SuperConsciousness Summer 2010 by SuperConsciousness Magazine

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St r es s For gi vi ng Rel i gi ous Pedophi l es

JoanBor ys enko Dani elSi egel Debbi eFor d JoeDi s penza Ber ni eSi egel Loui s eHay

SPIRITUALITY

CREDITS Publisher and Managing Editor Jair Robles Barajas Editor-in-Chief Danielle Graham Contributing Editor Heidi Smith Creative Director Paulina Amador Circulation Manager Helene Ecklin Business Manager Barbara Morando Webmaster Halley Graham Web Support Devon Thompson

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SuperConsciousness Magazine® is a publication of Editora La Voz del Istmo USA, Inc., 305 Van Trump Ave NE, Yelm, WA 98597. Copyright©2009 by Editora La Voz del Istmo USA, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording for public or private use, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission of the publisher or its licensors. SuperConsciousness Magazine® is published four times a year. Subscriptions rates: One year US $32.00 USD US/CANADA/MEXICO. International US $60.00. Send address changes to SuperConsciousness Magazine, P.O. Box 2903, Yelm, WA. 98597. Subscription inquiries: Send E-mail to subscribe@superconsciousness.com or call 360.400.2383. Printed in Mexico. Para suscripciones en México llamar al 01.921.211.8000 Ext. 122. Para mayor información mande un correo a blanca@superconsciousness.com Printed by Editorial Robles, S.A. de C.V., Av. Cuauhtémoc No. 1068, Coatzacoalcos, Ver., Mexico.

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CONTENTS

6 LEADING EDGE

MINDSCOPE

Reclaiming Health is About Changing Our Lives

Interview with Dr. Joan Borysenko By Danielle Graham

10 ART FORUM

Emotions + Experience = Design By Jair Robles

18 SOVEREIGN

LIVING MADE SIMPLE 18

Solar Laptop Chargers

Marriage Made in Garden By Cynthia Lair

MAIN BODY

INTRODUCTION

Getting Naked About Health

From Physical to Energetic The Evolution of Dr. Dan Gleeson

Love Yourself into Health

Interview with Dr. Bernie Siegel

39 Louise Hay – Listening to Our Bodies

Ultimate Self-Responsibility and Forgiving Catholic Pedophiles The Amazing Journey of Brent BecVar By Danielle Graham

Making Peace with Ourselves, Others, and the World By Debbie Ford

Stressed About Your Health? “F**k It,” Says John Parkin By Heidi Smith

Just Do It! 10 Reminders: Being Resilient in Times of Change By Joan Borysenko SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

From Patient To Respant By Bernie Siegel, MD

Physician, Heal Thyself

Dr. Joe Dispenza and the Power of the Mind

Aging in Reverse

Ellen Langer on Living “Counterclockwise”

Young at Heart

Why Meditative Practice Creates Well-Being in Our Bodies and Minds Mindsight by Dr. Daniel Siegel

The Paranormal Healings of John of God By Miceal Ledwith

A Visit to John of God

82 ANCIENT WISDOM

Words of Power and Blessing for Ourselves and Our World By Ramtha

PERSPECTIVES 84

FUTURE SCIENCE

A Medical Heretic Fesses Up By Danielle Graham

WRITES OF PASSAGE It’s Not Easy Being Green By Heidi Smith

VITALMINDS FOR THE BRAIN 88

Featured Review:

What You Think Matters, Literally The Spiritual Journey – DVD By Ramtha

Books for Parents

89 Bantam Reviews

LOCAL NEWS Growing Hope

EarthBox Creates Self-Sufficient Communities

AFTERTHOUGHTS Pharmaceuticals of the Future By Dan Berger

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EDITORIAL PAGE

any new and exciting things are happening at SuperConsciousness. We hope you’ve had an opportunity to visit our new website and enjoy all of the many features @www.superconsciousness.com, including the SC Community: Ideas that Matter – a place for you to share and engage in lively discussions with fellow readers. You can also follow us through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, sign up for our weekly newsletter, or take us with you on your iPhone or iPad. We are also proud to announce that founding editor and the premier scientific mind behind this publication, Danielle Graham, is our new Editor-in-Chief, beginning with this issue. As new media technologies emerge and we learn to implement them, SuperConsciousness is evolving in order to provide you with those exciting features. Behind this effort we want to acknowledge Advontemedia for their participation and counsel. We also welcome Halley Graham as SuperConsciousness’ Webmaster and Devon Thompson as a new member of SuperConsciousness web team. For this issue, preeminent contemporary designer Sami Hayek provided us with a bounty of ideas, photos and exclusive video of some of his most recent designs. We want to thank Sami for sharing his time and creativity, not to be missed in the Art Forum. Health is a topic of interest to most of us. After all, it is something quite personal and of great relevance in our lives. It has been the driving force for some of the most remarkable scientific discoveries. Every day the media reports on new breakthroughs in medical science for the treatment of any particular disease. One of the most powerful and profitable industries is driven by this need to find cures for our ailments. Recently we have witnessed how the discussion about the government’s role in the provision of healthcare can galvanize and polarize societies. Yet all of these examples are based on the assumption that health is defined by the state of our body and healing is only about what we do to the body. As we began discussing the scope and intent behind this issue, our Editor-in-Chief posed this question to us: Can you identify the moment in your life when you felt the healthiest? My thoughts immediately took me to some moment of great physical activity in my childhood. I consider myself to have a good understanding and acceptance of the role my thoughts play in determining the state and functionality of my physical self. Yet when asked about my health, I never reflected on the quality of my thoughts first. The same thing goes for my emotions. I understand the role they play in my thought process as I go through everyday life. I also know that if I’m angry or sad for a long period of time, it will “eventually” manifest as a disease in my body. But again it had never occurred to me that it was a contradiction to think that I was perfectly healthy when I continued to hold resentment of someone or something. This issue has brought me to a much greater understanding of the relationship between my spiritual journey and the process of healing. I no longer perceive health as the absence of disease. I am now coming to understand that sometimes illness is the messenger calling us to address the attitudes we hold on to, and that it is necessary to go through a profound healing process as a fundamental part of any spiritual evolution. The stories you are about to read have created a better picture for me of how much work I still have to do in becoming aware of my emotions and searching for their root cause in order to truly achieve a state of wellness. It is my desire that you also find this issue of great value and help in your process of becoming whole once again.

Jair Robles / Publisher

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

CONTRIBUTORS

FEATURED INTERVIEW Joan Borysenko, Ph.D, a distinguished Harvard Medical School alumnus, is a noted pioneer in integrative medicine and a worldrenowned authority of the mind/body connection. Her years of clinical experience and research culminated in the 1987 publication of the New York Times best seller, Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, which sold over 400,000 copies. Dr. Borysenko has effectively bridged spirit, science, medicine and psychology together in the service of healing. John C. Parkin, the son of Anglican preachers, realized that saying “F**k It” was as good as all the eastern spiritual practices he’d been studying for 20 years. He currently runs a retreat center in Italy, The Hill That Breathes, where he teaches Dr. Daniel Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA regular “F**k It Weeks“ with his wife Gaia. School of Medicine, on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Dr. Dan Gleeson, D.C., specializes in “Matrix Repatterning” - a Research Center. He is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight system of pain relief that addresses the body at the molecular Institute, and the author of six books including his pioneering book on level, and he is passionate about teaching other healing neurobiology, The Mindful Brain. professionals.

SUPPORTING INTERVIEWS

SUPPORTING ARTICLES

Brent BecVar, M.S., has worked directly with Dr. Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Center for Well Being over the last eighteen years as an administrator, teacher, program developer and counselor. He is Debbie Ford is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and trained as a psychotherapist, certified yoga/ meditation instructor, and an internationally recognized expert in the field of personal Ayurvedic educator, and currently specializes in Jyotish Astrology. transformation and human potential. Debbie’s first three books, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Spiritual Divorce and Dr. Bernie Siegel is a physician, speaker and bestselling author who The Secret of the Shadow, are considered pioneering works in has cared for and counseled innumerable patients. He embraces a emotional and spiritual education. philosophy that is at the forefront of a society grappling with medical ethics and spiritual issues. His best-selling books include: Love, Miceal Ledwith, L.Ph., has been a Professor of Theology, Medicine & Miracles; Peace, Love & Healing; and How to Live Between a University President for ten years, and a member of the Office Visits. Vatican’s International Theological Commission for seventeen Dr. Ellen Langer is an award-winning professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Her work on the illusion of control, aging, decision-making, and mindfulness theory has resulted in over 200 research articles and six academic books, including Mindfulness, The Power of Mindful Learning, On Becoming An Artist, and Counterclockwise.

years. He is co-author of The Orb Project and author of four DVDs, The Hamburger Universe, How Jesus Became a Christ, Orbs: Clues to a More Exciting Universe, and 20123. Louise L. Hay is the internationally renowned founder of Hay House publishing company and best-selling author of inspirational and self-help books including the international bestseller, You Can Heal Your Life.

Dr. Joe Dispenza, author, speaker and chiropractor, has lectured in over seventeen countries on six continents educating people about the role and function of the human brain. He was a featured presenter in the film, What the Bleep, and is the author of Evolve Your Brain. Sami Hayek, is an award-winning designer who has made his mark on everything from carbon fiber and bent-wood furniture to large-scale architectural projects. Hayek studied business at Pepperdine University and has BS in Environmental Design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

FEATURED DESIGNER

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SuperConsciousness Spring 2010

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THE LEADING EDGE

BEYOND PHARMACEUTICALS

L E A D I N G E D G E : V I S I O N A R Y N E W S S H O R T S : I D E A S T H AT A R E S H A P I N G T H E F U T U R E

Happiness and Heart Disease

A study led by Dr. Karina Davidson and other US researchers observed the health of 1,700 people over a ten-year span. They found that anxious and depressed individuals were at a higher risk of heart disease than those who had a more positive outlook on life. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, assessed participants on a five-point scale for emotions ranging from hostility and anxiousness to joy and enthusiasm. Those who ranked high in the happiness scale had a 22% lower risk of having heart problems, although by the end of the analysis only 145 people had actually developed heart disease. The research team now believes that happier people may sleep better, suffer less stress, and be able to get over upsetting experiences quicker. Although Davidson admits that more research is needed, she still recommends that people spend a few minutes each day relaxing and enjoying themselves.

Stroke Patients Sing to Communicate Stroke patients who have damaged the ‘speech center’ of their brain are now encouraged to use their ‘singing center’ instead. Gottfried Schlaug, a neurology professor at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, led the ongoing clinical trial, which shows how the brain responds to “melodic intonation therapy” by combining therapy with brain imaging. They found that the left side of the brain is used much more in speech and is home to the connections between brain areas that control movement and hearing. Typically, when the left side of the brain is damaged, the right side is unable to perform the same duties effectively. Singing, however, is able to make the crucial connections needed for speech to form on the right side of the brain again. Schlaug, who uses singing in therapy sessions, says that patients are taught to put words to simple melodies, to tap out syllables with their hands, and learn phrases by combining each syllable with the note of a melody. Dr. Aniruddh Patel from the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego says that “music engaged huge swathes of the brain,” and that “the study is an example of the explosion in research into music and the brain.”

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

HARBINGERS OF THE FUTURE

Cultivating Teen Interest in Science and Math According to a recent survey by the Lemelson-MIT Program, 77 percent of twelve to seventeen-yearolds are interested in pursuing a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) career, a fact that encourages many experts who believe that the future of the U.S. economy is dependent on innovation and educating America’s youth. In order to support this trend, NewsHealthDigest suggests a number of things that educators can do to encourage teen interest in the sciences. These include: giving teens the opportunity to build and do experiments outside of the classroom such as taking field trips to local companies, museums or planetariums which can help students further their understanding of the sciences; taking a hands-on, interactive approach to learning both in the classroom and at home by integrating animations, simulations, building skills and lab tools into students’ assignments; and lastly, providing role models that can help teens better understand the impact that STEM professionals have on society, which often greatly increases teen interest in the subjects.

SCIENCE – REDISCOVERING NATURE

To Shod or Not to Shod? Researchers have recently discovered that sneakers and other sports shoes alter our natural gait. This raises concerns that sports shoes may promote injuries, instead of prevent them. Daniel Lieberman, a human evolutionary biologist at Harvard University, looked at more than 200 shod, unshod, and newly shod runners in the United States and the Rift Valley Province of Kenya to measure their running gait and the impact that running had on their bodies. They found that shod runners tended to land on the heel of the foot, whereas barefoot runners landed on the ball, or flat part of their foot. Landing on the ball of your foot causes more flex in the arch, ankle and knee, and blunts the impact on the body so that barefoot runners experience a shock of .5.7 times their body weight where shod runners, landing on their heels experience a shock of 1.5-2 times their body weight. Dennis Bramble, an evolutionary morphologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, calls the findings “an excellent study…it confirms what we should have known all along: we’re built to run barefoot.” For the barefoot-curious, Lieberman cautions that a gradual transition that allows the feet and calves to strengthen slowly is best.

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SCIENCE – REDISCOVERING NATURE

Beam me up Scotty!

Five years after successfully teleporting information, Masahiro Hotta of Tohoku University, Japan has developed a theory that proves energy can be teleported the same way. Hotta has shown how a series of entangled particles could be stretched across an infinite amount of space before an energy change is induced in one of the particles, which would dictate a change in the entangled particles as well. In order to conserve energy, Hotta’s theory destroys the original particle, ultimately passing its energy to the final particle in the chain, resulting in a successful teleportation of energy from one particle to another. At this point there is no physical blueprint of an energy replacement plan, although researchers believe this development could lead to practical, and potentially significant changes in energy distribution.

