I’m happy to advise you.”

So, this kid remained in touch with me, and he told me later that he has this intuition that he needs to go to Jerusalem, that he needs to find what he will do with music in Jerusalem. And so, I helped him and guided him to connect with musi-

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And he decided to go to all the high schools in Jerusalem and audition every child in Jerusalem in all the schools and find the best singers across that city from all the different neighborhoods and different religions and put them together. Can you believe this kid going to talk to the principals of all those schools in that city? It’s a tough city.

You know, nobody wanted to talk to him. And you know what? I encouraged him to continue with his vision, and he made it. He created the Jerusalem Youth Choir. You can look on YouTube. Now they’re giving concerts all over the world. They just finished last summer a tour of Japan. They

OUR WORLD are coming to sing in America. He connected families and kids from across the divide, and this all started with one concert that I gave in Yale University several years ago.

Now, this is just one story, just one anecdote. I can sit and tell you 70 stories in the next 10 hours, and this is all because of the work that we do.

Now, we cannot measure it scientifically. We may see the impact of that in the future, but I’m confident that the only thing one can do is to inspire good in the world, to inspire hope, and to inspire others to do the same.

So, for me, the best stories, the best examples, are what happened to people who come to my concerts, and what they do in the world that is beyond that.

Miriam: --Fantastic. And I understand, Yuval, that you have just started a nonprofit foundation. Can you tell us about it?

sity of Chicago and many other universities, John Hopkins, UCLA, sometimes they gift an event to a community school.

Sometimes they send me to do an outreach in a city school, and they’re very kind to do that and pay for it, but most of the time they send me to schools that have lost their arts programs; they have no music and have no visiting artists. I go to communities that are in poverty and radicalism, not just in America but all over the world.

I just came from India a week ago, and I was told in India that the radicalism, Islamic radicalism in India is now highest in the poorest neighborhoods of Muslim communities in Rajasthan and in India.

And I was told that by leaders of the Muslim community that they are very concerned about that.

Yuval: Yes, indeed. The foundation is called Inspired Sound Initiative, and you can see it online, at Inspiredsoundinitiative.org.

And I did a workshop in Rajasthan a week ago for children in these poor neighborhoods to bring them together and to teach them the songs about sharing, about creating unity, about accepting other kids of other religions. That’s the kind of work that needs to be done.

The reason for starting this nonprofit organization is a vision that I have to try to bring more of the work that I do with children to communities that would never get to hear the work that I do. So, Yale University can afford to bring ten artists of my ensemble across the country for a residency.

And sometimes universities like Yale and Univer-

And because the communities that need us the most don’t have the resources, I decided to create a nonprofit organization that will raise the money from corporations and from foundations and from donors and sponsors and gift the work that I do to the schools and communities around the world that have no resources.

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OUR WORLD So, the workshop that we just did was in Rajasthan in Ajmer, in that school that brings Muslims, Hindu, Sikh, and Christian children together. We went there and we gifted the workshop to the school. The school paid nothing, not for the transportation or fees or any expenses. Everything was gifted by my foundation to that school.

We want to do more of that around this country, around the States and around the world. We do this work, but we want to do more of it. And again, we want to train other artists.

We want to train other musicians how to do this work so we can grow and have other ambassadors and other organizations all around the world doing the same kind of work that we do --training children to become citizens who care about harmony, peace, and beauty and unity using music and dance.

Miriam: That’s fascinating.

Yuval: In a school I visited in India, they had songs from the four different religions that coexist in that school. And that was wonderful. But, then I went on stage and gave my presentation with my ensemble, and I taught them a song in English about giving love, about sharing light, about teaching peace, and having that lead to harmony.

And that was all fine. That was all within what they were used to. And then I took it a step further

We want to train other musicians how to do this work so we can grow and have other ambassadors and other organizations all around the world doing the same kind of work that we do --training children to become citizens who care about harmony, peace, and beauty and unity using music and dance.

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We want to do more of that around this country, around the States and around the world. We do this work, but we want to do more of it.

And again, we want to train other artists. to a place that they normally don’t go. I taught them a song that is an old Israeli song about love, which I recorded on my CD, “Seeker of Truth.”

And we sing it as a prayer for peace. It’s a song called Erev Shel Shoshanim, but we sing it as shalom-salam, as a prayer for peace. And originally it was just for Israelis and Palestinians.

But, what I do--I did it with the world shalom, salam, shanti, which means peace in Hindu, and hallelujah, which is a Hebrew word, but to specially engage the Christian kids. And so, it’s one song, one melody using four different words that are sacred words and core words for peace and faith for these four communities. And we got them to sing all together, and the one song brought the oneness, brought the variations together into one.

And that’s something that they are not used to do. They’re used to position themselves side by side, you know, a different song for the Christians, different songs from the Muslims, different songs for the Hindus. And they create tolerance by that.

But, I took it a step further by having one song, same melody, same music, same notes, but using those different sacred words in one song, so increasing the oneness and the sense of oneness among those children.

And you know what? Their religious leaders who were there and donors and sponsors of the school--it was the Peace Day celebration in that school in Ajmer in Rajasthan, India--all the dignitaries took notice of that. They noticed that it was something beyond what they normally do.

And they came to me after and they were very deeply moved, and they asked me if I could come

OUR WORLD back and if I could go with them to Kashmir. The center of conflict between India and Pakistan is Kashmir. They wanted me to come back next year and to do a big event in Kashmir to try to lower the tensions and encourage the peace.

So, there was a fabulous reception. And this is in a very poor neighborhood. It used to be a slum, and now, with the efforts of many, many good people and charity organizations, it’s not a slum.

It’s still a poor neighborhood, but it’s not in dire straits as it used to be.

So, that is the kind of music that we do--the kind of work that we do using music to bring people together.

Miriam: I think that music has really proved itself to be a connector of--across divides. And it’s astonishing to me that not more people are doing this.

Yuval: Yes. Miriam: And so, I understand that--from what you said earlier that you’re also training facilitators to be able to expand this work out into the world.

Yuval: That is one of the programs that we have created for the new foundation, the Inspired Sound Initiative. One of the programs that we are planning to do once a year is pay for people to fly and stay in Los Angeles for the training period.

The center of conflict between India and Pakistan is Kashmir. They wanted me to come back next year and to do a big event in Kashmir to try to lower the tensions and encourage the peace.

So, there was a fabulous reception. And this is in a very poor neighborhood.

We’re going to handpick talented young artists who are willing to do something with their music and dance, and train them on how we do it, how we program, how we do the business side of things, how we get a nonprofit organization together, how we fundraise, how we coordinate, how we manage, and how we educate. And we are interested in people coming and going out to the world with this training, so we are not the only one who are doing it. We are interested in duplicating ourselves many, many, many times.

