The Eden Magazine December 2022

THE STORY OF GAIA

BY DR. JUDE CURRIVAN SPIRITUAL PHENOMENON

BY MONA SOBHANI, Ph.D.,

OwensTerrell

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Discover the path to a peaceful life among other living beings. We are all made of vibration and light in the universe to manifest our energy around all livingness.

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By Sherri Cortland

errell OWENS T

The Star Athlete, Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist, opens up about his childhood, professional career, and about the person who inspired him the most.

Where were you born and raised?

I was born and raised in Alexander City, Alabama. It's a very smalltown south of Birmingham, north

The economy of the town was mainly the textile industry. There was one big textile manufacturing company founded in Alexander City in 1902 named Russell Man ufacturing Co., and pretty much everyone – I would say 90% of the citizens - worked there. My grandmother, uncle, and nextdoor neighbors, all worked there. During the 1960s, their athletic apparel and uniform division was the largest marketer and manufac turer in the country. They made jerseys for the NFL, major league baseball, pro basketball, high school jerseys for schools all over the country, T-shirts, sweats, and pretty much all sports attire.

What were you like as a young boy?

I was a typical kid doing many things you're probably not sup posed to be doing and getting into a bit of trouble too. You know the usual scenario - you feel pressured by other kids and older boys, and sometimes you do things that are a little mischievous.

Who has been the most inspirational person in your life?

My mom had four boys at a young age, and my dad was not present, so I was raised by both my grand mother and my mom. I would have to say that my grandma has been my inspiration. Sometimes it was tough love. But looking back on it now, I appreciate the tough love she showed me. I'm grateful for how I was raised because if I didn't have that in my life at that time, and all that she instilled in me, the discipline, the disciplinarian that she was, and her teachings, then I don't think I would be the person I am today. I look at how productive

I am and have been and how I con ducted myself despite the percep tion of who I am, based on what I did when I played football. I think people judge me on my character based on misinformation and the media's wrong portrayal of me as a person. But, as I said, I am proud of how my grandmother raised me. She is my inspiration.

You have had an outstanding football career. If you could do it all over again, re your football career, what would you do differently and why? That's a good question, and I've often thought about that. I think the way I've conducted myself, the way I went about things, and even now, I see that people are starting to assess this current era of ath letes versus when I played, and a lot of people are now saying that I was way ahead of my time. I was outspoken. I was different. But I didn't do anything illegal.

Because I am a black man, a black athlete, and outspoken, I stood up for myself and didn't allow people to dictate and try to pigeonhole me into doing things or forcing me to conform to certain rules. So, I don't think I would do anything different in that regard. If there were anything I would do differ ently, I would take a more proac tive approach to how I played foot ball to become a better receiver and player.

The training, nutrition, and the things athletes are doing now, the cutting-edge ways to optimize their performance, we didn't have those available back then. I did get into all that towards the middle to the end of my career. If I really applied myself that way and took the off-season to train and do onthe-field stuff to enhance my skill set as a receiver, I would have been a better receiver. Those are things I didn't prioritize.

Did you always dream of a career as a football player, playing in the National Football League?

No, I didn't. I was a kid who loved the sport and played several sports in high school, but football found me. I didn't grow up wanting to be a professional football player in the NFL. My dream was to play for the University of Alabama. There are two prominent Universities in Ala bama, Auburn and the University of Alabama. Because I was so sheltered by my grandmother who didn't let us do a lot, I didn't even know Au burn was only 45 minutes from me until years later. And so, when I got recruited to go to UT Chattanooga and received a scholarship, I really didn't know where I was going. I thought I was going to UT Knox ville. That's how clueless I was to the football world and anything about football as it related to my being recruited. I didn't have many offers coming out of high school because I didn't feel I was a four or five-star athlete. And clearly, that was the case because I was smack dab near two of the main universities in Ala bama, and neither recruited me.

Did you watch football games on television?

I watched college games back when Bo Jackson was playing at Auburn, and running backs like Bobby Humphrey, Siran Stacy, and Gene Stallings, were playing for Alabama. So, for me, it was sim ple. I just hoped I could one day make it to play for Alabama. That would have been equivalent to a kid dreaming of playing in the NFL.

Besides your athleticism, what pushed you to achieve great suc cess in the sports? Well, as I mentioned, coming out

of high school, I didn't think I had the ability to play at the collegiate level. And yet to know what I know now and to look back on what I have accomplished, to have played at Chattanooga for four years and then drafted in the third round '89 pick, and then played 15 years pro fessionally and ultimately landing in the Hall of Fame, honestly, I don't have any words for how that makes me feel. All I know is that I am in credibly grateful for all of it.

Several companies, from real es tate to trucking companies, now bring me in to speak to them about how an athlete's mindset can apply to their workers or their job. I tell them about my three Ds: desire, dedication, and discipline. I don't think I would have made it as far as I did, especially not having dreams or aspirations of playing in the NFL without the three Ds. The three Ds are what helped me to make it!

What do you do to stay grounded and focused?

My grandma, she always took us to church on Sunday. She talked to us about having faith in everything we do, believing in God, knowing where our blessings come from, and knowing that we're not just waking up because an alarm clock goes off or somebody is waking us up ev ery day. I'm grateful for her words and teachings because they have al ways stuck with me throughout my career.

Faith is belief in something that doesn't seem possible. That could be related not just to athletics. It can help your personal, professional, and everyday life because everybody will have ups and downs.

I would like to say to those boys that I was once like you. The important thing is never to give up or settle for average.

,,

Terrell with mom

Terrell with Grandmother

There are going to be ebbs and flows of life. You will have trials and tribulations if you live long enough as you go through life. Your resolve is going to be tested—the test of life. As I said, there are some parallels be tween the game of football and how I lived my life. Those are some of the things that I've always kept with me.

One of my grandmother's favor ite scriptures is Philippians 4:13, "That I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." My grandmother passed away in 2012. In 1996, she was diagnosed with dementia, and it progressed into stages of Alzheimer's. My grand mother never knew what level of athlete I became early on. The year I got drafted was the year she got diagnosed with dementia. She really didn't understand what professional football was or anything about it or how much money was involved.

What was your first big purchase after signing to play pro football? The first thing I did was pay off our house. Anything that was debt-filled, I made sure to take care of all of that.

Besides the financial aspect, I did something that really meant a lot to me and still does today. I sent my grandmother a picture of me taken when I signed with the San Francis co 49ers. I had written a note on the picture. She was so proud of me and of that picture. She carried it every where she went. The day she passed, that photo was in her assisted living room. What I will always take with me is how she molded me into the person that I am proud to be despite the negative perception that has been out there about me from peo ple who don't know me due to the medias mischaracterizing me.

You are very active and involved with many Foundations and Charities. Please speak to us about this.

I've been involved with many Char

ities and Foundations over the years. However, I would like to highlight my involvement with the Alzhei mer's Association. I got involved because of my grandmother, who suffered from it. I didn't know much about this disease, but once I got involved, I learned a lot. I be gan doing more research and started talking to different people about dif ferent drugs and medications to help slow the progress. I even spoke be fore Congress in 2000 to help bring awareness and try to increase fund ing for the disease.

I've done several PSAs, and I'm on several Memory Boards and Mem ory Walk Boards for a number of Alzheimer's Associations in different cities. I vowed to do it and continue to do it for my grandmother.

In 2021, you were honored with the Most Valuable Philanthropist Award. What inspired you to move towards this path of giving?

Luke 12:48 says, "To whom much is given, much will be required." We must realize our essential role in the world, especially as athletes, be cause we're more than just athletes. We have a responsibility whether we want to have it or not. Sometimes we're thrust into situations where we have to react. I don't think there's a handbook for being a humanitarian or philanthropic.

When you have the means, and you see people that are less fortunate than you, and you happen to be one of those people that were less fortu nate at one time in your life, then it should be a no-brainer to be able to reach out and lend a hand to some one in need. That's how I've always been, regardless of how people have chosen to see me.

One of the things people don't know about me is that I'm very creative. Of course, some people may have noticed that I'm creative by watching some of my touchdown celebrations on the field!

I know how the media can sometimes thrust people into philanthropic situa tions to make them feel or make it seem like they're doing the greatest things for humanity when it's really not the case. For me, that's a publicity stunt. I've nev er been that way and I don’t do anything for publicity.

People who really know me will tell you I'm a genuine person, a caring person, and anytime I can help someone in need, I will say to my friends, 'If you ever need me, especially if I consider you a true friend, I'm going to help you even pri vately when I shouldn't because I know God will bless me no matter what.' I know my intentions are pure, and I'm doing it for the simple reason that that person needs help more than I need help.

Where do you feel most at home? I don't know if I've actually found a place where I feel most at home. Even at 48, I think I'm still trying to find myself. Home is where your heart is, who your true friends are, and with whom you sur round yourself.

At some point, I would love to establish a relationship with someone and start to build a family. I've always yearned for that because I didn't have that growing up. I've seen friends, and teammates, that lived the bachelor life, then got engaged, married, and now have beautiful families. Those are my aspirations! I want to find someone, establish a deep friendship, and have that friendship grow and transition into a lasting relationship.

Tell us about being a father. Growing up without a father in the household, I missed out on a lot. I do think that factored heavily into how I lived my life as an adult and how I went about my life in personal relationships because I didn't see that father figure role model growing up, so I didn't know what to do and what not to do.

I now have kids, and being a father has been a test. Navigating through it all has allowed me to grow. But I know I prob

ably haven't been the best father I could have been thus far because I don't live in the same household as my kids. Let’s say there was a lot of maturity and growth that I needed to have and be a part of, I love my kids very much. I have given them everything I could, not only from a financial standpoint but from the stand point of trying to be active and present in their lives when permitted. And that's what should be highlighted – when permitted!

Playing football in different cities made it difficult to be there for them or have that quality time I wanted. So, when I talk to them, I try to express that it's more about quality than quantity. If I can spend qual ity time half the time, that trumps the amount of time I didn't have with them.

Do you have a go-to place for peace and tranquility?

I'm at peace when I'm by myself. That's how I define my moments of solitude, being at peace. I'm used to being by myself and going through things inde pendently.

Where do you get your inner strength? Growing up, I had to be mentally tough. I was raised to grind it out. I witnessed two women, my grandmother, and my mother, doing it alone and taking care of everything! Having seen and experi enced that is where I get a lot of my inner strength.

When I look back, I realize I must have been born with something inside me that refused to settle for average. I don't know what it is, but I'm grateful I have it. Credit goes out to my grandmother for how she raised me—and also, going to church, and understanding that there's a bigger picture, a higher being than just myself, and truly understanding that. Your foundation of who you are does start in the home. The individuals that raise you and teach you, that's a represen tation of how you're going to be and how you're going to be able to live your life as you grow older.

What part does Mental Health play in becoming a star athlete?

There is something to be said about ath letes that become great athletes. But, un fortunately, that same mental fortitude that makes you become a great athlete is the same mental fortitude that prevents many people from becoming great.

That's when I think mental health comes into play. Still, it's a fine line between talking or discussing mental health awareness be cause you look at some of the greatest ath letes that have gone through ups and downs. When you think about the great ones and hear them talk about those mental hurdles and those tough things, that's what made them great.

Is there something you've never done before that you are looking forward to doing?

I want to go ziplining over a big ravine. That's something I've always wanted to do. Also, I want to go to South Africa on a safari and see some animals up close. I'd also like to visit some of the most beautiful places in the world. I haven't been on a vacation in nearly 10-plus years, but I'm going to the Maldives in a couple of weeks. It's been on my bucket list, along with many other plac es like the Amalfi Coast, Bali, Fiji, Greece, Morocco, and Thailand.

Growing up, we didn't have the luxury of going on vacations during the summer. When the school year began, I'd hear my peers in class or recess talking about vaca tions they took over the summer - Hawaii, Mexico, and many beautiful places. The only place we went to was Six Flags. That was considered a vacation.

What projects are you working on now?

One of the things people don't know about me is that I'm very creative. Of course, some people may have noticed that I'm creative by watching some of my touchdown celebra tions on the field!

In the last couple of years, I partnered with a friend, Carolin Taylor, and created my candle line called Loft81 Home - loft81home.com

My candles fragrances are created around my three pillars of success which are my three Ds: desire, dedication, and discipline.

We came up with some new blends and new scents that will be coming out in the next few months. One of the scents

I dedicated to my grandmother is called Tough Love because, as I mentioned earlier, she was tough and showed me tough love. So, I wanted to create one that was very meaningful to me. Tough Love is made of dried floral, incense, cashmere, and plum with a woodsy scent.

I asked myself, 'what would be some thing that would represent tough love?' And also, when I think about my grandmother, what do I think about?

I thought floral, and so we played with that. Then the woodsy part of it fac tored into the tough part. Then the love would come from the cashmere and the plum smell. In addition to that, as

I said, they are all based on my three pillars of success. I pretty much imple ment those into projects that I involve myself with.

I'm also into home décor, fashion, and wine. My clothing line is Prototype 81. I try to use fashion to inspire people based on my career and the things that make me uniquely me - desire, dedica tion, and discipline. They factor into how I present myself and how I want to look and be seen. All those things in my life have allowed me to be fashionable.

The DNA and fabric of my clothing line can be viewed online on my site, prototype81.com. My Wine business is 81Vino which can be viewed online at 81vino.com

,,

My personality might confuse some people. The fact is that I like to be alone. But those who know me know I can also be outgoing and social. Sometimes I'm quiet. Sometimes I'm loud. Sometimes I have nothing to say, and sometimes I'm very outspoken. So, I read and react to the energy around me and adjust.

Being around true authentic people. That's what moves me.

We've all experienced tragedy and natural disasters, especially over the last three years of dealing with COVID. And, of course, social injus tice, racial discrimination, and what happened to George Floyd. That was an eye-opener for many whose eyes may have been shut.

It took something like George Floyd's murder to open America's eyes and force many to see what has been, and is currently, happening un der their noses.

I want to surround myself with genu ine and like-minded people because, as we learn daily from things happen ing around us, there are some wicked people in this world.

For America to be the land of the free and one of the wealthiest countries, it's astonishing to see how much tragedy we have been having on our soil. We're killing our own people. If you look at some other countries, Japan, and other places, they have little to no death due to gun violence or things of that nature. Why is that? We are one the most powerful coun tries in the world, yet we're dealing with senseless tragedies every day and that makes me sad.

Would you care to impart some inspiring words to young men who are struggling emotion ally or physically and are trying to find themselves?

I would like to say to those boys that I was once like you. The important thing is never to give up or settle for average. We all have one life to live. It depends on how you choose to live your life, but you need to trust that we all have a purpose here on earth.

We covered a lot, but if there's anything else that you'd like to share, please do.

My personality might confuse some people. The fact is that I like to be alone. But those who know me know

I can also be outgoing and social. Sometimes I'm quiet. Sometimes I'm loud. Sometimes I have nothing to say, and sometimes I'm very out spoken. So, I read the room and react to the energy around me and adjust.

Also, I'm a huge basketball fan. Growing up, I was a Chicago Bulls fan and a fan of Michael Jordan, like many kids, in the late '80s and early '90s were. But I'm also a fan of a number of players and not just specific teams. I'm a fan of a lot of great athletes in the NBA and know some of those guys personally. I was fortunate to have been around Kobe Bryant, to have talked to him and to have seen how he evolved as an athlete.