Quantum Mechanics and Algae

It is now believed that the microscopic organisms in algae use an important property of quantum mechanics to boost the efficiency of the photosynthesis process. Researchers performed a series of experiments on cryptophytes, algae that inhabits marine and freshwater environments, by firing ultrafast, low-power laser pulses at the molecular antennas of the algae (the antennas are responsible for intercepting photons and channeling energy to reaction centers), and then measuring the changes in light energy. They found that the antenna molecules transferred energy to the reaction-center molecules through electron vibration at full strength four times longer than expected. The reason? Quantum mechanics controls the energy. Gregory Scholes, physical chemist and co-author of the findings at the University of Toronto in Canada, explains that the behavior of the algae is called quantum coherence. In layman’s terms: the molecular structure of the antennas converts incoming light into a wave, which can travel to the reaction center without losing energy. Scholes further states, “It shows that quantum effects can influence biological function.” Experts believe the discovery will open up a new field of research, and could lead to a new generation of superefficient light-sensitive devices.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

SCIENCE – REDISCOVERING NATURE

Nap to Increase Cognition The results of a recent sleep study at the University of California at Berkeley show that volunteers who took a ninety-minute nap during the day performed better on a cognitive test than those who remained awake. Thirtynine healthy adults were asked to take a hard learning task in the morning, and again in the evening after half of them had taken a nap. When the test was repeated, the nappers outperformed those who didn’t get to sleep. Dr. Matthew Walker, who led the study, believes that sleep will move your cognitive skills beyond where they were before napping; he compares it to a full e-mail inbox that has to be cleared out before any more messages can be received. However, Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre, states that there is no clear evidence that daytime napping offers a distinct advantage over sleeping every twenty-four hours, and believes that the results might become more “clouded in the real world.”

EVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY/REVOLUTIONARY BUSINESS

Quantum Machines Have Arrived

A team of scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne led by Tobias Kippenberg is close to creating gizmos that move according to the rules of quantum mechanics. In this state, an object can absorb energy only in discrete “quanta” and can be in two places at once. In order to enter the realm of quantum motion, Kippenberg’s gizmos make the slightest movement of vibration, are drained of every bit of energy, and quiver with an unquenchable “zero-point motion.” While molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles all obey the dictates of quantum theory, physicists have never been able to observe such behavior in a human-made object. Now, four different groups have been able to come within a dozen quanta of a machine that vibrates into a ground state, a crucial first step toward machines that oscillate around two different positions at once. Scientists believe quantum machines could lead to devices that blur the lines between electronics, optics, and mechanics, they also hope to explore further into the mystery of why human-scale objects don’t behave quantum mechanically.

Photos: Thinkstock

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ART FORUM Creative Expressions Related to the Sciences, the Environment, and Spirituality that Stimulate the Mind and Inspire the Soul.

Emotions + Experience = Design A look into the work of contemporary designer

Sami Hayek By Jair Robles

e are all quite familiar with the idea of making products attractive for consumers through the use of slogans, brand recognition or marketing promotions. But not everyone is aware of how a chair is created, why that color, or shape, or what made the manufacturer choose plastic over wood. Everything we buy, from a toothbrush to a car, goes through a similar process when it comes to its design. Someone at the beginning has to make the decision that will give any product, piece of furniture or building its defining characteristics. For this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Forum, contemporary designer Sami Hayek, who is known for blending styles, materials and scale to create striking modern products, shares his insights about the design process. Hayek has immersed himself in the design disciplines of furniture, interiors, architecture, landscape and industrial design, quickly establishing himself as a young, preeminent designer. His clients range from National Geographic and Louis Vuitton to private clients and governments. He has exhibited in numerous galleries, including twice at Art Basel Miami, and has made several appearances on design shows. We caught up with Hayek this spring while he was taking some time off at his familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ranch in Washington State to talk about the process he goes through in creating his designs and he shared some of the stories behind several of the projects he has created in recent years.

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Sami Hayek & Designer Philippe Starck

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SC: When you are asked to design a product or a line of products, how do you begin?

Process

Photo: Jair Robles

S H: Before thinking about the product itself, I try to come up with words that will define its character or personality. I like to think of the experience that the final consumer will have when using this product. These words refer to emotions it will provoke in them. I see them as the DNA. I also like to use similes to help me define its character: if it were an animal which one would it be; if it were a metal or a city, things like that. By doing these mental exercises I can come up with a definition of its essence. Once you have set those defining terms clearly then it doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter whether the final product is an airplane, a chair or a whole line of products. All the elements, such as the colors, the material, shapes, etc. have to fit within that first set of words that I came up with.p with.

outdoor and indoor

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

aromas and scents

colorful patterns

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007 Let me show you an example. This is a trunk I designed for a Tequila producer who wanted me to come up with a presentation platform for their high-end liquor. In this case the word I used is 007, as in James Bond. Everything came out of this already very well defined concept. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s classy, luxurious, adventurous, with gadgets that come out, etc.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Bentley In other cases, the company that hires me already has a very well-defined concept and I have to design something within those parameters, which sometimes makes the whole thing more challenging, because you have to come up with something new, yet it has to be clearly recognized with the brand. A couple of years ago, Bentley Motors asked me “Where do you see Bentley in the future? What do you think the next Bentley should look like?” They asked the same question of two other designers, so we went to their factory and got acquainted with their processes and the overall spirit of the company. The presentation of our projects was done at Basel Miami during a fancy sit down dinner. We decided that each of us should do a little video instead of explaining the presentation and that no one should know what we were presenting until the event. The first designer’s project was a car that morphed according to the circumstance. The second design was about creating life style furniture and products with the brand. I went last and all I said at the beginning of my presentation was, “This will be the biggest, fastest Bentley ever produced. It seats sixteen people.” I still remember the question mark expression on the faces of Bentley’s top executives from the U.K. One of them even clapped when he saw that it was a private jet and I am sure it was not so much because he loved it, but mostly out of relief as he realized it was not a stretch limo.

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SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

25% SC: Is there something that you do in order to find inspiration or clarity of mind when you are about to start designing? SH: Not really. This is my job, I have deadlines to meet, bills to pay and great responsibilities to give my clients something they will like. I’m not an artist in that sense. There are days when everything seems to flow great and others when I have to spend hours grunting things out until it’s good. One time I was jet lagged flying in from Turkey, exhausted and hungry and in the middle of chaos trying to pull a complicated project together. My client asked me as a parallel task to develop a concept for some furniture. As he was giving me some guidelines for it, he said: “I want them to be green, but not too much, just a little bit,” so I asked him how little “just a little “ meant. His reply was 25%, so right there at the dinner table I drew up this piece of furniture for him and said, “There you have it.”

The 25% recycled material table Photos: Sami Hayek Studio.

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SLMS

SOVEREIGN LIVING MADE SIMPLE

Featuring Knowledge and Products for a More Sustainable and Self-Sufficient Lifestyle, and Seasonal Healthy Whole Foods Recipes with Cynthia Lair.

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Solar Laptop and Electronics Chargers: From Casual to Serious

ouldn’t it be nice to work outside at the local park for an extended amount of time without having to worry about your phone or computer batteries running down? Or, how about taking your laptop to the beach and working while basking in the sun, or on a favorite multiday hike – far away from grid power? What type of solar gear would keep your computer charged in either scenario? With any kind of solar system, storing the energy generated is an integral and important function. For laptops, this is done by either directly charging the laptop battery, or charging an additional storage battery that can then operate the laptop while also charging the computer’s battery, much the same way that a regular plug into the wall power cord operates. Summer is the perfect time of year to take your work along with you on a recreational adventure, and on the next page, we’ve identified two companies that manufacture high-quality solar charging equipment that can help keep laptops operational.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

V EN

H LT

A HE

Y OG OL

C TE

The Generator, by Voltaic, is made of 100% recycled materials (soda bottles) and comes equipped with a battery built into the bag. The 15-watt solar panels charge the internal battery in about five hours, storing the equivalent of a typical laptop charge, and essentially doubling the life of your laptop battery.

Voltaic Systems

The Brunton Solaris 52 is powerful enough to directly charge a laptop battery, but if you want to have additional power after the sun goes down, pair the solar panel with a battery [like the Brunton Solo 15]. The Solaris 52 works even in low light (overcast) levels, folds up to the size of a textbook, and can be linked together with up to two additional units.

Brunton

SuperConsciousness staff has collectively lived off-grid for over 35 years. Our hands-on experience can provide you with valuable insight into solar chargers, how to choose them, and what works best under a variety of circumstances. For additional details about using solar for charging laptops, visit our websiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Environment department: http://www.superconsciousness.com/topics/environment

SLMS – FEATURING CYNTHIA LAIR

Marriage Made in Garden: Fresh vegetables + Fresh herbs Summer Recipes From the Garden Grow the love

Cynthia Lair is a Culinary Arts Director at Bastyr University. She is the author of Feeding the Whole Family (Sasquatch Books, 2008) and Feeding the Young Athlete and contributing editor for Mothering Magazine. Watch videos of her recipes at www.cookusinterruptus.com -- a humorous online cooking show.

In the quest to eat more vegetables, don’t let your basket of produce enter the kitchen without having their beloved – fresh herbs – nearby. Buy a few inexpensive clay pots or select an open spot in a garden bed. Pick up your favorite herb plants at the nursery and give them a home in a sunny spot. Having fresh herbs within reach is an inexpensive and satisfying way to bring happily ever after to your vegetable dishes. Partnering vegetables with fresh herbs magnifies the best attributes of each.

Matchmaking Who goes best with whom? Tomes have been written on the fresh herb and vegetable dating game. Don’t turn away from the tried and true pairings like basil and tomatoes. Simultaneously be brave and try some less likely matches. Keep things simple and allow the twosome to stand on their own (one vegetable and one herb) before inviting more flavors to the party. If you’re ready to move beyond recipes in your matchmaker skills, pick up a copy of The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg ((Little, Brown and Co., 2008). These talented authors give you the food and herb details for improvising just the right romance.

Here are a few examples of good love connections: Beets + Tarragon Carrots + Dill Chile Peppers + Cilantro Cucumbers + Mint Green Beans + Parsley Mushrooms + Thyme Potatoes + Chives Snap Peas + Sage Summer Squash + Basil Winter Squash + Rosemary Zucchini + Marjoram When in doubt about your vegetable/herb blind date, have a little taste of each in the same bite; if the combination pleases your senses, the relationship will likely work. Remember that fresh herbs bring more to the marriage than flavor. Parsley, cilantro, basil and mint are dark leafy green vegetables and come with all the nutrientrichness of bigger leaves. Antioxidants, phytonutrients, chlorophyll, vitamins, and minerals are part of the dowry.

Preparing for the union

Celebrate the union

Store fresh herbaceous herbs such as parsley, mint or cilantro as you would a bouquet of flowers. Cut off the ends and put the stems in a jar of fresh water. Cover the leaves with a plastic bag to protect the outer leaves from drying out. Set the jar on the counter if you plan to use them within a day or so or in the refrigerator for up to a week. Woody Mediterranean herbs like thyme and oregano can be kept bagged and in the fridge for one week. If you have some left after that, dry the herb, remove leaves from the stems and store in spice jars. If you grow your own herbs, snip what you need without worry about storage.

Serving mint raita and falafel? Tie a small bundle of mint and use it on the plate as part of the food presentation. Offer extra freshly chopped parsley in a small bowl at the table for guests to sprinkle on the vegetable minestrone. Rosemary branches love to be roasted vegetable skewers, basil leaves yearn to stand in for lettuce leaves in veggie sandwiches; you can hardly keep dill sprigs from jumping in the arms of pickling cucumbers. Encourage the romance.

Chopping the herbs before adding them to dishes releases their essential oils where the flavor lies. Stack some leaves on top of one another, roll them up and finely chop. It is A-OK to eat tender stems of plants like cilantro or Italian parsley, however if the herbs are on a woody stem, like thyme, pull the leaves off of the stem before mincing. Some cooks like to put the small leaves of plants like marjoram or lavender in their hands and briskly rub them together over the pot or bowl. This not only releases the essential oils, it leaves the cook with sweet-smelling hands. Nice. Best to add freshly chopped leaves just before serving to retain flavor. Delicate fronds like dill (which prefer scissors to knives) can be added just a few moments before the food is plated whereas the sturdier leaves of rosemary or oregano can take heat for up to 20 minutes.

Lemon Basil Potato Salad Fresh basil is crushed out on the nightshade plants – tomatoes, potatoes and eggplant. This is a not-just-for-lunch kind of salad; try serving it with grilled fish for your next summer dinner party. Wash, scrub, and cut potatoes. Place potatoes in large pot of boiling water. Cook 10-12 minutes or until fork tender.