Miriam: So, if someone is interested in supporting this or getting involved in this some way, can they connect with you through Inspiredsoundinitaitive.org?

We’re going to handpick talented young artists who are willing to do something with their music and dance, and train them on how we do it, how we program, how we do the business side of things, how we get a nonprofit organization together, how we fundraise, how we coordinate, how we manage, and how we educate.

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Yuval: Yes. Yes, there is a page there for connecting with us. It’s very simple. Yeah, just go to that website, learn more about it and please contact us, because we have a great team of people from all over the country, lawyers, educators, bankers, mortgage lenders, so many people. It’s really heartwarming that people responded to the call that I put out, and they’re all coming together to work to realize that vision.

Miriam: Again, it’s Inspiredsoundinitaitive.org.

Well, Yuval, you are a man of many parts. Thank you for being with us today.

OUR WORLD REVIEW

The 8 Laws of Change:

How to Be an Agent of Personal and Social transformation

by Steven A. Schwartz

Reviewed by Cynthia Sue Larson on “The Reviewers Roundtable” on NCR Radio

T

The idea in the book, like the Beatles’ song goes, is that everybody wants to change the world. Actually, there is an element of truth to that.

J

ust listening to the news, some positive changes would be a nice thing. Sometimes we get frustrated. A lot of groups are not so effective, while some actually have been quite effective. The author, Steven Schwartz, who is a distinguished consulting faculty member at Saybrook University, has done a lot of work with the publication Schwartz Report, and he’s written four books, hundreds of papers, and he’s written for the Smithsonian. The most important

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OUR WORLD thing is that he has a lot of personal experience during the Civil Rights Movement in the ‘60s, and the social movements of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. After looking at the dynamics of change, he noticed something really shocking. He found that there’s one particular group that has been, time after time, at the core of all the successful change movements.

Here’s the surprise: he noticed that every time, there were a few Quakers joining together in common intention. This book is not really telling you how to be a Quaker. You might think, “What’s going on there?” What he’s really doing is showing some of the things that Quakers are doing – and they fit in with what he describes as the eight laws of change.

He just observed these Quakers, how they’re very quietly part of things that are successful. What they’re doing is that they share a common intention. That’s one of the eight things. Another one is they have goals, but not cherished outcomes. They also accept they may or may not see change in their lifetime. They accept having a lack of credit or acknowledgement. That’s why people don’t usually think of Quakers as being the ones who are really successful here. They enjoy fundamental equality.

They forswear all violence. They’re consistent between their private and their public positions and they act from a place of integrity.

I think this is one of the books of our times. I think it’ll be a classic. The book itself is not nearly as dry as I just spelled it out. It actually is lively. Each chapter tends to go through an example. Benjamin Franklin did a lot of wonderful things that were very far reaching, and forward thinking.

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Here’s the surprise: he noticed that every time, there were a few Quakers joining together in common intention.

This book is not really telling you how to be a Quaker. You might think, “What’s going on there?”

It sounds like every one of those elements is 180 degrees from what we see around us, and that’s because we’re watching the corporatocracy trying to take over the world, but this book shows how to turn that around. I think this is one of the books of our times. I think it’ll be a classic. The book itself is not nearly as dry as I just spelled it out. It actually is lively. Each chapter tends to go through an example. Benjamin Franklin did a lot of wonderful things that were very far reaching, and forward thinking. I’m so impressed with what he’s been able to do in terms of setting things up so that we have libraries, we have a lot of public thing including school systems and just things that we take for granted now. We think that they’re part of America, but they wouldn’t have been unless someone like Benjamin Franklin put them together.

Actually, a lot of what he did was in accordance with these laws of change, so you don’t need to be a Quaker. I’m just pointing out that it is interesting that there is a group of people who are doing these eight things, and setting a model for the rest of us.

Steven Schwartz then ties it all together and shows how lots of people are bringing about amazing positive changes in the world and how we can all do the same thing.

OUR WORLD ARTICLE

Shamanism, Society & Politics

by Nick Seneca Jankel

S

hamanism is going mainstream.

Forbes1, the New Yorker2 and even the Daily Mail3 have all featured shamanism and medicine plants like ayahuasca (aya) in the last few years. This could be a watershed moment in the West. Shamanic

1 F orbes, ‘Do Psychedelics Drive You Crazy Or Keep You Sane?’, Mar 11, 2015 2 N ew Yorker, ‘The Trip Treatment’, Feb 9, 2015 3 D aily Mail Online, Suicides, sects, murder and insanity: The disturbing truth about the trendy ‘spiritual’ hallucinogenic brew being taken by gap year backpackers in the Amazon (and even in British sitting rooms), Oct 1, 2015

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skills, processes and medicines (along with their Western analogues) could lead to a viral pandemic of individual empowerment and social emancipation. However, there are a number of assumptions and dogmas from both within the traditions themselves, as well as in popular culture, which I believe may be preventing this from happening.

The exact nature of shamanism is something that few anthropologists or experts agree on. The word ‘shaman’ itself is notoriously hard to define categorically. Ask 10 different scholars and you’ll get 10 different definitions. Eliade declares any defi-

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nition is hazardous.4 In fact, strictly speaking, calling the diverse array of shamanic-type peoples – from Siberian medicine man to South American wise woman – ‘shamans’, is a Western conceit or category error. However, I believe that an underlying archetype, the ur-shaman if you will, can be a useful distinction when understanding both old and new forms of human transformation. I would describe what the ur-shaman does as ‘dialoguing’ with something other – whether we call that nature, the universe, or the ‘spirit world’ – in order to help individuals and communities solve problems.

The ur-shaman brings vital information from the ‘other’ side, and the Other in general, to help the group survive and thrive.

Although shamans (or curanderos as they are sometimes called in South America) are often assumed to come from places like Mexico or darkest Peru (see Paddington Bear), the word was first coined in reference to shamans of the Tungus tribe in Siberia5 by Russians engaging with them. However, we need not look to just the exotic places to understand what a shaman is. Eliade suggests that a type of person akin to a shaman has appeared in virtually every traditional culture on the planet, 4 E liade, Micea 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by Willard R. Trusk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 5 V itebsky, Piers (2001). The Shaman: Voyages of the Soul – Trance, Ecstasy and Healing from Siberia to the Amazon.

Duncan Baird. ISBN 1-903296-18-8.

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including our own6. In other words, every tribe has had its shamans. Sadly, many of our communities no longer have theirs. I believe that the result of this can be seen in the devastating problems we face – from rampant suicide and depression to climate change and poverty.

