OMTimes Magazine November C 2016 Edition

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November C 2016

Cover Story

Metaphysics

24

76

Harold Koenig, MD - You are My Beloved. Really?

Health & Healing 36

5 Ways to Get Out of a Funk

Spirituality 42 44 48

Being Thankful in a Time of Uncertainty Discovering Inner Compassion Do Animals Have Souls

OM Living 56 60 64

The Universe as a Symphony of Strings Product Spotlight - Deep Wave Body Healing OMTimes Radio Host Spotlight - Linda Joy

Relationships 70

Find True Love by New Year, Without Karma

Ask Whitedove

Personal Growth 84 90 94

7 Ways to let GO of little EGO Looking Back to Focus Forward The Danger of Self Help

World Vision 100 When Can We List Ourselves as Endangered?

Books 108 Book Spotlight - The (not so) Little Book of Surprises

Interview by Victor Fuhrman

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So, I was kind of shocked by that because I hadn't had any training at all in nursing or in medical school or certainly not in psychiatry on the role that religion played in people's mental health or coping with illness. So, that's how I got interested.

Victor Fuhrman: Did you come from a religious or spiritual background?

Victor Fuhrman: Dr. Harold G. Koenig, I read your CV, and it read like a small book, 88 pages long. Your education, training, and practice were grounded in science and medicine. What events led you to explore the connection between religion and health?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: Well, I kind of had the same experience that you did with your friend. As a physician, I came across many, many patients, in family medicine that was having a hard time in the hospital when they got sick, when they had a stroke, when they had a heart attack when they had surgery, and they were trying to cover. Many of them were middle age and older adults, and I just wondered how they were coping with all that.

I had been a nurse before becoming a physician, so I'd been trained to be sensitive to how people were dealing with and coping with their health issues.

So, I asked people,� What do you do to cope?� I can't believe how consistent it was that people said their religious faith. They talked about prayer and reading the scriptures of their faith tradition. They said that brought them comfort and gave them hope in the setting of their illness.

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Dr. Harold G. Koenig: I came from a religious background. I was raised as a Catholic. And then you go to high school, and it loses its significance if it ever had significance before that. I went to college, and then it just dropped off the map.

In medical school, you don't have time for anything. When I started my residency in family medicine, bad things began to happen in my life. My wife left me, I got very depressed, and I had a series of failed relationships that were very, very painful.

And so, all around this time, I'm taking care of patients, asking them how they cope and everything. I guess my question to those patients was real, my own search for some way to cope with my problems. What helped them to cope?

I was trying to figure out for myself what I had to do to get out of this, this depression, this sense of loss, this just not having much purpose or meaning in life. I was a physician, graduated from Stanford, went to one of the top medical schools in the country, and I had everything, really. I was just not happy.

Victor Fuhrman: So, you literally had a dark night of the soul at that point.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: It was indeed. It was a dark night. And it took four years for me to get back on solid ground.

Victor Fuhrman: What do you attribute that to in hindsight?

What do you think happened there?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: I think what happened was I was reading, and I tend to be very intense in my reading. I was getting into Alan Watt's teaching which is very much Buddhist. For me, I found that you've got to have a guru to help guide you with this stuff.

I didn't have anybody to guide me, and I just kind of went off the deep end.

It was just a very a disorganizing experience that caused, initially my own self to kind of vanish. And, then I was lost somewhere, and I didn't know where--how to get back. That's the only way I can put it together.

Victor Fuhrman: When you got back into the medical field, you graduated medical school, and you began your exploration of the connection between faith and science. What were some of the initial theorems that you tested, and how did you go about testing them?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: Well, I was interested in whether older adults were happier if they were more religious and whether they feared death and if they feared it as much if they were religious. That was my question.

Does religion help people to feel happier and experience less death anxiety when they get old and closer to death?

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Those were the first studies, and I did surveys and, collected data on hundreds of older adults and found that, lo and behold, there was a correlation. Those older adults who were more religious said they were happier, and they said they didn't fear death as much.

I thought, wow, you can show this, you can document it using statistics. So, that was, for me, a surprise.

Victor Fuhrman: Of those studies, what were your findings regarding people approaching transition, approaching death, and how they passed versus those who were not religious or had any faith base?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: Well, I did not then pursue that among those who were getting ready to die or dying, although I can talk about that, given a series of about a dozen studies on that topic at Harvard at the DanaFarber Cancer Institute. But I departed away from the group of people who were old and dying and started to study people in general, focused on older adults.

Our initial findings were that not only did older and middle age adults who are more religious have greater well- being, but also they had less depression.

That was something I was interested in because I had transitioned over to Duke.

And so, one study after the other began to show that religious people were just less depressed. They coped better with illness and stress. They had less anxiety. I thought this might influence their physical health as well. If they're not as depressed, if they're happier, if they have greater well-being, maybe they take better care of themselves. I thought I ought to look at their physical health as well. That resulted in a series of studies showing that those persons who were

more religious lived longer, spent less time in the hospital, had lower blood pressure, had less cardiac problems and had a better immune function. One study after another showed that religious people were just healthier, happier, lived longer and basically were more productive as members of the community.

Victor Fuhrman: Fascinating.

Now, how was the Duke Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health founded?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: When I was getting interested in this, in 1995, I developed a program on religion, health, and aging. In 1998, I received a grant from the Templeton Foundation to start The Center for Religion, Spirituality, and Health. I continued doing that for a while, and then I got another grant from the Foundation to support a new center that we renamed The Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health.

I've been directing that center since about 2005. The center is all about training people to do research, getting colleagues at Duke together to actually do research, summarize and try to make sense of what other people are finding in the growing field. It's become a field now--of religion, spirituality, and health and helping to interpret what those findings mean for people out in the community and, for other academic colleagues. That's what the center does now.

Victor Fuhrman: Duke has a tradition of accepting openminded positions on things. I remember the Rhine studies on ESP back in the '60s. So, Duke is a Mecca for open minded study with an “out of the box� approach.

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Dr. Harold G. Koenig: I've been at Duke since 1986, and Templeton didn’t fund us until 1998. So, there were about 10 years there where I had no funding support and Duke was supportive. At least they didn't discourage me. A lot of places I'd been before were discouraging. Duke said to learn the research methods, do your studies, design them and we'll see what happens. They were open-minded, actually. I had many people, especially in the Center for Aging, that were very supportive of what I was doing, even initially.

Linda George, Harvey Cohen, and Dan Blazer were the leading people in the world on aging. They agreed to participate in my research and be co-authors with me, placing their reputations on the line in these papers.

Victor Fuhrman: There have been studies and reports years ago about the power of prayer in healing, and I'm not talking about people praying for themselves or being prayed for in person, but people being prayed for remotely.

In those tests, I recall that some people were not prayed for in a control group, some people were prayed for in the other group and that, at the time, there were some interesting outcomes. What's your knowledge on this, and what's your experience with it?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: Well, you're referring to the Intercessory Prayer Studies that--the first one was in the mid-1980s at San Francisco General by Randolph Byrd. I was there doing my medical school rotation in psychiatry around the time that he was doing these studies.

That started a series of maybe 25 different studies that culminated in the Harvard multisite study on which I was part of the advisory group. Herbert Benson was the lead investigator. They studied 1,800 people who were undergoing open heart surgery and coronary artery bypass grafting. They randomized 900 to intercessory prayer, nine to no prayer, and half of the ones in the intercessory prayer group who were getting the prayer were told that they were getting the prayer.

They followed these people for a period of time and found that the group getting the intercessory prayer did no better than the group that was not getting prayer. The group that was told they were getting the intercessory prayer did worse. In fact, it was on the cover of Newsweek at the time. It came out in the American Heart Journal in 2006. It was titled, “Please Don't Pray for Me.� Duke did a study. It was published in The Lancet before that and also found no difference between prayed for and non-prayed for.

Since the beginning, I have had a negative view towards those studies. I mean, nobody goes into the intensive care unit if somebody's not praying for them, I can tell you that.