Ingredients Salad: • 6-8 cups red potatoes cut in chunks Dressing: • 3-4 cloves garlic • 1/3 cup tightly packed fresh basil • ½ teaspoon sea salt • 1 teaspoon lemon zest • ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil • ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

While potatoes are cooking, place garlic, basil, salt, and lemon zest on cutting board. Rock your knife at all angles and chop together to a paste-like consistency. Combine paste with oil and lemon juice; set aside. Drain potatoes and let cool. Pour dressing over slightly warm potatoes; toss gently. Serve immediately or chill to serve later. Preparation time: 20minutes

Makes 6 servings

Thai Steak Salad over Soba Cucumbers, cilantro and lime beg to be together. I say let the ménage a tois begin with this sensual recipe. Choosing beef from healthfully raised cows is important nutritionally, ecologically and politically. If you can’t find grass-fed or humanelyraised beef from a local farmer, ask questions at your food coop or grocery store to find a beef from cows that were not given antibiotics or hormones.

Ingredients Marinade/Dressing: • 1/3 cup lime juice • 1/3 cup olive oil • ¼ cup packed fresh cilantro, chopped • 1-2 cloves garlic, minced • ¼ teaspoon hot pepper oil or hot pepper sauce • 3 teaspoons honey or sugar • 1 teaspoon sea salt • Freshly ground pepper • • • • •

1 pound sirloin or flank steak, 1-inch thick 3-4 cups salad greens, washed, dried and torn ½ small red onion, cut into half moons ½ cucumber, peeled, seeded, cut into half moons 1 8-ounce package soba noodles

Preparation time:

1-12 hours for marinade, then 20 minutes

4 servings

Procedure Combine lime juice, oil, cilantro, garlic, hot pepper oil, honey, salt and pepper in a small bowl. Whisk together and set aside. Place meat between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and pound on both sides to tenderize. Remove wrap and place meat in a shallow pan. Pour half of the dressing over the meat. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour or up to 12 hours. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Heat a cast iron or oven safe skillet with a teaspoon or so of oil. Place marinated steak in skillet and brown for a few minutes on each side. This is a good time to salt and pepper the meat. Transfer steak to the oven for 7-10 minutes. Check center for doneness (red for medium rare, pink for medium) and remove from oven when it is redder than you desire. While meat is cooking, boil water for noodles and prepare according to package directions. Transfer meat to a carving board and let rest 10 minutes before slicing into thin slices on a diagonal against the grain of the meat. To assemble place a small bed of noodles on each plate. Toss the greens, onion, and cucumber with almost all of the remaining dressing and divide among 4 plates. Top each plate of noodles and salad with an equal portion of steak slices and a drizzle of dressing.

Grilled Vegetable Salad with Sweet Poppyseed Dill Dressing Ingredients Salad: • 1 eggplant, cut in ½-inch rounds • 1 red pepper, cut in large wedges • 1 onion, cut in large wedges • 1 summer squash, cut in long, fat strips • 1 zucchini, cut in long, fat strips • 10 big mushrooms • Extra-virgin olive oil • 8 cups salad greens • 1-2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled Dressing: • 4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil • 3 tablespoons brown rice vinegar • 2 tablespoons maple syrup • 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard • 2 teaspoons poppyseeds • 1 tablespoon fresh dill or 1 teaspoon dried dill

Feathery little dill leaves pine to get close to big late summer vegetables and together they dance. Grilled vegetables are delicious whether served over rice, in a pocket pita or in this incredible salad. Thanks to Susan Wilson for the inspiration.

Preparation time:

30 minutes

8 servings 2/3 cup dressing

Procedure Heat up your grill (a small hibachi works fine). While grill is heating, prepare vegetables. Wash and cut them and brush both sides of each vegetable piece with a light coat of oil. Place vegetable pieces on hot grill and cook a few minutes on each side, until the vegetables just start to brown. Set aside grilled vegetables. Wash salad greens by placing leaves in a sink full of cold water. Drain and repeat. Spin or pat dry. Tear greens into bite-sized pieces and place in a large salad bowl. Cut grilled vegetables into bite-sized pieces and add them to salad greens. Crumble feta on top. Whisk all ingredients for dressing together or shake up in a small jar. Dress and toss salad before serving. Save any leftover grilled vegetables to make sandwiches the next day.

Recipes reprinted with permission from Feeding the Whole Family (third edition) by Cynthia Lair (Sasquatch Books, 2008). Photos: Shutterstock & Thinkstock

INTRODUCTION

Getting Naked … is “Getting Real” about HEALTH W

e live in a world scope-locked on what our bodies look like. Are we thin enough? Does our physique conform to societies’ ideals? Popular television shows like The Biggest Loser® emphasize diet and exercise as the path to a healthier life, but the question arises: Are diet, exercise and body image all there is to achieving health?

of attaining greater states of health and well-being? SuperConsciousness addressed these questions and more with eleven emissaries of our more advanced future health care systems. They have played and continue to play important roles in the evolution of our understanding about health, healing and wellness.

understanding about healing from a purely physiological perspective to one that encompassed physical injury as a valid and demonstrable system of energy expansion.

But then, changing one’s life is what health is all about, and Dr. Joan Borysenko is a living example of that earned, personal truth. Although considered a pioneer in integrative medicine, she has come to understand If not, what then is the essence of For Dr. Bernie Siegel – or Bernie, as he that health and wellness are not about wellness? Is it simply about our bodies prefers to be called – it was the lessons what kinds of medicines are used and how they look, or does health also taught him by his surgical patients to mitigate illness (pharmaceutical encompass the whole of who and what about their miraculous capacity to or alternative), but that illness we are – our thoughts, our feelings, our self-heal that changed the direction of itself is an opportunity to transform attitudes, our minds, our relationships, his career. He started out as an elite, oneself and to engage life from new and our ethics, as well as our interface western-trained surgeon, but through perspectives and attitudes. She agrees with the non-material world of energy his fascination with watching miracles that paying attention to the basics – and information beyond our bodies, unfold, he became a physician driven to nutrition, exercise, rest, some form perhaps even beyond space and time? understand how the human mind and sheer will are more effective healers than of contemplative meditation – are fundamental requirements for everyone’s Further, can we realistically think of his scalpel. Bernie shares his insights life, and in this issue she also provides us ourselves as healthy when we carry in both an article and an interview with ten key elements to help us better grudges, or if we ignore long-standing about how resilient, “bad” patients who negotiate today’s stressful environments. emotional habits and attitudes? What take proactive roles towards their own is the difference between experiencing healing are ultimately more successful at Supporting our bodies is not the an emotion and being caught in its web, reclaiming their health. only important change we make to only to recreate the experience of that understand health. Research evidence emotional chemical over and over? Dr. Joe Dispenza – “Dr. Joe” of What clearly shows that the relationship How does an increasing awareness the Bleep fame – shares his story about between our thoughts and attitudes is a of our thoughts, feelings, dreams, doing just that: Being the proverbial bad paramount component in our experience and challenges provide us with the patient, taking responsibility and then of well-being. Perhaps the person who opportunities to awaken into greater directing his healing regimen after a lifelevels of health? changing accident, an event that ultimately has done more than anyone to bring that understanding to our attention is Louise changed the course of his focus and And, how do we create and engage a life career. And Matrix Repatterning physician Hay. We are honored to pay her tribute by including a short excerpt from her rich with change and transformation Dr. Dan Gleeson shares his story of how newest book. as an integral and life-long journey he passionately evolved his chiropractic SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

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If attitudes and perspectives are important components in shaping the future quality of our lives, they would continue to be so during our later decades. Psychologist and Harvard Professor Dr. Ellen Langer conducted some interesting research decades ago showing that revisiting the past and happier times has a demonstrable effect on the markers used to determine age, and a spunky, ice-cream eating 98-year old shares with us some of her perspectives about maintaining joy and happiness during her almost century of life. Have you ever experienced trying too hard to be healthy? John Parkin just says, “F**k It!” He created The F**k It Way as his own form of discipline to assist him in releasing self-imposed “have-to’s” and the stresses of the world generally. As shocking as it might initially sound, just saying “F**k It” provides a surprising release of tension, that in this day and age, everyone can use to their advantage! What if we allow ourselves to keep hidden and buried the emotions we are most ashamed of, or that we try to protect and suppress? How does that affect our health? Life coach Debbie Ford undertook exposing her own demons to realize that what goes unaddressed in our lives not only wreaks havoc, but is also the door into experiencing and expressing our greatest potentials.

Psychologist and Vedic Astrologer Brent BecVar agrees. He carried the shame of the experiences in childhood of systematic sexual abuse by trusted Catholic leaders. His journey of healing brought him to an extraordinary understanding: It was his emotional vulnerability that was at the heart of what truly needed to be addressed and healed. Today he integrates that wisdom in his practice. What exactly is mind, and how does it play a role in our experience of wellness? Dr. Daniel Siegel, a preeminent researcher and clinician has brought to the scientific arena a working definition of ‘mind’ – one that extends our understanding of mind to include our relationships. This verifiable hypothesis broadens our concepts of health to include our social networks. If mind, then, can be demonstrated to extend outside the physical body, the implications become exponential, and have yet to be fully explored by most of us. Yet there does exist repeated phenomena that are unexplainable by current societal and scientific means, and the extraordinary Brazilian healer John of God is one such anomaly. Dr. Miceal Ledwith was invited to stay in the healer’s home recently and shares his story about the experience.

As our knowledge and understanding increases about the functioning of our bodies, our brains, our emotions, our states of mind, and the complex ways in which those coalesce to become what we refer to as ‘our lives,’ so, too, does our understanding about what constitutes a ‘healthy life.’ Subsequently we evolve beyond a mindset that is exclusively physical and extend our understanding into a more mature perception of ourselves – one that is not central to the body, but includes the body. Everyone we spoke with reinforced the fact that developing the ability to focus our attention beyond the physical was integral in healing. Thus, for many, the genuine journey of regaining health often becomes one of profound spiritual awakening. All of us here at SuperConsciousness hope you enjoy this issue and utilize these concepts to transform your life into one of continuous change and well-being.

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MINDSCOPE

Reclaiming Health is About Changing Our Lives Interview with Dr. Joan Borysenko By Editor-in-Chief Danielle Graham

Joan Borysenko

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oan Borysenko, medical scientist, psychologist and educator, possesses an unforgettable warmth. She openly strives to “meet people where they are” and in doing so, instantly establishes rapport. Her presentations sound more like spiritual inspiration than medical advice, but her professional accomplishments and scientific credentials are unquestionable: An elite education from Harvard Medical School including three post-doctoral fellowships, groundbreaking work as a clinician, co-founder and director of one the first Mind/Body clinics in the US, and a thriving career as an author of fourteen books including the New York Times bestseller Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. Yet, what truly distinguishes her in the field of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is the fact that she walks her talk. Through the experiences of her own challenges and personal transformation, she has effectively bridged scientific credibility with spiritual integrity. As a result, Borysenko radiates an authentic love and compassion that endears her to both professional and lay audiences alike. SuperConsciousness Magazine is honored to bring you Dr. Borysenko as this issue’s featured interview.

SC: You’ve played an important role in bringing about a broader, more comprehensive understanding of the nature of health, healing and wellness. What do you see as the relevant differences between traditional, pharmaceutical-based medicine, the integration of alternative therapies into our current health care practices, and the pursuit of a greater understanding about wellness? JB: I’ve been in this field since when it was first called holistic medicine in the 1970’s, so I’ve had a long time to watch the evolution of medicine. During that time, what I’ve noticed are many concerns and attitudes that bring people to alternative medicine. On one end of the spectrum are those people who are simply just trying to avoid pharmaceutical medicine. Rather than looking at health and wellness to include all the forces of life, from environmental forces to emotional forces to spiritual kinds of things, you have just the opposite: Those who approach alternative healing as in “This is a way that I can avoid chemotherapy.”

my point of view, that is what wellness is all about. When I think about wellness, it includes psychological health, human maturation, and spiritual growth. Together, they are all a part of wellness and exist at the opposite end of the spectrum from the people that attempt to avoid treatment. And, of course, there’s everything in between.

into the trap of really becoming like specialists of any type who only see their specialty instead of the whole. True complementary medicine follows that definition of supporting the growth of the whole person and the facilitation of that growth no matter what discipline you’re in. It’s a rare clinic that’s able to bring it all together, and that’s the challenge. The alternative for a person seeking wellness is to put together a team, because putting together the team for one’s self is an extraordinarily empowering thing and an important part of the process. At the same time, you have to be extremely motivated to do that as well as possess a certain capacity to figure out what kind of treatments you might need and where to look.

The National Institute of Complementary and Alternative Medicine describes illness as an opportunity for personal growth and healthcare providers as able to facilitate a person’s growth by working along with them. From my point of view, that is what wellness is all about.

Yet, The National Institute of Complementary and Alternative Medicine describes illness as an opportunity for personal growth and healthcare providers as able to facilitate a person’s growth by working along with them. From

What I do see in this country is a definite interest, a growing consumer driven interest, in looking at wellness. And that, of course, is why hospitals have put in their own wellness departments and complementary medicine departments. It’s really because that’s what the public is asking for. Unfortunately, many of those departments, to be quite honest, don’t really make it because they’re not utilized well, or they’re a hodgepodge. Clinics will bring in somebody who does Reiki, another who does acupuncture, someone who teaches mindfulnessbased stress reduction, and somebody who teaches yoga. There’s a sense that it’s a little bit like complementary, but healthcare providers can easily fall

I think we have an awfully long way to go but at least we’re moving in the right direction. For most people it is much easier to ask for a pill or ask for a homeopathic remedy or go for an acupuncture treatment than it is to reflect on one’s life and understand that adverse childhood experiences have a relationship to health later in life. SC: How important is it to address childhood experiences for obtaining or maintaining wellness?