Famously characteristic of much shamanism is the role of out-of-mind or out-of-body experiences in the process of transformation; experiences that bring new insight and information into the self and ecosystem. This experience has often been termed ‘ecstasy’. The Greek word ekstasis, the root of the word ‘ecstasy’, means entrancement or astonishment. It usually refers to an experience when we are out of our traditional consciousness and so penetrate into the hidden order of things. In many cultures, this kind of ecstasy is a normal part of life. Grof7 believes that most non-Western cultures have an officially authorized way to experience ecstasy in their culture.

Ecstatic experiences, whether the 2nd Century BC Eleusinian Mysteries or 21st Century ayahuasca ceremonies, offer us one route to transform the roots causes of our environmental tragedies and social calamities. Through opening the doors of perception by using Nature herself - in the form 6 Eliade, Micea 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by Willard R. Trusk. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 7 Grof, Stanislaw LSD Psychotherapy, Hunter House Inc., 1980

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of plant medicines (or synthesized molecules that deliver similar experience), we can truly connect with Her. Whenever and however such altered states are experienced, they often provide insight and healing within minutes and hours as opposed to the weeks, months and years of traditional therapy and meditation techniques. The massive uplift of interest in shamanic paths to ecstasy - and the medicine plants and psychedelic substances that can get us there - speaks eloquently of our urgent search for rapid paths of transformation that can help us evolve at a speed that matches the insanely rapidly-changing world we live in.

sources, flooding it with waste, poisons and carbon and sold us on a dream of greed and growth… which has ended up in rampant anxiety, addiction and depression. All these discourses stem from the same belief in ourselves as discrete individual selves, and our apparent rationality and drive towards self-interest. However, this worldview is neither internal nor self-evident, no matter how it appears from “in here”. In fact, various historians have pointed to the Early Modern era as the period where our modern idea of a thinking, self-actualizing individual was invented.8 On its heels came the Western idea of homo economicus, and everything else that followed.

In fact, I would argue that the human race – and the planet we are devastating at speed – does not have time for a lengthy ‘conscious revolution’ if that means waiting for everyone to spend 20 or 30 years meditating before they can take part in the shift we need to make now. The clock really is counting down on the species. And shamanic transformation – whether using medicine plants or not – might be the fastest way we have to get to the tipping point and change our consumerist, advanced capitalist lifestyles before we reach irreversible planetary damage.

Western reformers, rooted in the individualist paradigm, have been wedded to a promise of rational progress ever since. Decade after decade sees new social welfare, criminal justice and international aid programs designed and implemented by such rationalists. They are clearly failing to deliver the impacts desired. The emotionally-traumatized still abuse, hurt and reoffend, despite billions spent on retributive punishment. The disempowered remain unemployed and underemployed, no matter how many initiatives are launched to get them back to work. The war on drugs keeps failing because it too has failed to treat the root cause of all these ills: emotional and spiritual despair. As prescient ecologist Lynn White

It is clear that the current wave of social and environmental disasters hitting our species is derived from Western economic theory. The advanced capitalist activities it enflames, together with controlling, mechanistic science, have stripped the world of re-

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8 Lyons, John O. The Invention of The Self: The Hinge of Consciousness in The Eighteenth Century. Carbondale: Southern University Press, 1978

OUR WORLD wrote back in 1967, before we realized just how big a crisis it really is: “Since the roots of our trouble are so largely religious, the remedy must also be essentially religious, whether we call it that or not.”9 Even socialism – a response to the suffering existent under Western hierarchies where power and wealth remain in the hands of a few, whether aristocrat or banker – was co-opted by rationalists. Rosa Luxemburg, one of the pioneers of socialism, which was to doom the project in Russia, Vietnam, Cambodia and China, explains where it went wrong: Socialism in life demands a complete spiritual [my emphasis] transformation in the masses . . . Social instincts in place of egotistical ones, mass initiative in place of inertia, idealism which conquers all suffering, etc., etc. No one knows this better, describes it more penetratingly; repeats it more stubbornly than Lenin. But he is completely mistaken in the means he employs. Decree, dictatorial force of the factory overseer, draconian penalties, rule by terror.10 Yet the invention of the modern welfare state on both sides of the Atlantic was actually inspired by spiritual, not just techno-rational, aspirations. As the factories of the Industrial Age started to destroy the livelihoods of so many, John Ruskin published Unto This Last, a call to the public to reground politics in the values of the human spirit.11 Leo Tolstoy, lauded by the intelligentsia for his seminal works of fiction, such as War and Peace, ended his days in Russia far more famous for his role as spiritual activist than a writer. At the turn of the century, he wrote The Kingdom Of God is Within You12. In it he asks his fellow citizens to refuse to fight in the wars of the governing classes, and instead find peace and political truth within. It is no accident that these books went on to inspire both Gandhi13 and 9 W hite, L. ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,’ <i>Science</i>, 1967; 155: 1203–1207 10 Luxembourg, R.The Russian Revolution, Workers Age Publishers (New York), 1940 11 C raig, David M. .John Ruskin and the Ethics of Consumption (Studies in Religion and Culture Series) Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.

12 D onna Tussing Orwin The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge University Press, 2002 13 D antwala, M Gandhiji and Ruskin’s Unto This Last, Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 30, No. 44 (Nov. 4, 1995), pp. 2793-2795

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Martin Luther King14 in their remarkable efforts to bring about tangible yet peaceful social revolutions in two of the most populous nations in the world. What these pioneers share is how our realization of our essence as an intrinsic part of the one universe can impact so dramatically on our society and on the planet.

Yet although Ruskin was a very important figure influencing membership of the early Labour Party in the UK, the days of spiritual inspiration in the daily grind of most progressive politics and change-making seems to be over. The irrational faith in rationality is oblivious to what we know from rationalist neuroscience: We are utterly emotional beings15, who learn, communicate, and engage because of the stories and experiences that touch our hearts and give us meaning. All the rationalist and technocrats can offer us is a clinical Cartesianism. They focus on production, performance, efficiency and consumption – all metaphors from the world of machines. Little wonder that depression, anxiety, anguish, fear-driven greed, and aggression are so rampant, and costing us the Earth. Quite literally.

So the rising engagement in shamanic and psychedelic paths to spiritual awakening could offer us in the West an entirely apposite path back to a heartled progressive movement that is more interested in minimizing suffering than it is in maximizing the means of production. Medicine, whether plantbased or inorganic, can help us let go of the obsession with rationalism, separation, and mechanism.

By appealing to those who are drug-curious and experienced, it could help us bring back heart-led ways of being that have been banished from intellectual circles since the time of Ruskin and the Romantics. Shamanism can help us rebuild our society with profound meaning and interconnection at the heart of it.

However, there are some major stumbling blocks.

People in positions of power in the West have been suppressing ecstatic forms of knowing for hundreds of years through various forms of witch hunt 14 King, Jr., Martin Luther; Clayborne Carson; et al. (2005). The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume V: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959 – December 1960. University of California Press. pp. 149, 269, 248. ISBN 0-520-24239-4.