I used both Kobe and Michael as inspiration for their relentless pursuit of greatness. I didn't ever win cham pionships, but when you talk about the pursuit of greatness, that's what I was pursuing. It was unbeknownst to anybody when I was growing up because none of my high schools, coaches, or fellow players would have bet their life that I would one day go on and become a Hall of Famer play ing football in the National Football League. It was just something about me that I worked in quietness. I worked behind the scenes, and I be came great, unbeknownst to a lot of people.

Special Thanks to:

Terrell Owens

Stylist: Kyvon McFashion

Photography by: JSquared Photography @j2pix Location: Richard Garnier Wellness center https://www.richardgarnier.com and Wendy Wheaton & Tommy Red P. www.TinseltownManagement.com

Faith is belief in something that doesn't seem possible

FindsuccessincreatingnewbusinessopportunitiesforTopCelebrities! HOLLYWOODEXECUTIVEPRODUCINGTEAM

Executive Producers and Celebrity Management Team, Wendy Wheaton and Tommy Red P. of Tinseltown Productions & Management, dig deep into causes and storytelling when they work with high-profile celebrities.

From a high-end Interior design er, Kenneth Bordewick, who reno vates palaces around the world, to a 12x Olympic medalist in Bowling, Gazmine Mason, to retired NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens... the two things these elite celebrities all have in common – is that they have trusted and worked with the production duo on collaborative business opportuni ties outside of the Hollywood realm.

With over thirty years of combined entertainment experience, Wheaton and Red have carved out a unique niche for themselves and have become magnets to the Hollywood Elite, providing them with new audiences & business opportunities; they also specialize in high-end photography, videography, exclusive one-on-one in terviews, behind the scenes set visits, along with TV, Films, and documen tary productions.

While Wheaton started as an A-list entertainment Reporter three decades

ago, she is the business and celebrity liaison, often brainstorming an op portunity for select celebrities. At the same time, Red provides technical de tails, writing, and production. Their left brain / right brain completes the beginning process of their develop ment.

In 1988 Wheaton created her first television show, while a freshman in college in Boston, MA, called “VID EOS IN THE DARK” – that ran for four years – on WLVI, and the Fox television network, with her program lead-in by The Arsenio Hall Show.

In 2014 Wheaton and Red flew to In dia and met The Crown Prince of In dia (Rajpipla Region), HRH, Prince Manvendra Singh Gohill. After brain storming, and a lengthy development process, they created a television show starring the Prince as the first openly gay royal. Wheaton/Red success fully got the Prince in an episode of KEEPING UP WITH THE KAR DASHIANS and an offer for his TV show

“I like to evolve where things are at in the industry. As A content creator, there are so many more opportunities and platforms now than when I first began my career, with just Cable and Television Networks. I get excited after researching television networks and programming that excite me – to be one of the Produc ers that tells compelling stories.” Says Wheaton

Many people introduce the Producing team to unique people, who have already achieved success, but may need help opening up new doors.

WendyWheatonandTommyRedP.

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Another Client, Interior Designer Ken neth Bordewick – was so compelling and unique – in renovating palaces in the Middle East (for Kings, Queens, and the Hollywood Elite) that Wheaton/Red spent many years building a show that highlight ed Bordewick’s extravagant lifestyle and his rich clients, putting a spin on standard programming, that reaches new audiences, and revealing things they would never gen erally get to see.

Many people introduce the Producing team to unique people, who have already achieved success, but may need help open ing up new doors.

“We don’t just work with or take on any celebrity project. Our development starts with brainstorming on things that make a difference and will benefit the lives of others. We then set out to develop the TV show, film, and documentary, put together our unique wish list of talent, then move to attach who we think will compliment the project… along with our vision.” Says Red

Wheaton Recently helped 12x Olym pic medalist Gazmine “GG Got Game” Mason gain exposure with two major tele vision outlets; the LA TIMES and SPEC TRUM ONE CABLE – who saw the unique story on GG and wanted to tell her story to not only encourage other peo ple of color, in “non-traditional sports,” but also to tell the story behind how GG put in the hard work and managed to be

the only African American woman, at age 27, in the PWBA (Pro Women’s Bowling Association) THERE MOTTO OF WHEATON & RED: “AHEAD OF THE CURVE IN ENTERTAINMENT” Is paying off. Celebrities have gained their trust to help get their brands out and into the marketplace of new audiences in a more personable way that big agencies often overlook, TV network executives, and Hollywood studios.

FAMILY LIFE: Aside from being busy with their entertainment business, Wheaton and Red often bring their lovely daughter, Actress Jazz Dior, along on productions so that she learns all about the Hollywood lifestyle, and red carpets, at an early age. Their little bundle of joy is a natural, go ing out on auditions and landing national commercials - following in the footsteps of her mom & dad.

Be on the lookout for Wendy Wheaton and partner Tommy Red in 2023 – with many new tv projects, documentaries, and celebrity collaborations.

For more information, please email us at: Wendy@Tinseltownmanagement or visit our website at: www.TinseltownManagement.com

Look for wheaton/Red in 2023....with other with "50 years of Sounds of Black ness" legendary music doc, along with other TV projects

I have gotten to know Wendy and Tommy through time, and I like their team dynamic and integrity. ~ Terrell Owens

THE STORY OF

GAIA

THE BIG BREATH AND THE EVOLUTIONARY JOURNEY OF OUR CONSCIOUS PLANET

By Dr. Jude Currivan

Photo by AdobeStock

Origin

Closing my eyes and slowing my breath, I imagine the beginning of our Universe. It is black. Not the transparent black clarity of a night sky tinged by stars. Nor the blackness of squid ink, black yet with a hint of blue. But an utter and complete blackness. Not an empty void but replete with everything and the potentiality of what might come. Not a black hole, but the black hole.

It is minute, tiny, almost beyond com prehension. Its wholeness at its first mo ment is as small compared to my body as I am to the vastness of what it has since grown into over its 13.8 billion year-long evolutionary journeys.

It is hot. A hundred trillion times as hot as the interiors of its stellar progeny will be billions of years in the future.

Though only as simple as it can be, it is simple to gift an eventual cornucopia of planets, plants, and people.

I am in wonder at the audacity of its visionary magnificence. How! could the infinite and eternal mind of the Cosmos dream the perfect intricacy of such a thought? And why?

The Big Bang to the Big Breath

The big bang wasn’t big, and it wasn’t a bang.

Instead of our Universe beginning in the implicit chaos of a ‘bang’, it was born in a minuscule and incredibly simple and ordered state.

Its laws of physics, the informational al gorithms guiding its existence and evolu tion, were extremely finetuned, and the relationships between its fundamental physical attributes and the associated nu merical constants they embed exactly to a meticulous degree. Had they differed from what they are by only a minuscule amount, our Universe would never have been able to even exist, let alone go on to evolve.

Its unified nature and the extreme or der and simplicity of its birth had the inevitable consequence of a universal and one-way flow of time from its first moment until its last. The complemen tary and ongoing expansion of space and its holographic manifestation has, ever since, enabled more and more meaning ful information to be embodied within space-time and will continue to do so throughout its lifetime.

As a finite thought of an infinite and eternal Cosmos and vitally imbued with meaning, the extreme finetuning of its laws of physics instills it with an innate evolutionary impulse and essen tial purpose; to evolve from its original simplicity to ever-greater complexity and individuated and relational levels of self-awareness.

In doing this, our Universe embodies two universal principles, and they continue to guide and be way-showers in the ongoing journey of exploration and discovery. Its first underlying rule is that it is, to para phrase Einstein, as simple as it can be but no simpler to manifest its evolutionary im pulse. The second is that within its overall conservation of energy-matter and its over all balance to zero, all sub-systems use the minimum energy possible to manifest their existence and their evolutionary impulse.

So rather than a one-off and the chaotic big bang, our Universe continues to sound the ongoing harmony in the Big Breath of its emergent potential.

The Story of Gaia explores the discoveries and understanding, both leading-edge and ancient, that have progressively perceived how our Universe began and, from its earli est epoch, the long path that would eventually lead to our planetary home and the myr iad abundance of the children she’s birthed, including ourselves.

Unity in Diversity

One of our most venerable wisdom tradi tions, the Chinese I Ching, tells that: ‘in the beginning was the one, the one became two, the two became three – and from the three, ten thousand things were born…’.

From the potency of its unified oneness, our Universe realizes itself through its universal informational ‘alphabet’ of just two letters; zeros and ones. This simplest of differentia tion then combines, imbuing innate mean ing into all the diverse expressions of the relational two-nesses of energy-matter and space-time.

Its primary two-fold relationships then fur

ther resolve into a multitude of three-fold relationships at all levels of existence.

For example, the two-dimensional holo graphic boundary of what we call space, through the flow of time, projects the innate and evolving intelligence of the entire Uni verse into its appearance of three orthogonal dimensions. Our x/y/z experience of left/ right up/down and forward/backward is woven into its semblance rather than being merely a construct of our awareness.

Within the intrinsic properties of ener gy-matter, three-fold combinations of quarks make up the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei; the familial groupings of protons, neutrons, and electrons form into stable and electrically neutral atoms, and the ubiquity of positively, negatively, and neu trally electrically charged particles and energy fields are subsumed within an overall and exactly neutral Universe.

From its beginning, our Universe has evolved from this foundational simplicity of the complexity of the I Ching’s ‘ten thou sand things and more…’ From the genesis of its first moment, it was poised and expect ant with all the potency of its evolutionary diversity.

Another wisdom tradition, that of the an cient Greeks, intuitively perceived the fun damental nature of numbers, geometry as a number in space, and music as a number in time, all underpinning their cosmology in a four-fold quadrivium of knowledge. Throughout Gaia’s story, the harmonic and resonant relationships and universal pat terns of these teachings are now being newly appreciated as playing all-pervasive roles in the story of our planetary home and her Universe.

As a creative and finite emanation of an in finite and eternal Cosmos, the manifestation of our entire Universe through its continu ing Big Breath also reflects the ancient Vedic perspective of the Breath of Brahman. The Upanishads, a series of discourses between seers known as rishis and their students in ancient India, set out an integral philoso phy of the unified nature of reality and allpervasiveness of consciousness. Their Isha vasya wisdom teachings seek to guide the understanding of both the un-manifest caus ative realms of existence with the manifest world that the Breath of Brahman exhales and which represents the ultimate Unity behind and transcendence of all names and forms.

The profound insights of these ancient schol ars are being re-appreciated by ever-more discoveries of leading-edge science. Even more vitally so, the living lore of Indigenous peoples who have never forgotten the in nate web of life that encompasses the whole Cosmos is now being honored as offering experiential guidance to heal our collectively dis-membered relationship with Gaia.

Gaia’s own journey …. For the last 4.5 billion years of our Uni verse’s evolutionary journey Gaia has contin

ued the emergence of ever greater complexity and diversity through the innate, dynam ic, and in-formational interconnectedness and collaboration of her entire ‘gaiasphere’ comprising her planetary geosphere, hydro sphere, atmosphere – and biosphere. Pulsed, not by passive continuity but proactively by change and challenge, the evolutionary emergence of her biological children has not only survived but flourished. Gaia’s innate nature is far from equilibrium, and the in tricate collaborations of her gaiasphere are perpetually dynamic. Yet, she has managed the extraordinary feat through all this time of not only providing a planetary home for her organic children but opportunities for them to explore, communicate, learn and grow in complexity, diversity, and individu ated self-awareness.

Over this time, she has dealt with our sun, Sol radiating some thirty percent more brightly than when she became a young planetary mother. Yet she has succeeded and, despite the immense trials of regulating the interlocking and evolving cycles of her entire gaiasphere, to continue to provide a breath able atmosphere, liquid water, resource-rich land, and temperate climate, to sustain and nurture the evolution of her organic children.

Photo by AdobeStock

As a mother herself, she embodies profound wisdom. She only uses the energy needed for all she achieves. She fits form to function with underlying simplicity, exquisite beauty, and intri cate precision. She recycles everything with no waste. She shares and informs her skills locally and globally. She em bodies collaboration throughout her biosphere, appreciating healthy com petition and encouraging holarctic co operation. She exults in diversity and knows it to imbue resilience and col lective genius. And she exists, evolves, and thrives within the wholistic lim its and emergent opportunities of her planetary gaiasphere.

And she’s been doing so for over four billion years.

Her story has taken her and her or ganic children from single cells to organisms embodying trillions of cells, to the distributed intelligence of slime molds, the extended cogni tion of bats and spiders, the eusocial communities of bees and termites, to the dreaming of dinosaurs, the flights of birds, the dialect-rich songs of whales and the laughter of hominins.

Progressively, she’s guided emergent in-formational networks of complex ity and sentience with distributed and coherent multi-level intelligence. Their signaling capacities, whether the mycelium wood wide web of an entire forest or the intricate nervous systems of animals, enable such coherence to prevail, and the neural hubs of the nine brains of octopuses, empowering their eight arms to operate independently, the thirty-two brains of a leech, and the encephalized ones of birds and land and marine mammals, testify to their complex reasoning abilities.

Alongside and beyond intellect, how ever, Gaia has progressively nurtured empathy and emotional attachments in her biosphere. In the cooperative and loving relationships of mates, parents and offspring, families and communities, she has embedded cir cles of caring. Bacteria, insects, and

fish cooperate to look after others in their communities, especially the vulnerable. And in the altruism ob served in rats and monkeys, the griev ing of elephants not only for their own kin but for a human carer, the selfsacrifice of a human stranger, and the protection by humpback whales from others not of their own species; the cir cles of care further expand as spirals of compassion.

As a planetary mother, even when faced with the extinctions and dev astation, she not only endured but resolutely recovered and went on to continue to serve the Universe’s and her own indomitable evolutionary impulse.

Why?

As I’ve continued to seek a deep er sense of how our Universe is as it is, a possible answer to my question of why has also emerged, it tells of a Universe that learns through its holo graphic and holarctic manifestation. And through its explorative, experi ential, and evolutionary reflections to further know itself. Its innate Unity, through the co-creative appearances and tensions of its dualities with their universal masculine and feminine at tributes, then reconciles in the trinities of their child expressions. Their flour ishing, in the diversity and complexity of its ongoing journey, will eventually come full spiral, from Unity to Unity in diversity, to a re-membered Unity in belonging and an ultimate return to Unity.

Gaians

We are the youngest of Gaia’s organic children and the only ones left of our family of hominins. We embody her legacy and that of our entire Universe’s evolutionary arc, and we stand togeth er with them at the bow wave of their and our next emergent possibility.

We are the last of our kind, yet, we are not alone.

We, and her entire family, are all Gaians.

Jude Currivan, Ph.D., is a cosmologist, futurist, planetary healer, member of the Evolution ary Leaders Circle, and previously one of the most senior business women in the UK. She has a master’s degree in physics from Oxford University and a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Reading. She has travelled extensively, worked with wisdom keepers from many traditions and is a life-long researcher into the nature of reality. She is the author of 6 books, including The Cosmic Hologram, and is co-founder of WholeWorld-View http://www.judecurrivan.com/

THIS IS THE ONE ITEM THAT IS RUINING YOUR WORKOUT

www.barbend.com

For many fitness fans, smartphones are an essential item to not only take to the gym but to use during a workout, whether it be to track progress or for workout inspiration. However, fitness expert Bree-Anna Burick from BarBend reveals the four ways your phone is ruining your gym session.