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For most people it is much easier to ask for a pill or ask for a homeopathic remedy or go for an acupuncture treatment than it is to reflect on one’s life and understand that adverse childhood experiences have a relationship to health later in life. Once a person experiences being diabetic, having heart disease or obesity, it’s very difficult behaviorally to exercise or to change the diet when it is relational to their childhood. Most people don’t want to go there, and that’s the challenge most people are up against. The most interesting research that’s come out in the last decade is called the ACE studies.* [Adverse Childhood Experiences]

important part of healing, but it’s a hard sell for people.

thoughts as ‘whatever I do is never good enough. When anything goes wrong, it’s my own fault. That this is the story of my life and it’s pervasive through every part of my life.’ People begin to understand their explanatory style, and only with that awareness can people actually look at their thoughts and make other choices.

Questions are asked like, ‘How do you manage stress? What is it to be stress SC: What have you found that helps hardy?’ And that leads directly into people be more committed to negotiating ‘Where did you learn these things?’ that path? Emotions that have been most familiar throughout life are addressed and JB: It’s very empowering for people when questioned with ‘What have you always they realize they can learn how to change done with those emotions?’ their breathing, learn meditation, learn mindfulness, learn yoga, and notice right There was certainly an emphasis on The ACE studies really gets to the bottom away a decrease in symptoms. That’s emotional literacy and it touches on very basic, and the first set of skills of things. If we really want to talk about childhood and the kinds of things we people have to learn. wellness, we need to start with our learned as children. When you have children, and to do that, first we have to issues left from childhood, you’re often heal ourselves. We have to go far enough From there, the next step is to address left with a sense of learned helplessness emotional intelligence and the fact that back and address our issues so that we and that helplessness ripens into there’s a tremendous amount of chronic depression. That’s actually the best don’t automatically hand the difficulties stress that comes from the state of we had in our families off to our kids. cognitive model of depression and that learned helplessness related to such Research shows this to be a very comes from Dr. Martin Seligman’s work on Positive Psychology. *http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ace/ and http://www.acestudy.org/

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SC: What is the relationship between the manifestation of physiological and psychological disease, reviewing childhood issues, and forgiveness and selfforgiveness?

with a soul, as a human being with a body, with emotion, with a family system – all of those things.

directly out of childhood experiences and the subsequent lens then through which they viewed the world. I sent a lot of people to therapy over the years, and many of them learned. They were actually glad to begin to touch on those things once they really realized the amount of pain they carried. Through the years, I’ve also been a tremendous proponent of the Hoffman Quadrinity Process.

When you have issues left from childhood, you’re often left with a sense of learned helplessness and that helplessness ripens into depression. That’s actually the best cognitive model of depression.

JB: The second book I wrote, Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson, was based on nine years of Those that could not heal were still clinical observations; that there were always people who picked up the ball and fragmented, they were emotionally bothered and their symptoms weren’t ran with it. improving at all. And when I really began to ask what is it that prevents people I noticed that a lot of people just don’t from healing, it became very clear like themselves and they were always that the largest thing was holding onto down on themselves. And, of course, they blame themselves, they can’t forgive regrets and resentments, which came themselves, they project that, they blame others, they can’t forgive others. After watching all of this, I began to notice the qualities of those who did not transform themselves. You know, the word ‘heal’ really comes from the Anglo Saxon root haelen, which means to make whole: A human being

The Hoffman Process views the human being as a quandrinity, or four parts: A physical body, within that body the

When I really began to ask what is it that prevents people from healing, it became very clear that the largest thing was holding onto regrets and resentments, which came directly out of childhood experiences and the subsequent lens then through which they viewed the world. www.superconsciousness.com

adult reasoning intellectual self, and an emotional self that is frequently the unhealed emotional child that carries on a dialogue with the intellect. And, then, of course, there is a person’s spiritual self. The process includes healing your relationships with your parents, understanding how you developed as you did, and how those patterns of behavior and thought were developed since childhood. It’s a weeklong process and includes looking at the patterns of behavior that your parents had before you were even born. If we either adopt the behaviors of our parents, we’ll be loved and become just like them, and even if we rebel against those behaviors, there’s attachment to the parents one way or another.

incredibly deep. Nothing, of course, is perfect for everyone, but it has done a tremendous amount of good. There are many ways to help yourself forgive the past and the Hoffman Process is certainly one of them.

then be able to make a conscious choice, to engage in more conscious evolution of wellness and action in the world, and then to develop compassion toward other people. It’s different for different people, so there’s no way that I can generalize except that frequently serious illness is that tipping point for people.

SC: What were the circumstances in which people make the choice to address their issues and say, “I’m done with this. I Another thing that I started to notice when working at the hospital was the want to be done with this forever”? anatomy of change. For instance, let’s say a woman just found out that she has JB: Why people want to be done with it uterine cancer or breast cancer or lung is because they become so miserable. cancer, or whatever it might be. What That’s always the impetus. There are was frequently said to me was, ‘the day that I got my diagnosis I felt like I died right then and there. I just died.’

Why people want to be done with it is because they become so miserable. That’s always the impetus. There are relatively few people who simply say “well, my life is pretty good and I have a sense that if I did all this work it would be even better.”

That’s actually true. That’s what a change process really is. You begin by dying to relatively few people who simply say The first couple of days are really for who you were. You can never go back to understanding the patterns of the parents. “well, my life is pretty good and I have a sense that if I did all this work it would be the way your life was before because it’s They call it prosecution of the parents; irretrievably broken. It’s like the ground even better.” get your anger out. The next couple of has opened up underneath you and days are very deep compassion processes swallowed you, like a trap door. SC: Have you observed that people only where you understand your parents and change through adversity? how come they are the way they are The second stage is a period of dwelling as best you can. They do this in a very JB: I think there’s a tipping point for most in that place between no longer and brilliant way. The training culminates people between the desire to wake up, to not yet. And that’s been written about with a sense of self-forgiveness that’s SuperConsciousness Summer 2010 SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

31 eating right, but they don’t bother because they’re depressed. That despair and depression really shortcuts what could be happening in terms of transformation. At best, it prolongs the process. At worst, it really blocks the process. There are other people who really start to transform in that place of uncertainty. They start to do the things that maybe they’ve known were important before, but are really important now like reaching out and looking for who truly are their allies. ‘Who are my mentors? What can I learn?’ And later in the process, they begin to mentor and help those they can help. in many different traditions from the anthropological to the spiritual, like the Jews wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Jesus cut it down to 40 days. He was very speedy after his temptation by the devil, before he returned from that liminal space completely transformed with something new to give to the family of humanity. The difficulty is making it through the liminal space. That time between no longer and not yet. Yes, a person may have the experience of death, but they haven’t yet gotten to the point of rebirth.

Perhaps they are supposed to be exercising or they’re supposed to be

SC: What about personal expectations? JB: You know, the thing that comes up time and time and time again, and I always go over it because it’s never

There are other people who really start to transform in that place of uncertainty. They start to do the things that maybe they’ve known were important before, but are really important now like reaching out and looking for who truly are their allies. ‘Who are my mentors? What can I learn?’

The study of people who are resilient is really a study of people old territory, is ‘new age guilt’. I have who have a sense of how to survive that liminal space, that period of uncertainty. I spent a greater part of my career trying to explain to people that yes, you are think that’s incredibly important. responsible for your health to a large degree, to the degree that you eat right, The third phase of the change process that you exercise, that you learn to is when you come back transformed manage your emotions, and all of that. and your life has really become more But in spite of the absolute best that you conscious and you’ve developed the do, people get sick anyhow, and often we capacity to author your own unique don’t know the reason. gifts to other people. There has been an

That’s what a change process really is. You begin by dying to who you were. You can never go back to the way your life was before because it’s irretrievably broken. It’s like the ground has opened up underneath you and swallowed you, like a trap door. During that time of uncertainty, I’ve noticed one of two things tend to happen. One of them is that a certain number of people simply give up hope and often give up on their medical treatment, or they become lackluster about paying attention to what they should be doing.

a whole other set of skills. And then he comes back with the manhood skills to take his place in a different way. Explained correctly, it can be more empowering when people think, ‘I’m an initiate in the rite of passage instead of the victim of some random horror.’

expansion of who you are as a human being, a kind of revelation of essence. So, I used to give an anatomy of change lecture to all of my patients and to tell them it’s like an initiatory thing. And, you know, when a boy in Africa undergoes an initiation, and he’s taken from the mother’s hut, it’s really scary just like getting ill. And then for a year he has to wander in the wilderness and learn

Unfortunately, there are people who want to oversimplify illness by saying, ‘You were thinking wrong. You attracted it to yourself.’ Those kinds of comments picked up again after The Secret came out. There is a middle ground. Back in 1989 there was a conference on holistic health in medicine in Bangalore, India, in which Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama were co-sponsors. During the event a woman from the West and a man from an Eastern country were asked to sit with His Holiness and talk about health and healing. I got to be the woman from the West, and there was a wonderful psychiatrist from India who was the man from the East. We were charged with asking questions of His Holiness that we thought were very, very www.superconsciousness.com

contexts of which we’re a part. That begins to happen through childhood healing and peeling away some of that mask that we have, those patterns we adopted so that we could stay safe in our family of origin, and then reconnecting with our own self.

Unfortunately, there are people who want to oversimplify illness by saying, ‘You were thinking wrong. You attracted it to yourself.’ Those kinds of comments picked up again after The Secret came out. important to ask. The first question I asked him was the new-age guilt question: “So many of my patients feel guilty because they believe that they have caused their illness through their thinking. What is your perspective? What is the most conscious, enlightened thing I could tell them?”

SC: What are some of the other ways people tend to block achieving wellness?

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We recreate the image of God with the image of our parents and all of that comes up when people are facing an illness and all of these old religious beliefs come up. Many patients will say ‘I’m not religious, I’m spiritual,’ but they hadn’t really contemplated deeply what their beliefs actually were. Those old thoughts came back and grabbed them.

I ask them if they have a theory about why they’re ill. What surprised me was how many people will say “I must have done something to offend God.”

JB: When somebody comes to see me who is significantly ill, I ask them if they have a theory about why they’re ill. What surprised me was how many people will say “I must have done something to offend God.” When we’re really stressed and frightened we will regress to the most infantile of childhood beliefs. That was the most popular belief as to why It’s the journey of maturation as a human people thought they were sick. being – understanding the breadth of that context, and how we cooperate Then the next most popular belief was I in enriching and purifying the various brought it upon myself with my thinking. Essentially what he said was that they should not be so simpleminded, and realize that there are many different routes. “There are genetic routes, there are environmental routes, there are emotional routes, there are, you know, relational routes.” He went on simply naming them and stating that a person can’t oversimplify to say that you created your own illness without understanding context.

And then a very small minority, maybe 10%, would say that it’s a mystery, “I may never know that, so I’m just going to concentrate on what it takes to get better.”

I’ve come to realize that much of the work I have done I call soul care because people needed a place to talk about meaning. What does this mean? What do I believe? It’s an important process to help one engage their own healing journey. For more information about Joan Borysenko, go to www.joanborysenko.com Photos: Thinkstock

A Few Recommended Paths for Healing This issue of SuperConsciousness Magazine is rich with references to healing methodologies and techniques that have been effectively utilized for personal transformation by the many medical professionals we interviewed for this issue. Here is a short list of their recommendations:

Hoffman Quadrinity Process – An intensive designed to review why you behave the way you do, examine parental influence on your thinking, and free oneself through forgiveness. Recommended by Dr. Joan Borysenko. http://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/

EMDR – A comprehensive psychological information processing therapy that addresses self-esteem issues and stress disorders related to severe emotional and physical trauma. Originally designed to assist Vietnam veterans in healing from war-related PTSD. Recommended by Brent BecVar. http://www.emdr.com/

The Shadow Effect – Debbie Ford’s comprehensive online course designed to address and ultimately free yourself from your hidden, darkest, most shameful thoughts. Home study course available. Highly recommended by Brent BecVar. http://store.debbieford.com/pages.php?pID=49 Matrix Repatterning – A hands-on therapy that alleviates the underlying causes of pain and structural imbalances in soft tissue, organs and bones using a blend of physical and energy manipulation. Recommended by Dr. Dan Gleeson. http://www.matrixrepatterningcenter.com/MRC-index.htm

Mindsight Institute – Online courses designed to increase the ability for the human mind to see itself so as to better understand and address our inner lives with greater clarity, transform the brain, and enhance our relationships with others. Recommended by Dr. Daniel Siegel. http://www.mindsightinstitute.com/

Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment – Considered by the SuperConsciousness Media staff to be the most comprehensive knowledge and training for complete life transformation available anywhere in the world. Home study course available. http://homestudy.ramtha.com/hsp/

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Thinkstock & Dan Gleeson

FROM PHYSICAL TO ENERGETIC The Evolution of Dr.

Dan Gleeson

Dr. Dan Gleeson of Thunder Bay, Canada, is not your everyday, run-of-the-mill chiropractor. He began training straight out of high school in 1958, and in those days, the methodology was “redneck chiropractics – anything goes” in so much as they utilized every technique available to them.