15 Bechara, A. et al., Emotion, Decision Making and the Orbitofrontal Cortex, Cereb. Cortex (2000) 10 (3): 295-307.

OUR WORLD – whether literal or figurative. Even though the medical literature is full of new studies that suggest that man-made entheogens and indigenous medicine plants may be tremendously powerful in healing problems like addiction, depression and end-of-life trauma1617, these substances are often still seen today as the refuge of counter-cultural scoundrels and lost hippies rather than a path to social and ecological harmony.

Medicine plants and ecstatic experiences allow us to pierce the veil of separation and the power hierarchies - priests, aristocrats - that form around it. Instead, they give us direct experience of our reality as an intrinsic (and much loved) part of the universe. As dogmatic religion, and then an equally dogmatic science, have both risen to prominence, such local, folk and indigenous techniques for healing suffering souls and sick communities have been sidelined. The result is that we have an impoverished access to relevant and responsive wisdom tools, that, free from dogma, can be seen to have been iterated over hundreds, if not thousands of years as ways to help us access our inner capacity for compassion, empathy and justice.

On the other hand, ‘Transcendental Tourism’ - the voyage to indigenous lands to find authentic experiences of shamanism - and the reverse version of this, ’Shaman Tours’, where indigenous shamans come to Western cultures to run ceremonies may not be the whole answer. In fact, it can be argued that whilst often doing a lot of great work, in other ways they may be part of the problem. Venerating indigenous shamans without critical consciousness can rob us of our own innate ‘shamanic’ capacities to heal. This doesn’t serve anyone longterm. Nobody can be with a shaman, therapist, coach or wisdom teacher 24/7. So if we don’t learn how to self-heal and self-transform, we will always remain in stasis until another “expert” is available to support us.

If we want to empower ourselves to grow through the tough challenges that life inevitably brings, we 16 D uman, R and Aghajanian, G ‘Synaptic Dysfunction in Depression: Potential Therapeutic Targets,’ Science, Oct 2012 17 ‘ Treatment-Resistant Depression: Glutamate, Stress- Hormones and their Role in the Regeneration of Neurons,’ presented at New York Academy of Sciences Mar 2013

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must learn how to access our own ‘inner shaman’.

This is particularly true if we want to have the inner resources and capacity to make a difference to our social and environmental problems. Such an “inner shaman” has a vital role to play in all our lives: it helps us move forward, heal, and grow so that we can play our part in harmonizing our world.

I believe such an “inner shaman” is within each of us. I am not alone. The Native American shaman Black Elk said: “This center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” Contemporary scientific studies on resilience state that we all have this force within that compels us to become more generous, compassionate, wise, and whole. Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch of Zen said: “The fools of this world look for sages far away. They don’t believe that the wisdom in their own mind is the sage.”

Many traditions have a name for this intuitive wisdom and inner capacity to heal. It is both totally mystifying yet utterly mundane because we all access it every day. In the Chinese tradition it might be called the Tao. In Greek it could be called the Logos. In Jewish mysticism, this inner wisdom is called Chochma. Chochma means something like “the potential of what is”, “the potential to be” or, simply, “pure potential.” Chochma flashes within us when we allow it space. Whatever we called this spark of other-worldliness entering our quotidian, this-worldy reality, I believe it is universal intelligence bursting forth as a flash of intuition or insight.

This could be the inner shaman at work, ferrying information from the Other to the here-and-now.

I believe this process is accelerated and amplified by psychedelics, entheogens and medicine plants.

Let us always remember that it is our organic biologies that encode and enact the dreams, visions and sensations of shamanic experience. The metaphorical inner shaman does the work of becoming whole. Yes, the professional and the initiated can open us up and hold us when we are most vulnerable – but they don’t ‘do’ the healing itself. Our own cells, nerves and spirit do that. How could it be any other way?

What this suggests is that chochma / intuition / the inner shaman is an intrinsic intelligence in life itself.

I believe it is this intelligence that ensures nature is

OUR WORLD always in dynamic equilibrium, in harmony, with itself. According to this school of thought, which we might equate with the Western philosophy of pantheism, this intelligence is in everything. It is therefore unsurprising that, according to Hutton in Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination, one of the few firm commonalities between all shamanic traditions is a belief that all objects are inhabited by spirit(s). Modern pantheists and ancient shamanic traditions agree: there is consciousness in everything. All is Mind and Matter. All Matter is Mind.

Most wisdom traditions tell us that if we align ourselves with this natural intelligence and abide by it, we can find our way through challenging times with maximum ease and grace. When we follow the Tao or Logos – going with the flow of the inner shaman – we become what the Taoist tradition calls the zhenren, or Perfect Man, and what stoicism calls the Sage. Nature is always the alpha and omega of everything. Within Her we are born and into Her we die. This wisdom always brings more thriving into the space we are working in, whether in a relationship, business or community. Whether in corporate innovation or group healing, the insights that emerge from chochma spark ideas that invariably empower, enlighten and emancipate more people from mental and economic slavery.

Furthermore, the contemporary blossoming of shamanism may also be perverting the core role of the shaman: to heal society not the individual. At the World Ayahuasca Conference in Ibiza in 2014, a book of essays by many of the world’s leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, called Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond18, was launched. The essays fundamentally challenge many of the most cherished notions of shamanism. Their research suggests that tobacco was actually the predominant medicine plant of South American shamans. Its main role was less about individual therapy and more about “promoting ecological harmony for the group”. The use of aya as medicine and religious sacrament looks like it may have spread upriver, from the Westernised coast to the indigenous interior, and not vice versa. In addition, the practices that the curandero 18 L ebate, B.d Cavnar, C. Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond, Oxford University Press, 2014

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uses in ceremony seem to have developed through massive cross-fertilization with Christian and other traditions over the last century or so, and not passed down for millennia in isolation.

So the focus on ayahuasca as a substance for personal healing seems to be as much a product of Western projection (with our solipsistic Freudian therapeutic culture) as it is indigenous tradition.

This is key. For an authentic indigenous shaman’s primary duty may be more about maintaining the harmony of the community – as a kind of psycho-spiritual steward – than it is to help individuals heal their traumas and so feel happy. If we are to honor the tradition fully, we must ensure that we move firmly through our own healing to that of our tribes. I believe that the shift from shamanism for Me to shamanism for We is the critical step we need to progress the burgeoning psychedelic / shamanic movement.

Connection – to ourselves, our family, community, race, species, all species, rivers and oceans, rocks and mountains, stars and comets – is the only thing that can change the world into the one so many of us are aching to see, touch and feel. Its aim could be to bring about a mass shift towards a truly planet-ready consciousness that might find a plastic bag floating in the breeze agonizing. We see it and immediately feel the suffering of our planet as it labors for millennia to decompose it and bring it back into the circle of life.