Impaired Balance and Stability

Running on the treadmill or performing Olympic lifts requires a fair amount of balance and stability. Without it, you can risk a failed lift or an embarrassing tumble off the treadmill.

Using your smartphone a lot can slow down your overall reaction time. If you're spend ing your rest time on your phone, you might be less coordinated when you go for a heavy clean and jerk. In that case, keeping your smartphone close may be doing more harm than good.

This is especially the case if you're texting while exercis ing. If you find yourself tex ting or talking on the phone while exercising, studies suggest that your posture may become more unstable, which can worsen your bal ance and stability by up to 45 percent. Whether you're walking on the treadmill or walking outside, you can increase your risk of falling while talking or texting on your phone.

Lower Intensity Workouts

There's nothing wrong with a low-intensity workout, but if all of your training sessions are starting to feel a bit easy, there may be a problem.

Texting your friend about the latest friend-group gossip can make it tough to main tain your focus through an intense workout. Yes, you want to take some rest even during high-intensity inter val training (HIIT) — but taking too long can trans form your HIIT workout into a regular session. Using your smartphone during your workou t can increase the time spent at a low intensity, whereas not using your smartphone can increase the time you spend at a high intensity. This is especially important to keep in mind if your time in the gym is limited. One of the advantages of HIIT is that it's supposed to let you do more work in less time. But if more of that time is spent on your phone than on the gym floor, it can affect your progress.

Reduced Cardiorespiratory Fitness

If you're a lifter, you may

struggle to program ade quate conditioning work into your strength training.

To keep the intensity of their cardio work low but effec tive, strength athletes may choose to maintain cardio vascular health by taking walks. If that's been your goal, smartphones might get in your way.

Frequent smartphone users are more likely to choose sedentary activities related to their phone — scrolling through social media, per haps — than performing physical activity, which can negatively affect cardiore spiratory fitness. Seemingly related, excessive cell phone use has been linked to higher blood pressure. So shutting off your phone might be helpful for locking in your cardio health.

Impacted Movement

Even if your smartphone isn't directly in your hand, you may be hearing the ping of a text message or see ing a notification light up your screen. Therefore, your screen lighting up can be just as distracting as actually checking your phone.

These seemingly harmless interruptions might actually reduce your movement and range of motion in your elbow and shoulder flexion and extension. This can lead to a less efficient workout overall, which isn't optimal for maximizing your gains.

All photo courtesy to AdobeStock

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Even if your smartphone isn't directly in your hand, you may be hearing the ping of a text message or seeing a notification light up your screen. Therefore, your screen lighting up can be just as distracting as actually checking your phone.

Interview by Phyllis King

iaz DR. N KASRAVI

Dr. Niaz Kasravi is a national expert and advocates on criminal justice, social justice, and racial justice, with 19 years of experience leading campaigns across the country - including on police accountability, racial profiling, and death penalty abolition. Dr. Kasravi is the Founder & Director of the “Avalan” Institute – a research, advocacy & training institute. She previously served as Director of the Criminal Justice Pro gram at the National Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People (NAACP) and as Associate for the Domestic Human Rights Program of Amnesty International USA. Dr. Kasravi holds a Ph.D. in Criminology, Law, and Society from the University of California, Irvine.

Photo credit: Zaynab Behzadnia, https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaynab/

Your education is in Criminology. How does Criminology fit with your current role?

I did not even know what a Criminologist was. I grew up in Iran until I was ten. After the revolution, we moved to the US as a result of the war. We heard many things about the United States being a haven of freedom, fairness, equality, and opportu nity. Once we moved here, it shocked me that this country had systemic racism.

I took a Criminology course and loved it. It opened a door for me to explore and understand the criminal justice system. I chose to focus on what is not efficient or effective and how it harms people. I learned in this coun try; there is a way that you can change what does not work.

It has been a long path to the Avalan Institute. How did you get there?

I have an academic background which counts for a lot. Advo cacy is more real-world experi ence. It can be a very close-knit community. I was not in the cir cles. Then 911 happened, and I was looking for work. A friend of mine who is an immigration attorney was helping people deal with the National Securi ty Entry Registration System.

NSEERS targeted young men from 25 (mostly Muslim) coun tries based on ethnicity, religion, and national origin.

Even though their visa was val id, they needed to come in and identify themselves at their local

immigration office. Let them know what they were doing and where they were living. It was a way of keeping surveillance on these men.

I had just come back home from an informational interview with Amnesty International, and when I saw this, I said to my self Amnesty needs to do some thing. I sent a note and told them what was happening and asked what Amnesty was doing about this. I was told they would have to run it up the flagpole. The headquarters is in London for Amnesty. They asked me to, in the meantime, write a paper or memo about what was hap pening. And this paper ulti mately led me to getting a job at Amnesty International, USA.”

So, you carved your way in. Does it seem?

That is how it all began.

How did your tenure at NAACP come into play?

The same person who gave me my job at Amnesty had just been hired as the head of the NAACP. I told him I might be looking for something. He said he was trying to build a criminal justice program at the NAACP. There were a lot of police shoot ings being reported from mem ber organizations. He needed someone to come in and pro vide support for these cases and these communities. He hired me as a consultant first to deal with police shootings and police brutality issues.

I wanted to build my own strategies and tackle the issues most effectively.

,,

Gathering to commemorate the police shooting of unarmed Iranian American Bijan Ghaisar.

Photo credit: Kaveh Sardari, www.sardari.com

Photo credit: Zaynab Behzadnia, https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaynab/

Now that you have been in volved in these structures and the systemic racism that is built into American culture, are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Are we making progress?

I’m not pessimistic for sure, though it’s tough to bring about this kindof change. If I was pes simistic, I would not still be do ing this work. It is not the most lucrative thing you can do, but I strongly believe in humans' po tential to improve and be better.

How do we make progress in general?

Criminal justice reform is very intertwined with people’s fear and it’s politicized by politicians and the media. First, you have to validate people’s fears about pub licsafety. People are just trying to provide for their families and have a sustainable life. Then, it is important to push back against some of the fear mongering we hear in the media that falsely feeds people’s fears. We need to create more awareness about why transforming the criminaljustice system from what it currently is will actually provide more safety and be more effectivein general.

Do we want to ask what the root of racism in our criminal justice system is? Why is it that police officers racially profile, and how do we root it out?

It is not just white officers against the Black community. People of all racial backgrounds are pro filed. We all have biases, some more than others. Some act on it. Some have the power to act on it,

How did Avalan Institute come to be?

I wanted to build my own strat egies and tackle the issues most effectively. And I was at a point in my career where I felt comfortable doing that. I started my own research and advocacy institute, When you are running your own business, it is always a bit of a

hustle. There is no guaranteed paycheck for however long you are here. You have partnerships and build relationships. I started this institute a little later in my career and had a lot of contacts and people who knew me. It has been easy to attract projects and slowly build up.

Are the law enforcement community and prison system open to you? Do they see you as an enemy?

I do not see myself as an enemy. Again, that gets us into a polar ization-type thing. I think some people in law enforcement do not like the things we have to say. I am sure some people within the system do not agree. Some peo ple still believe we need to be tough on crime, lock them up and throw away the key, which has not worked for us. Rather than get caught up in the labels, we talk about improving the way we do things and providing more safety to communities, and treat ing people fairly.

How can an EDEN reader help? There’s a lot anyone can do. It depends on your interests and personality. We can all volunteer our time for organizations we care about, we can donate, we can host fundraisers. But animportant first step is to create self-awareness. A lot of the issues in my field with regard tocrimi nal justice and policing tend to come with a level of fear for peo ple. It’s important toexplore why something is scaring you.

Speaking at the Orange County Iranian American Chambre of Commerce

At San Quentin State Prison’s Alliance for Change annual banquet

Iranian-American Community Town Hall – in collaboration with Iranian American Bar Association –focusing on Know Your Rights, law enforcement, and racial profiling

Let’s take the rise in crime rates for example. Is the fearwe may feel based on facts and reality, or on talking points by the media or political leaders.

Then, we have to be ok looking at and talking about issues that are controversial, whether it is with yourself, or your family and friends. No one wants to sit around and talk about policing, or the death penalty, or public safety, but part of change is be ing okay with being uncomfort able and challenging the status quo.

We don’t live in a society where we have the luxury of only car ing about issues that impact us directly. First, it’s the right thing to do to stand up for justice no matter who the injustice im pacts. Second, the issues that other communities face will at some point, in some way, impact us. So, it’s important to build partnerships and stand with oth er communities in their fight for justice. Because then they will be more likely to stand with us when we need support.

How can readers support Avalan?

If interested, readers can go to our website at www.avalaninsti tute.com to sign up and receive updates about upcoming events, reports, or campaigns. In those

emails, we try to list out action items if there are any. It’s im portant generally to remain en gaged around these issues, espe cially for communities who are not always engaged. I always en courage the Iranian community in the diaspora to show up for other communities when they are dealing with injustice. We’ve already talked about the impor tance of building solidarity and allyship – it’s the right thing to do, and it will be helpful to have allies to rely on when we need them.

Also, there are tons of local or ganizations that can use support. I’m a firm believe that progress happens locally, so beyond re maining engaged with Ava lan, it’s important to advocate around these issues on a local level – working with city coun cils, local advocacy organiza tions, voting in local elections (as well as national), remaining engaged with your elected offi cials and making sure they understand the community’s needs and demands. These efforts add up and lead to a shift in the na tional landscape.

Thank you so much for that. It is www.avalaninstitute.com. We are so grateful for the work you are doing and the exper tise you bring.

Gathering to commemorate the police shooting of unarmed Iranian American Bijan Ghaisar

Photo credit: Kaveh Sardari, www.sardari.com

Photo credit: Zaynab Behzadnia, https://www.linkedin.com/in/zaynab/

“Premiere of Small as a GIANT photo exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology at California State University, San Bernardino.

Photo credit: Robert A. Whitehead/CSUSB”

At San Quentin State Prison’s Alliance for Change annual banquet.

I was thrilled to have a chance to speak with Robin Knecht, a Director of Counseling at Saint Joseph's Indian School. Saint Joseph's Indian School has greatly succeeded in help ing Lakota students heal, learn and graduate, embarking on successful, fulfilling lives and careers. As a mental health professional herself, Robyn can share a thoughtful and engaging perspective on how St. Joseph's helps students heal from many challenges unique to Native Americans.

St. Joseph's Indian School, a small nonprofit Native Amer ican school in South Dakota, makes an enormous difference for Lakota youth and in pre serving the culture and heritage for students healing from some of life's most serious challenges. Many factors could cause this disproportionate suffering, and many experts believe it is due to the loss of land and culture after European colonization, stoking unresolved grief to be transmit ted across generations of Native Americans.

Most Americans do not understand the disproportionate difficulty in Native American communities. Why is this the case?

I am so glad you are asking that question. Many different factors play into it. Experts feel the loss of land and culture with the colonization process pushed Native people from their homelands. This process of tak ing things away from them was passed down through the generations through a historical trauma and generational trauma. There are also huge barriers to accessing services in ru ral areas on the reservations.

So, is this the case with other Native American tribes as well?

Other tribes also have those difficulties.

Funding is a big thing. Access to health care and being able to pay for services is a huge barrier as well.

St. Joseph appears to be one of the few all-inclusive resources. Are there others?

We are unique in what we provide. We hope that other organizations can look at our model and see what parts of it they can uti lize. We encompass the mind, heart, body, and spirit. We have a health center residen tial care and very low-class sizes. We have access to mental health counselors, psychol ogists, and child psychiatrists. We provide every wrap-around service that any student would need.

We tend to think of Native Americans as sovereign. Is this part of why they have limited access? What is the issue?

I know specifically for the reservations in our area; it is a very rural state. Finding staff to fill teaching positions and provide mental health services is difficult. We have a reser vation about thirty miles from here. They have one mental health person for the entire reservation, over two thousand individuals.

An interview with Robin Knecht by Phyllis King

I enjoyed reading how you offer rituals to help people to stay connect ed and involved in their culture and traditions. That includes the use of horses.

Yes. We are so fortunate that we have supporters and donors that believe in our mission and want to be part of that. Without our donors, many of our services would be unfulfilled. And we are grateful for that.

Do people donate horses?

Our equine specialist has a herd of horses at her home. She selected specif ic horses out of her herd that we could have on campus. In the beginning, she would bring the horses, and they lived

here with us. Over the years, she sold those horses to us. They came from Patty, who is a trusted equine special ist. She knows her horses very well and what horses will work well with stu dents. She has been a blessing to us.

How did you find your way to St. Joe's?

It was about 18 years ago. I grew up in Sioux Falls, a bigger South Dakota city on the eastern side of the state. My husband transferred out here for his job. I heard about an opening at St. Joe's. I had just completed my master's program in counseling. I applied for it. I have been here ever since. I was called to be here.

What else would you like readers to know about St. Joseph's?

Our counseling department is unique. We have ten master-level counselors that provide individual therapy, group therapy, and family services. Each of those counselors is assigned a student. When a student comes to campus, ev ery student gets a counselor. It is all part of breaking down the stigma of mental health support. We help stu dents realize counseling is part of how we take care of ourselves. It is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength and a way to build up your inner spirit.

Our counselors have a caseload that ranges from 20 to 25 students. We can make connections with families and join families in celebrating their suc cesses in life. We are also there with families to support them during times of sorrow or grief. We also have a drug and alcohol counselor on staff and a prevention coordinator. Drug and alcohol abuse is at high rates among the native population. Of course, our equine therapy program.

How does someone come to St. Joe's?

A parent decides that they want to apply to have their child attend St.

Joe's. Most of our applications are students who struggle educationally, whether they are on an IEP or need ex tra services in the classroom. If we can meet their need, we want students to be able to attend. Families receive all our services free of charge. Once a student and family are part of St. Joseph's Indi an School, they are our family forever.

How many people are enrolled at any given time?

The most we have had in the past ten years was 220.

I noticed there is a POW wow for the community. What happens at a POW wow or a drumming circle?

The Pow Wow is our favorite time of year at St. Joseph. We invite donors, the community, and families. Students dance and wear their regalia that rep resents who they are. It connects them to their culture. We have drum groups from all over the state come and partic ipate. Our horses are part of the Pow Wow. They do the grand entry and are part of that whole experience. It is a chance to show the beautiful, rich culture to our donors and people in the community.

It can sometimes be devastating to feel like you are not connected and do not belong. Any opportunity to have our students feel that connection will only be a step in the right direction.

I am quite curious how the mixture of Lakota traditions and spirituali ty blend with the Catholic roots of the priests who originally founded the school.

I think it is always going to continue to evolve into something beautiful. St. Joe's does offer access to Lakota ceremonies. For instance, if parents are very traditional and want their child to participate in a sweat cere mony, we provide that on campus. We also have students who go on cultural trips to visit sacred sites in South Dakota. On campus, we of fer exposure to Christian culture and show its similarities and par allels. We have a Lakota mass once a month. Instead of typical church songs, we have the drum group come to drum songs.

It can sometimes be devastating to feel like you are not connected and do not belong. Any opportunity to have our students feel that connec tion will only be a step in the right direction.

How does St. Joseph survive?

We need the support of our donors, and we need people to continue to talk about who we are and what we do. Most of our funding comes from private donations. It could be some thing as small as a one-time donation of $20.