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of the IKAC physicians would obtain information from a patient’s body would evolve into kind of shorthand. Gleeson developed this new client/ chiropractor communication along with fellow physicians Terry Franks and Alan Beardall. The new and quicker Q&A methodology would simplify the process and enable them to become more effective at addressing the complex issues related to attitudes that were held unconsciously by the client. As one A new level of professional training began of the leaders who helped to advance with the International College of Applied this field of chiropractics, Gleeson was impassioned with communicating his Kinesiology (ICAK) of which he was a ever-advancing knowledge, and soon founding member. He helped to develop a systematic way to teach what the more teaching other physicians became a personal mission. At the same time, he progressive members of the group were continued to keep himself open for new finding in their clinical practices, thus I knowledge while also progressing his began an almost nineteen year span of teaching for the organization, which now clinical practice. has over 8,000 members worldwide. Additionally, Gleeson’s spiritual In the same “redneck – anything goes” knowledge and experience increased as a result of his training at Ramtha’s spirit, the leadership of ICAK worked collectively to advance their knowledge: School of Enlightenment, and so did the depth of his understanding about They merged their client’s results health and healing. Soon he began to and the most successful applications would then become integrated into the recognize another level of information exchange between himself and his training curricula. patients that he attributed to the body’s biofield, or, the realms of frequency Traditional kinesiology is a binary energy that surrounds the human question/answer system of interfacing body. By 2001, he was introduced to an with a patient’s body. A practitioner advanced healing system called Matrix begins a session by first determining Repatterning (MR). The methodology of what constitutes a “yes” response and the same for “no” by asking the patient’s this technique was consistent with his evolving experiences and he became body a series of questions. During the excited by its possibilities. course of a visit, all three fundamental, medically related aspects of a person will For many people, MR is quite abstract be queried and addressed: The physical and challenging to understand, but it is (structural), biochemical (nutritional, completely in alignment with the laws hormonal, etc.), and mental/emotional of physics: When energy is displaced, (emotions, attitudes, conscious or it expands. MR recognizes the body unconscious). Once a practitioner has as a complex molecular/energetic established clear communication with structure. When injury occurs, the the patient’s body, questions are then body absorbs the trauma, particularly shifted to address the specific ailment. in the skeleton and fluid filled organs, and those cells go rigid. As a result, Over time, the system by which several espite his extensive and, according to the standards of the time, well-rounded training, by his second year of private practice, he had begun to experience frustration due to the fact that he wasn’t always seeing results. He soon enrolled in post-graduate courses and thus began a lifetime of building his knowledge base. Once he did, he was, as he puts it, “blown away” by what he didn’t know.

the molecules of those cells expand, thus forcing the body’s fascia to distend and stretch. Homeostasis, the body’s state of functional harmony, is disrupted and can stay so for years or even decades until the body releases those energy blockages. As long as the fascia remains displaced, the energetic expansions place stress on the entire system of connected organs, soft tissue, and skeleton. Gleeson’s MR training enables him to first check the stress load carried by the body’s interconnected fascia. Then, by working through levels within levels, from very general whole body systems to very specific areas of cells, he is able to help the body release structural, biochemical and mental/emotional energetic energy blockages due to injury. Even though it is well outside the comfort zone of most practicing chiropractors, Gleeson has also come to terms with the fact that he is also capable of addressing issues and attitudes that a patient may possess at birth. This phenomenon opens the door to non-traditional concepts such as reincarnation – an arena of knowledge not yet accepted by mainstream medicine. In the course of his decades of service and healing, he has uncovered many ways to help facilitate greater awareness as an integral part of the process of personal change and transformation. Dan Gleeson started out as a purely physical, mass-to-mass chiropractor, but over time, his ideas about healing and his role in helping facilitate a patient to attain wellness has evolved. By impeccably following his passion to learn and experience ever-advancing systems of knowledge, he found himself exploring realms of healing in unpredictable but deeply satisfying ways. For Gleeson, the personal message of healing he imparts to every client through his work is “know that you have always been well.”

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onsider this scenario: a friend or family member asks you to do something you don’t want

to do. How do you respond? Do you feel obligated to help but secretly feel resentful, or become anxious about saying no? The answer may have a direct impact on your state of health, says the legendary Dr. Bernie Siegel. Learning to say no means saying yes to what he calls “our authentic selves” and requires self-love and self-empowerment, both of which are critical in the healing process. Siegel is a pioneer in the medical world, famous for first bringing attention to the role of thoughts and emotions in disease. While still a practicing surgeon, he broke radically from the medical ranks in the 1970’s, hugging his patients, listening to their stories and using drawings and visualization techniques as part of their treatment. Whenever a patient requested music during surgery, refused medication or demanded to be seen as a human being rather than an illness, the hospital staff would nod to

Bernie Siegel

Love Yourself into Health Interview with

Dr. Bernie Siegel

each other, “Must be one of Siegel’s.” His impact on the profession has been huge; today, practices that were considered outlandish when he began them are accepted as commonplace. More importantly, scientists have conducted an avalanche of studies documenting the impact of thoughts and feelings on the body. Siegel, meanwhile, continues to share his stories of what he calls “Exceptional Patients” who took responsibility, not only for their health but for their attitudes and beliefs that contributed to disease. SuperConsciousness talked with him about love, empowerment and the health benefits of changing your mind.

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37 SC: You’ve said that the fundamental problem most patients face is an inability to love themselves. How so?

want to do is be bitter and resentful and angry, you’re never going to find out who you are.

BS: The biggest public health issue on the planet is parenting, because the first few years of one’s life one is in a hypnotic trance, literally. Anyone giving you negative messages sets you up for a very difficult life. These are quotes from people: “My mother’s words were eating away at me and maybe gave me cancer.” Now that was a woman who was told she’d be a failure, was dressed in dark colors, and had to get a life-threatening illness to buy a pretty dress and to start living her life.

Listening helps, too. It isn’t just visual. When you’re willing to sit and listen, like I did with that woman whose entire family committed suicide, she was in such a rage that I didn’t know what to do for her. I just sat and let her scream and yell and rant and rave. After a few months it all emptied out and she calmed down and started a new life.

Go into a high school and ask the students to write a suicide note for homework, and then write a love note about themselves for homework. You’ll get three to five pages on why I ought to commit suicide, and lucky if you get a full page on why I’m worth loving. Seventy percent of high school students have considered suicide, and it’s the fourth leading cause of death among ten to fourteen year olds. So here we go.

BS: Quiet the mind. That’s the key. When you quiet your mind and your life, that might mean abandoning your past; you let go of it so you’re not in constant turmoil. A quiet mind, a quiet life, you can see your reflection through new eyes. I am a swan. I am a beautiful creature. But if you don’t quiet it, it doesn’t matter who comes along and who helps you. If all you

If you’re living a role, it’s bad for your health. These are quotes from men: “If I can’t work any more, what’s the point of living?” and the family is sitting in the room. Women say, “I can’t die until they’re all married and out of the house.” When the kids are all married and out of the house, her cancer comes back and she dies. It’s getting them to be empowered, live authentically – not a role.

Quiet the mind. That’s the key. When you quiet your mind and your life, that might mean abandoning your past; you let go of it so you’re not in constant turmoil. SC: How do you see the relationship between loving yourself and empowering yourself?

BS: When you’re empowered, you don’t have a problem saying no. One of the most important queries is what’s called ‘immune competent personality One woman, whose parents told their children to commit suicide and then they questions,’ being asked to do something you do not want to do, how do you did, is alive today because I said, “I love respond? This can be family or friends you and I care about you,” and I listened to her pain. She was able to empty it out. asking you to do something, and you don’t want to do it. What do you say? Nurses have a lot of trouble with that. What you do is rebirth yourself. If someone comes along and loves you, and They’re busy saving the world, so the majority of them say, “Oh, I’d go do it.” is not indifferent, does not reject, does You see, then you’re not empowering not abuse, but persists in loving even if they don’t like what you’re doing, what I found with my patients was that three to six months later, they began to realize that they were worth something. SC: What if they don’t have that outer reflection and want to work on loving themselves – what can they do?

being selfish, you’re just doing what feels right and living your authentic life.

SC: How have you seen what happens when people do transform themselves and their relationships to health?

BS: People with incurable illnesses rebirth themselves and don’t die when they’re supposed to. It could be that instead of dying in two months, you live five and a half years, but I also know people who, instead of dying, lived over twenty years and died at age ninety-four. When you do what makes you lose track of time, you’re in that kind of trance state. If you get into something really creative and have no sense of time, you’ll also have no sense of your body, and your body will feel wonderful. I always say, you can’t grow old and you can’t be sick if you never know what time it is, because you’re in an incredible state. I say this from personal experience, whether in the operating room or painting.

When you do what makes you lose track of time, you’re in that kind of trance state. If you get into something really creative and have no sense of time, you’ll also have no sense of your body, and your body will feel wonderful. yourself – you’re saying ‘no’ to yourself. So when you have self-worth and selfesteem, you pay attention to your life time. You don’t waste it doing what others impose on you. You say, “no” and then you’re empowered. It comes from selfworth, self-esteem, self-love. You’re not

SC: You work with people’s belief systems in order to heal them, and whatever they believe in is empowered, so it works. Have you worked with people who believe that they are the ones actually doing the healing, rather than crediting Christianity or biofeedback, etc.? www.superconsciousness.com

BS: I think there is potential in the person. I also know that others can heal me, because I’ve had that happen. So I think that both things are possible. Do you have to believe? Yes. The mind is incredibly powerful. If you believe you’re being treated, you respond as if you are. I’m talking about things like chemotherapy, radiation – when people think they’re getting drugs or think they’re getting radiated, they react as if they are. Some of them react in a positive way, tumors shrinking, and others react with all kinds of side effects, even thought they’re not getting any treatment.

SC: It seems like the next step is for all of crayon she picks up out of the whole box us to have that faith in ourselves. is black. BS: There’s a sentence I love from Ernest Holmes, the founder of religious science: “What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?” I’m sure he was laughing when he wrote that. What I try to get across to people is, think about your potential. Don’t die because of statistics. It’s about not dying because of someone’s prediction.

If you believe you’re being treated, you respond as if you are. I’m talking about things like chemotherapy, radiation – when people think they’re getting drugs or think they’re getting radiated, they react as if they are.

One doctor who really impressed me is a radiation therapist. He said he had just done the routine inspection of his machine and realized that he hadn’t treated anyone for a month, because when they’d repaired the machine, they forgot to put the radioactive materials back in. He was telling me that he felt terrible, and I told him, “You’d have to be an idiot to not know that you’re treating people. You’re obviously having people whose tumors are shrinking and are having side effects, so you thought you were treating them.” His eyes almost bulged out of his head when he really stopped to think about how people reacted, even though he wasn’t treating them.

I told her, “Three or four times a day, I want you to stop and visualize yourself going to the hospital and having surgery. It’s successful, you feel well, and then you’re going home.” A week later she came into the office and I said, “Draw another picture.” It was gorgeous. There’s four legs on the table, the room is filled with doctors, and her family is right around the table. There’s a window in the operating room where God’s light is shining in. It’s just such a healing scene. It was obvious that she could go now and do well.

The visualization can reprogram you, because your body doesn’t know you’re not experiencing it. When people SC: Based on your own experience anticipate, it’s imagery. When people say, and what you’ve seen, what is actually “I’m going to get chemotherapy,” their happening during visualization and why is immune function is already going down it such a powerful tool? as they’re driving to the hospital, because they’re imagining what’s going to happen. BS: Actors were on a stage and a They’re already living it. graduate student handed them a script, first for a comedy, then for a tragedy. This SC: How has your understanding changed was part of his research, and he drew since you began this work? their blood while they were reading this script. While they were performing in the BS: I accept my mortality as my therapist. comedy, their immune function increased If I’m here for a limited time, I don’t give my power away to people. I’m only in control of my own thoughts, so I don’t spend my time being miserable because of what somebody else has done to me. I and their stress hormone levels went resolve it some way, let go and move on. down. The opposite happened with the I don’t want that to keep robbing me of a tragedy. He was amazed. joyful life.

Visualization can reprogram you, because your body doesn’t know you’re not experiencing it. When people anticipate, it’s imagery. When people say, “I’m going to get chemotherapy,” their immune function is already going down as they’re driving to the hospital.

So when someone comes to me and For more information about says, “I’m having surgery,” I say “Draw Dr. Bernie Siegel, go to yourself in the operating room.” Literally, http://www.berniesiegelmd.com/index.htm this one lady drew a black box, nobody is I often use the term, “I try to deceive people into health.” Would you be mad if I there taking care of her, and she’s lying on a table that only has two legs. The only lied to you and you got well? No!

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Hay House Publishing

Listening to Our Bodies By Louise L. Hay

The following excerpt is taken from the book Experience Your Good Now! Learning to use Affirmations by Louise L. Hay. It is published by Hay House (April 2010) and is available at all bookstores or online at www.hayhouse.com. Reprinted with permission from Hay House.

e very clear that your body is always trying to maintain a state of optimal health, no matter how badly you treat it. If you take good care of your body, it will reward you with vibrant health and energy.

Louise L. Hay, metaphysical lecturer and teacher, is also the author of one of the most revolutionary works of mind/body healing – the connection between our thoughts, unresolved emotions, and health. What began as the “little blue book,” Heal Your Body evolved into the best selling phenomenon, You Can Heal Your Life, and since 1984 has sold over 35 million

I believe that we contribute to every “illness” in our body. The body, as with everything else in life, is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. Our body is always talking to us, if we will only take the time to listen. Every cell within our bodies responds to every single thought we think. When we discover what the mental pattern is behind an illness, we have a chance to change the pattern and, therefore, the dis-ease. Most people don’t want to be sick on a conscious level, yet every dis-ease that we have is a teacher. Illness is the body’s way of telling us that there’s a false idea in our consciousness. Something that we’re believing, saying, doing, or thinking is not for our highest good. I always picture the body tugging at us, saying, “Please – pay attention.”

copies worldwide, as well as laid the groundwork for Hay House Publishing.