They're getting prayer by family members, they're praying for themselves, the nurses, whatever. They're getting a lot of prayers. So, now it's not a matter of, prayer versus no prayer.

God may not answer the prayer right during the study period. Maybe he wants to heal people after the study is over. They only followed them up I think for three or six months. Maybe after a year, he wants to heal them.

Victor Fuhrman: Harold G. Koenig: in preparation for our interview, you mentioned that you were currently reading some

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of the Hindu scriptures. Eastern philosophy embraced the mind, body, spirit connection long before the West began embracing it. Have you gained any insights from the Upanishads or the Bhagavad Gita?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: I'm saving the Bhagavad Gita for after I get through the Upanishads. But, from the Upanishads, everything is all one.

The body is, the mind, the breath, the speech is all part of the one and part of Brahman, as I understand it. I'm getting to the Bhagavad Gita, which emphasizes that with the coming of Lord Krishna into being, Brahman having come to earth that is, God coming to earth to guide his people.

Victor Fuhrman: No accident! In the stories of Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions and Christianity, we know that it comes from the same source.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: That's my belief.

Victor Fuhrman: Your new book is called You Are My Beloved. Really?

It's a treatise on questions that people of every faith and people of no faith have asked since we've had the ability to ask.

What prompted you to write this book?

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: Well, Victor, I've been caring for patients as a psychiatrist, and I do geriatric psychiatry right now, and I have run into so many patients--by the time they get to see they have got a lot of problems.

A lot of these people have chronic pain and multiple medical problems.

They're developing dementia, or they're depressed or

psychotic. And, I must deal with their caregivers.

I've come to know and love some of these patients. They're not just patients to me. I've so wanted to help them and give them something of myself. My spiritual, religious transformation experience three years ago changed my life. I want to be able to give this to my patients because I feel like it will help them. I've had chronic pain syndrome and other problems for all of these 30 years.

There was a time that I had to use a wheelchair. I'm much healthier just in the last year or two, and I really can't attribute that to anything other than prayer.

This book kind of captures everything that I have learned as a psychiatrist, as a researcher and just as a person, going through bad experiences like everybody else is going through, good and bad experiences.

I've tried to compact this into this tiny book that explains what I think and that I plan on reading as a devotional for the rest of my life.

Everything that I've learned in my life is in this little book on how to live a happy, holy, healthy life. It’s what we did with the elderly patients initially. Then we started to engage people with PTSD - in fact, our soldiers and our veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. I've been doing research with this population now for about two to three years, and we have developed a treatment for what's called a moral injury. It's called Spiritually Oriented Cognitive Processing Therapy.

Cognitive Processing Therapy is a type of psychotherapy that is used to treat active duty military and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder that results from their combat experiences and various, kinds of horrific experiences that people go through during the war. Part of this post-traumatic stress disorder involves moral injury. Moral injury is the kind of feelings that soldiers and veterans feel when they do things that OMTimes.com

transgress their moral code. Even if they're just doing their duty, it has consequences. It affects them morally.

And that is where we think a lot of the trauma lies and is one of the reasons why posttraumatic stress disorder doesn't respond to treatment very well. Probably 70 percent of people with PTSD don't really get all that better, and it follows them into their later years. When they get sick, they try to suppress this trauma. If they lose their job and can't work, then it comes back.

So, we are targeting this moral injury, and the book is designed for this intervention. It features two chapters per session in a series of six weeks. It's part of this spiritually oriented cognitive processing therapy that is targeting moral injury.

Victor Fuhrman: And the lesson that we should learn from that is-it's the simplest lesson of all love one another. That's what it comes down to. Take care of people. The Golden Rule; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig: It is so simple. And, it's so hard to do. It's so hard to maintain it, to continue to do it, because, loving--we almost have to have God's love in us for us to truly love others unconditionally. That's the thing.

Natural love is kind of a negotiation - you do for me, I do for you, but if you stop doing for me, I stop doing for you. It's conditional.

But, this love that God offers is not. It's unconditional.

Imagine yourself‌ driven from your home by war, broken lives floating on a Sea of Troubles, your simple prayer to find Kind Hearts, Kind Hands to help you on your journey.

Be the answer to a prayer.

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Health & Wellness

Innovative new approaches to Healing as well as holistic methods for dealing with health issues and personal growth

5 Ways to Get Out of a Funk

by Rebecca Clio Gould

Do You Find It Hard to Get Out of a Funk?

Lately, I have been feeling a bit funky, and not the good kind of funk; the bad kind of funk. The stuck-in-a-rut type of funk. The uncomfortable type of “I just feel blah” type of funk.

This happens from time to time, and I might know why.

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Sometimes, something very specific has happened to trigger negative emotions or wipe me out energetically. But sometimes I cannot pinpoint one thing in particular that is making me feel so out of whack. And this is one of those times. Perhaps it’s the collective consciousness. It could be the politics, the change of the season, or something I ate. I am a sensitive soul. Can you relate?

I’ve had to learn all sorts of tips and tricks for snapping me out of it, for pulling myself out of that funk and moving through the yuck to the yum.

But sometimes the hardest thing to do when you’re in a funk is to simply take the action you know will help you. Am I right? I can promise you, though, by the time you read this, I will have taken my own advice.

The following methods have helped me in my darkest hours, and are also great for when all is well. I hope they help you, too:

1. Feel your feelings.

All of them.

You know what they say? The only way out is through…. When you’re feeling emotionally icky, it’s essential to feel into the depths of your sadness, anger, frustration, fear, or shame, to cry your tears, to yell and scream (not at others, but in a private and safe space), and to let yourself simply feel like crap for a bit if that’s how you feel.

Know everything is going to be ok, already is ok, and about to get even better, one way or the other. Feel your feelings, and keep on breathing.

2. Commit to starting your day off right.

Did you know that spending ten minutes, or even just a few minutes, in the morning to think about who and what you love, to envision your goals, to think about what’s good, what you’re grateful for, can set you up for an awesome day? Trust me. This works. When you first wake up, before getting out of bed, give yourself several minutes for focusing only on all the yummy, juicy, goodness in your life. Can’t think of anything? Keep it simple. Notice the warmth of your bed. Notice that you have a bed. Since the human brain has a tendency to focus more on the negative, we must retrain it with techniques such as this, to redirect our attention and mindset to focus more on what’s good, to remember what’s good. So go ahead and try it!

3. Morning pages.

This suggestion comes from Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. Here’s what you do: First thing in the morning, WRITE-by hand, in a notebook, for three pages, non-stop. Write before you are awake enough Omtimes.com

to really think or censor yourself; just let it flow. Write honestly about how you feel, what your stories are, what your fears are, what your truths are, what your questions are. Be open to the answers coming through. Ask for them to come through. Then listen as you continue to write.

You just might write yourself out of that rut or bad mood!

in front of you. I mean that: look at what’s right in front of you. Look at an object in front of you. Focus on it, and if possible, pick it up. Look at it closely. Allow yourself to be mesmerized by it. Take in every detail. If you’re touching it, feel how it feels. Be here now, and delight in the simplicity. Relax into the peace of presence.

4. Move it or lose it.

About the Author

Exercise. Dance. Run. Hike.

Whatever gets your heart rate up. Just get moving. Break up the stagnation. Move the energy and emotions through you. If you’re feeling physically depressed, it might be hard to get started, but as soon as you do start moving and breathing and sweating, you’re going to feel better.

Even if only in the moment.

Rebecca Clio Gould is a Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Qigong and Meditation Teacher, Sexual Awakening for Women Facilitator, and Author of “The Multi-Orgasmic Diet.”

She’s on a mission to help women live healthier lives, step into their power, love themselves more, experience more joy, and live life to the fullestemotionally, physically, and sexually. Rebecca is a graduate of the Heartwood Institute and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. She has been running her own business, Elemental Harmony, PLLC since 2007, and lives in Seattle, Washington.