Does the community at large sup port this mission?

I am not sure everybody understands the wealth and the depth of it. When I grew up in South Dakota, I did not know that St. Joe's existed, and I did not know a lot about the reservations. There is a push now to integrate in formation into the non-native cul ture. We still have a lot of work to do.

There has been an absence of information in traditional white Amer ica to understand the plight of Native Americans. What impact does that have on the kids and families when their story is not out in the public domain?

Any size donation is a good donation. It does not have to be a corpo ration or a business. What is next for St. Joe's?

We are continuing to build strong re lationships with our families. We are building an equine therapy complex currently, and that should be done this winter sometime so we can offer therapy year-round versus just in the warm months.

What is the best way to support it? Any contribution is appreciated. Coming to campus and taking a tour to see what we do is a wonderful ex perience. We have a museum that rivals national museums with Native American artifacts and paintings. One of the best ways to learn more about us is through our website. It shows every program we offer and has a donation page.

Robyn Knecht, St. Joseph’s Director of Counseling.

Robyn is a Licensed Professional Counselor with the State of South Dakota. She graduated with her Master’s Degree from South Dakota State University and has been with St. Joseph’s Indian School for 17 years. In her role, Robyn loves being able to help people and make long-term positive impacts, be it in the development of her therapeutic staff or the students she serves.

Robyn has three girls and loves spending time outdoors with her family,

We are unique in what we provide. We hope that other organizations can look at our model and see what parts of it they can utilize. We encompass the mind, heart, body, and spirit.

Life is your Creation

Spiritual Phenomenon

By Mona Sobhani, Ph.D.,

CHELSEA HANDLER CHANGED MY LIFE

Chelsea Handler's podcast changed my life. The magical episode was where she discussed with Laura Lynne Jackson, a psychic medium. I didn't know who Laura Lynne Jack son was, and I was surprised that Handler, a self-proclaimed skeptic, would have a psychic medium on her show. I perked up to listen —if she was interested in interviewing Jackson, then I was interested in hearing.

I listened to it while driving to see a friend who lived an hour away and was completely mesmerized. I kept rewinding to relisten to parts of the interview. Jackson described a model

of spirituality that I had never heard before but that close ly aligned with the things the intuitive had talked about in the readings that I hadn't previously understood. The entire story started being pulled together for me. Briefly, it can be summarized like this: Our purpose as souls on Earth is to learn lessons that evolve and advance our souls, and we do this through many different lives (i.e., reincarnation). The thing that ties us all together is love, which she described as binding light energy. Like all things in nature, there needs to be balance, so karma helps keep that balance. She also de scribed the concept of soul groups, the groups of souls with whom we allegedly tend to reincarnate continuously.

Excerpt from Proof of Spiritual Phenomenon

Photo by AdobeStock

I was so excited to hear someone finally explain this spiritual frame work. I didn't believe it, per se; I just wanted to understand it better to assess whether it was believable. At first, listen, it seemed utterly prepos terous. I began to wonder if all intu itive went to the same school or got the same kind of training. Where did they learn this spiritual framework that I had never even heard of? Jack son and Handler mentioned a book entitled Many Lives, Many Masters (1988), written by a psychiatrist named Brian Weiss, M.D. Handler told a story of how she found the book in the seat pocket on a plane ride from New York to Los Angeles the day after getting into a fight with a friend over the ludicrous idea of reincarnation. I could relate to that condescending attitude toward oth ers with ideas that I thought were ridiculous. She read the short book on the flight to LA, and by the time she landed, she thought to herself, "Everyone must read this book."

Many Lives, Many Masters begins with Dr. Weiss's own background, which is impressive. He attended Columbia University and then moved on to Yale University for medical school and residency. He had his own practice and was the Chairman of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami. He was a complete skeptic and not at all interested in the "unscientific" con cepts of parapsychology, past lives, or reincarnation. For a science snob like myself, his background was im peccable. I'm not proud to admit it, but the book carried so much weight with me because of Dr. Weiss's credentials and his logical, rational, scientific approach to the problem. I would not have given any merit to the same book if it had been written by someone less credentialed, less agnostic, and less scientific.

The story goes that Dr. Weiss was treating a patient named Catherine, who was suffering from recurrent nightmares and anxiety attacks from

an array of personal fears, including fears of water, choking, airplanes, the dark, and more. Essentially, it sound ed like she was a walking anxietyridden, insomniac mess. After eigh teen months of traditional psycho therapy with Dr. Weiss, Catherine was not getting better and still had anxiety and panic attacks. As a last resort, Dr. Weiss decided to try hyp notherapy. Although you may be conjuring the image of hypnothera py that I also conjured when I read this—which was of a psychiatrist dangling a pocket watch in front of your eyes to place you in a hypno tized state—it turns out that hypno therapy is a commonly used practice in therapy to help access repressed traumatic memories, and basically entails the patient being placed into an extremely relaxed, but conscious, state. Through this method, Cath erine did uncover a long-forgotten trauma from when she was three years old, but her severe symptoms did not improve as Dr. Weiss ex pected. He was perplexed. He would normally see marked improvement and healing with other patients once a repressed or forgotten traumatic memory and its accompanying emo tions were recalled (i.e., catharsis). He wondered if there was more trau ma from before she was three years old. So in the next session, while she was in a relaxed hypnotic state, Dr. Weiss asked her to "Go back to the time from which your symptoms arise." She began describing a very detailed life—her life—from 1863 BC.

Dr. Weiss wrote about his extreme confusion in the session and not ed that no other patients had ever crafted such fantasies under hypnosis before, but he continued the session and jotted down all the details she provided of her name, age, appear ance, topographical details of the sur roundings, and more. She reported that she had died by drowning in this life. After this session, Catherine's choking symptoms and fears of water finally disappeared!

The point of learning the lessons is to evolve our souls and advance up through levels of spiritual being. With each advancing level, we become more like the Source, or Godlike, which is apparently ideal and worth striving toward. At some point, when you have become an advanced enough soul, you stop incarnating and help other souls.

I thought to myself, "What if?" and kept reading. Plus, I wanted to finally understand this reincarnation theory, even if just to put the fragments from my intuitive readings and Jackson's descriptions into a framework.

Here's my take on summarizing that framework based on the fact we have souls that incarnate on Earth to learn specific lessons through the events and relationships that make up a lifetime here. The point of learning the lessons is to evolve our souls and advance up through levels of spiritu al being. With each advancing level, we become more like the Source, or Godlike, which is apparently ideal and worth striving toward. At some point, when you have become an advanced enough soul, you stop incarnating and help other souls. The lessons are things like learning to be kind, pa tient, and loving (I would have rolled my eyes at this in the past!). Souls typ ically choose just a few lessons to learn per lifetime, and if they don't com plete the lesson (e.g., never learning that being an abusive alcoholic par ent is a bad thing), then they have to incarnate again and again until they finally learn the lesson. Karma is real, and there are karmic debts to be paid that help you advance. The reason there are so many lives is that there are many karmic debts to be paid and many lessons to learn. Souls change race, sex, religion, and physical health or impairment throughout the differ ent incarnations to learn everything by experience. Before birth, souls choose their parents, circumstances of life, and a plan for the upcoming life. So, all the participant's souls agree to the relationships. Souls are given a preview of the major events and key people they will encounter in a given lifetime, including soul group members. As for destiny and free will, they are allegedly complementary, and we have both. The idea is that you have "destiny points" in your life, such as meeting a soulmate, but how you behave and handle the situ ation is your free will and, ultimately, what contributes to determining your

karma. But according to this frame work, everything happens for a rea son—a saying that up until this point in my life had been anathema to me.

My first reaction still was that I felt like I wanted to throw up. Not in an "Oh wow, I'm so overwhelmed by the beauty of the truth" kind of way, but rather a "You have got to be kidding me that the point of life is all that hippie-dippy stuff" kind of way. I could not roll my eyes hard enough.

In the book, he mentions that he found it hard to believe that he was the first to stumble across this finding, so he began searching the literature for others. He mostly found literature around reincarnation and near-death experiences, and while very similar to what he encountered in his prac tice, it was not quite the same. He realized that while he was surely not the first behavioral health practitioner to come across this healing tech nique, he might be the first one who had to write about it. He struggled with the decision for years, fearing ostracization from colleagues and loss of credibility, but finally decided to publish his findings. Instead of being met with hostility and skepticism, outreach from other behavioral health practitioners poured in with similar stories.

Now, this really had my attention. One man is easy to brush off, but multiple practitioners with similar findings deserved a closer look. After doing some reading, I learned that Dr. Weiss was far from the only ther apist or psychologist, or psychiatrist who had inadvertently stumbled onto past lives in their clinical psychology or psychiatry practice and found it to be an effective therapeutic. I read all of Dr. Weiss's books, and those of many others in the same field, to better understand and scrutinize the methods and the spiritual framework. The revelation of wonders didn't stop here.

Mona Sobhani, Ph.D., is a cognitive neuroscientist. A former research scientist at the University of Southern California, she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Southern California and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University with the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project.

She was also a scholar with the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, VOX, and other media outlets. She lives in Los Angeles.

https://monasobhaniphd.com/

Wellness Entrepreneur Rises from Mental Health and Illnesses to Launch

LAJEANELL

a Clean Beauty, Vegan Skincare and Cosmetics Line

By Lynda Smith Hoggan

STILL, Thinking About a Relationship from LONG AGO?

Photo by Viacheslav Yakobchuk/AdpobeStock

Many of us find ourselves asking these questions, even as time goes on. I certain ly have.

At 20 years old, I fell deeply in love. But there were complications.

Although both JT and I were in college, our schools were hours apart. It was 1972, and we didn’t have cars or cell phones. We didn’t have money, either, and long-dis tance calls were expensive. So we wove our magic in the only way available to us, through letters. And what incredible letters they were! Pages and pages penned late into the night were full of prose, po etry, and song lyrics. Then we’d read each other’s words over and over while listen ing to the exciting crossover music from that era—Motown, Santana, Sly, and the Family Stone.

If distance were our only problem, we might have made it. But it was messier than that. JT and I came from different racial backgrounds—black and white, re spectively—and due to my parents’ racial prejudice, we felt we had to conceal our love affair for a while. Just as significantly, when I met JT, I was already in another relationship. As much as I came to love JT, I felt guilty about breaking up with the other man—so guilty that I just did not do it. Finally, I had a girlfriend who was smitten with JT.

She pursued him, using my relationship

with the other man to create doubt in JT’s mind. And I did nothing to try and stop either one.

Handling those things the way I did, or perhaps I should say mishandling them, was the biggest mistake of my young life. I never completely got over it. And I’m not alone. An analysis of people’s expe rience of regret, which looked at com monalities from multiple studies, found that romance ranks third in past decisions that we mourn—and, in some cases, that we long to do over. Those “what ifs” can haunt us.

My “what ifs” definitely haunted me. I’m fortunate that I was able to move on. But that was a long and painful process, and along the way, I learned some things about how to deal with my regrets:

Remember that things weren’t always perfect. Yes, I cringe whenever I reflect on how I didn’t break up with my first boyfriend for JT. But it wasn’t just my foolishness at play. JT took a long time to even tell me that he loved me, and at times sounded like he wanted to just cut and run; how could I feel secure with him given that? In addition, my first lover was a really fine man. He had survived a trou bled background and felt like I was his reward for the things he’d gone through; how could I take that reward away from him? Even my friend who betrayed me— was she just a cold, selfish person? Or did the fact that she’d recently been dumped by a man she thought she was going to marry mean that she was also acting out of her own pain? In the threesome of JT, my friend, and me, none of us is com pletely innocent. No one ever is.

“WHAT IF MY FIRST LOVE YEARS—OR DECADES—AGO WAS REALLY ‘THE ONE?’” “WHAT IF WE COULD GET BACK TOGETH ER AGAIN TODAY?”

He always validated the inner beauty that had initially drawn him to me. He reminded me of the person I wanted to be, and I felt like he was a true watermark for my continuing growth and development

,,

Stay friendly with the person you’ve separated from. Holding on to valu able relationships can be hard but rewarding. Over the years, JT and I stayed in touch. Even though I moved across the country and he traveled widely for work, we always had a phone number, an address, and even tually an email to contact. Any time I heard from him was a bright spot in my day. Mostly we shared music and occasional reminiscences. He always validated the inner beauty that had initially drawn him to me. He remind ed me of the person I wanted to be, and I felt like he was a true watermark for my continuing growth and devel opment. Hopefully, I provided some of the same for him. Staying in touch this way can be a source of joy and a balm.

Hold the good memories close to your heart: they are a gift to be grate ful for. Back in the day, JT and I spent very little time together. Because of our distance and lack of resources, we saw each other only about ten times before our complications drove us apart. But those weekends are forever engraved on my mind. Ah, he was handsome, so handsome that I could hardly picture him without my breath catching a lit tle. He was smart, and even though he was an athlete and identified with be ing a jock, his writing showed that he had a bit of the poet in him, too. I can easily call up a mental picture of us— whether laughing together over a bit of wordplay, getting tearful over a beautiful song, kissing until our lips burned, or wrapping our long arms and legs around each other in love making. Those are the sorts of gifts that even time can’t take away from any of us.

Let your “what ifs” inspire art: paint ing, music, and writing. It’s good for the soul. I always thought that I would write about JT and me someday. And I imagined that my book would focus on JT’s letters because, besides the memories, that is what I have left of him. His letters were unique, full of gentle teasing and

shy longing. Imagine my shock when I learned that I could not use JT’s letters without his permission. Then my disappointed when I asked him, and he did not answer me. I’d already started the book by then and was real ly excited about it. It could have been dead in the water, but it just meant too much to me. So I worked hard to re-craft the story around my feelings about him, our times together, and, yes, my paraphrases of his wonderful words. I fell in love with him all over again, and I cried my heart out over and over again. But in the end, I’ve created something that I am proud of, and I share my story in my forthcom ing book Our Song: a Memoir of Love and Race. The process was exhilarat ing and healing. Creative expression is always good for the soul.

Be open to falling in love again. And again. At first, it felt like no other man would ever capture my heart and soul the way JT did. But I was only twen ty-one when we ended. I knew I did not want to spend the rest of my life without love. So I thought about the qualities in JT that had so captivated me, and I looked for those qualities in other men. And I did fall in love again, more than once. It was a joyful and uplifting experience every time. One of those times was even with JT him self. I was in my 60s when I began con templating how quickly the years had gone by and how few of them might be left to us. I reached out to see him one last time, and we spent two in credible nights together.

Author Dan Pink writes about how regret can move us toward creating new realities. Whether JT and I could or would try again, whether it might work out or not—none of that mat tered quite so much as this: those two nights we spent together when he an swered the questions I’d been wonder ing about for forty years. This finally brought our story full circle for me. I could just love him without regrets, without wondering about the “what ifs.” That story of our youthful folly and glory is done.

Lynda Smith Hoggan, author of Our Song: A Memoir of Love and Race, has been a professional gift shop duster, bra strap counter, playground instructor, army base secretary, garment district house model, barmaid, go-go dancer, high school teacher, technical writer, sex educator, and amateur martini taster. Her writing, which includes poems and newspaper articles, sexuality columns and newsletters, academic journal articles, pages on a state web site, and personal essays, has appeared in Westwind: UCLA Journal of the Arts, the Los Angeles Times, Cultural Daily, and the anthology Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis. She’s a Pro fessor Emeritus of Health and Human Sexuality at Mt. San Antonio College in Southern California; her formal education includes a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Education from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and a Master’s Degree in Public Health from UCLA.