Sometimes people do want to be sick. In our society, we’ve made illness a legitimate way to avoid responsibility or unpleasant situations. If we can’t learn to say no, then we may have to invent a dis-ease to say no for us. True healing involves body, mind, and spirit. I believe that if we “cure” an illness yet do not address the emotional and spiritual issues that surround that ailment, it will only manifest again.

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40 Brent BecVar, , The Chopra Center

Ultimate SelfResponsibility and Forgiving Catholic Pedophiles The Amazing Journey of Brent BecVar By Editor-in-Chief Danielle Graham

rent BecVar is an extraordinary man. He has accomplished a level of universal forgiveness and self-responsibility that very few people ever achieve, even though he suffered what many would consider as the most heinous of crimes: Childhood sexual abuse from trusted religious leaders.

The abuse was not a single instance, but occurred multiple times at the hands of multiple clergy over many years. Likewise, his healing process spanned decades, but eventually brought him to a place of utter peace, and ultimate personal freedom. He had help along the way. As a young adult in the 60â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, his journey included psychedelics, spiritual mysticism, martial arts, and becoming a Yoga practitioner and instructor. He also pursued a Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Degree in Educational Psychology, motivated by the desire to understand himself better. After discovering certain innate skills, he spent eleven years working in the advertising industry. BecVar would eventually meet and work for Deepak Chopra, and for almost twenty years he has served as an administrator, teacher, counselor, and program director for The Chopra Center. Today, he is a highly sought-after Jyotish Astrology counselor and enjoys helping others to address the challenges in their lives utilizing this profound and mathematically sophisticated form of astrology that originated in the ancient Vedic tradition of India. SuperConsciousness Magazine is truly honored that Mr. BecVar has so generously shared his story with our readers and hopes others who have experienced similar brutalities will also find assistance and peace.

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SC: How did the sexual abuse unfold in your life? BB: I was raised Catholic: My parents were Catholic, I went to Catholic schools, and graduated from a Catholic college. I was the oldest of six kids. As a very young child, I didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting the same amount of attention I had initially gotten [before my brothers and sisters were born.] My father was away a lot and worked very hard. What I remember most is craving some kind of male protector: I used to wish for an older brother. When I tried to get more attention at home, I would be punished, and as a result I began to experience my first feelings of shame and thought I was not okay.

I began acting as though I was someone else. I didn’t want anyone to see who I was; I was so deeply ashamed of all of this. The whole thing just threw me into a state of confusion. It later affected my schooling and my relationships with other people. I don’t remember a lot about that time, but I do remember that they sent me to the school psychologist because they could tell something was wrong. The teachers were wondering what happened to Brent. Years later the psychologist was discovered to be a pedophile himself. It was everywhere. It turns out that the assistant pastor of my grade school was one of the most

wasn’t molested there, but the weight of oppression became unbearable. There was a lot of physical abuse in those days: The brothers didn’t hesitate to slap you or use other types of physical abuse. It was just a nightmare: The whole Catholic grade school experience and high school experience. I finally got into a public high school and started going to school with girls again, which was great. I conveniently forgot about the abuse of my childhood and just tried to be normal and get along in the world. During the 1960’s I began to experiment with psychedelics like a lot of my contemporaries, searching for some kind of meaning in life. I also had an interest in Eastern mysticism. The drugs eventually gave way to yoga and graduate school.

That I heard a radio interview where a woman was describing having experienced incest by her father and she eventually took him to court. There was something in this woman’s voice that just woke me up. I realized that I had been in denial of the fact that I am a victim of sexual abuse and it has messed up my whole life.

The sexual abuse began when I was nine-years old. I was sent off to a summer boarding Catholic prep school camp that was run by an order of religious brothers. At my grade school, there were only nuns, so at this camp I’m thinking, “Oh good, I’m going to have a protector, a friend, a mentor.”

But as with a lot of pedophile situations, the predators can really spot the vulnerable ones, and I was really vulnerable. During that summer, I was molested by one of these religious Brothers on a number of occasions. I really shut down at that point and became very afraid, very ashamed of everything that had happened.

virulent pedophiles in the state. He was molesting most of my friends at school, and it just got worse. The archdiocese knew but moved him from one parish to another where he continued to abuse children. There were a huge number of mostly boys who were victims of this guy. Later, I attended a Catholic high school that was run by the same order of brothers that had run the summer camp where I had first been molested. I stayed there for about two years until I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I

It wasn’t until I was forty years old that I heard a radio interview where a woman was describing having experienced incest by her father and she eventually took him to court. There was something in this woman’s voice that just woke me up. I realized that I had been in denial of the fact that I am a victim of sexual abuse and it has messed up my whole life. SC: How did you feel messed up? BB: I was in a state of constant anxiety; in constant fear of being attacked, or having

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Brent BecVar, The Chopra Center

my boundaries compromised. I became hyper-vigilant. I didn’t trust people. I saw men as predatory and didn’t trust them. I had male friends but many of my friends had been abuse victims themselves. We had our own solidarity.

of depression? Were there other physical and psychological symptoms? BB: Depression was a part of it. I just lived with it.

process was gradual. It wasn’t until I heard that radio interview that the light really came on. I just knew I had to get into therapy.

Later on and after I began working for Deepak, I made SC: Did you and a decision that your friends openly I needed to talk about it? confront the priest. I woke BB: We did. We up one night would joke about it and thought because we didn’t that I had to know what else write a letter to to do. We would the paper and try to lighten it tell them what happened. There were up because it was just devastating. But probably many other victims that don’t I wasn’t free. I was acting. I was putting we couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Who know they can get help. I knew they on a front to be accepted – to just get would have listened to us back then? Nobody. A lot of the boys tried to tell their along. I knew my real self was shut down. would be living in secret and living in the It was through yoga and meditation that I shame of what had happened to them. parents but the parents would not even began to let go of the need to perform or I decided I was going to tell my story. listen to what they had to say. Since my parents were friendly with the the need to act out in order to be liked. Archbishop, I thought, out of respect for SC: You stated that you had tucked the their relationship, I would write him a memories away, but they began to affect Everything changed during that period letter and tell him what I was going to do. your health anyway. Did you have periods of time. I began to wake up. That whole

We would joke about it because we didn’t know what else to do. We would try to lighten it up because it was just devastating. But we couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Who would have listened to us back then? Nobody. A lot of the boys tried to tell their parents but the parents would not even listen to what they had to say.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

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I got a letter back so fast from the Archbishop, stating that he was sorry about what happened and that he would like to support me in my healing. But he warned that if I wrote that letter to the local paper, my parents would have to bear the weight of the public disclosure. He really got me there. It was a very clever tactic on his part because I really felt the guilt of putting my parents through that. Of course, that is one of the reasons why I had never spoken up all those years in the first place: I wanted to protect my parents. Eventually, I was able to have a meeting with the assistant pastor. That was very helpful for me as part of this process of healing.

meet with me only on the condition that the therapist would be present because he wasn’t sure if I would take him by the throat. Instead, when I saw him, I thought that the guy was just pathetic.

horrible act of molesting children, of taking the power away from children, should never happen, but even I couldn’t continue to hold on to that hatred or hold on to judgment.

As a result of that confrontation, I was able to take a lot of my power back. He was the one afraid of me. I had been

At the time, I couldn’t say “I forgive you” and he wasn’t even asking for it then. He was just hoping that someday I could forgive him. After many years, I finally got to a place where I really felt ready to forgive him and I wrote him a letter. I wanted him to be able to move on with his own life and not to continue to live under the weight of this guilt. Even though he committed acts of violence against children, he didn’t have to continue to live with that. I told him that I forgave him and I hoped he would be able to forgive himself to have a better life.

As a result of that confrontation, I was able to take a lot of my power back. He was the one afraid of me. I had been willing to face him as an adult male. I took that damaged little boy in me by the hand and said, “Come on; we are going to confront this guy, this monster.” But he was no longer a monster, just this pathetic figure. That was a huge thing for me to experience.

willing to face him as an adult male. I took that damaged little boy in me by the hand and said, “Come on; we are going to confront this guy, this monster.” But he was no longer a monster, just this SC: Was he still an active pedophile after pathetic figure. That was a huge thing for me to experience. Later, he was all those years? convicted in both civil and criminal trials SC: In addition to Yoga and Meditation, and went to prison most likely for the rest did you employ any specific techniques BB: Yes, but he was in his eighties to help you heal from the trauma as of his life. and had terrible health problems. He well as addressing the role of victim of was a really pathetic old man, but still that abuse? SC: Did you still possess anger or dangerous and still in the employ of the Church. He was working as a chaplain at resentment towards him afterwards? BB: One of the most effective therapies an adult living place. They were trying to I used was EMDR [Eye Movement keep him away from children, but he was BB: I had no actual anger after the Desensitization and Reprocessing] – a still a free person and he could have gone confrontation. I felt only sadness for him. It wasn’t quite compassion yet, but type of therapy that was developed in the and done anything he wanted. 1970’s for the soldiers coming back from I recognized that the reality of abuse Vietnam that were suffering from Post was a part of the human drama. This He had a therapist and would agree to

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Traumatic Stress Disorder. The therapy utilizes a combination of technology while a person recalls experiences of trauma from their past. How I understand it is that when we experience trauma, and it’s not properly resolved or not properly digested, the memory gets stuck in the amygdala part of the brain. If we experience something in the present that reminds of us of this past trauma, we react in much the same way as if we were experiencing the trauma again. Cortisol and adrenaline kick in, we experience anxiety, we perspire and hyperventilate.

of the brain into the neocortex so that I could learn to take charge of that reaction by consciously recognizing, that, okay, the original experience happened a long time ago, but it is not happening now. I could make the choice to address the situation in a different way.

shamed. I saw that I didn’t feel safe even then. As a young child, I didn’t feel like I had anybody to go to or to tell me how to be – how to be a male. I saw my pattern of feeling alone, feeling vulnerable, feeling afraid, and that that pattern existed even from an early age. When I saw that, I began to have a lot more compassion for myself, and began to feel more like an adult who could actually hold that little boy, be his protector, and be the guide for that child.

I saw my pattern of feeling alone, feeling vulnerable, feeling afraid, and that that pattern existed even from an early age. When I saw that, I began to have a lot more compassion for myself, and began to feel more like an adult who could actually hold that little boy, be his protector, and be the guide for that child.

SC: So, the anxiety that you were experiencing was the same kind of PTSD symptoms experienced by soldiers? BB: Yes, and it changed my life by addressing all of that anxiety associated with unresolved trauma. For instance, for years I had continued to have reactions to men that I thought might be predatory: Not just gay, per se, but gay men that I thought were interested in me in a predatory way. I would go into a hyper-anxious state. EMDR helped me to integrate the experience from the fight/flight portion

Through this process, I began to see myself in different stages in my past. I was even able to go beyond the actual events of the trauma and realize that the emotional pattern was there even before the abuse. SC: The EMDR technology helped you to integrate neuro-pathways that were stuck or locked in a certain pattern – an amygdala – fight/flight loop. And as a result, you experienced even earlier thoughts. Did these thoughts occur during the actual therapy, or did they emerge afterwards during contemplation? BB: Both. I began to see images of myself, the little boy that felt rejected by my mother, that tried to get her attention and when I didn’t, I began to act out, and then would get punished, scolded and

I was able to realize that for much of my life, I thought there was something missing and I looked for it outside myself when in fact that potential was always there inside me. That was life-changing to understand. SC: During your journey, what was the process of healing yourself and forgiving yourself for carrying all that shame and guilt for so long? BB: I’ve given that a lot of thought over the years. I have come to understand that in some ways we attract the situations that we need in order to heal, even to the extent of attracting perpetrators into our lives as a way of gaining greater clarity. Early in life, I didn’t feel that I had that protector and I was pre-occupied with

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I’ve given that a lot of thought over the years. I have come to understand that in some ways we attract the situations that we need in order to heal, even to the extent of attracting perpetrators into our lives as a way of gaining greater clarity. that as a child. I had to learn to become the protector of myself, to re-parent myself over time. And as I did that, it brought out a deep level of compassion for that child that I was and the desire to be the protector to that child in me. I took responsibility for that vulnerability because this was clearly something that I came in this lifetime with, something from a past incarnation. SC: Often there is a great deal of fear associated with addressing pre-existing emotional vulnerabilities. That fear prevents people from looking deeply and asking those very tough, deeply penetrating questions: “If I’m really creating my reality, then I must be creating this also. What is it within me that’s creating this abuse, this upset, this challenge, these repetitive situations? What is it in me that’s doing that?” That’s a really difficult question for many people to address that have not already done a lot of healing and releasing work over many years.

helped me get to that place. [See page 48 in this issue of SuperConsciousness Magazine.]

When we can see that, it becomes “I am that.” I am that quality, too, and it’s a part of being human. Once we can see that the other person is just like us, and in their own way doing the best they can, then we can begin to feel compassion for them. And in that compassion, when we release them, we also release ourselves from our woundedness.

SC: How has your personal experience and subsequent healing assisted you with Anything that helps us move towards your clinical and compassion consulting work? is healing. It’s BB: I find that abuse comes up in a lot of my counseling with people, or resentment, or where people are holding others in judgment and holding them hostage. I find myself in that role of trying to help them get some perspective on it.