See more at http://www. rebeccacliogould.com

5. Be in the moment.

Speaking of the moment, yes, be in it. Be in the present moment. Distract yourself from any nagging or tape loop thoughts about the past or the future by being fully present with what’s happening in this moment, with what’s right

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Simply Spiritual To perceive reality from a different perspective is to open oneself to the wonders and unlimited wealth of creation. Simply Spiritual offers the opportunity to visit new places, new methods, and different ways to perceive the vast human knowledge of our Universe.

Being Thankful in a Time of Uncertainty

by John Holland

The Spiritual Energy of Being Thankful Life is one big continuous circle of giving and receiving energy. As a soul, you’re an energetic being, comprising of an intelligent source of spiritual energy that guides you on your path toward happiness, prosperity, and well-being. If you pray for these things and more, don’t forget it’s just as important to stop and give thanks for what you’ve actually achieved and

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acquired already. When you’re in a state of thankfulness, you actually acknowledge and honor the spirit of your soul - the Divine Source.

Sometimes, when I am feeling a bit lost and not sure of the direction I’m taking, I try to remember to remain grounded in a place of gratitude while I wait for guidance, synchronicity, or a clearer direction. Be thankful for who and what’s in your life right now, rather

than complaining about what you don’t have. If you focus on gratitude, you will attract prosperity and abundance.

Thankful for All the Wealth We Receive... and Share When I say prosperity, I’m not just referring to financial riches, but about the less tangible, such as: love, friends, kindness, health, compassion, etc. There are various kinds of prosperity and abundance, so by just saying: “Thank You” and holding those words inside where they can resonate with your soul, it will help with the connections and good intentions of others to stream in to your life and create affirmative experiences.

Equally, it’s all right to thank yourself. If you’ve done something positive for yourself then pat yourself on the back and say: “I Thank Me.” After all, you deserve it.

JOHN’S LESSON This week make a list of all the things in your life that you’re grateful for. Remember nothing is too small to put on the list.

For example: The mailman who greets you every day with a happy ‘hello’ as he delivers your mail no matter what - rain or shine. Or maybe, it’s the neighbor who mows your grass when they mow theirs.

Appreciate all the abundance and goodness that’s around you. Be thankful for your health, children, sunny days, your garden, family, best friends, or even the person who lets you jump ahead in line at the bank! The more joy you begin to notice and appreciate, the easier it becomes for you to experience more happiness, joy, abundance, prosperity, and most important - love.

When you focus on having an attitude of gratitude, you’re really sharing so that everyone benefits.

Live a Soul-filled life!

About the Author John Holland is an artist, author, public speaker, and psychic medium. To learn more about John Holland, visit http://www. johnholland.com.

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Discovering the Inner Compassion

by Daniel Mitel

“What is not love is always fear, and nothing else.”

--A Course in Miracles We have a tendency to think that inner compassion is just giving food, money, clothes or anything that makes people happy and comfortable in their daily lives. Subsequently, very often we are giving some money for different organizations or projects. But inside us we feel in our hearts that something is missing; we know intuitively that this is not compassion.

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In 1962, some of Bertrand Russell’s books were banned in India by the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Bertrand Russell had reacted to India’s invasion of Goa and Jawaharlal Nehru was obviously upset about it. Russell said, “Where is your compassion now? Your compassion was just political. You are all Ghandians, aren’t you? Your nonviolence was just political. You are talking about nonviolence but when the moment comes you become violent!”

It is a shame that Bertrand Russell was banned because he was right. He said to Nehru, “When others are fighting, you stand on your high altar and you condemn the whole world as violent. Where is your nonviolence now?�

So, what is inner compassion?

Really, what does it mean to be compassionate?

The Tibetan Masters tell us that when we become aware that we are not just a body, we then cannot continue this life as it is, and a different universe arises in us: the universe of compassion, of goodness and of unconditional love. Once we realize we are not a body, our whole world, our daily activities cease to exist.

We realize that the more we are inside of our daily activities, the more sensitive we become. The more sensitive we become, the more we feel inner compassion for all around us. Is it possible to be open to this world and not to suffer? Is it possible to be undisturbed and detached from all the ugly things that happen in each moment on this planet?

How can we transform our

frustration when we see all the injustice that happens around us?

There is a fascinating Tibetan method that helps us to use our frustration as a vehicle to move towards the center of our energy. The method is simple: whenever we feel frustration and sadness we move to our inner center; to the point where the frustration was coming from. When we feel the sadness or the frustration coming out, we move all our intention and attention to the center from which the frustration is coming, and not to the person who produced it.

Then one day, a profound transformation will happen inside of us. We are going to master the technique so well that whenever we feel the frustration coming out of us, we will be able to move to our center and the only thing we would find there will be inner compassion. From there, we are going to make a profound discovery: hate and love, anger and happiness are coming from inside of us, from the same source! We became aware of ourselves. We became compassion. When we are aware, any anger we have Omtimes.com

inside transforms into compassion. The anger that was our enemy suddenly becomes our friend. That’s what Shiva asked us to do: to be authentic, to be aware of our “false personas”, of our masks.

We have people all over the world talking about inner compassion, nonviolence, love.

But if we take a closer look at their lives, some of them are violent and they are not even aware that they are violent.

Is it possible to be violent in nonviolence? Yet, if we are trying to force others to be nonviolent that is violence; that is a lack of compassion.

Inner compassion is when we help somebody to grow and to transform. Buddha never called it love, he called it compassion. There is a famous story about the man who told Buddha, “I want to serve humanity. I feel deep compassion for it. Tell me how I can serve.” Buddha looked at him and said, “Where are you?

Who will serve humanity? You are not you, yet. When you are,

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you don’t even need to ask me.

Your acts will be compassion, in a natural way.”

So, the first thing is to be present. The first thing is to be aware, not to be a mechanical thing, a robot. And then we don’t show inner compassion; we are compassion.

Beyond duality, beyond logic and reason, we became one with the Infinite Spirit.

Buddha calls this state “being compassion,” and Jesus calls it unconditional love.

About the Author Daniel Mitel is a worldclass master of meditation, helping people understand the intimate connection to their inner selves. Interviewed and published around the world, Daniel’s books are highly regarded as some of the best meditation and spiritual guidebooks. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter, and discover more at: www. danielmitel.com, and http:// www.motivate-yourself.org

Looking for Love in all the wrong places?

Do Animals Have Souls?

by Lisa Shaw

A Miraculous Soul Intervention In 2005, a band of men abducted and severely beat a young Ethiopian girl, trying to force her into a marriage. In what some called a miraculous intervention, three lions came to her rescue and chased the

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men away. They continued to stand guard over her until authorities discovered and returned the girl to her family.

Per the Associated Press, wildlife officer Stuart Williams attributed the girl’s rescue to her crying: “A young girl whimpering could be mistaken for the mewing sound from a lion cub, which in turn could explain why they didn’t eat her,” Williams said. Surely, the reason breaches the boundaries of scientific explanation.

Those of us who consider animals sacred guardians of the spirit explain it differently.

The lions exercised compassion -- a Divine trait -- which we instinctively know the spirit bestows upon us. Those who live compassionately also live close to the Source…those whose inner compass is programmed by benevolence and empathy live at the soul level.

Are the Souls of Animals the Same as Ours?

So here comes the million-

dollar question: Do animals have souls? Are they the same as ours? Or are they, as some adherents of formal religions proclaim, devoid of souls and just slaves to their biology?

Asked this question, many would say that animals have some form of spirit, such as possessing the breath of life which is extinguished upon death, but nothing greater.

Such pronouncement disregards and disrespects the beliefs of global indigenous people who view animal spirits as teachers and guides.

Those who have intimately shared their lives with animals would agree with those tribal spiritual systems that embrace all nature as Divine.

To answer the question of whether animals have souls, we must we position western tradition against inner experience, doctrine against intuition. We in the west cling steadfastly to religious proclamations and

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laws without considering their historical and social context.