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Welcome to our Contributor Writers ' neighborhood

By Phyllis King

This ONE SHIFT in2023 WILL MANIFEST

YOUR HEART'S DESIRE

Conscious creation is simple. To access the simplicity of con scious creation, we must first master our inner world. Human beings love complexity. We get lost in it. It’s a bit like driving on a freeway with no offramp. We continually find ourselves on the same road to somewhere we do not want to be. The sooner we recognize the answer is simple and employ that simplicity in our lives, the sooner we will find our exit ramp and get off the endless freeway of discontentment.

The challenge most people face in manifesting is not paying enough attention to how the creative process works. We manifest what we focus on and what we give our attention to.

No exceptions. We squander our focus and spend it thinking about

what we do not have rather than the feelings of what we want to receive. We use a lack mentality. We will spend 90% of our thoughts and feel ings in a lack of awareness. Then we wonder why saying affirmations for two days doesn’t bring about a joyful manifestation. It’s simple math.

How do we expand our view and stay alert to energetic truths?

AWAKEN through a process such as reading this article. Commit to staying awake.

We often have a core disconnect with ourselves. We are asleep to our power and purpose. We behave as if we are only our body and that phys ical reality is the only reality. In this slumber, we silence the wisdom and connection to the intelligence that gave us life. We need that wisdom and that connection to receive the fullness of our desires.

Photo by Junior Reis

ERADICATE COMPARISON THINKING.

We compare ourselves to each other, and to measurements, outer reality tells us we should meet. We short change who we are and neglect our authentic purpose. Absent authen tic purpose, everything feels hard.

PRACTICE ENERGETIC ALIGNMENT.

We must become an expert at align ing internally first with what we want to manifest externally. Absent this skill; manifestations will be lackluster and incomplete.

One of the most potent ways we attract what we desire is to act as if what we desire has already hap pened. I often tell my clients to win an Oscar in their life stories. Act as if.

As we focus attention and energy on alignment with “it already hap pened,” it manifests quickly. The mind says, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Energy says, “when you believe it, you will see it.”

Quantum physics has proved that what we perceive to be true alters tangible matter. This is why two people given the same circumstance and opportunity will have different results. They perceive the circum stance and themselves differently, altering the outcomes. Perception is powerful. It is the greatest tool we have to influence our well-being. The sooner we grasp this truth and strategically act “as if,” the sooner we will start having fun cre ating our lives.

Many of us spend our time focusing on what we do not have. We focus on what hurts. We focus on repeat ing stories of our injustice and pain. This only magnifies loss and pain, assuring recreation of that circum stance in some form. What we give our attention to is what we create more of. We must learn how to shift

our awareness as quickly as possible to pore beautiful “outcome” energy into our thoughts and emotions.

We cannot be given a learning ex perience we do not need. Any mo ment of hardship or discomfort teaches us more about our true nature and clarifies what we want in life. It is preparing us to receive something even greater. It affirms the direction we need to focus on. Too often, when discomfort arrives, we focus on the discomfort and slow our rewards. Never forget this: the human mind says pain and dis comfort are bad. The soul says pain and discomfort are an opportunity to expand awareness and love more deeply.

Feelings are the barometer. They give us immediate biofeedback as to whether we are moving closer to or away from joy and wealth. When we feel the opposite of joy and wealth, the answer is always to move away from the biofeedback we do not like. In the practice of feeling “as if” what we want has happened, we empower ourselves to be the divine creators we were born to be.

When we feel enthusiastic, happy, and optimistic, we are vibrationally sound. Our happiness is not con ditional upon anything outside of us. When we achieve that state of being, we become magnetic and attractive. This is the state of being where we become automatic receiv ers. When we do set an intention from a state of receivership, the only possible outcome is a benevolent manifestation.

In 2023 dedicate your attention first to becoming a receiver before focus ing on a specific thing. Awaken to source wisdom. Remember who you are. Practice aligning internal ly first with what you want to ex perience externally. If you do that, you will have wealth, love, joy, and abundance in your life. Full stop.

Known as the Common Sense Psychic (tm), Phyllis King has worked with tens of thousands of peoplein 25 countries. She is known for her practical and down to earth approach. She has been featured on, ABC, CBS and NBC TV, radio programs across the country, and has been published in over 70 print and online publications.

She has four books, including Bounc ing Back, Thriving in Changing Times, with Dr. Wayne Dyer. Her latest book The Energy of Abundance is available in bookstores now. Phyllis holds a B.A. in Sociology. www.phyllisking.com

Quantum physics has proved that what we perceive to be true alters tangible matter. This is why two people given the same circumstance and opportunity will have different results. They perceive the circumstance and themselves differently, altering the outcomes.

By Angela Dunning

TUSSLE OF HEAD THE VERSUS HEART

Photo by AdobeStock

It’s that age-old human dilemma: Whether to listen to your head or follow your heart? Do you think, reason, and apply logic to our choic es, dilemmas, and conflicts? Or listen to the quiet whisper deep within your heart? How often do we get stuck in this dilemma, seemingly never learning from our own experiences and the positive results that come when we follow our hearts?

It’s a conundrum that ties many of us in knots and leaves us stuck, unable to decide, or acting in haste by following the rigid route that logic and reason like to pin us down by.

We also have to battle with the enormous pressure from our cul ture, which favors the head over the heart and logic over feelings and intuition. Every corner of our lives is pressured into this very left-brain way of thinking and be having. Emotion, feeling, and gut instinct are still relegated to second place and seen as inferior, often in derisory ways still linked to the diminishment of women and the feminine in our society in general, despite all the progress we seem to have made.

Men and women still struggle to find the courage and learn the wisdom of listening to their gut feelings, intuition, and heart’s de sires, let alone act on them and particularly when it may seem illogical, counter-productive, not financially viable, or socially acceptable.

And yet, there is now much ev idence to suggest that the heart holds its own vastly intelligent wis dom. It also contains a brain, and thanks to the research and work of the Institute of HeartMath, we now know that it’s the heart that leads the brain, not the other way around. The heart has also been deemed “an organ of perception,” meaning that it plays a significant role in our interactions with others and the world around us too.1

On a more personal and profes sional level, I can certainly attest to this. Every time I have made a decision where I followed my head, reason, and logic, things never went well for me, and I would end us stressed and regretting my choice, often backtracking on decisions. On the other hand, when I followed my heart, things flowed smoothly and effortlessly.

“To know how to choose a path with heart is to learn how to follow intuitive feeling. Logic can tell you superficially where a path might lead to, but it cannot judge whether your heart will be in it.” ~Jean Shinoda Bolen

,,

Photo by Mahdi Bafande

For many of the clients and my self, I work with, it’s the wisdom of the heart that shines through time and again. Not only that, but my equine partners always seem to back this approach up too, as evidenced by them turn ing AWAY from someone or in deed myself when we approach them and our interaction to gether from a logical head-place, but turn TOWARDS the person when we connect to and listen to our heart. Every single time without fail, this has been my experience with horses.

I believe this is because when we’re solely “in our heads” and relying on our rational brain to guide us, this causes tension in our body, including in our mus cles; our breathing is shallower and more restricted, and our heart rate is faster. All of which the horses feel from a few feet away. However, when we take the time to gently drop our aware ness down into our heart center and make a connection to our selves and our true feelings and desires, then our body automatically softens and relaxes. Again, the horses feel this and respond differently, usually through ap proaching, touching, and making a deeper connection. Whenever I take the time to tune into my own heart, carefully lis ten, and then ask for guidance regarding a direction or deci sion, the response is irrefutable. And here’s the thing: I almost always know which direction or choice I really want to make. It’s just that my trickster mind often takes over and tries to persuade me to go in a different direction entirely. When I fail to listen to my heart and intuition and fol low my mind’s urgings, I always end up unhappy and uncomfort able. Whereas when I do follow through on my heart’s intelligent

whisperings, I calm down inside and reach a state of equilibrium again, and my actions seem to flow naturally with ease.

So, whenever we want to connect more fully with ourselves and/or those in our lives, whether with our pets, partners, children, col leagues, or clients, it’s far better to do so through the soft warmth of our heart, emitting love, com passion, and kindness in the pro cess. Everyone responds so much better this way, yet it’s easy to forget and fall back on facts and reason instead.

Further, by learning to heed our heart on a more regular basis, we start to develop greater emotion al intelligence, meaning we are more connected to our emotions AND that we act accordingly to help the emotion simply move through us without keeping us stuck and blocked. As my teach er Linda Kohanov is fond of reminding her students: “You have a brain in your heart; please use it!”2

Ultimately, as Jean Shinoda Bolen says in the quote at the beginning, if our heart is not in something, it’s likely not to lead to fulfilling outcomes. That is certainly my experience: if my heart is not in something, I struggle, and it leaves me feeling dissatisfied and empty. It’s the inherent warmth that emanates from our heartfelt choices that lead to richer connections and experience, and I, for one, would rather take that any day over the cold harshness of logic and rea son alone.

References:

1. Stephen Harrod Buhner, Spirituality, and Health article: The Heart as an Organ of Perception, MarchApril 2006.

2. Linda Kohanov, Way of the Horse: Equine Arche types for Self-Discovery, p.60.

Angela Dunning is a regular contrib utor to The Eden Magazine. She is the author of The Horse Leads the Way: Hon oring the True Role of the Horse in Equine Facilitated Practice.

Angela writes regularly on Facebook: ebook.com/thehorsestruth. You can learn more about Angela and her work helping people and horses at: www.thehorsestruth.co.uk.

DESIGNECOLOGIST

Spiritual Growth Checkpoint:

By Sherri Cortland, ND

Photo by

Truthteller eretic? or H

Once upon a time in the 1980s, when I first began channeling my Guides (the "GG"), they told me that one of the reasons they had to basically drag me kicking and screaming out of the metaphysical closet to write my books was because I had a lifetime where I was burned at the stake as a heretic.

That's a difficult thing for a soul to recover from, and that residual fear is still sometimes overwhelming for me. I am 100% sure that's why I often have difficulty sharing what the "GG" channel.

What just cracks me up about this is that I wouldn't mind being the first to channel some thing new and interesting, but I'm also afraid to do it. It's a dichotomy that I continue to live with. Is it that I don't think the "GG" is giving me the correct information? Not at all— but sometimes I'm surprised and challenged by the information they channel, and that residual "being burned at the stake" energy takes over.

It seems to me that many sources are channel

ing lots of new and important information now, which is a great thing for all of us since I know that I sometimes drag my feet getting informa tion out there. And the "GG" has been outspo ken in saying that there is more and more new information coming because we've been doing the work, and we have a right to know…

"You are incarnated in a difficult, dense energy, where you remember very little, if anything, of who you are and why you are here. You work and struggle to learn tiny tidbits of truth; you make a bit of progress, and your vibrational energy increases."

One subject the "GG" has been outspoken about is who we are, and I'll let the "GG" speak for themselves…

"We are, each of us, a spark of the Creator, a spark of the Source, a spark of what many re fer to as God, but the name does not matter. It is our understanding of who we are that mat ters. When in human form, we are blind to this knowledge, and we feel separated."

"Nevertheless, we are made up of the same cosmic stuff, the same material as the Creator entity. It is important to understand that we are not sepa rated from the Source; we are very much a part of it. It is how the Source evolves; it is how souls evolve."

With this truth about who we are, comes responsibility…

"With awareness comes the knowl edge that the Source is not hands-on, and everything that happens to us is because we plan it.

When our lives do not go according to the plan we made before coming into the body, it is because of free will on our part or because we or another human being has a short circuit that affects the original plan. With this knowledge comes the understanding that we are personally responsible for our lives. Such knowledge is evolu tion, not blasphemy."

What the "GG" is saying here about our lives not going according to plan because of freewill or because of something that we or someone else does to upset our carefully laid out plans is a key point when it comes to the awareness of who we are and how we look at the things that happen to us and around us.

According to the "GG," rape, mur der, and suicide are not planned events; they are events that are caused by short circuits in the brain of a human being. These short circuits happen when someone takes on too much for one lifetime or when a soul is abused and/or forced to experience awful things—especially at a very young age. No one enters an incarna tion intending to be a murderer, and no Spiritual Guide would ever con done such a thing. That would never get past the planning table. Yet these things happen, and that brings us to the next level of awareness the "GG" wants to share—that there is no such thing as evil.

"When things go wrong, they go

wrong because of the ego, not because a soul is evil. It is crucial to spiritual growth to understand that the ego is not who we really are. The ego is shaped by our experiences as human beings, and part of being aware is to question the conclusions that the ego places in front of us. In order to make decisions that allow higher levels of awareness and to expedite spiritual growth, a thorough examination of the conclusions, judgments, and calls to action initiated by the ego must take place."

Here's where the "heretic" part of the subject line of this article really comes into play. The "GG" write that no soul can be evil if it is a piece of the Source, a piece of God if you will. And the next step is to question the existence of heaven and hell.

According to the "GG," these places of reward and punishment are fabri cations created by man to exert con trol over the masses.

When I was writing Raising Our Vibrations for The New Age, the GG channeled that if souls fervently be lieved in heaven and hell while incar nated, they would find exactly what they believed in so zealously when they first crossed over but would eventually move past these human beliefs as they remember who they truly are.

As we continue to evolve and gain a greater sense of awareness about who we are, and as we truly know that we are part of God/Source/Creator, it makes sense for us to ask ourselves this question: Why would God pun ish Himself? If God sends a soul to a place called Hell, and we are all sparks of God, doesn't logic dictate that God would be sending Himself to Hell?

Something to think about and some thing I was initially scared to share.

Namaste.

Sherri Cortland has been communicat ing with her Guide Group, the “GG,” since 1987 via automatic writing. Much of the information she has received is included in her four books, which were originally published by Ozark Mountain Publishing and are currently available on her website and on Amazon.

On Sherri’s website, you will find several free classes and meditations, along with more articles and workshops on video. https://www.facebook.com/SherriCor tlandAuthor

www.Sherri-Cortland.com

WALKING FREE FROM DOING INTO THE FOREST AND BECOMING

By Zee

Photo by Lora Ninova

The sky opens, the sun flows across cloudless blue, and leaves dance. Nature's rhythmic succession is in unison with the fresh summer breeze. What madness won the war, besieged the human mind, programmed now to remain permanently imprisoned by a duality of doing and becoming.

Don't leave; the inner voice cries out through the pushback, afraid and in fear of abandonment. Don't leave; stay on the path; hey, you come back and get it together; tomorrow is a better day. And yet you stay, remain on this self-chosen path of living repetition day upon day. In what appears as a multitude of different learning experi ences, one is captured, framed within a world of social connectedness,

Now fully functioning and definite ly in control of the driver's seat, one remains blinded as time slowly moves on. That forgotten inner voice calls out your name, unheard amongst the noise to inform, to say bye-bye, human, as one remains wrapped up in the right and wrong sides of connected busyness while doing and so becoming.

Life is good.