To be able to walk through an experience where you have to come to terms with a trait that you find so offensive in the other person, you have to give it a name. Once you have that quality in mind, ask yourself: “Is it possible under some condition, that I could be that, that I could exhibit that quality or exhibit that trait?”

We perpetuate those wounds when we hold someone in resentment or judgment. To be able to walk through BB: We really haven’t been trained in an experience where you have to come that way, to see that we do create our to terms with a trait that you find so experiences, that we create our world offensive in the other person, you have to through our projections, through our projected needs and projected beliefs. It give it a name. Once you have that quality in mind, ask yourself: “Is it possible took me a long time to want to address those issues because it is so much easier under some condition, that I could be that, that I could exhibit that quality or to fall back into that victim role. exhibit that trait?” Debbie Ford’s Shadow Process course, Of course, as the old saying goes, if you what she calls “shadow work” really

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can spot it, you got it. You got it and you keep on getting it.

healing for us and it’s healing for everything out there, because there is no difference, it’s the same consciousness. And, people really feel it. That’s the amazing thing. When we are actually willing to take responsibility, the other person changes out there. That’s the magic. That’s what we move to, that union. Every spiritual tradition wants to guide us to that place. Even the most difficult experiences can be the greatest teachers, and can offer us the greatest opportunity for spiritual evolution if we are willing to use them as such. SC: Your willingness to talk so openly about your own abuse and healing is very timely. There are many people in the world

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that wrestle with similar abuse histories. Is there anything you would like to say to all the people this interview will reach? BB: I would want people to know that they can get help, that there are people who are holding the space for not only self-inquiry but also self-understanding, self-forgiveness and self-realization. There are people out there, and, the best people to help are the people who have been through that journey. SC: That space of isolation is challenging for many people to free themselves from. BB: We suffer until we can’t suffer any

longer. I use that example of someone holding my head under water until I was willing to come up for air. We have to suffer sometimes until we are willing to surrender that illusion of separateness. Sometimes it’s pride, and sometimes it’s stubbornness that makes us want to hold on to our isolation, our aloneness. But when we can get to that place of asking for help – it is such a huge thing when we can say, “Okay, I get it. I can’t do this alone.” It’s a humbling thing, but that experience of humility is itself healing, especially when we can be met by someone who has insight and can assure us, “I get it. I understand. Here’s the way.”

It is such a huge thing when we can say, “Okay, I get it. I can’t do this alone.” It’s a humbling thing, but that experience of humility is itself healing, especially when we can be met by someone who has insight and can assure us, “I get it. I understand. Here’s the way.”

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Making Peace with Ourselves, Others, and the World By Debbie Ford

Excerpted from The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self, by Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson, CopyrightÂ ÂŠ 2010 by Deepak Chopra and Rita Chopra Family Trust, Debbie Ford, and Marianne Williamson. Reprinted by permission of HarperOne.

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Editors’ Note: In recent years, scientific research has clearly established that our thoughts and attitudes impact our health in significant ways. Unfortunately, we are often unaware of those thoughts, thus the journey of healing necessitates exposing our internal world – what we’ve even kept hidden from ourselves. Bestselling author Debbie Ford refers to those buried feelings as The Shadow Effect, and is an established authority on the lifetime process of addressing our emotions and beliefs that are the source of shame and suffering in our lives. In the following excerpt, Ford describes how we unknowingly spend large amounts of energy to keep suppressed the parts of ourselves that we judge and dislike, which ultimately sabotages our attempts at a joyful, fulfilled and authentic life: Our thoughts do matter – and our bodies are listening.

we continue to succumb to our lower impulses, sabotage our own desires, and neglect our future. In an attempt to hide our discontent, we put on a happy face, muster our best “everything is fine” look, and continue acting out in ways that undermine our selfesteem and defeat our best-laid plans.

the answers to our woes. The robotic nature of our egocentric self rises up to help us overcome our feelings of insecurity and shame by protesting our innocence and proclaiming our differences. We think that if only we could just get that one person or thing to change, we would feel better. We believe that if we handle the one issue we keep complaining about or get that one thing we’ve been striving for, we will be happy. Rather than taking the time to pierce the veil between who we think we are and who we really want to be, we allow the illusional life of a self that exists in our minds to be in control.

Yet we continue to succumb to our lower impulses, sabotage our own desires, and neglect our future. In an attempt to hide our discontent, we put on a happy face, muster our best “everything is fine” look, and continue acting out in ways that undermine our self-esteem and defeat our bestlaid plans.

he story of the human being and the human psyche has been examined, studied, and written about since the beginning of our existence. Although it’s been researched and dissected by brilliant thinkers, explored and explained by the greatest intellects of all time, most of us are still living in the dark, perplexed by the behavior of our friends, our family members, our idols, and – more often than not – ourselves. Disappointed by the condition of our own lives, we forge ahead each day hoping that our darker impulses and bad behavior will miraculously disappear. Hurt time and time again by the flaws that we can’t seem to shake free of, we silently pray that we will find the courage to give up our procrastination, our overspending, our chocolate, our resentments, or our sharp tongues. Yet

Unfortunately, this method of survival strips us of the ability to live the life we were meant to live. The emotional pain that surfaces as part of our everyday life has us wish away our past and become resigned about our future. If we feel we have been deceived or conned or that we have acted out of character, we become victims of the past and hopeless about what’s to come. Cynical and skeptical, we fall prey to judgment, opting to point our finger at others rather than look inside ourselves for

The problem with this approach to life is that it prevents us from discovering our true self, and it endangers the areas of our lives that are most important to us. When we are busy protecting ourselves from the demons that lurk in the dark, we miss out on feeling joyful, fulfilled

When we are busy protecting ourselves from the demons that lurk in the dark, we miss out on feeling joyful, fulfilled and deeply connected with those we love. Intent on hiding the darker half of our human nature, we fail to reach our potential and experience the depth and richness of our lives. www.superconsciousness.com

and deeply connected with those we love. Intent on hiding the darker half of our human nature, we fail to reach our potential and experience the depth and richness of our lives. There is only one thing that can rob us of that future, and that is our shadow – our dark side, our secrets, our repressed feelings, our hidden impulses. The great Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung tells us that our shadow is the person we would rather not be. The shadow can be seen in the person in our family whom we judge the most, the public official whose behavior we condemn, the celebrity who causes us to shake our head in disgust. If we understand this correctly, we come to the startling and sometimes sobering realization that our shadow is everything that annoys, horrifies, or disgusts us about other people or about ourselves. With that wisdom in hand, we begin to see that our shadow is all that we try to hide from those we love and don’t want other people to find out about us.

Our shadows, filled with rhetoric and a hypocritical set of rules that we can never adhere to, leads us to glorify some and demonize others. It began with the teacher who called us stupid, the bully who taunted us, or the first love who ever abandoned us. We have all hidden away and repressed pain-filled, shamefilled moments, and, over time, these emotions harden into our shadow. These are the unexpressed fears, the horrifying shame, the gnawing guilt. These are all

into believing that we are too unworthy, incapable, undeserving, unlovable, or stupid to be the superstar of our own life. It is our dark side, the repressed and disowned aspects of our personality, that cuts us off our true self. The fact is that whatever we have hidden away in shame or denied out of fear holds the key to unlock a self that we feel proud of, a self that inspires us, a self that is propelled into action by great vision and purpose rather than one that is created out of our limitations and the unhealed wounds of our past. This is why we must explore our shadow. This is why we must unveil and reclaim our whole self, our true nature. This is why we must look within to examine the underpinnings of our life. Hidden here is the blueprint, a template, a vision of our authentic self.

Whatever we have hidden away in shame or denied out of fear holds the key to unlock a self that we feel proud of, a self that inspires us, a self that is propelled into action by great vision and purpose rather than one that is created out of our limitations and the unhealed wounds of our past. This is why we must explore our shadow.

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the issues of the past that we have never faced. Our shadow might stem from one defining moment, and most do, or it can accumulate over years of denial. As the shadow takes shape, we begin to lose access to a fundamental part of our true nature. Our greatness, our compassion, and our authenticity get buried beneath the parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected from. Then our shadow gains the upper hand. It can trick us

My own study of the shadow began as I made the transition from a clumsy preadolescent to a pretty young teen. Confused and alone, I set off on a journey to fit in. I worked hard to feel good

about myself, despite the fact that I was riddled with insecurities about everything from being a friend and girlfriend to being a sister and daughter. I fought to understand why I felt so bad about who I was. The voices in my head that seemed to overtake me – even at the young age of twelve – filled me with endless loops of dark thoughts and negative feedback: “Why did you say that?” “Don’t be silly; he will never like you.” “You’re an idiot,” “Don’t stand too tall; people will be jealous of you,” and on and on and on. I found it odd and confusing listening to these voices inside my head, because one minute they were telling me that I was nothing but a spoiled, rotten brat and the next they were convincing me that I was better, prettier, smarter and more talented than everyone else. An internal war raged inside my psyche. First it was, “You’re great!” and then, “You’re nothing but a little liar.” “Everybody likes you because you are kind and warm,” and a few minutes later, “You are a cold-hearted bitch who doesn’t deserve to have any friends.” These voices left me utterly confused about who I was. The coexistence of the positive messages and the negative warnings created so much havoc within me that I was either crying hysterically or going out of my way to spread good feelings to anyone who was willing to

receive my love. They called it hormones at the time. Erratic behavior was expected of a girl my age, but mine was a bit more melodramatic, which earned me the title of neighborhood drama queen. At last I had finally won a pageant, except this crown came with many negative projections from my family and lots of laughs from family friends who were privy to my private shame. I began to feel more and more powerless over my internal chattering, until I came to the conclusion that there was definitely something wrong with me and there was nothing that I could do to fix it. I tried with all my might to silence those voices, to make them shut up, by trying to convince myself that I was really okay.

to school, it became harder and harder to break free of the stranglehold of my internal demons, whose voices sounded like a church choir singing out of tune. Instead of feeling compassionate, kind and gentle toward myself, I felt hopeless, hostile, and angry.

I began to search for what might silence my ugly little mind and make me feel better about myself. My search for feel-good moments began with certain foods: Sara Lee brownies and a liter of Coke seemed to do the trick.

My moments of peace and happiness became less and less frequent, unless I was fortunate enough to get caught up in listening to a great song or playing with my friends. But in the quietness of a shower or an early morning rush

As my internal discomfort rose, I began to search for what might silence my ugly little mind and make me feel better about myself. My search for feel-good moments began with certain foods: Sara Lee brownies and a liter of Coke seemed to do the trick. I learned how to silently slip into my parents’ room during dinner, go into their wallets, and steal the change I needed to get my daily fix. It started off quite easily, because the 7-Eleven was right across the street from our home on Forty-sixth Avenue in Hollywood, Florida. As months went by, that fix was just not enough. My inner hunger to feel good soon became greater than my need to be liked or to be perceived as a good or

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I began my journey of becoming intimate with my dark side, my shadow self. This moment of reckoning became a catalyst for living a life beyond my wildest dreams. a “decent young lady.” I was overcome with the impulse to change the way I felt. My sugar addiction quickly turned into something greater, as I picked up my first cigarette and a sampling of drugs. Pot, which was never my thing, turned into pills, placidillies, or downers, as they were called in those days. These escalated into psychedelics that led me to a plethora of other substances. As I succeeded in using drugs to create moments of complete peace – the mantra of almost every popular song back then – I ingrained into my young psyche a new way of thinking and behaving that said to feel good I needed to look outside myself for something to make me feel better. Over time I learned that the scary impulses that often came out in my behavior were not meant to be examined or expressed, but rather should be hidden and repressed, no matter what the cost. Slowly, I slipped away from any semblance of the innocent child I once was and created an outer persona that exuded confidence and success. The more I played in the darkness of my human demons, the stronger the impulse to hide my feelings of shame and unworthiness. I began to overcompensate for my weaknesses by becoming charming, friendly, street-smart, and savvy in the outer world. Although I struggled desperately in school, because I was too busy listening to the craziness

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face with the real Debbie Ford – with all of her flaws, weakness, and disowned qualities as well as her gifts, strengths and deeply hidden inner needs. It was during this very humbling meeting with myself that I committed to learn about who and what I was and why I felt compelled to do the things I did. It was at this pivotal time in my life that I began to understand the human shadow and If I discovered something about myself that was not acceptable to my ego ideal, I the effect it had on my life and the lives would search the outer world to see who of those around me – not as a theory in was acceptable, and with the sensibilities a textbook, but as a woman struggling to deal with her own unwanted feelings and of a true artist, I sculpted the new me, deep insecurities. giving the illusion that I was the person I wanted to be rather than the person I Driven by deep feelings of loneliness feared I was. The problem was that no that came from not understanding who matter how much I overcompensated I was or why I was here, I began my for the parts of myself that I feared or journey of becoming intimate with my was ashamed of, in the silence of my dark side, my shadow self. This moment own mind I knew the truth about who of reckoning became a catalyst for living I was under my public mask. Although some could see through the glorious act a life beyond my wildest dreams. It has led me to study, grapple with, and dwell that I had created, for the most part I in not only my own human behavior, but had become a successful human being because I could fool those around me. My the behavior of hundreds of thousands of people whom I have been privileged to shadow was in control, even though, in all my arrogance, I believed I was the one guide into the territory of their unclaimed self and the glorious discovery of a life in charge. Truly the dark side had won, yet to be lived. until my persona came tumbling down. in my mind rather than the teacher in the room, I wrapped myself up in a package that looked somewhat smart and pretended to be an opinionated knowit-all, hoping that I could fool everyone, including myself, into believing that I wasn’t the dumb little sister of Linda and Michael Ford.