The truth is, we can all connect like this whether through nature walks, taking inner refuge, mindfulness meditations, vision quests, or plant-based medicines. Through reconnecting our hearts we can awaken our inner shaman and dialogue with things that are ‘Other’ to our individual egos. We can use these simple techniques to expand the circle of things we think of as ‘friends’ and therefore include the whole world in the things we want to protect with passion. We move out of Me consciousness and firmly into We consciousness, the prerequisite for a heart-led social and environmental approach that looks to heal ourselves so we can heal the world. In the Jewish mystical tradition we commit to Tikkun Ha’nefesh, healing our own soul, so that we can be elegant virtuosi at Tikkun Olam, healing of the world. We then realize that Shamanic experience without personal transformation is

OUR WORLD escapism. Shamanic experience without world transformation is narcissism. As I write in my book, Switch On19:

“We turn enlightenment from a lovely personal experience into a force for good. Enlightenment, the indescribable awakening to our true nature as one with the universe, is the start of our journey, not the end-point. We become enlightened in the world, for the world, as the world; not removed from it in a monastery, yoga studio, or temple.”

Every human being on Earth was created with the potential to heal themselves and their communities. New meditation apps and ancient medicine plants, whether wielded by ourselves, therapists or curanderos, can be fabulously helpful to ensure we get the transformation we are looking for. But they are just tools. They are not the thing itself. We all are autopoietic in nature. We have the potential to create ourselves - and so to heal ourselves - within us.

Placing our power into the hands of anyone or anything else, whether some kind of God, shaman or substance, can only ever disempower us. All the insight and intuition we need are within, right now, ready to bring more love, truth and creativity into our shared space so we can all thrive in conscious community. Whilst a trip to Peru or West Africa may be a powerful opening for transformation, we don’t need to wait to enjoy direct access to the source of all healing. And with the resultant wholeness we can open our hearts to the suffering of others and vote, lead and act - in politics and elsewhere - accordingly.

Perhaps then we will be able to grow a political movement that transcends the old dichotomy of left and right wing, which is now stale and out-ofdate. We can blend the left’s orientation towards 19 J ankel, N. Switch On: Unleash Your Creativity and Thrive With The New Science and Spirit of Breakthrough, Watkins Press, 2015

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social justice, environmental protection and equality of opportunity with the right’s belief in small government, self-empowerment and self-reliance.

At the heart of such a movement would be our connected hearts, not our disconnected heads.

As shamanic journeyers and psychonauts, such a movement will be premised on connection not consumption; on expression not possession; on purpose not production. We will be free to consult our intuitive inner shaman to make choices on policy and strategy. We will agree to put compassion ahead of utilitarianism; the reduction of suffering over the maximization of the good (whatever that may be). In this way we can connect the primal and primary impulse of shamanism - “promoting ecological harmony for the group” - to our post-industrial world. Perhaps this is the only way to bring our economies and ecosystems back into alignment with Nature in time to prevent irreversible climate change and disappear poverty and injustice for good.

Nick Seneca Jankel is a Cambridge-educated wisdom teacher, breakthrough coach and the author of the bestselling book Switch On: Unleash Your Creativity and Thrive With the New Science & Spirit of Breakthrough. He is a sought after international keynote speaker (e.g. Google, No.10 Downing Street and Oxfam), TV presenter (BBC, MTV) and the lead creator of Breakthrough Biodynamics™, a radical new framework for leading breakthroughs in any area of human endeavor. Nick is CEO of leadership and personal development company SWITCH ON WORLDWIDE (www.switchonworldwide.com), which works with leaders from companies like Genentech, Intel and the BBC. The enterprise also innovates transformational media, meditations and live experiences designed to switch on everyone on so they can face an uncertain future and thrive.

To that end, Nick has recently launched a major new online learning experience, The Switch On 21-Day Breakthrough Challenge, which contains uber-short videos designed to get users to a major breakthroughs in just a few minutes a day.

OUR WORLD ARTICLE & REVIEW

The Five Levels of

Awareness

An Excerpt from On the Verge: Wake Up, Show Up, and Shine

by Cara Bradley How you experience this moment is very much like looking through a camera lens. You can look at the world in panorama or zoom in for a closeup. The lens can be focused, showing sharp lines, or unfocused, so that shapes are foggy and blurry. What you see depends on whether your lens is in focus, what type of filter you’re using, and what type of lens you’re using (telephoto, wide angle, or standard).

W

hen you’re upset or pissed off, your experience may be filtered so it feels dull or distorted.

If you’re trying to multitask, your experience may feel fragmented. When you are engaged and fully aware, you experience the world in high definition.

Your lens is focused and crystal clear. How you experience what you’re feeling and what’s happening around you comes down to whether you are awake and aware or busy and asleep.

Awareness is your perception of this moment. It’s how you experience life right now. When you’re unaware and trapped in busy mind, life appears unfocused and sort of foggy. Being unaware is like trying to take a picture but being unable to focus the lens. On the other hand, when you’re fully aware, your perception is crystal clear. You experience life

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OUR WORLD in high definition. You’re aware of ideas, perceptions, and physical sensations as they arise. Being fully aware is like seeing life through a camera lens that’s clear and focused.

The Five Levels of Awareness The five levels of awareness help you distinguish when you’re aware and engaged and when you’re not aware or distracted. They are like mile markers or reference points to help you determine your location, or state of mind, in any given moment. Understanding the five levels will help you to uncover where you’re spending most of your time and energy. You may be surprised at what you find. The five levels of awareness are: 1. Busy Mind

2. Waking Up

3. Power Pause

4. Glimpsing Your Natural State 5. Living on the Verge

At Level 1, you’re stuck in your Busy Mind, preoccupied with doing, consumed by your overflowing lists and overcrowded schedule. You can feel mentally frazzled, emotionally exhausted, and physically tense. At Level 1, you may not recognize

Cara Bradley is the author of On the Verge. She has taught yoga, meditation, and fitness internationally for more than thirty years and is the founder of Verge Yoga. Visit her online at www. carabradley.net.

Excerpted from the book On the Verge: Wake Up, Show Up, and Shine. Copyright © 2016 by Cara Bradley. Printed with permission from New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

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there’s a healthier and more empowering way to live. You are not aware that you are not aware.

At Level 2, Waking Up, you shift beyond busy mind and momentarily wake up out of the dream state of thinking. Your busy mind gets interrupted and you catch yourself in the middle of an angry or anxious moment or fantasizing about where you want to vacation next year. In other words, you catch yourself entrenched in drama and distraction. You are aware that you are not aware.