Take divorce, for instance, and the religious decrees forbidding it.

Social Structures and Understanding the Modern Soul Level Open-minded scholars understand that the social structure of Jesus’s time made no provisions for a woman to survive on her own. If she divorced, she she’d be unable to care for her children, no means of support, no survival tools.

To ensure that a woman would not live desolate the streets, the early Church outlawed divorce.

In this way, she and her children were guaranteed comfort. But times change, and doctrinal elasticity becomes possible.

Modern scholars understand that Church doctrines (regardless of the denomination) are human constructs.

The Bible and apocryphal writings underwent the scrutiny of religious leaders’

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redaction after redaction, translation after translation, diluting the original message, sometimes sacrificing critical contexts and definitions. As a matter of fact, today we even celebrate those who defied doctrinal practice.

Take, for example, St. Francis of Assisi, who took great risk by separating himself from Church doctrine to apply the Christian philosophy of unconditional love to the earth’s most innocent creatures, the animals.

Churches around the world celebrate St. Francis Day with special Blessings of the Animals services, during which pets often come into the church.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Proverbs tells us that “A righteous man knows the soul of his animal.”

One Leader’s Generous Soul-based Proclamation In 2014, Pope Francis either settled or created controversy (depending on one’s holistic perspective) generously

proclaimed that animal indeed have souls: “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures,” he said, breaking with traditional thought.

While both Catholicism and Judaism have always taught respect for and fair treatment of animals, issuing very specific instructions to ensure their welfare, they stopped short a deeper theological assertion.

The Pope’s departure delighted animal guardians everywhere.

Note the Pope bypassed the generic article “the” in favor of the possessive pronoun “our,” as in “our Father, our brothers, our sisters, our families.” And this is just how we integrate our animals as family members and relate to them, on both a familial and a soul level. This relationship remains unfettered by human frailty and egoistic flaw.

The Soul’s Relationship with the Divine

In the Bhagavad Gita 5:18 we read, “Those who possess this wisdom have equal regard for all. They see the same Self in a spiritual aspirant and an outcaste, in an elephant, a cow, and a dog. When we look at an animal, we enter soul territory. We experience, as the Lakota believe, that “we are all related.” Thus, when compassionate souls witnessed the brutal slaying of Cecil the Lion, we grieved so intensely, emitting reverberating lamentations that awakened the world to this shamefully overdue acknowledgment.

In our soul-level relationship with all life, we experience the “Namaste,” the divine meeting the divine.

About the Author Lisa Shaw is an animal communicator, Reiki Master, professor, and writer who lives in South Florida with her furry and feathered brood. Her web site is www.Reikidogs.com. She conducts a free Animal Reiki Circle on Facebook.

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OM Living For those living a more Conscious Lifestyle

The Universe as a Symphony of Strings

by Jill Mattson

Strings Vibrate to Tell Us a Healing Connection What do fifth-century B.C. Pythagoreans have in common with modern, state-of-the art cosmologists and physicists? In a word - strings! For the ancient Greek Pythagoreans, it was the lyre string; modern scientists postulate infinitesimally small strings as the ultimate building blocks of the universe.

The Greeks found that the tone of a plucked lyre string

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corresponded to its length.

Changing the length of the vibrating string changed the tone in a precise way; double the length and the tone goes down by a full octave; reduce the length by two-thirds, the note changes by a fifth. Thus, we discover the laws of music and harmonics and reduce them to mathematics. The Pythagoreans believe music and math form the basis of everything.

The Pythagoreans extended this thinking in attempt to

explain the entire universe.

They partially succeeded, but ultimately failed in their attempts.

Modern Scientists and Their Theory of Strings Modern scientists now feel that they have the theory-of-everything, based on incredibly small strings. These vibrating strings are the fundamental unit of all matter and energy. When a string vibrates in a certain way, an electron results; change the vibration of this same string and another particle appears - the electron changes into a neutrino. As with the plucked lyre, it is the string that is fundamental; the tone (in the musical example) or the subatomic particle, arise from the way that the string is vibrating.

Modern string theory also had its roots in mathematics. The proposed strings are far too small to ever view directly. Their existence was slowly recognized as the theory of strings solved formerly impossible problems in physics. The beauty of the theory is that we eliminate the numerous “fundamental� particles that exist today and unite the formerly conflicting

theories of Einstein & the Quantum theory. We potentially have a real theory-of-everything, same as the Pythagoreans sought thousands of years ago.

Vibratory Healers also Use Strings of Energy There is another group, growing in popularity today, that share an important link with the ancients & scientists of today, Vibratory Healers. The string is the primary element with our first two groups, but it is the vibration, more precisely vibration energy, that modern Alternative Healers utilize to produce wondrous results.

Vibration energy is extremely versatile and effective, in its benefits to living things. Why is this so? The form of the energy - vibrations - seems to be easily absorbed; frequencies are available for almost any need - in the exact amount of energy required. The spectrum of vibratory frequencies is immense, offering precise and selective remedies to tune all elements of the holistic being-body, mind, and soul.

Vibratory energy of the right frequencies has shown the ability Omtimes.com

to greatly accelerate the growth and resistance to disease and pests of many plants. “Melodies” of frequencies derived from plant DNA studied by French physicist, Joel Sternheimer, consistently produce accelerated plant growth.

Tuning in to the Strings Deep Inside Us Certain Sound Healing practices have achieved impressive results “tuning” individuals with the use of unique tuning forks (Hulse). For example, placing a tuning fork that emits a single frequency on the spine, or on key meridians, helps loosen subtle energy, or alleviates back pain. Tones, rhythms and harmonics associated with chakra clearing allow vital subtle energy to enter our systems, producing health and vitality.

Modern Masters, many of them Indian swamis and Sufi masters are descendants of a long tradition that uses sound to build moral and spiritual development. The master, Sri Ganapati Sachchidananda Swamiji, does healing concerts where modern-day miracles are reportedly performed. Many ancient spiritual masters held Omtimes.com

sound as the most powerful means of achieving and influencing the divine (similar to the Pythagorean tradition, mentioned above).

The Soul Strings in Voice Prints and Flowers Sharry Edwards has spent a lifetime demonstrating that the voice print of a human voice is a window on the underlying physical and emotional well-being of its owner.

Edwards has learned to read and correct imbalances in the human voice. This done with vibratory energy, restoring health in the process. In Edwards’ BioAcoustics, frequencies can take the place of physical substances, such as vitamins, muscles, and so on. These frequency equivalents are noninvasive packets of energy that can selectively restore missing balance to the inharmonious soul. The circle is complete when the restored frequencies are once more present in a new voice print is recording.

The author has studied the vibratory modalities of the Bach Soul Flower remedies and of facial skin and muscle

rejuvenation potentials. These seemingly very different aspects of nature are linked. These are also available, tuned, and revitalized using the appropriate sound energies.

Hans Cousto learned to interpret the motions of the planets and stars into Star Tones, powerful forces for using and understanding astrological energies. He played the music of the stars!

Strings in the Cosmos, with Subtle, Divine Connections Fibonacci tones mirror patterns found throughout nature and the cosmic realm. This set of frequencies is revealed in every aspect of creation, including the human body. The ancients believed that tuning to this pattern not only harmonized their souls and bodies, but connected them to the divine.

The Bible mysteriously encodes solfeggio tones. In history and modern times, each tone is reported to have its own healing benefit; such as one frequency used to repair DNA in scientific settings.

Different scales with related

note-pitches also produce a variety of healing impacts. Scales such as the Pythagorean and Just intonation are created with different methods than those used in our current musical scale.

Different vibratory patterns associate with different impacts on the body.

Through the ages, we use the idea of a vibrating string againand-again to help thinkers better understand the universe around us. The string helps us gain insight into unseen mysteries; be that supersubmicroscopic strings, or the workings of the human body and the chakras. Thus, Einstein had it right, matter is energy.