THE PHYSICAL: Walking into the forest; one is filled with excitement and anticipation as the feelings of for est bathing permeates every cell. The air is crisp and fresh; one expands into lightness and wonders within the body-mind-spirit. The physical springs into life as leaves in shades of green never seen before flash across/all around one's attention. An unbalance in one's stride comes into focus. There is tension in one's breathing; leg mus cles begin to speak out in pain. One is reminded why giving up one's yoga practice was not such a great idea.

Love IS Light

THE MENTAL: What does the forest represent? Months in, the first thing one begins to notice as the recapitula

tion multiplies under now its own con tinued evolution is the outside world becomes absolute stillness as if framed within a moving picture. Light, which is no ordinary light, marks the pas sage as the body-mind slowly moves through an ever-expanding smile. Re flection moves one inward, encapsulat ed as every single past memory floats out from the deep, upward like a bub ble, clearly into one's vision. Now ex pands outward to block the light from today's sunshine.

It appears dark within the projector of one's own film, stretched across a time period almost lost and forgotten. Now consciously left staring into the mind's abyss, one's mindset film plays back ward on a myriad of past choices, and memory flashes block out and conceal one's present moments of existence. And very slowly, frame by frame, the external world disappears from view. And so it begins as one traverses step by step down memories forgotten lane. The observer within now becomes the self-witness over the distances between experiences lived and the true reality of what transpired. All this flowing like a river torrent coupled with the ensuring never seen consequences, discovered for the very first time. Time to sit, make amends, and take a deep breath.

A single tear falls

What madness moves one to take on such a forest walk in the first place? It appears that today's world of assumed connection among so-called humans has, in real-world experience, thrown Trust out with the bath water. People everywhere are deliberately avoiding eye contact with one another. People are fearful of touching one another, and this habit has only happened over these past 3 years. Up till now, we still have no idea why this has occurred in such a short period of time. Another quite noticeable factor on the radar is, being helpful to another has become like a disease, and that's very disturb ing if this world is to move forward as a collective whole.

Finally, how many are frustrated with juggling the never-ending narrative of who or what is right and who or what is wrong about every single ac tion/word expressed? While constantly being told there is no duality, yeah, right. What we are facing is a cross roads of humans judged and formulat ed into separated divisions by powerful individuals. Even worse, the oppressed have become the angry oppressor with no understanding of the word "re spect," while so many humans struggle and fight to breathe a life worth living.

After many eons, when one is no lon ger willing to fight, one becomes im mune to it all and settles into a life less traveled. Even later in life, as wis dom floods the brain cells, a daunting realization sets in that all humans are standing in the same boat regardless of circumstance or structure. When will the leaders wake up? They can't; they're thinking of rides on a different train track. Vive la France.

Uniforms; let us consider the impli cations of what transpires when one places that uniform over the hu man body-mind, bam, it becomes life-changing. All of a sudden, one is connected to a group, a structure, a profession, a class distinction, and the personality of those humans momen tarily changes. Now they wield some sense of magical power over their gen eral public. Strange, is it not? These very same humans go home, take off their uniform and become the very same general public they harass and tread on while doing the work. How did one allow a uniform to create self-meaning where it doesn't normal ly exist? The mind boggles at how one willingly falls into such stupidity and forgets their humanness; forget they are also the general public.

Blows the mind.

It appears we are born into this life force to spend our entire existence

framed into, trying to be successful or better. Sometimes during one's trying stages, one may consider realigning one's perspective and ask the obvious question, better than what? If we look back at when and how it all started, it's simple mathematics.

We were gifted and trained in all the correct word terminologies with their dual meanings. One with a, we think we know perspective, while the other perspective remained hidden from us mere mortals. Challenge and resist you may, yet in the end, work, marriage, children, mortgage, and consumption will accept you into its open bosom, where you will happily retire into your self-chosen comfort box.

Interestingly in today's world, big business and personal development movements all practice the "out of the box "thinking. Also fascinating as it is, these same individuals show their success by or are gifted luxury seating in private boxes. Lesser individuals buy their opportunity from a box of fice. Not sure what this is called, but it does look like there is no escaping the "box." Take it away, Billy.

La-la-di-di-da da-dum, if I could get out of this place.

Various cultural terms are used to de scribe a person who, after the first 3 stages of living, decides to leave their lifestyle and move into a more recluse existence. One term is they are referred to as a Muni. After creating a family and living one expected life, the idea is that now is the time to merge into a life without dualities, hatred, and desires. To be liberated from the bondage of conditioned education com monly talked about as normal and possibly found peace within, self-gen erated spiritual freedom not easily gained while engaged in the hustle and bustle of today's earthly pursuits.

MODIFY

your clue. Crazy as it may sound, Walking into the Forest is the freedom from doing and becoming.

Every decision you make is a choice in choosing one side of this dual existence. Therefore one is trapped forever. You have

The world has changed, or was it? In fact, while most humans were busy living out their expectations, they found themselves unaware of the many evolutions progressing all around them within society over a very quick short period of time. It is now that the individual may observe the world through a new set of eyes and possibly grasp new self-realizations. Does one's mind ever really get to grasp the true meaning of what this word realization actually implies? Over time, what is it that really comes to the surface of one's thinking are the real facts of a life lived? Did one's life actually belong to ideas, expectations, and assumptions, all belonging to numerous other individuals one chose to believe as the way to live one's life?

Time to check out.

Checking out has never been allowed; it's totally discouraged and frowned upon for all manner of reasons by family, friends, and education, and then there is one's obligation to society. What will people say and think about you? In this everyday reality, it's like cutting the second umbilical cord to live a life

worth living. A very tough decision, or maybe not; what do you say?

Are you ready? Have you been thinking about stepping out past the fringes and risking being classed/called out as an outsider? Think clearly before any action; after all, existing there in that space, you will have so much to lose!

In our time here on this earth, life offers up what no percep tion, intellectual discussion, or definition will ever be able to explain. So you may ask, what is the answer, "don't bother?" Whatever you come up with or are told, it will never be the true reality, just one of a trillion options.

Everywhere you look or listen, there are Keys or Codes to inform you how this all works and the best ways to move forward with a purposeful understanding. Every decision you make is a choice in choosing one side of this dual existence. Therefore one is trapped forever. You have your clue. Crazy as it may sound, Walking into the Forest is the freedom from doing and becoming.

Photo by AdobeStock

By Heidi Connolly

LIKE A HERMIT CRAB Living

Photo by Coline Haslé

Iam almost ridiculously fortu nate in all sorts of ways. To be met at the airport by my gracious sister is only one of them. It might seem like a small thing, but to know that some one who loves you will be there when you walk through the bag gage claim doors after a flight into and back from the intense world of Los Angeles, let alone a whole different state and frame of mind, is like waking up to breakfast in bed when you're normally responsible for making enough pancakes to feed ten hungry mouths.

I'm also filled with gratitude to be welcomed home by my house: qui et, serene, backed by woods full of gently swaying trees and stocked with enough coffee and toast, so I don't have to stop off at the su permarket at 10 pm along the way. Coming home is always met with a great sense of relief. When I step in the door and put down my bags, the first thing I do is sigh, "I'm home, where I belong."

I love theories. One of my theories is that there are Outdoor People and Indoor People, just as there are introverts and extroverts. I am more of an Indoor Person, just as I am more of an introvert than an extrovert. One of my other theo ries is that no matter who or what, or where we are, we are all hermit crabs, carrying ourselves with us ev erywhere we go.

As hermit crabs, some of us might prefer more time outside our shells, exploring and interfacing with the world; others prefer more time in side, comfortably surrounded by and protected by barnacles and sea weed. Whichever feels more agree able, the most important thing is to be in alignment so you're content

where you are.

When you're an HSP, it's even more critical to be aware of your internal state of being. That is, aligned with your highest self and your HSPness so that you're home, no matter who or what or where you are, even when you're not.

In the past, as an HSP, a High ly Sensitive Person, and someone who appreciates solitude, quiet, and self-reflection, moving about the world used to be the ultimate parody of the traveling nightmare. I've traveled to many countries in my life and been ill or lost or both in all of them. I've suffered from heat waves and lived through cold fronts, been bitten by swarms of bugs and stumbled over far too many snakes, felt overwhelmed and afraid, and sad that my pathetic sensitivity kept me from enjoying the adventure. That's why I am so impressed by the way I'm holding my own these days.

The crabby hermit crab As an unhappy—and often crab by—hermit crab, on my most re cent trip to Los Angeles, the old me would have lost my boarding pass, misplaced my Kindle, spilled my coffee, and remembered I'd forgotten my phone cord or tooth brush by the time I'd arrived at the gate. On the plane, by the time I'd landed, I would have been stricken with flu-like symptoms, and sure I had Covid or some other horrible disease. I give up some valuable real estate in my carry-on for my Ziploc of Kleenex because I've had that happen so many times—step on the plane, start sneezing, sneeze until the moment I step off, when symptoms usually dissipate, though there have been times it's taken days.

It was painfully obvious when I played my first salon concert after many years of hiatus. The first few minutes were nerve-wracking but went smoothly. Then, during a few measures' rest, my eyes roved over the room, full of talented musicians and other creative people.

It never once occurred to me in all my decades of life that such symptoms were indicators of my HSP-ness. Not in the sense that I understand it today. You run around do ing your life, going places, interacting with people, and so on, but the pervasive thinking says that there are al ways rational reasons for your reactions, which can always be tied to one "logical" thing or another. For example:

• You're sneezing/coughing: There must be something in the air. You're sensitive to chemicals and perfumes. You've caught a bug from someone.

• Your heart is pounding: You're afraid of flying. Crowds make you nervous.

• Your stomach hurts: It must be something you ate. You could be getting colitis.

Louise Hay, Bruce Lipton, and other "biology of belief" ad vocates would say otherwise. They—and I—would suggest

your body is responding to some sort of belief that you have integrated long enough and deep enough for it to manifest on a physical level.

Everyone's indicators vary. One of my favorites is how I oc casionally wake up in the morning feeling peeved for no ap parent reason. The emotion is usually accompanied by the physical sensation of anxiety.

In the old days, I immediately worried about why I was anx ious and what I had to be so annoyed about. Now I immedi ately remind myself that money is about to show up.

Seems unlikely, I know, even ridiculous—that money would have anything to do with my emotional waking state. And yet, it's proven correct much more often than not. And there's something very nice about turning anxiety into financial abundance, let me tell you.

Photo by AdobeStock

One of my other favorite in dicators is my choking mecha nism, which appears suddenly and unpredictably whenever I go down the road. What made me think I was good enough to play with these amazing musi cians? It was painfully obvious when I played my first salon concert after many years of hiatus. The first few minutes were nerve-wracking but went smoothly. Then, during a few measures' rest, my eyes roved over the room, full of talented musicians and other creative people. I panicked.

What right did I have to be there? The choking started a second later.

I have come to love my indica tors, all of which reveal when I'm out of alignment or when my energetic Psychic Octopus is busily globbing around in other people's energy. It's like being tapped on the shoulder by the Angel of Clarity.

The happy hermit crab

I thought a lot about my indi cators on this last trip to LA as I:

• Ate my snack of sushi comfortably away from the hordes in a nice cor ner surrounded by empty seats;

• Found my way to my seat on the plane easily and was offered help to stow away my bag above my head;

• Sat on what was a crowd ed plane but found I would have an empty seat next to me;

• Saw that the man sitting by the window was the man I'd noticed in the

boarding area whom I'd known spirit would bring into my field somehow because we were supposed to meet;

• And then got to spend the next two and a half hours gabbing about every sub ject under the sun with someone with whom I was destined to be friends.

It wasn't until I actually stepped off the plane that I realized I'd sneezed only once. Could it be a new me? Could I be a happy hermit crab car rying her own "home of align ment" with her everywhere she goes?

• I hadn't coughed at all;

• I didn't have a headache;

• I wasn't worried that I wouldn't be able to find my sister in the bedlam of "no-idling zones" outside baggage claim; and

• I didn't feel that I'd trav eled across the planet in stead of state lines.

Would you like to switch it up, so the experiences that once had you crumbling are now, dare I say, pleasurable? You can. You're an HSP. You're awe some. While indicators indi cate by definition, the question is what they are an indicator of. Start by noticing your physical (and/or emotional) reaction. Then, instead of making an assumption about what your emotion or sensation means, ask yourself what you thought when you had it.

Because what looks like a duck and quacks like a duck is not necessarily a duck at all and might be much more of a hermit crab.

Heidi Connolly, The Celestial Professor, is a purveyor of down-to-earth s pirituality.

She has authored a number of books, including Crossing the Rubicon and The Gateway Café, as well as her upcoming, Elevate Your HSP-ness: How to Live a High-Frequency Life that Amplifies Your Vibration, Celebrates Your Sensitivities, & Uplifts the World! Heidi is an intuitive coach and medium who works with those who wish to communicate with loved ones on the other side as well as Highly Sensitive People to develop their sensitivities and intuition. A spirit-guided musician, Heidi’s flute recordings are renowned for the healing power of their encoded frequencies. Heidiconnolly.com hspness.com harvardgirledits.com theobitwriter.net

Great Wrap Founders Are Changing the Way Stretch Wrap is Made With Potato Waste

The husband and wife duo introduced its home com postable stretch wrap to the U.S. market in August, ex panding its Australian brand to a growing eco-friendly customer base.

Jordy and Julia Kay, Co-founders of Great Wrap, are disruptors in an indus try that has not seen change since the 1940s. Great Wrap, a materials science company that manufactures the only certified home compostable stretch wrap from potato waste, is expanding to the U.S. in August to end the American reliance on petro leum-based plastics.

Great Wrap is launching in the U.S. with a compostable cling wrap and a refillable dispenser for American households to help mini mize plastic and promote composting at home. Jordy and Julia, a husband and wife duo and a former archi tect and winemaker, have as sembled a team of scientists, biotechnologists, and engi neers that have developed technology to manufacture the stretch wrap.

The Wrap is formulated by diverting potato waste from landfills and con verting it into the main raw ingredient. Julia Kay states, "If we added just 0.4% to the world's soils by composting food waste, then we could immediately counteract climate change. Compost ing has a profound impact on your gar den and on saving the planet.

"We've made it possible for Australians to ditch plastic without changing their habits and plan to do the same in the U.S. We're proudly helping people take a step towards a more sustainable future by making our compostable stretch wrap readily available at an affordable rate."

Jordy added that the average person throws away over 38 pounds of cling wrap per year and 5.71 million tons annually, with Americans buying enough plastic film each year to shrinkwrap Texas. The founders, in their late 20's and early 30s, currently have two factories in Australia and are work ing on setting up one in the U.S. in 2023. They're already on track to divert 50,000 tons of potato waste from land fill this year and plan to grow that to 300,000 tons once they open a plant in the U.S.

The stretch wrap breaks down in under 180 days into carbon and water, leaving behind zero toxins, unlike biodegrad able products that are petroleum-based and decompose into harmful micro plastics.

Great Wrap acquired $24 million in Series A funding for its expansion from key impact and sustainability inves tors, including Groundswell Ventures, Springbank Collective, Barrel Ventures, ALIVE VC, and the investor group Trail Mix Ventures (TMV). This has al lowed Great Wrap to set up a biorefin ery at its Tullamarine factory with the capacity to manufacture 30,000 tons of compostable stretch wrap by the end of 2023, making them Australia's larg est stretch wrap manufacturer. TMV praised the brand for its innovative, mission-driven approach.