At Level 3, Power Pause, you experience the space beyond your busy mind long enough to pause and interrupt your habitual tendencies to worry, doubt, fear, or judge. During the pause you recognize that you can choose to either show up and be engaged or slip back into dullness, distraction, or drama.

You are aware of the power in pausing.

At Level 4, Glimpsing Your Natural State, you shift into the space beyond your busy mind and glimpse your natural state of clear mind, bright body, and open heart. You feel stable and clear for a few moments. Although it may be short-lived, you recognize your natural state and what it feels like to be fully alive. You are aware that you are aware.

Level 5 is Living on the Verge, a metaphor for being awake. You experience life through the unfiltered lens of your natural state. You feel clear, bright, and open. You show up and shine. You are fully aware.

OUR WORLD REVIEW

On the Verge: Wake Up, Show Up, and Shine

T

by Cara Bradley

here are places in the Amazon jungle where two rivers merge into one. These places are considered sacred because plants and wildlife thrive more here than in any other area of the river. This place is called “the verge.” The author who calls herself a human-potential junkie, uses this same term to refer to that place where a person is “100 percent engaged right here and right now…being fully present and aware.” Her book explains how to experience this more frequently and gives actual processes to use to facilitate being on the verge in daily life.

She explains that living on the verge is not about doing more - it is about being more, “….being in a state where your mind is clear, your body bright, and your heart open.”

The practices include: notice this moment; move my body; meet my mind; and notes to self. She offers strategies that help you experience your natural state more often by helping you navigate your life and maintain balance. These strategies include: be in sync; be kind; let it go, let it be; and be aware.

On the Verge is not only a delightful book, it is practical, full of energy and humor, and offers roadmap to living in the present with high energy, attention, and devotion - and who doesn’t want that?  Reviewed by Krysta Gibson

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CONSCIOUS CINEMA

Want To Change Your Life?

Watch a Movie!

By Brent Marchant Must we accept life as it is? Or can we successfully alter it, preferably to a form more to our liking? For those who practice conscious creation, the philosophy that maintains we shape our existence through our thoughts, beliefs and intents, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

A

s previous articles have shown, conscious creation (also known as the law of attraction) maintains that we have an infinite number of probabilities for reality creation at any given moment, and the existence that ultimately materializes depends on whatever thoughts, beliefs and intents we choose to make it possible. And, since we always have a limitless range of manifestation options available to us, we’re by no means “stuck” with what we create. We can always employ our power of choice to change what we get.

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CONSCIOUS CINEMA Much of the time – especially when we manifest results we dislike – we feel limited by what we’ve created, believing we have no choice in the matter. However, given that we always have the power to choose at our disposal, we also always have the power to change our minds about what we want to materialize.

The power of change, like the power of choice, is one of our fundamental birthrights, and we can use it to work wonders in the realities we each create. To be sure, we may sometimes have difficulty envisioning alternatives, especially when we feel hemmed in by our creations. But those other options are always there, and we can bring them into being simply by opening up our minds to them. A little inspiration can prove helpful under such circumstances, and that’s where the power of film once again comes into play by offering us examples of how to do things differently.

Change can be effected in our lives in numerous ways. Perhaps most fundamentally it can be used to alter the prevailing nature of our reality, a no-

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tion aptly illustrated in the quirky comedy-drama, “The Truman Show” (1998). In this truly original offering, everyman Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the star of the world’s most popular reality TV show – the 24/7 chronicle of his life – but he’s the only one who’s unaware of it. However, keeping up the façade necessary to pull off this monumental feat is a tremendous undertaking for the show’s producers. So, when noticeable glitches begin to appear in the course of production, Truman’s curiosity is naturally piqued, so much so that he begins to question – and subsequently sets about changing the beliefs governing – the nature of his existence, a process that enables him to become a truly creative master of his destiny.

Similar themes run through the narratives of two Woody Allen comedies, “Zelig” (1983) and “The Purple Rose of Cairo” (1985). In “Zelig,” viewers are treated to an uproarious mockumentary about Leonard Zelig (Allen), a chameleon-like character who becomes a 1920s celebrity sensation thanks to his ability to change his appearance and persona at will to mimic the circumstances and compa-

CONSCIOUS CINEMA ny surrounding him, all just by thinking those qualities into existence. Likewise, in “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” a gallant, chivalrous explorer (Jeff Daniels) disillusioned with his fictional existence steps out of the movie in which he appears and ventures into the real world to meet an ardent fan (Mia Farrow) who repeatedly watches his film to escape her dreary life during the Great Depression. In both cases, the characters come to experience a fundamentally different existence merely by believing in the possibility that changing their circumstances is possible.

spirit is inadvertently transferred into the counselor’s body at the time of her passing, he must contend with having to share her consciousness along with his own, a change that gives each of them a new perspective about what it’s like to walk in another’s shoes. In “Switch,” a similar story line plays out when a philandering chauvinist (Perry King) is murdered by a trio of jilted girlfriends (JoBeth Williams, Lysette Anthony, Victoria Mahoney).

But, when the deceased attempts to enter heaven, he’s denied access because of his treatment of the women in the life he’s just departed. To atone for this, God sends him back to Earth reincarnated as a woman (Ellen Barkin) to see what it’s like to undergo what he had just inflicted on others, a change that proves to be a truly eye-opening experience.

Changing our perspective can be accomplished in other ways, too, most notably by the practice of time travel, a concept explored in a number of films. In “Men in Black 3” (2012), a special government agent (Will Smith) charged with overseeing the alien presence on Earth travels to the past to change the circumstances that spawned a present-day calamity, one in which he must also save the life of his partner (Tommy Lee Jones) by altering the actions of his partner’s skeptical younger self (Josh Brolin). Comparable story lines characterize “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986), in which a disillusioned middle-aged woman (Kathleen Turner) travels back in time while attending her 25year high school reunion to assess and reconsider the choices of her past, and “Frequency” (2000), which tells the story of a New York firefighter (Dennis Quaid) and his detective son (Jim Caviezal) seeking to alter the outcome of a 30-year-old tragedy using some unconventional tools of change.

Of course, changing the nature of one’s reality generally begins by changing our perspective of what constitutes existence, a notion hilariously depicted in two gender-bending comedies, “All of Me” (1984) and “Switch” (1991). “All of Me” follows the exploits of a harassed, henpecked, altruistic lawyer (Steve Martin) responsible for administering the estate of an ornery heiress (Lily Tomlin) in the days leading up to her untimely demise. But, when her

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Change can be applied in numerous areas of life as well. Many of us seek to apply it in changing various aspects of our character and worldview, and those experiences can be seen in an array of movies. For instance, the documentary “Time is Art” (2015) follows the odyssey of writer and one-time spiritual skeptic Jennifer Palmer, who explores different ways to change her life through a series of conversations with new thought leaders in a wide range of subject areas. The result is an inspiring, thoughtful look at options for creating a new existence for ourselves.