All is vibration, everything is One, and all can be shown to be the same. And we will evolve out of matter, one day.

All is united in the divine.

About the Author Jill Mattson, four-time author, composer, and expert in Sound Healing CDs. International awards include Best Book & Sound Healing CD 2016, Best CD 2015, Best CD Silver. Free music: Discover more at: www. jillswingsoflight.com Omtimes.com

OMTIMES Spotlight bodies, specifically the organs. When they detected disharmony within an organ, they tuned it to harmony, which they associated with the health of the organ. In this meditation, establish healing connection and tuning of organs, with the help of frequencies associated with healthy body organs.

Jill Mattson Talks about her Music:

Jill Mattson

Powerful Sound Healing from Atlantis • A CD with Beneficial states of Consciousness to influence Physical Body Well Being • Absorb Vibrational Energy that Invigorates and Tunes Healthy Body Organs • Enjoy Added Healing Frequencies: Elemental Energy Sounds, Schumann Earth Tones, Anti-Inflammation Tones, Pyramid Energy, Sacred Geometry and more Healing Subtle Energies Ancient wise Masters established conscious control of their physical OMTimes.com

This CD arose from a vision that I had, in which I saw people in Atlantis living VERY LONG lives. One of their secrets to a healthy long life was to clairvoyantly and clairaudiently view their organs and body systems. If they were harmonious and healthy, the organs emitted white light with rainbow splashes or colors. Each organ had a unique song or sound, which was harmonious - when it was healthy.

When the organ’s harmony slipped, it became dark colored and sounded nasty. With conscious intent, these ancient wise people remembered the beautiful feeling, colors and sounds of the healthy organ. They simply felt this wonderful feeling, imagined its sounds and beautiful colors, and this action transferred healing energy to organs within their bodies. They felt these feelings until their organs were once again completely in tune, harmonic and radiating beautiful colors. The organ then healed itself!

Easily one can scoff at the idea that emotions and frequencies are associated with organs. A scientific

study by Paul Pearshall PhD., Gary Schwartz, PhD, and Linda Russek, PhD, studied the emotions people received from organ transplants. For example, a 47-year-old male received a heart from a 17-year-old black youth.

He expected to discover a liking for rap music, as he had heard that transplant recipients take the likes and emotions of the organ donor.

Surprisingly he discovered a newfound love for classical music. When participating in the scientific study he learned that his donor loved classical music and died hugging his violin case on the way to his violin lesson. In a very real sense, we deposit emotions in our organs. We can discharge the negative emotions that we store in our organs, and this CD meditation teaches you how to do this.

The Deep Wave Body Healing CD teaches you how to connect with the consciousness of thirteen major body organs. You too can recognize what they feel like when healthy. The CD literally gives you the sounds of healthy organs and their harmonic cascades – just as was done in ancient times.

Further, there are techniques of elemental healing along with cathartic release of negative energy - which ancient wise sages associated with individual organs.

I have been doing this and I memorized the feeling and sounds of healthy organs. When I get a little pain, I connect to the organ, and use my intent, to restore harmony to the OMTimes.com

organ. It is a beautiful technique to enable us to become the “master” of our physical bodies.

Also in my vision, I understood that each organ resonated with a specific emotion, for example the lungs with freedom/"breathing" room, and the heart with matters of love/anger. Since they trusted their intuition, unlike our current society, they used the feelings that resonated with each body organ as a warning system. For example, if they suddenly felt pain in their heart and they knew their heart was a healthy organ, they believed that someone they were energetically close to (a loved one) was having heart ache (perhaps something bad happened) or a heart ache could be on its way for them personally. In this way, they used these feelings of organs as a warning, and communication system with loved ones, in addition to using these feelings for personal healing.

Deep Wave Body Healing CD • Invigorates and Tunes Healthy Body Organs • Enjoy Healing Frequencies: Elemental Energies, Schumann Earth Tones, AntiInflammation Tones, Pyramid Energy, Sacred Geometry & more

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Relationships The interconnectiveness among all human beings and, consequently, the relationships among us are the focus of this section. The dynamics of the web of connections we make is one of the most prominent aspects of human existence: how we interlace with each other’s existence in a meaningful way.

Find True Love by New Year, Without Karma

by Courtney Marchesani

Find True Love with Heart Alchemy If the reader is thinking, find true love, this will never work for me, think again. Heart Alchemy is a sacred experience which has been used since the third century B.C. It helps us travel inward into the life of our own magical heart.

Heart Alchemy doesn’t mess with karma because we’re not trying to trap another soul in a relationship where they don’t belong. That would be more like sorcery. We’re pouring Omtimes.com

loving intent into our heart, which is no less virtuous than finding the elixir of life. When we keep our highest good alive in our intentions, there can be no ‘bad karma’.

That all sounds beautiful, but how?

Alchemical Practices for the Magic of Winter Use the magic of winter and its element to find the irresistible true love we’ve been longing for.

A lot of times we have resistance about winter - the frozen quality of it. The power of winter is exactly this frozen aspect of water which forces us to go inward. Many of us flee, avoiding this valuable life force. Despite the cold nature of winter, there is deep nourishment that happens where we are held by water, virtually stopping all aimless wanderings, to collect oneself.

the qualities in our partners would reflect our outward worldly pursuits such as “She loves music and loves to dance”, “He knows how to play a good game of chess”, or “He isn’t put off by my quirky love of all things vintage.”

Using the alchemy of water and its reservoir of holding inside of us, we are reminded of our intentions to find loving commitment, are strengthened in the pursuit of it, and will eventually bring us together with those we long for - and who long for us.

Making a list is a way of taking ‘real’ qualities of a lover and putting them into form. It helps us organize our thought process about what we really want in a partner. Once all these qualities are put on paper, look at the list and chunk it down into a top ten.

Try imagining the tender parts of your heart and the qualities of life you find most important.

What would it look like to share them with someone else?

Alchemical Love Koan #1 Write a list

Alchemical Love Koan #2 Make an altar

Write down all the qualities a loving true-blue partner possesses. We consider things that are concrete, but also meaningful, and spiritual. This means searching our hearts for the things we admire, love, and desire within ourselves.

Do we fancy the romance of vintage clothing, strategy of chess champions in the park, or are we dance maniacs? If so,

This is one of the most exciting parts of the process. Use the whole dining table if need be. An altar is a sacred consecrating of the container of the heart. It’s a real-world manifestation of what the heart looks like inside of us.

We use imagination, creativity, and juicy exciting items. Bring out favorite objects, light candles in old fashioned jars, or elegant candle stick holders. Pull out all Omtimes.com

the stops and make your altar the perfect picture of love designed by the heart. Imagine snowy scenes holding hands or ice-skating with your perfect partner, then draw it or find a picture which represents this ideal. Each morning and evening connect with the altar and say a silent prayer for love.

Alchemical Love Koan #3 Visualize (and then make a vision board) Calm, peaceful meditations are an excellent way to connect with our own heart.

Take a relaxing breath in.

Then, slowly let it out. Do this three more times. Visualize the heart and imagine blue light healing the chambers, ventricles, and aorta. Picture the veins and blood moving freely in and out. This brings healing and strength. Once done with meditation, create a vision board filled with beautiful scenes depicting the things you love in life. If you’re having trouble, imagine when you were young. Think back and picture what you wanted when you were a child, imagining your perfect love.

Give yourself free reign to create your vision board; there Omtimes.com

are no ‘wrong’ ways to create your masterpiece.

Alchemical Love Koan #4 Abstinence This will flummox some, but abstinence is a key to finding true love. Many may disagree, but using sexual energy to manifest reality has long been known through many cultures spiritual practices. When we take a break from sex it allows the body to heal and build up the much-needed reserves for a quest such as this. Consider it an aphrodisiac which will call lovers much faster into this new reality.

About the Author Courtney Marchesani is the creator of Intuitive Soul Language™. She designs integrative health plans for the Highly Sensitive Person.