We saw a materials revolution happening around us. Everything was changing rapidly; energy, transport, and agriculture, yet me. We knew the technology existed to end plastic waste, but no products were available on the market for us to use. That's when Great Wrap was born

"Great Wrap is a natural fit in our Sustainable Solutions thesis—we believe there is a critical need to build everyday products for consum ers and businesses that reduce environmental impact in a real way," said Darabi from TMV.

"Jordy, Julia, and the team are creating break through new materials and driving both busi ness and consumer adoption with a brand that resonates and has an accessible price point."

PETERS’ PRINCIPLES

OF SUCCESS

Lenny Peters, MD,

Photo by Tom Morbey

Life has revealed certain elemen tal truths to me. In poker, a flush beats a straight. Facts can be cru el, but they outweigh opinions. And it takes guts to face and defeat tough truths if we are to give our best effort.

There are times we encounter facts that we do not like. Something we believe is true might be proven to be untrue, or vice versa. This can cause our brains to play tricks on us. Each of us has a com fort zone, which makes existing in this world more tolerable.

Defense mechanisms help us cope with life’s pain. These are psychological strat egies unconsciously used to protect our selves from anxiety caused by difficult thoughts and feelings. Such techniques include denial, rationalization, and re pression.

We find in life what makes us most com fortable. In this way, we choose the peo ple we enjoy being around, the places we live and visit, and the sources of informa tion we believe.

Yet when something fails to fit into our comfort zone, it is human nature to de velop selective hearing. We might think we know best, or we can simply say to ourselves, “I do not feel like that is true.”

Unfortunately, feelings and facts are not always in congruence. If we wish to be successful or to sustain the success we are already achieving, we must be honest with ourselves.

This takes remarkable effort.

It can become easy to deceive ourselves into thinking we are the ones who know better, our decisions are always the right decisions, and our methods are the best methods. These are partly our ego and partly our cognitive dissonance, forcing a detour from the path of success onto the back roads of isolation and alienation. How can one be successful in a relation ship or a family setting if he or she tunes everyone else out and refuses to hear or understand where the other people in volved are coming from or what they might be going through? It is unsustain able. And the same is true in business.

We must be adaptable and open to new information, new data, evolving technol ogy, and innovation and market disrup tions. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global business on all fronts, from supply chain and manufacturing to the way the world uses virtual data and the way we get our food and visit with loved ones.

There are companies that turned this crisis into opportunity, and despite all the negativity, the death and illness, and the dark days of quarantine and govern ment-imposed restrictions, these busi nesses turned a profit. Other businesses were built as a result of the pandemic, while many existing firms executed deft pivots to make new products geared to ward battling the virus and therefore prospered in ways that otherwise might never have been possible.

Telehealth in the medical industry and video conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams took off. During the crisis and beyond it, doctors who once found it difficult to keep tabs on patients in remote or rural settings and patients with limited access to hospitals and clinics due to trans portation or mobility issues con nected virtually, meeting screento-screen rather than face-to-face. How many chronic illnesses might be better treated with more regu lar contact between providers and patients utilizing this technology?

Virtual calls and virtual private networks (VPNs) existed long before Covid-19 forced so many industries to adopt work-fromhome capabilities. Yet look how much money companies have learned can be saved on travel, office space, and in-person events moved to the virtual platform space. Sure, we absolutely need to return in some facet to the inperson practices of doing business and being social. Global commerce depends on it, as does society in general. Yet there are now more readily accepted cost-saving mea sures that can be employed where managers and executives deem them feasible. Prior to 2020-21, widespread use of such platforms would have been dismissed out of hand.

Admittedly, some leaders perfected their ostrich imitations and kept their heads firmly in the sand, oblivious to hard truths. The good news is that others did not waste time lying to themselves, whining that “someone” or “the world” was out to get them or, perhaps worse, that their businesses were some how immune to world events. No, these savvy CEOs and leaders saw the world landscape as it was, an ticipated changes, and decided to act quickly and decisively. They saw what was possible rather than what was being made impossible;

that is precisely what we each must learn to do. And we can start by working proactively in our minds to recognize the boundaries of our comfort zones, face the hard truths and when it comes time to make decisions, have the courage to overrun those self-imposed bor ders.

There are simple questions we can ask ourselves when faced with an opportunity to lie to ourselves. We might even ask those around us whom we trust, an executive board or a team member, a co-founder, or even our spouse or significant other.

And what do we ask? “What are the facts?” “What rock do we stand on?”

Making an effort to face reality re quires reintroducing ourselves to our inner gyroscope and compass. We must remain steady in our search for True North.

To know which direction is best, we must first assess our starting position and, next, plot a course that will lead our organization to the desired position. If we are not being honest with ourselves, whether about our abilities or in abilities, the state of the industry, or of the world, will we ever real ly get from Point A to Point B, or will we fail? Perhaps we will only swim in circles and waste time, neither failing nor growing. Stag nation is never a desirable outcome.

This takes us back to our individu al comfort zones and a showdown with our defense mechanisms, perhaps in the form of a self-au dit. Take stock of the flaws within ourselves, characteristics we know deep down we can improve upon yet do not want to address. Why? Because these are uncomfortable, inconvenient truths. “Mirror, mir ror on the wall” and all that.

If I look around, whether in the office or at home, and I do not like what I see, things are trending negatively, morale is down, or numbers are down, or we are not communicating as openly and lovingly as we once had, I must first look in the mirror. Am I being honest with myself? What are my shortcomings? How might I improve?

Photo by AdobeStock

If I look around, whether in the office or at home, and I do not like what I see, things are trending negatively, morale is down, or numbers are down, or we are not communicating as openly and lov ingly as we once had, I must first look in the mirror. Am I being honest with myself? What are my shortcomings? How might I im prove?

What have I done to address it? How have I changed since I last looked around and was pleased? Is my behavior or attitude different? Am I causing this, or if not, how might I change anyway to be better suited to lead us out of this period of difficulty?

It cannot always be a laundry list of demands placed on others and pounding one’s fist on the table and pointing the finger down the line. If we want to be celebrated for our successes, we must first be accountable for our failures to our selves and others, and this requires that we be brutally honest with ourselves.

God has placed many angels in my life, and people along my journey have seemed to spring up at just the moment I needed them with just the right number of resourc es I needed, no more, no less. The years passed, and I continued to follow my instincts. I traveled first to Nigeria for a year and then on to the United States, where I studied at the University of Pittsburgh.

Each new country required a repeat of the residency process in that nation to be permitted to practice medicine. It takes a lot of work and discipline to become a doctor, let alone to do so four times in differ ent corners of the world.

It might seem easy today for me to describe the thought processes by which I made the decision each time, when and where I would

then go, and what I might do when I got there. The anxiety near ly overwhelmed the mind of the 14-year-old boy who was me, an earnest yet provincial future global citizen who had not seen much be yond his own village. The 24-yearold, newly accredited doctor who had not practiced medicine in a major metropolitan hospital set ting was similarly challenged.

How did I overcome these profes sional and personal hurdles? I put in the effort to analyze the pros and cons and then make the tough choices. To this day, when faced with a decision that I absolutely must make, whether regarding my life, my family, or in business, I always think, “What is the worst that can happen? Will I survive if I make this decision?”

If the answer is, “Yes, this is a do able choice,” that seems to be the best choice, and I make it. If the very worst outcome I can imagine is something I can still deal with after reviewing all my options, and if l feel comfortable moving ahead, I do so. I take that leap of faith.

I am an options-oriented man. If I do not know what the options are, I ask. I confer with my colleagues, my team, and my family, and then I choose an option. I may wait a day; I may think about it a bit lon ger.

To some, my approach might sound a bit like “ready...fire...aim.” Not really, though. For there is a chasm between shooting from the hip and waiting too long to decide upon the optimal course of action, the one with what you know— in your heart of hearts—has the highest chance of success.

Lenny Peters, MD, is the founder of Bethany Medical Center in High Point, North Carolina, with fifteen locations that provide primary care, urgent care, and fifteen different specialties to patients from all walks of life and income levels. Among two thousand companies in North Caroli na, Bethany Medical was awarded the Best Company for Inclusion and Diversity by Triad Business Journal. In 2006, Dr. Peters established the Lenny Peters Foundation, which provides grants and gifts to needy individuals and families in the Piedmont Triad and finances palliative care for cancer patients and homes for orphaned boys and girls in India.

Lenny detailed his inspiring success story in Barefoot to Benefactor: My Life Story of Faith and Courage (2021). All proceeds from the sales of his books support Lenny Peters Foundation recipients. Peters’ Principles of Success (November 2022) is an inspirational yet grounded guide to thriving in our challenging world while making a difference in others’ lives.

Reframing Can Change Everything

By Ellen Meredith

Try this experiment. Look around you, letting your vision scan in a 180-degree arc. What did you notice? Now, make a circle with your thumb and index finger and look through it like a spyglass. Scan the same 180-degree arc with your finger spyglass and notice what you see this time.

When I scan my surroundings in a general sweep, I see very little detail. I get impressions of colors and textures, and I

notice walls, pictures, curtains, mirrors, wall hanging, and windows. Mostly my mind just names what it sees. But when I view the same room in framed moments, I see the image in the picture in more vivid detail, notice a light my earlier sweep missed and how utilitarian its design is, see the expression on my face in the mirror, and appreciate the lovely curve of a railing on the steps outside my window. In short, I get more information.

Photo by By ElijahAdobeStock

An excerpt from Your Body Will Show You the Way: Energy Medicine for Personal and Global Change

Framing has to do with accepting your power to influence and shape your own experience, to assign your own meaning. It offers you a way to bring in your wisdom to create understandings that help you grow, heal, and evolve rather than digging you deeper into the culture of illness, wounding, and victimization.

Framing shapes how we see some thing. Often framing also influences how well or how clearly we see some thing. If you frame your relationship as “falling apart,” you might miss details you would notice if you were to frame it as “falling apart so it can reformulate” or “reaching the end of a cycle.”

Anne, who used her Buddhist prac tice to befriend her pain, reframed her health woes by moving from seeing them as a plague to seeing them as a teacher and, further, as Blanche, someone she could get to know. Within this new framework, her understanding transcended the plague aspects of the situation and zeroed in on specific dimensions that ultimately gave her more clarity and awareness of what her body was expressing. It gave her a way to move the situation forward and improve it, whereas seeing it as a plague had been funny but led nowhere.

Framing is a core skill for healing, living well, and being able to thrive. It is the art of structuring how you see something so that you can actu ally work with it and make a differ ence.

“My husband left, and I’m in the process of trying to reclaim myself,” tells your body and hurt self that you aren’t a throwaway at the mercy of his unskillful exit. It tells others not to project their breakups and the culture of dumping onto what was probably a much more compli cated set of interactions than they know.

Framing is not the same as euphe misms, which avoid calling things what they are with words that are impersonal. And it’s not the same as spin, which is about packaging a situation to sell it to others (or to oneself).

Instead, framing has to do with accepting your power to influence and shape your own experience, to assign your own meaning. It offers you a way to bring in your wisdom to create understandings that help you grow, heal, and evolve rather than digging you deeper into the culture of illness, wounding, and victimization.

Imagine you go to the store and end up waiting in line for over an hour to get through checkout. How you frame the situation during and after determines your lived meaning of your experience and how it affects your body.

If you stand in line fuming, be moaning your fate of getting stuck in a crowd, and complaining to yourself or others about your bad luck, you create stress on your body and probably poison the experience for other people.

If you disappear into your cell phone and noodle around on the internet, you might be less aggravated about shopping or the store, but on the other hand, your nervous system has to reconcile the two competing re alities of electronic stimulation and physical inaction. You might come away feeling vaguely dissatisfied, and a bit jumped up energetically.

If you frame the time as a chance to stop momentum and just en joy where you find yourself, you might strike up an interesting conversation with someone you otherwise would not have met. Or you might choose to use the time to people watch or to try to figure out how the store operates, or to practice standing medita tion, noticing your breath and posture and all the sights and sounds of the store as you practice perceiving.

Each of these choices has a dis tinct impact on your body and psyche.

And when you report on your experience later, you can tell your loved ones you had a miserable morning, an annoying interlude, a productive time-out, a lovely connection with someone you met, a good laugh at the human ity on display, an edifying obser vation of how things work, or a good practice time.

Each of these influences how the experience gets stored in your energetic wiring and how your gatekeeper (the keeper of your au topilot) instructs your body and mind to react to future similar situations.

At each moment, you have the opportunity to choose how you focus, what details you notice, how you engage with life, how you react to (or cope with) invol untary responses, and how you interpret your experience. You also have the opportunity to do something to shift your energies. Because of this, framing is a key to healing and well-being. Many of us walk through life scanning our reality, taking life as it comes, but not actively choosing how to frame our moments.

I am not talking about con trolling your moments! There is a positive-thinking movement out there that says, “Only allow your self to have positive thoughts and feelings.” One woman I knew, when asked how she was, would always respond, “Awesome.” She would say this whether she was feeling great or was in the midst of dealing with tricky and pain ful situations. It was difficult for people to really know her and to support her appropriately. And, of course, her relentless positiv ity often turned into denial that made her miss the significance of her own experience.

Even when her husband became ill with a terminal diagnosis, she’d say, “I’m awesome; everything’s perfect as it is.” That was basical ly a very fuzzy lens to be looking through! She didn’t need to say, “Terrible, I’m freaked out and miserable,” though that would have been a valid choice. But she could have framed the situation for herself in a way that would have created an opening for oth ers to connect: “My husband is in the hospital, and I’m trying to understand how I can help him and deal with my own fears right now.” She could have framed the situation as: “My husband has a diagnosis that has scared us, and we’re trying to stay positive and figure out how to support his body through this challenge.”

I’m not suggesting we all become mealymouthed and speak in un natural phrases. Rather, I’m sug gesting that we recognize when the frameworks we choose trigger reaction, defeatism, and judg ment in ourselves and others and that we reframe our situations in ways that can yield better re sponses.

Ellen Meredith is the author of Your Body Will Show You the Way and The Language Your Body Speaks.

She has been in practice since 1984 as an energy healer, conscious channel, and medical intuitive, helping over ten thousand clients and students worldwide.

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

YOGA

IS THE MOST POPULAR FITNESS CLASS IN CALIFORNIA

By www.fitnessvolt.com

A new study reveals

• Yoga is the most popular fitness class across America, with 16 states searching for Yoga classes more than any other fitness class.

• Pilates is the second most popu lar, with 11 states searching for 'Pilates classes' the most.

• Zumba is the country's third most popular fitness class, espe cially across the West.

A new study reveals the most Googled fitness classes in each state, with Yoga taking the top spot as the most popu lar fitness class in the country.

The research, conducted by fitness experts Fitness Volt, analyzed Google Trends data to discover the most Goo gled fitness classes in each state over the past year.

Yoga is the most popular fitness class in America by some distance, accord ing to the research. Yoga is the most searched-for fitness class in 16 states, including Arkansas, California, and Illinois. Yoga is especially favored in the Northeast, as states such as New York, Connecticut, and Massachu setts all search for Yoga more than any other fitness class.

The second most Googled fitness class across the country is Pilates. Pilates has surged in popularity over recent years and currently receives 9,000 average searches a month across the country for the phrase 'Pilates class es. Pilates is the most Googled fitness class in 11 different states, including Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington.