CONSCIOUS CINEMA Implementing changes to our calling in life is possible, too. In “Malcolm X” (1992), director Spike Lee’s biopic details the transformative life of its title character (Denzel Washington) from a life of crime and drugs to one aimed at seeking justice for the African-American community by becoming one of the most charismatic civil rights leaders of the 1960s. In a different vein, “Black Swan” (2010) tells the story of a budding virtuoso New York ballerina (Natalie Portman) looking to expand the range of her talents to include both her sweet and gentle side (in which she’s already proficient) and her untapped dark side, both of which are essential to successfully portray the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Meanwhile, in another part of the Big Apple, “Working Girl” (1988) follows the exploits of a Wall Street secretary (Melanie Griffith) seeking to move up in the financial world by employing some unconventional tactics, much to the delight of her smitten collaborator (Harrison Ford) and to the consternation of her conniving boss (Sigourney Weaver).

Changing the conditions of our personal lives is often a powerful incentive for making adjustments to our daily existence. Such is the case in the Italian romantic comedy “Bread and Tulips” (2000), in which an unhappy housewife (Licia Maglietta) trapped in a bad marriage impulsively – and dramatically – changes her circumstances by taking off on an impromptu road trip. A similar scenario plays out in the screwball comedy “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972), in which an obsequious Midwestern musicologist (Ryan O’Neal) bullied by an overbearing fiancée (Madeline Kahn) makes a radical change to his life thanks to a chance encounter with an uninhibited free spirit (Barbra Streisand) while on a trip to San Francisco. Starting over is also a theme that permeates the charming comedy-drama “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (2011), in which a group of discontented British seniors (Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Ronald Pickup, Penelope Wilton) resettle in Jaipur, India to begin a new chapter in their lives, guided by their infectiously optimistic hotelier host (Dev Patel). In each of these films, the characters find a new sense of fulfillment simply by changing their minds – and what springs forth from them.

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Relationships with family and partners are another area often ripe for change. For example, the classic family drama “On Golden Pond” (1981) explores the often-contentious relationship of a curmudgeonly retired professor in ill health (Henry Fonda) and his free-spirited daughter (Jane Fonda) during a summer vacation at the family’s New England lakefront cottage, a process skillfully mediated by the perpetually cheerful family matriarch (Katharine Hepburn). In “The Kids Are All Right” (2010), changes in the nature of relationships between partners, as well as between parents and children, are up for grabs when a curious 18-year-old (Mia Wasikowska) seeks to locate the sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) who assisted her lesbian parents (Annette Bening, Julianne Moore) in giving birth to her and her brother (Josh Hutcherson), a move sure to shake up things in this unconventional household.

CONSCIOUS CINEMA

Change is positively pivotal when it comes to altering the political, economic and social landscape, a theme recurrent in numerous film offerings. Take, for instance, the rise of the women’s movement, a sweeping social change chronicled in the excellent documentary “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” (2014), a tribute to many of the unsung heroes of this groundbreaking initiative. Similarly, other pictures capably explore the emergence of other significant initiatives, such as “Testament of Youth” (2015), the biography of Vera Brittain (Alicia Vikander), a former World War I battlefield nurse who helped spawn the 20th Century pacifist movement; “Freeheld” (2015), a fact-based drama about a lesbian couple (Julianne Moore, Ellen Page) seeking to secure equal rights for survivor benefits for same-sex couples; and “Taking Woodstock” (2009), a fact-based comedy-drama about the famous 1960s musical festival and how it and its founder (Demetri Martin) helped cement the influence of the counterculture in reshaping American society.

It’s been said that one of the few constants of life is change, even if we don’t always recognize it as such. And, when it does come along, it frequently feels imposed on us, especially when it takes us in directions we’d rather not go. But, by embracing the power of change, we can drastically alter the existence we experience, often in ways that bring us tremendous fulfillment. Employing this practice in our conscious creation efforts can yield results

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that astound and satisfy, taking us to places that exceed our expectations.

Copyright © 2016, by Brent Marchant. All rights reserved.

A lifelong movie fan and longtime student of metaphysics, Brent Marchant is the author of Get the Picture?!: Conscious Creation Goes to the Movies (http:// bit.ly/1WyK074) and Consciously Created Cinema: The Movie Lover’s Guide to the Law of Attraction (http://bit.ly/1TbWOj7), books that provide a reader-friendly look at how the practice of “conscious creation” (also known as “the law of attraction”) is illustrated through film. He is a Featured Contributor for VividLife magazine, Smart Women’s Empowerment, Movie Correspondent for The Good Radio Network, and contributes to Library Journal, BeliefNet, New Age News and Master Heart Magazine. He’s a frequent guest on various Internet and broadcast radio shows, as well as a regular presenter at conscious creation conferences. Brent holds a B.A. in magazine journalism and history from Syracuse University. His web site is www.BrentMarchant.com, and he blogs about self-empowerment and conscious cinema at http:// brentmarchantsblog.blogspot.com

Rising Stars Profiles of Conscious Creatives you may not yet have met ...

Have you ever wondered what wishes you would ask for if you found Aladdin’s lamp? Jean Adrienne is the lead author of Realities of Creation, a book about conscious creation that puts a Genie in your hands. Because we are multi-dimensional beings, we have the ability to create in several, if not many, different realities. We aren’t just limited to the physical world anymore. Truly we never were, but we just weren’t able to expand our minds to be able to see that. We had no frame of reference. The past is gone, taking with it all thoughts of playing small. You have found that magic lamp, and you aren’t limited to just three wishes—you can have as much (or as little) as you can handle.

Jean is also is the developer of the InnerSpeak TM Breakthrough Coaching and Therapy process, as well an author, radio show host, world traveler and entrepreneur. Her books include Power Tools, Reframe Your World: Conscious Living In The New Reality and Soul Adventures. Her website is JeanAdrienne. com.

Lise Bourbeau is a best-selling author and the founder of the largest French personal growth school in the world, the Listen to Your Body School. In 1982, Lise left her successful career in international sales to follow a dream in which she was helping people listen to their body. She founded the Listen to Your Body School, situated in the heart of the beautiful Laurentian Mountains, which has since become one of the largest personal growth schools in Canada. The philosophies taught, through her workshops and through her 24 successful books, are based on the relearning and the utilization of unconditional love. Listen to Your Body continues to enjoy tremendous success as the largest French personal growth school in the world. She and her team run workshops around the world and her books have sold over four million copies in more than 22 countries. Websites: www.ecoutetoncorps.com and listentoyourbody.com

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Rising Stars Profiles of Conscious Creatives you may not yet have met ...