Courtney is the author of The Energetic Psychopath: How to Protect Yourself and Recover from Violence and The Fifth Chamber. Her works have been featured in The Huffington Post GPS for the Soul, Elephant Journal, and OM Times Magazine. http://www. inspiredpotentials.com/

IT IS TIME TO LET THE BOX

GO

Think Out of the Box: Try Ascending Hearts for free and see for yourself

Metaphysics

WHITEDOVE

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Celebrity Psychic & Spiritual Medium Michelle Whitedove is an expert in her field and she has been featured on HBO, Bravo, Lifetime TV and interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show.

November C 2016 Edition You can ASK Whitedove too, just email her here

Dear Whitedove, As I go about planning my days and weeks ahead, thinking about purchases that I need to make and vacations that I want to take, I feel that I get stuck in a negative cycle of thinking about my lack of money.

My parents pinched pennies and I find myself in the same boat although my husband and I make decent wages. How can I get out of this rut? My funds are low – in Louisiana Dearest, The Universal Law of Abundance and Prosperity tells us that the measure of a person’s self-worth and self-love is directly ties to their ability to succeed. Man, can only receive what he believes that he is worthy of receiving in equal parts.

This includes abundance of all kinds: spiritual wealth, financial, wellness and good health. There is enough for all of us; the Universe is abundant and always expanding.

Scarcity is just a state of mind.

Think of money as energy, it’s easily accessible. It’s green paper that is exchanged for goods and services.

There is plenty, our government keeps printing it daily! Change your perception and your reality with change too!

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Dear Michelle, I’m being prompted to give free readings to family and friends as I develop my gifts. I’d like to know how you ask spirit for the most detailed information. I’ve seen you on TV and I’d like to be as clear of a channel as you are. Your Student in Spring Hill Dearest, Over the years I have fine-tuned my gifts of communication through daily prayer (Talking to Heaven) and meditation (Listening to Heaven). This spiritual practice is a must to raise your vibration and improve your abilities. During my prayers, I always give thanks for the information, I claim it. Instead of

November C 2016 Edition

asking, give thanks; express your sincere gratitude.

Mediocre readings are not an option. Cold readings are not an option. If God is calling – then do the work! As I pray and meditate, I feel my energy levels rise. You need to feel that connection.

Your intuition is a knowing, you're not thinking about an answer, you're not being analytical, you're not mulling it over, it's not something that's intellectual. It's just, boom! It came in and you may think “where did that come from?”

That is a true message from Spirit!

Once you start doing the spiritual work, claiming the solutions, then the information is going to be clear, clear, clear, and then there's not even a question.

You’ll trust the information that comes through on a high vibrational level. Sometimes I tell Spirit to turn up the volume: I need to hear more clearly. When I’m seeking an answer for myself, but feel my emotions are in the way, I will tell God to give me three signs or omens that only I will clearly understand and know to be true.

Don't ask, claim it. If I want confirmation on something that seems tricky or way out here; I'll

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just wait for those three signs of confirmation. Every time I demand it, I get it. So I tell you to pray and meditate daily and claim it. Develop your gifts; Knock and the door will open!

Connect with Whitedove

November C 2016 Edition

Life Stages Heads up for next 12 Months

Make the most of meaningful events and encounters and lessen the effects of any negative experiences.

Life Stages alerts you to specific occurrences, where you should best consolidate, or when to experiment; otherwise where to be cautious; when it’s down to you, or someone else; when to wait and when to act.

Life Stages Life Stages Life Stages

VIEW A Sampler REPORT https://az792155.vo.msecnd. net/samples/omtimes/life_st ages.pdfSAMPLER Awareness of potential development Your personality mask, material security and intellectual ability as well as emotional security, enjoyment of life and responsibilities.

Your relationships and ability to deal with life and philosophical beliefs.

Your personal status, social life, secret dreams.

20+ Pages delivered instantly on-screen & emailed.

Personal Growth & Development

We grow as individuals as we face challenges and overcome life’s obstacles. This section is dedicated to helping you chart your course.

7 Ways to Let GO of Little EGO

by Colby Psychic Rebel 7 Ways to Let GO of Little EGO We all have little ego. It’s that negative self-talk that tries to tell us that we are not good enough. That little voice deep inside that makes a point to remind us of the last time we tried something it didn’t work out. Little ego can create paralyzing fear.

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It can stop us in our tracks and prevent us from believing in ourselves for fear of failing. If we embark on a new project that doesn’t provide the results we had hoped for, that same little voice says, “I told you so”. Over time we may find ourselves giving up before we even make the attempt. Tucking our wings inwards instead of spreading them wide.

We may find ourselves forfeiting hope in exchange for comfort and security. It’s safer to stay in a stagnant job then to embark on a new career. When we have bills to pay, mouths to feed and responsibilities to live up to, we can easily surrender the passions and dreams that once made us feel invincible.

Little ego has a beautiful talent of breaking us down and forcing us into submission. A life of complacency.

However, we are not designed to settle. Our path is not to walk aimlessly through this human existence to only reach the end with a bucket full of

regrets. For each of us can honor our soul and personal potential. When we can redirect our little ego from a place of negative self-talk to positive outreach, we can begin to accomplish all our goals.

We can live the life we always imagined and find a level of happiness that touches our heart and satisfies our soul.

Here are 7 ways to let GO of little EGO 1. Give it a NAME. That’s right. It’s time to give our negative inner voice a name.

Choose a name that is not that of a beloved friend, pet or relative. Pick a name that stands out. For instance, let’s go with Ginger. So now, when our little ego has an outbreak and flairs up, we can call it by name and address it directly.

This helps to distinguish it from our own name and self.

2. Assign a TIME OUT. Now that we have a name for our little ego, we can set the rules. If our little ego

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doesn’t know how to play nice in the sand box, we take disciplinary action. We give it a time out. We call it by name, let it know that it is not behaving in a way that is reflective of our highest good and proceed to give it a time out. Calling our little ego by name separates it from us. Giving it a time out is an opportunity for us to subconsciously remove it from our active thoughts and feelings. This will then allow us to disassociate ourselves from the little ego. Once we put it aside, it can no longer consume our thoughts since have taken away it’s residency within our mind.

3. Uphold our BOUNDARIES. When little ego starts to attack and attempts to wreak havoc on our thoughts, we must uphold our boundaries. We must stay committed to the all-knowing belief that we are capable of anything and everything. We will not allow little ego to detour our mission.

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4. Practice Self-Love. Selflove and little ego cannot exist simultaneously. If our inner voice begins to take center stage, we can immediately shut it down by practicing self-love. Replacing the lower vibration of negative self-talk with the higher vibration of self-love instantly lifts our overall vibration. This creates a feeling of optimism while reconnecting us to the core of our being.

5. Remember Mindfulness.

Little ego arises from the fear of the unknown. It could be the stress of not knowing how a situation will unfold, the impending work review or promotion, the worry of finances or wellbeing of a loved one. We have an innate desire to control the outcome or at the very minimum have the play-by-play so that we can prepare ourselves accordingly.

This uncertainty is a feeding ground for little ego. It loves to get into the crevices of stress

and worry and create internal stories of embellished failure.

In these moments, practicing mindfulness pulls us into the present moment a place where the stress eases, the worry fades and the stories disappear.

We cannot control our future.

And when we surrender to the universe and allow ourselves to trust our internal compass, we discover a sense of peace, quiet and stillness.

6. Love Others. When we turn our attention to others, we release the focus on ourselves.

This deflects little ego and its attempts to penetrate our thoughts. Extending our heart outwards not only makes the recipient feel good, it’s a wonderful way to thwart little ego’s attempt at sabotage!

7. Surrender. When all else fails, simply surrender. Trusting the universe and the knowingness that it’s working for our highest good reminds us that we are loved and protected in so many ways. Although an experience

may feel like a setback in the moment, it may be the universe’s way of protecting us. Or, it might be guiding us in a direction that may just be more incredible and wonderful than we could have possibly imagined.