The research revealed that Zumba ranks closely behind Pilates as the country's third most popular fitness class. A total of ten states search for Zumba classes more than any oth er fitness class, such as Kansas and Alabama, and the popular dancing workout also receives 12,000 average monthly searches for the term 'Zum ba classes. Zumba classes also ranked particularly popular across the West,

as states such as Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming all search for Zumba the most.

BodyPump follows as the fourth most Googled fitness class across the coun try, with a total of six states search ing for it more than any other fitness class. BodyPump is a fast-paced, bar bell-based workout specifically in tended to help people get toned, lean, and fit. This workout class is most popular in the West, ranking number one in states such as Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico.

The fifth most popular fitness class across the country is Boxing. Four states search for Boxing classes more than any other fitness class, and the term 'Boxing classes' receives a huge 20,000 average monthly searches across the country. Boxing also ranked particularly popular across the South east, as states such as North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia all search for Boxing classes the most.

A total of three states search for Aero bics classes more than any other class, making it the sixth most Googled fitness class across the country. These states include Michigan, Missouri, and South Carolina.

A spokesperson for Fitness Volt com mented on the study: "The popularity of fitness classes first became apparent in the 1970s and are still as popular as they have ever been today, with people eager to reap the benefits of a workout in the form of organized group exercise.

This data offers an interesting insight into which fitness classes are the most popular across the country, with the unmatched popularity of Yoga show ing no signs of slowing down."

This research was conducted by Fit ness Volt, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to Strength Sports, from healthy eating to exercise and everything in between.

Photos by AdobeStock

Since the COVID-19 lockdown, Specialised Solutions has seen strong demand for its line of offgrid park benches and shelters and its modular buildings.

Worker and supply shortages in the building and construction industry and councils zeroing in on renewable energy projects are behind the demand for its cut ting-edge products.

Brad Riddle, the company’s na tional business development man ager, said Specialised Solutions were now eyeing more opportuni ties on a global scale.

Riddle said the company has dis tributors in the United States and New Zealand but said there is “strong interest” from European and Middle Eastern markets.

“We are working on an export version of our products,” Riddle said.

“We’re still working on that, but it will be a little more transportable and more modular.

“A number of our products are larger and made of aluminum and steel and so we need to look at transport efficiencies to ensure that we can still be competitive in

the international market.”

Based out of the Tonsley Innova tion District in Adelaide, South Australia, the company has been manufacturing its Sedi line of smart furniture for the last three years.

The original outdoor bench has since spawned bins, bike racks and heaters harnessing their power from the sun.

Designed by JPE Design Studio, the furniture is made from steel and sustainable timber and, using a small battery, can provide WiFI, lighting and charging ports to people.

Riddle said the company saw in creased demand for the unique products during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

“I think COVID-19 has put a new focus on public spaces and councils are looking for innovative ways to deliver in those spaces, and our products fit within that perfectly,” Riddle said.

“We’ve also seen large public infra structure grants to councils come out in the last 18 months, 24 months with COVID-19, so we’ve had a renewed focus on those public spaces

Riddle said there has also been a growing ap petite for modular buildings in regional areas struggling with housing issues.

“A lot of places can’t get builders, so people are looking at different systems and different processes for how they would traditionally do something, in particular regional areas.”

In May, the company installed three modular buildings, including a foreshore cafe, visitor’s information, and a library in the South Aus tralian town of Whyalla for the local council. Riddle said the council couldn’t find local builders to complete the work in time.

The company constructed the modular build ings at the company’s base in the Tonsley Innovation District. They then shipped the buildings to the South Australian town to be installed on-site.

“We’ve found our products cross a gamut of needs and requirements at the moment, which works well, but we’re always looking at how we can improve the modularity in the production of what we do to reduce cost for the end consumer,” Riddle said.

Arpa Foundation for Film, Music & Art

Twenty-seven years ago, Sylvia Minassian manifested her vision and started Arpa Foundation for Film, Music & Art (AFF MA) with the support and encouragement of her husband. In 2017 Arpa came to be recognized as one of the oldest indepen dent film festivals for international cinema in Los Angeles.

Arpa Foundation for Film, Music & Art (AFFMA) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 to provide a platform for filmmakers, musicians, and artists, whose works explore subjects of social and cultural importance.

Arpa International Film Festival's (Arpa IFF) dedication is cultivating cultural un derstanding and global empathy by cre ating a dynamic forum for international cinema. AFFMA has bridged cultural di vides by fostering dialogue among people of diverse backgrounds. By showcasing local and international films that explore critical issues such as war, genocide, dias pora, dual identities, exile, and multicul turalism, Arpa IFF has solidified its role in safeguarding films that continue to make a social impact.

Founder Sylvia Minassian

This year Arpa celebrated the 25th Anniversary Gala with many celebrities attending in Beverly Hilton Hotel on November 20th. Congratulation to all this year's winners, who inspired and sustained Arpa Festival globally with their outstanding films and music. Arpa festival's future has always depended on the selfless acts of the community that continue to be a beacon of light, pushing forward diversity, innovation, creativity, and vision to preserve our Festival.

Photo by NASA

How Increasing Wildfires Could Transform the Arctic

Wildfires, and the nutrients they bring, could make the Arctic Ocean more productive.

By Brian Owens

In August 2014, the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole was suddenly awash with microscopic life—gripped by an algae bloom that cov ered the Laptev Sea, a large chunk of the East Siberian Sea, and part of the open Arctic Ocean. In a regular year, late sum mer is a quiet time for the Arctic. Long past is the regular spring phytoplankton bloom that supports so much activity. By August, the algae that bloomed in the spring have sucked most of the nitrogen out of the water, leaving the region prac tically devoid of microscopic creatures and the larger animals that eat them. So where did this bloom come from?

Because the Arctic Ocean ecosystem is typically limited by the availability of nitrogen, researchers including Douglas Hamilton, an atmospheric scientist at North Carolina State University, started looking for where a glut of the nutrient might have come from to trigger the bloom. One by one, Hamilton and his colleagues examined various ocean-based sources, such as the upwelling of cold nutrient-rich water or the runoff from rivers. Nothing seemed to add up.

Convinced that no oceanic source was bringing in enough excess nitrogen to spark such a massive bloom, the scientists were left with just one option. “The only place left was the atmosphere,” Hamilton says.

Eventually, the scientists pinned down the most likely culprit: huge wildfires that were raging across Siberia thousands of kilometers south—fires that were burning through forests and, notably, ni trogen-rich peat. The smoke from those fires had drifted north where it deposited its nitrogen in the nutrient-starved wa ter.

The work echoes a similar study, pub lished last year, which shows that iron in the aerosols from wildfires in Austra lia in late 2019 and early 2020 fertilized anomalous algae blooms in the Southern Ocean. Joan Llort, a biogeochemical

oceanographer at the Barcelona Super computing Center in Spain who worked on that study, says that as wildfires in crease in frequency and intensity because of climate change, especially at higher latitudes, we may see more of these fer tilization events and increasing numbers of blooms in traditionally nutrient-poor regions.

“We can’t say for certain yet as we have only recorded a couple of these events so far, but it seems to be going in that direc tion,” Llort says.

For many coastal areas, more algae blooms could be a problem. Some algae release toxins, while the decomposition of all that phytoplankton can deplete ox ygen levels in the water. Increasing wild fires in California, for instance, could bring more harmful blooms to the Pacif ic coast, says Llort.

In the Arctic, however, the changes could be much more profound.

The Far North is undergoing a process of “borealization.” Rapidly warming and increasingly ice-free, the Arctic Ocean is coming to look a lot more like the North Atlantic. In fact, fish from boreal regions farther south are already shifting north, chasing their preferred water tem perature. But the Arctic Ocean is much less productive than the North Atlantic. Even though the temperature is right, these migrating fish are not finding ev erything they need to survive. For these new arrivals to thrive, the Arctic Ocean will require big new inputs of nutrients to support them. Like the input from wildfires.

For the Arctic Ocean, then, if increas ing wildfires and the 2014 bloom are a sign of things to come, this higher flow of nutrients could transform Arctic eco systems.

“If we keep seeing more of this in the fu ture,” Hamilton says, “we can expect the Arctic Ocean to be getting significantly more nitrogen than it has been for the past several thousand years.”

Brian Owens is a freelance science writer and editor based in St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

His work has appeared in Nature, New Scientist, the Canadian Medical Associa tion Journal, The Lancet, and others.

This story originally appeared in "HAKAI MAGAZINE" It is republished here as part of The Eden Magazine partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collabora tion to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

How Climate Change Is Affecting Women in the Amazon

Droughts and floods have radically altered family farming, but women leaders are finding solutions for themselves and their communities.

By Meghie Rodrigues

According to the United Na tions, climate change and its effects are not gender neutral: Women and girls are hit the hardest, as the climate cri sis deepens already existing gender in equalities.

This is true especially for the develop ing world. According to a 2022 UN re port, women have lower survival rates when faced with environmental disas ters. They are also highly vulnerable to gender-based violence in the aftermath of extreme events. Agriculture, a deep ly weather-dependent activity, is still the largest employer of women in lowand lower-middle-income countries. Though they are almost half of the agricultural workforce globally, wom en own less than 13% of agricultural lands, according to the UN.

In the Amazon, changes in hydrolog ical cycles pose a special threat to tra ditional groups. Women bear a good part of the brunt, according to Luisa Viegas, an ecology researcher at the Federal University of Bahia in Brazil. “The change in river levels affects riv erine communities, and when extreme events happen, women are especially affected, as they are usually home and take up most of the domestic work,” Viegas said.

Research has consistently pointed to increasing changes in rain cycles and drought in the Amazon. One study suggested that areas deforested for over a decade receive less rainfall than others during the dry season. NASA released another study in which researchers concluded that the atmosphere over the rain forest has been increasingly dry as a result of deforestation and the burning of forests. A review found that changes in land use, especially in the southern Amazon, affect atmospheric circulation: The regimes of dryness and rainfall are quickly changing.

Traditional communities that work the land, especially women who care for small family farms, are feeling those changes already. A primary impact is on food security, observed Mônica Vas concelos, a sociobiodiversity researcher at the State University of Amazonas. In the Negro River region close to Manaus, capital of Amazonas state, rising temperatures decrease outdoor working hours. Nearer the Juruá River (in the west), flooding extremes mean reduced cassava production.

“The result of both flood and drought is increased food insecurity and less reve nue for local communities. For women it is even worse, as they have a double work journey and do not receive twice the compensation,” Vasconcelos said.

In Brazil, women are a powerful work force behind family farming—accord ing to Brazil’s National Supply Compa ny (CONAB), female participation was 80% higher than male participation in family farming in 2019. Family farms in the Amazon are particularly vulnerable to flooding and drought. “Soils in the Amazon are really acidic, so the overflow of rivers helps balance the soils’ pH,” said Marcela Vecchione, an Amazonian studies researcher at the Federal Uni versity of Pará. Women usually sow the floodplains after the rainy season, but the lack of [accurate precipitation fore casting] harms the management of small agricultural systems,” she said.

Such mismanagement not only con founds the agroecological calendar, but also harms the collection of seeds for fu ture production seasons, Vecchione said.

Finding Solutions

Challenged with the current scenar io, women in the Amazon are working on solutions. One project addressing the issue is Amazonian Agroecological Logs (Cadernetas Agroecológicas na Amazônia), in which women keep track of the food they produce, consume, exchange, donate, and sell. Created in 2011 at the Center for Alternative Tech nologies of the Zona da Mata region in the eastern part of Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, the log system is familiar to rural communities in Brazil.

This year, the Federation of Organs for Social and Educational Assistance (FASE), a nongovernmental organiza tion, together with the nonprofit Dema Fund, is undertaking the project in Pará state, in the Amazon region. According to Beatriz Luz, an educator at FASE and the Dema Fund, the organization is fol lowing about 90 women in Pará state.

“Every day, women write down all they do with their production and account for what they would pay or get, so they

have an idea of their work’s worth— something that has been historically made invisible,” said Luz. In a previous round of the project, the logs revealed that women made an average of 400–600 reals ($80–$120) a month—about half of Brazil’s current minimum wage. Even that value, according to Luz, is an underestimate, “as women do not al ways note the seeds they exchange, for example.”

The project “sheds light on [what is] very often invisible work, fosters food security,” and contributes to local bio diversity, Luz explained. (One log docu mented 246 species in a single backyard garden plot.) The logs have also cata loged rural work, allowing the women to apply for retirement benefits from the government. By keeping effective records, women farmers are able to scale their production—some family farms manage their crops in a way to sell to local schools or businesses, for instance, while others diversify to extend growing seasons or include animal husbandry.

In another project, this one close to the Negro River in São Gabriel da Cachoe ira, Amazonas state, members of the In digenous Women’s Association of Alto Rio Negro are working to pass on and preserve their Traditional Knowledge of agricultural production. Older wom en lead workshops in which they teach younger generations to grow beans, cassava, and other crops. It has been a challenge to follow the tradition by the book as rainfall patterns change, said Elizângela Costa, a Baré Indigenous leader who directs the Women’s Associ ation.

“We’re looking for new alternatives at the same time we want to protect our Traditional Knowledge and value our fellow women. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s important to care for our communi ty, our territory, and our future genera tions,” Costa said.

Covering climate change since 2014, most of her work focuses on the intersection of science and policy, economy and sustainable development.

This story originally appeared in "EOS" It is republished here as part of The Eden Magazine partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

“When extreme events happen, women are especially affected, as they are usually home and take up most of the domestic work.”

Meghie Rodrigues is a science journalist and has reported mainly on Earth, physical and climate sciences to Brazilian and international news publications.

As many of us know, having a pet can be one of the greatest blessings, but when we lose them, it leaves a void so big that it’s very hard to process. This week we lost our cherished dog, Tyler, aka Hundee, after having the gift of his presence in our lives for more than 18 years. I held him in my arms as his physical journey peacefully came to an end. Hundee, as we affectionately called him, came into our lives at 6 months of age after he had been abused and abandoned by his previous owners. From the first moment we laid eyes on him, there was a mutual bond and connection that was undeniable, and we knew that our lives would be forever blessed to have him as part of our family.

We had so many great adventures with Hundee through the years, he also provided love and comfort to me and my family members through some very difficult times. Hundee also was an inspiration for us to create a healthy dog treat made with quinoa under our brand “Andean Dream,” which was on the shelf in Whole Foods Markets nationwide for many years.

As he has now transitioned to the other side, we feel the absence of his presence and hope to meet him again someday in another time and space.

On his final day, I read a beautiful poem by Paul C Dahm called The Rainbow Bridge. I wanted to share this, as it may offer comfort to others who will feel or have felt this kind of loss before. It goes like this…..

There is a bridge connecting heaven and earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow Bridge, there is a land of meadows, hills, and valleys with lush green grass.

When a beloved pet dies, the pet goes to this place. There is always food and water and warm spring weather. The old and frail animals are young agan. Those who are maimed are made whole again. They play all day with each other.

There is only one thing missing; they are not with the special person who loved them on Earth. So, each day they run and play until the day comes when one suddenly stops playing and looks up! The nose twitches! The ears are up! The eyes are staring! And this one runs from the group!

You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him or her in your arms and embrace. Your face is kissed again and again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusting pet.

Until we meet again, somewhere over the rainbow

If you align expectations with reality, you will never be disappointed.