Zen Cryar DeBrücke is the author of Your Inner GPS: Follow Your Internal Guidance to Optimal Health, Happiness, and Satisfaction (New World Library), her new book that helps readers understand and access a powerful tool called an Internal Guidance System (IGS) that we are all are born with. Not unlike the GPS system that is built into cars, its purpose is to guide us through our lives by letting us know whether our thoughts and actions are moving us closer to, or further away from, the things we most want to create in our lives. How to use it is detailed in her book. Zen has used her own Internal Guidance System over the course of the last twenty years to leave painful memories behind, abandon destructive relationship patterns, and create the life of her dreams. She is an internationally renowned teacher, speaker, and coach whose programs have helped people all over the world transform their personal and business lives for the better.

Visit her online at http://www.zeninamoment.com.

Robert Clancy is a gifted entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, author and minister. At 19, Robert had a divine spiritual experience that greatly altered his life.

In 2012 he started “Robert Clancy – Guide to the Soul” Facebook fan page where he shares his divinely inspired thoughts, now followed by over 250,000 people worldwide. Robert is the author of the acclaimed book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Soul. Through his passion for exceptional design & innovative technology, he co-founded Spiral Design Studio over 26 years ago to lead an award winning creative team in the evolution of major corporate brands, marketing & web development. Balancing his corporate commitments with his lifelong compassion for humanity, Robert supports ongoing volunteerism within his business and everyday life. His dedication to community inspires his team and encourages professional leaders to step up and give back. He is a master trainer in two martial arts disciplines.

His website is http://www.guidetothesoul.com/

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Rising Stars Profiles of Conscious Creatives you may not yet have met ...

Sheri Laine illuminates and demystifies the art of acupuncture and ancient Oriental medicine, explaining natural energy and how it works, why you want it in your life and how you can cultivate your own powerful life force called Qi (Chi). Sheri calls our own individual life force EnerQi, which is an energetic vibrating force field that circulates in and around each of us, and changes based on our lifestyle choices and how we care for ourselves. By having Balanced EnerQi, your energetic frequency will be raised to a much higher level allowing you to be stronger and much more alive than ever before.

The simple key to maintaining vibrant well being is learning how to tap into and harness our EnerQi, our own unique life force. In her book, Living The EnerQi Connection, Sheri explores this innate natural energy, how it works, how it can benefit your life, and how you can easily cultivate your own powerful EnerQi. Her Website is http://www.balancedenerqi.com For 25 years, Jennifer McLean has served as a spiritual catalyst and healing facilitator, inspiring thousands worldwide to lead heart-centered lives focused on spiritual, mental, and physical wellness.

Growing up in an alcoholic family and having survived years of middle school bullying, childhood sexual abuse, and cancer, Jennifer has used her life challenges as opportunities to become an internationally acclaimed healer, author, wellness entrepreneur, and transformational change agent.

Her proprietary Spontaneous Transformation Technique has helped hundreds of thousands of individuals shift withheld energy in the body to successfully liberate themselves from various ailments and heartaches.

Her multimillion-dollar wellness organization, McLean MasterWorks, and its acclaimed sub-brands, Healing With The Masters, Living Your Success Signature Business, and MasterWorks Healing have made her a force in the human potential movement.

Purchase Book: http://www.spontaneoustransformation.com/book/ Website: http://www.spontaneoustransformation.com

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Rising Stars Profiles of Conscious Creatives you may not yet have met ...

Effie Miri, Ph. D. is a doctor of psychology, professor, Iranian native, and American Citizen. She is the author of Iran, How a Culture Develops Pathology, a memoir of her personal experiences as a mother, student, immigrant and psychotherapist, navigating two different cultures.

Her story addresses the experience of thousands of Iranians who fled the revolution. While psychopathology can be found anywhere, she believes that Iranian culture has generally bred fear, insecurity, self-doubt and dishonesty in a people she lovingly describes as sharp, ambitious, and hardworking. The subordination of women and the starkly religious orientation of the culture have, she believes, created deep psychological pathology. Iran, she argues, has had often-bastardized, fear-based versions of Islam imposed by many past and present religious leaders of questionable qualifications, impacting the mental health of its people. Miriâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book is not meant to be religious or political, but as Iranian people are in essence, religious, the conversation must include Islam.

Book link: http://amzn.to/1s6SiGt

Leslie Shore, MA, is the owner of Listen to Succeed, a consultancy that focuses on using listening analytics to help its personal and professional clients achieve their highest level of effective communication. Her work with corporations, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, health professionals, and educational institutions in the development of intra-personal communication skills includes seminars, facilitation, and training in listening effectiveness, organizational structure and change, and cultural diversity.

As a consultant and facilitator, she challenges and inspires substantive and engaging conversation by tapping into the knowledge, expertise, and experiences of participants and by raising their current perception of intra-personal communication to a new and even higher level. No one leaves a session without adding to his or her personal and professional toolbox. Her book, Listen to Succeed: How to identify and overcome barriers to effective listening, is currently used in four universities. Website: www.ListenToSucceed.com

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Reviewers in the Spotlight Cynthia Sue Larson, a best-selling author, life coach, and inspirational speaker who is known as “The Quantum Optimist” for helping people discover their many possible selves and jump into their favorite lives as they focus on the question “How good can it get?” Cynthia has been featured on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, Coast-to-Coast AM, and BBC. You can watch her videos and subscribe to her free eZine at: www.realityshifters.com

Krysta Gibson is the publisher of New Spirit Journal, http://newspiritjournalonline.com, a publication established in 2005 in the Puget Sound area. Krysta teaches and counsels, and is the author of two books, 22 Steps to Success (also published in Spanish) and The Entrepreneur’s Toolbox, as well as two CDs, Positive Self Talk for Family Caregivers and Embrace Your Day. Her personal website is http://anoasisforyoursoul.com/ Brent Marchant has been a lifelong movie fan and longtime student of metaphysics. He is the author of Get the Picture?!: Conscious Creation Goes to the Movies and Consciously Created Cinema: The Movie Lover’s Guide to the Law of Attraction, books that provide a reader-friendly look at how the practice of “conscious creation” (also known as “the law of attraction”) is illustrated through film. Brent maintains an ongoing blog about metaphysical cinema and other self-empowerment topics at http://brentmarchantsblog.blogspot.com. Brent holds a B.A. in magazine journalism and history from Syracuse University.

Miriam Knight is a lifelong bookworm who is inveterately curious about how the world works. A passionate proselytizer of unity consciousness, Miriam found her sweet spot as Publisher of New Consciousness Review and host of NCR Radio.

She also offers book and eLearning narration services at www.miriamknight. com

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