Although little ego may find ways to still creep in, we can minimize it’s stay and impact by practicing these 7 Ways to let GO of Little EGO. Letting GO of our little EGO will open the path of optimism, opportunity and allow us to take back ownership of our thoughts and feelings.

About the Author Colby is an Internationally recognized Psychic Medium, certified master Spiritual teacher, radio host, speaker and author of the best-selling book, Leap of Faith: How to Build Your Spiritual Business.

Colby is a spotlight writer for OMTimes Magazine and member of Shay Parker’s Best American Psychics.

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Lo o kin g Back t o Focus Fo rw a rd

by Maria Khalife

“Always do your best.

What you plant now, you will harvest later.” ~Og Mandino

What Does it Take to Focus Forward?

When you walk sedately into your twilight years, you don’t want to carry along any sense of regret. I recommend going there now and asking

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yourself what you’d love to cherish when you arrive there years from now. And then come back to today with a determination to make sure you accomplish all you want, so that the twilight years or retirement years are filled with satisfaction and contentment.

Here are some ideas to contemplate so that no regret slips into your future.

Be Fully All That You Are. There is no need to costume yourself as anyone else. It is one hundred percent acceptable to be only you.

And why not? Everyone else is taken! Relinquish the idea that you have to be a certain way for someone else, because that’s just not true. If there is some other in your life who sits in harsh judgment of you, why do you tolerate them remaining there? You are not here to please anyone else – even your mighty parents –

and it is okay for you to just be you. When you are you and only you, these others will eventually recognize just how great that is and that their ideas might have been suffocating you.

Dream Only Your Dreams.

This goes along with the first idea. If you are fully being you, you are fully executing your own dreams, and not the aspirations others may have for you. You only have one life, so live it as you prefer. Create your own path and your own goals. Others might not be happy. They may give you a hard time about it. This is good because it helps you strengthen your character. I knew that what I was doing for me was the right thing when I became so absorbed in my job, that I completely lost track of time.

That is passion ignited.

Your Attitude Governs.

Attitude arises from your

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habits, so decide what your attitude will be and then cultivate the habits to support that. And remember that your associates require some scrutiny, also. Do not let other people pull you down with their bad habits and gloomy attitude. So, be selective of your friends. You deserve to be happily supported.

so of course I would strongly recommend that you be on the lookout for ways to change, to improve, to better yourself. To do this, you have to be willing and you have to let go of old ways of doing things. Once you understand embracing change, you’ll see how it moves you forward in an everincreasing upward spiral.

Treat Others the Way You Like to Be Treated. As you move upward on your path to greater success, always remember what it was like to be a few rungs down, and treat those “below” you with respect and consideration. Be the boss who knows the name of the lowest employees. Show them the love you so enjoy yourself, so that it’s not only about you.

You can decide now how you want folks to talk about you when you’re gone.

Drop Back and Punt. In football, this means when you think you’re out of options, pick the least viable option and do it. Don’t give up ever. There is always some small forward step you can take. Look around for what you can learn and find that one last tiny step you can take.

Those small steps do add up over time. Think of yourself as he/shewho-perseveres-no-matter-what.

Be the Change. You all know how I love this theme. It is the theme for my own life,

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Let Go of the Small Stuff. Life is infinite, and full of infinite options. It is not humanly possible to handle all the options, so just handle the big chunks and allow the little

pieces to fall between the cracks.

If you handle the big stuff and some of the medium-sized stuff, you’ll be making enormous progress. Remember, you are looking at this from the tail end, so you can now understand how unimportant obsessing over the crumbs can be.

If You Aren’t Satisfied, It’s Not Enough. Do not settle for any less-than solution just because it is the first one that presents itself. Ask yourself in the core of your being “Is this enough? If this is all I get, does it satisfy me?” If you get a “No” answer, start looking for another option that offers you more. You need to know what satisfies you, and choose that.

You deserve the whole tamale.

There’s Only Now. I was in a seminar where they spoke of ‘this right now moment.

And this one. And this one.’ I realized that all I have is right now, and that tomorrow truly never comes because when I

do get there, it’s yet another right now moment. So, I decided to use each right now moment that I could to do the things I love to do, achieve what I wanted to contribute to the world, accomplish the goals I want, and to accept no lazy excuses because if I don’t do it for me, who will?

Now, you can go to your own.

Look backward, and then focus forward. Piece of cake, eh?’

About the Author With over 20 years of experience gained across television, radio and print, Maria Khalife brings knowledge and understanding in holistic and motivational living to her clients. Maria brings to the world powerful life-changing experiences for those who seek extraordinary lives and want to reach their maximum potential. Maria can help you to uncover your true dynamic self. Please visit http:// www.MariaKhalife.com

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The Danger of Self Help

by Dr. Dragos

How Dangerous Can Self Help Be? For seven years, I holed up in bookstores and read almost everything on the shelves of self help and personal development.

I read everything from holy books, sacred texts, and Omtimes.com

ancient manuscripts to business books, entrepreneurship, and leadership how-tos. But somehow what I learned in these self help books didn’t prevent me from ending up broke, and failing in my work.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ I thought to myself. ‘How can I be so unworthy that I cannot achieve what these books claim everyone can do so fast?’

I didn’t achieve financial abundance instantly. No, I didn’t make a million dollars in 90 days, and the I-don’t-knowhow-many steps to success didn’t lead very far. The secrets in the self help books turned out to be nothing more than common sense. The three, the four, the seven things ‘you have to know’ were not the only the things you must know.

The instant success formulas were deplorable delusions that throw people in pain. I began to investigate the scientific literature to find out the truth.

Merging the Truths of Self Help and Science After 400 years of research, scientists discovered that we have a truthfulness bias, a

natural tendency to believe what we read, even when it’s not true. Every idea, every conversation, every human interaction changes our brain, and others can impose these changes on us against our will. When we receive new information, our brain’s instinct is to accept it as true. We can accept or reject the information, but only after we have initially believed it, and we are not always successful at undoing it.

In an article titled, You Can’t Not Believe Everything You Read, Dr. Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, wrote: “Acceptance of ideas is passive and inevitable, it happens against our will, whereas rejection of ideas requires mental effort to undo the initial passive acceptance.”

We believe everything, and then we must make a conscious choice that requires mental effort to undo our belief in the idea. To correct our automatic tendency to believe, we must take a step back and unbelieve.

When we’re learning something new, and we don’t have previous information about the subject, we instantly believe what the others tell us.

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Scientific fact 1 - We believe everything we read.

We sleep next to our phones, and we wake up in the dead of night to check our texts, e-mails, and updates. It is ever more difficult to delay gratification, and we want immediate pleasure or the instant removal of pain. We demand our lives to function like social media: I want it all, and I want it now. Technology has turned our every wish into an instant demand: on-demand movies, on-demand car rides, on-demand video games, ondemand dating, on-demand life.

Dr. Darrell Worthy, professor of psychology at Texas A&M University, discovered that immediate gratification has become the default response when we want something.

Waiting is hard, and our unconscious mind has raised immediate gratification to be our main purpose in life.

According to a study performed

by Common Sense Media, a San Francisco non-profit that educates families on the safe use of technology, this growing need for instant gratification has robbed us of our most important ability: the ability to think.

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Scientific fact 2 - We want it all, we want it now, and we can’t control it.

We make almost all buying decisions through the filter of our emotions. The impulse to buy a product is triggered by promotional messages that target our emotional responses. These include our need for love, our need for significance, our fear of loss and our unconscious demand for instant gratification. Research shows these impulse purchases, in about 80 percent of the time, lead to financial difficulties, family criticism, guilt, and disappointment.

Scientific fact 3 - Marketers craft targeted promotional messages Marketers craft the promotional messages to target our emotional response, and our uncontrolled want for instant gratification. When products fail to deliver on their promise, we become disillusioned, upset, and disheartened with ourselves (not with the product).

These three scientific facts-our natural vulnerability to believing everything we read,

our uncontrollable demand for instant gratification, and the marketing messages that target our emotional needs and promise a million dollars overnight, instant success, dramatic weight loss, the perfect relationship--combine into a dangerous marketing strategy that may backfire against us. We tend to also believe that if the instant success formulas don’t work, something must be wrong with us. Therefore, this is the same as saying that if a theory is not working, something must be wrong with reality.

Brains Do Require Self Help to Think Critically The brain begins by believing the message written in the sales letter. When the product fails to deliver on its promise and things don’t work out as we expect, we don’t challenge the information; rather, we challenge ourselves, and our self-worth. Thus, something that was created to help, in fact, injures us, and we become more depressed than before.

Regardless of the passing circumstances, you find yourself

in, your heart is still calling you to return to truth. And you do have infinite worth simply because the Divine created you; perfect just the way you are. Your worth is given to you by the Divine. Hence, it is not assigned by other people, not by what you achieve, and not even by yourself. Doing meaningful work takes time, and reality doesn’t obey our on-demand requests at a snap of a finger.

About the Author Dr. Dragos is an award-winning scientist, author, and speaker on six continents. He is the founder of The Amazing University, online teaching platform. It brings together the best minds in the world to inspire and empower one billion people in 140 countries to live their truth.

It also transforms their dreams into reality anywhere they start.

Forbes named Dragos’s team at Singularity University in Silicon Valley “among the smartest people in the world.” His work is translated into 20 languages.

You can connect with Dr. Dragos at www.drdragos.co and join The Amazing University at www.theamazinguniversity.com

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When you look at the view of Earth from space, you are immediately in awe of what you do see: the incredible beauty of Creation. It is not until you look closer that you realize what you do not see.

You do not see lines partitioning countries.

You do not see separation between races.

You do not see division between religions.

You do not see the walls people build to isolate themselves from each other.

There is only One Planet. There is only One Humanity.

This section is dedicated to introducing thoughts and ideas to foster a greater understanding of Humanity’s interdependence.

World Vision

When Can We List Ourselves as Endangered?

by Kathy Custren

Are Humans at the Endangered Stage?

When bees have reached the doomed designation of being on the endangered species list, does that not spell a certain kind of doom for humanity itself? All the earth science we are ever taught growing up

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teaches us that bees are the linchpin of our food chain.

Without our delightfully buzzing friends that chain unravels. They are what work the whole pollination scene like a boss; well, more like a drone. And we cannot deny their importance.

Bees are so important that the cyber world is itching to explore tiny mechanical bees.

Now, the budding scientists have their chance. There will be plenty of buds without the usual buzz to plant the pollen that helps nature do its thing. It will either be mechanical bees or people will have a whole new line of tedious work to do, as usual, pretending to do what nature does best.

Is the Human Race in Denial?

We are quick to deflect or deny the realities of global warming, or climate change, whichever language suits our sensibilities best. Truths

about environmental doom are occurring. These realities include rising temperatures, water levels, and storms that bring devastating flooding and take lives. Yet rising water does not concern us. We see computer models of simulated shorelines and think what?

Great graphics, it looks so real? More houses on stilts?

A booming boating industry?

Sure do hope the great minds have been working on solar powered outboard motors.

All this while multiple environmental articles are paying passing respect to the passing away of the Great Barrier Reef. This is an entire ecosystem the watchdogs of the ocean consider wiped out; just gone. Off to the great sea heaven in the sky, perhaps?

Or, Have We Become Jaded, Instead?

Where do these vast patches of our planet go when they die, anyway? Seeing one polar bear clinging to what is left of arctic

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ice is no longer tugging at the old heartstrings the way it did just a few years ago. Will the truth be inconvenient on when we see pods of whale carcasses littering the shoreline? Or when we cannot breathe because of noxious air? Is that when we will understand the scale of the problem? Maybe along with the boom in the boating industry there will be a huge uptick in the stocks for oxygen tanks and other breathing apparatus?

We may as well add our friends, the trees, to the list of endangered beings on the planet. Gone are the many in our equatorial belt that used to serve as the lungs for the planet. The jungles and tropical rain forests filter carbon dioxide and pump fresh oxygen into the atmosphere.

Whether looking for exotic wood or palm oil, so much of the land has been clear-cut, leaving great swaths of dark, barren land.

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Technological Progress, at What Expense?

And speaking of dark, barren land, we would be remiss not to feel the planet’s pain for all the fracking underground and oil dredging in tar sands.

As we wring every bit of non-renewable resource from our global home and foul our water to the point of it being unpotable, we shrug our shoulders. Nestlé and other corporations feel they are in a prime position once all the water goes poof; market share, and all that. We think the Native Americans staking claim to a somewhat healthy heritage have it wrong somehow. Why stop the progress of a pipeline, when the rewards are so great?

Ah, right; rewards. We have reaped so many rewards as we wiped much of the plants and animals away in the name of progress, haven’t we? One by one, we have kept diligent lists of endangered things. We

have our thorough accounting, silently marking the deaths as we cheer the progress. Yet even by keeping track, we may not register the grand imbalance taking place?

Is It a Leap in Dimensional Living?

There is the rub. The internal inklings and feelings so many of us have that there is something so much larger going on. Call it the shift or the leap in dimensional living that we are here to experience and bring forth. Will it take a global cataclysm for us to say we, too, have reached the brink? Are we denying the inevitable? And why are we not doing anything about it?

We are quick, if not almost eager, to mark other animal species on the planet as being endangered. Scientists had said that if the number of bees fall below a certain threshold, it would endanger us. Our precious bees are now

endangered. Yet there are few who actively take part in protesting land misuse.

Perhaps they equal the number of people who actively plant new trees, or work meager plots of land back to health to save the planet. The rest of us watch our little screens, and send along an emoticon.

What does it take? When can we list ourselves as endangered? Learn more: http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/ wildlife-conservation/ endangered-species-act.aspx About the Author Kathy Custren, OMTimes Senior Editor, is a mother of four. She strives for balance and has a deep respect for All. Interests include education, elements, nature, humanity’s cosmic origins, philosophy, spirituality, and wellness.

Connect with her community page “Consciousness Live� on Facebook.

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Humanity Healing Syrian Refugee Relief Please Donate Here

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.�

Yes, it really is as simple as that.

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Books

A Mystical Journey into the Beauty & Awe of Life, And the Daily Power of Transcendence Through Surprise!

From Will Arntz, the Creator of What The Bleep?!

What is surprise in your life but an instant opportunity for transformation? A moment that can send you ascending into joy and wonder or spiraling into deep thought and lifechanging new awareness.

An eye-catching beautiful and whimsical book The (not so) Little Book of Surprises brings that home in—of course—surprising ways! A mystical journey into consciousness, an exploration of what touches our hearts, a glimmering reflection on nature and ourselves, and plea for becoming our better angels are just some of the touchstones in store for readers as they experience the poetic exquisiteness of this gem.

The (not so) Little Book of Surprises is anchored with Hade’s visionary and lyrical poetry skipping lightly about over the stunning images curated by Balogh. Each breathtaking page creates an emotional resonance with the reader...using surprise as the doorway to transformation and transcendence. The images in the book are part eye candy/part soul candy. They pile on a sensory experience that mounts the sense of surprise page by page.

For more information, or to purchase the book, click the cover or visit:

BookOfSurprises.com

BOOK SPOTLIGHT Accelerate Your Book Marketing Success with OMTIMES

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It is time to let the box go

TREAT YOUR BRAIN ONLY WITH MINDFUL AND CREATIVE INFORMATION.

MAGAZINE

November C 2016 Contributors Writers Colby Psychic Rebel Courtney Marchesani Daniel Mitel Dr Dragos Jill Mattson John Holland Kathy Custren Lisa Shaw Maria Khalife Michelle Whitedove Rebecca Clio Gould Victor Fuhrman

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