Just like Humpty Dumpty, who fell to the ground, by the time I was twentyseven I was stripped of my “I have it all together,” know-it-all persona and left wailing on the floor of a drug treatment center. It was there that I came face-to-

For more information on Debbie Ford go to http://www.debbieford.com/ or, take the online Shadow Effect course at: http://www.theshadoweffect.com/

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Stressed About Your Health?

F**k It,

Says John Parkin By Heidi Smith

tressed out? Exhausted? Running yourself ragged trying to be a good person, raise tolerant children, impress your boss, eat healthy, pay the bills, grow spiritually and monitor your carbon footprint? John C. Parkin has a suggestion for you: Just say “fuck it.”

Parkin, the son of Anglican preachers, spent twenty years studying eastern religion, meditating, chanting, breathing, doing yoga, detaching and attempting to heal his chronic allergies, without much success. Finally, he came to a conclusion: saying “fuck it” was the western version of what eastern religion preaches. Ironically, he arrived at this realization while setting up a retreat center to teach relaxation workshops, after leaving behind a top-paying job as a copywriter in London. Today, in addition to “yoga weeks”, he and his wife Gaia run “Fuck It Weeks” at The Hill That Breathes in southern Italy. Despite how it may sound, “fuck it” does not mean abandoning all responsibility and lying by the pool all day eating bon-bons (although that might happen). Instead, Parkin explains it as learning how to deeply relax, releasing attachments, judgments and fears about what we “should” be doing that get in the way of living lives that are fully engaging. He should know; shortly after saying “fuck it” to the whole notion of needing to be perfectly healthy in order to be happy, Parkin actually began to get well for the first time in years, and has stayed that way ever since. SuperConsciousness talked with Parkin about his spiritual journey and why saying “fuck it” is good for your health.

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SC: How did your own struggles with health, both physically and mentally, lead you to the whole “fuck it” idea? JP: We’d been on the beach in southern Italy one week, and a week later, we were driving into a very rainy, dirty, cloudy, dark London, moving into a very small flat with the prospect of having to work again, having not worked for a while. My health dropped; and I fell into a pretty deep depression. On the tube one Saturday morning, I was in a real state; I was crying, blubbing like a baby. The tube was busy, so there were a lot of people around. I remember thinking, “I’m really crying, with all these people around, and I’m not bothered by what people think about me. That’s interesting, because I’ve always been bothered by what people think about me. And my God, that feels very liberating!” It was a peculiar, paradoxical feeling of desperation and liberty at exactly the same time. As I came out of that period and back to normal, I retained this sense of “It doesn’t matter so much what people

I’m really crying, with all these people around, and I’m not bothered by what people think about me. That’s interesting, because I’ve always been bothered by what people think about me. And my God, that feels very liberating!

think of me. What people think of me is not going to stop me from doing some of the things I want to do.” That was a key seed for the later “fuck it” idea. In the end, “fuck it” is about a process of retuning in to what I want and what I would like to do.

in order to help alleviate and soften the symptoms of the allergies. Over fifteen years, I explored plenty of things: hypnotherapy, Qigong, tai chi, breath work, and a whole range of spiritual ideas – Buddhism, Taoism, the ideas of letting go and being less attached.

I also had chronic health problems with allergies to various things and I was pretty ill as a child. I knew that it was exacerbated by stress. I went on a spiritual journey as well as an alternative health journey, into the art of relaxation

It was a beautiful irony that in setting up the relaxation center, I was probably the most stressed and yes, sick, than I’ve been for a long time. In the first six months we were working on finishing a house, looking after our small children, www.superconsciousness.com

starting a business, doing the marketing, trying to attract guests during the day, and at night I was replying to emails and inquiries. So I was starting the office job at 11:00 at night and finishing around four in the morning, getting up at half past six to pick up vegetables. It was a nightmare! We realized that in the stress of setting up the place that we were saying “fuck it” to ourselves quite a lot. We started saying to our first guests, “You are leading lives that we’ve been leading, and what we’re finding helpful is saying ‘fuck it.’” It helps in the same way as some of these more complicated techniques, but you get there much quicker. We started saying “fuck it” to ourselves, saying it to our guests, and the guests started to say to us, “That’s really helping. The meditation was brilliant, the Qigong was brilliant, but I’m just saying ‘fuck it’ more, and things are improving really quickly.”

I’ve been putting off happiness until I could achieve this moment, and therefore I would be better. Now here I am: I’m still sick. But my life isn’t that bad. I’ve got beautiful children, a beautiful wife, and it is wonderful here. I’ve got to start living now – accepting things as they are.” It was a big letting go of the idea that I would only be happy when thing things were sorted and I was completely well.

It was a beautiful irony that in setting up the relaxation center, I was probably the most stressed and yes, sick, than I’ve been for a long time.

people in the teaching of healing. In the end I think health, in every single way is about deep relaxation. I don’t think there’s anything you can’t heal with total and utter deep relaxation. The main thing to do is get out of the way. If you can get yourself out of the way, in whatever way you can, the healing will actually work much better than if you’re there going, “Okay: breathe in, breathe out. I will now spread beautiful golden energy around my body. Okay, I’m getting better. I saw the symptoms yesterday as improved by five percent.” Get out of the way! Just go to bed. If you could inject yourself with something that would disengage the mind for three months and you just slept and wandered around without all the thought process, we would probably heal.

SC: In your book you talk about an experiment you’d like to do with food, giving one person healthy food and another person junk food, but That’s the tyranny, in my mind, of a lot presuggesting to them the effect the of the ideas around holistic health and spiritual health. It’s all about being whole food would have on their bodies and then and being well. Of course we can talk SC: You say you “gave up on being well” about the wonderful ways to heal and the at a certain point. Do you see that you very powerful ways to heal, including the actually gave up on your health, per se, way we use our minds or that you gave up on your judgments and using visualization about your health? techniques. But the flip side of it is that it JP: The latter more. There was a moment creates pressure and at the end of our first summer in 2004, expectation. It puts off when we’d come out here to Italy. I was the idea of it being okay pretty sick. I went into the bathroom of now. That can defeat our tiny little flat and I thought, “I’m here the actual object. It’s a in the sunshine, at a relaxation center, peculiar, paradoxical and God, I’m just as sick. All this time, process that we can give

Get out of the way! Just go to bed. If you could inject yourself with something that would disengage the mind for three months and you just slept and wandered around without all the thought process, we would probably heal.

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57 was at the core of what was going on with me. In Chinese medicine, grief is related to lung stuff, and it was that which I started out with. SC: What do you hope will be the impact of the work you’re doing?

of these negative thoughts, we’re likely to be increasing the negative effects of those things. I will eat a hamburger JP: The junk food I mention is a chocolate occasionally, and I won’t have judgment around it. éclair. I had this friend who was a great breath worker. I was really stuck in the SC: What have you realized about how idea that I had to eat really well and exercise and do Qigong every day in order disease is created? to get better. He told me, and he was JP: My sense is that tension in some actually smoking a cigarette as he said way is creating those problems. If we this, “Okay: if I don’t have any thoughts don’t realize and recognize that we around the harm that the cigarette can should try to be more relaxed, then in do to me, I know that this cigarette will do me less harm.” He may have even said one form or another, stress and tension and difficulty and resistance will tend to no harm at all. This intrigued me – the create illness. It’s harder when you get power of the mind over the body and to kids. Small children tend to be soft the effects of certain things that we’re and relaxed and open beings, and yet putting into our body. What we do with they get ill as well. What’s happening cigarettes in the U.K. is, the cigarette there? I think as kids we’re so open that packets are now simply instructions we will absorb tension of other people about how these things are going to kill around us and may take on illnesses you. So the truth is, if you are going to that really should be other people’s. smoke a cigarette, it’s probably best to think this is not going to kill me, I think what happened rather than this is going to kill me. The in my case was that combined effect of the nicotine and the thought that it’s going to kill you is more there was some unfelt grief that was likely to kill you. being blocked around when I was a child The idea is, of course, a meal of brown and I was trying to be rice and vegetables is better than a helpful by taking that hamburger. However, the thoughts on. Who knows? I’m around those things are very important, because not all of us eat well all the time. blaming nobody. I’m guessing that grief If while we eat dodgy things, we have all watching what happens biologically. How do you see that in relationship to health?

JP: I’ve learned not to have any intention around it, just to do our stuff and talk about it and share it. Yet what I’ve seen after six years of this, especially with the book and with wider teachings, is that huge numbers of people get a lot of benefit. It’s a lovely thing to hear, but I don’t attach to anything when I’m teaching. I didn’t write the book with the intention of helping hundreds of thousands of people; I wrote the book because I couldn’t do anything else. I had these perceptions that I wanted to put on paper. I really enjoy teaching this stuff, and it works for me every day. In the tensions I come up against and the stressful situations I come up against, this stuff really helps me. It’s never an “I have to get there” in terms of the relaxed state and the whole, healed body that I’m trying to reach and then it stops. It’s always a process. The verbs are more important than the nouns to me. That’s what it’s about. For more information about John C. Parkin, visit http://www.thefuckitway.com/ Photos: John Parkin

If we don’t realize and recognize that we should try to be more relaxed, then in one form or another, stress and tension and difficulty and resistance will tend to create illness.

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Just Do It!

10 Reminders: Being Resilient in Times of Change By Joan Borysenko

he world we once knew is in the process of dissolving and reforming . . . but it’s not the end of the world. It’s the beginning of a more just, compassionate, and cooperative era for our planet. Still, uncertainty is the order of the day, and we’re in for a prolonged – and intense – period of change.

Here are ten brief reminders that will help you weather the transition and create a more positive outcome for yourself and for future generations.

1. Give up trying to change the past – it’s history. Put 100 percent of your energy into creating a more skillful future.

2. Mobilize resilient thinking. Incorporate these methods into your life: • • •

Look reality in the eyes and accept what is. Find valuable meaning in your situation. Use whatever is at your disposal to improvise solutions.

3. Drop the victim mentality immediately. Let go of grudges and regain your power.

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4. Exercise regularly. Stress shrinks your brain, but you can reverse that trend by committing to a moderate fitness program. Be absolutely religious about this!

5. Don’t just sit there – do something. Optimistic realists take action, but wishful thinking is a dead-end street.

6. Don’t just do something – sit there. Meditation reduces stress by eliciting the relaxation response, and it stimulates the right-brain thinking necessary to improvise your way to a better future.

7. Stay engaged with life. Alienation and isolation breed stress and depression. If you’re depressed, get medical help immediately.

8. Reverse the flow. Helping others shifts the spotlight off your own troubles and releases feel-good hormones that heal, inspire, and give meaning to life.

9. Think of one new thing at the end of each day to be grateful for. Gratitude and other positive feelings enhance resiliency and help you become more expansive and compassionate.

10. Connect with a friend. Practice the teachings in this book with a friend so you can support each other as you enact positive, life-affirming changes. Photos: Thinkstock

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FROM PATIENT TO RESPANT By Bernie Siegel, MD

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nfortunately doctors and health Bernie Siegel professionals, in general, do not study success. We are far more likely to consider an unexpected recovery to be due to the treatment or a spontaneous remission. However, I have learned from my experience with patients and by asking them, “Why didn’t you die when you were supposed to?” that they always had a story to tell. I can recall, as an intern, realizing that the seniors, with hip fractures, who were noisy and demanding didn’t develop pneumonia and die while the submissive, quiet seniors who never raised their voice or caused a problem had a much higher mortality rate. By speaking up and becoming a character or problem patient you become identified as a person and not by your room number or disease and, therefore, are far less likely to have a fatal or non-fatal medical error made while being cared for. The word patient SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Those in the mental health field are far more likely to be aware of this because of what they see happen to their patients. When people have a sense of meaning in their life, express anger and emotions appropriately in defense of themselves, ask for help from family and friends, participate in their health care decisions, We now know from studies how one’s say no to what they choose not to do, emotions and personality affect survival find time to do what they enjoy and to rates. I was criticized years ago for play, use their feelings to help them to speaking about many things no one had researched because no one believed they heal their lives and do not live a role but an authentic life they will always do made sense, which are now scientific. better than expected. I would add that a Simple things like laughter affecting spiritual faith and not seeing the disease the survival of cancer patients and as God punishing them also plays a role, loneliness affecting the genes which control immune function are now proven as well as, their desire and intention to survive. Disease is a loss of health, not to be true by studies. The fact that women live longer than men and married punishment, and your health is to be looked for as you would seek to find your men live longer than single men with lost car keys. the same cancers is not about female hormones or sleeping with them, but about relationships and meaning in your I found a large part of the problem was that people were afraid to take life. Survival behavior and an immune responsibility and participate because competent personality are not an if they didn’t get well that would mean accident or luck. derives its meaning from submissive sufferer. That is not a good thing to be when hospitalized or receiving medical treatment of any kind. You need to be a respant, or responsible participant if you want to heal and survive.

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I found a large part of the problem was that people were afraid to take responsibility and participate because if they didn’t get well that would mean they were a failure. they were a failure. Decades ago I invited one hundred cancer patients to attend a support group and live a longer better life. I expected them to bring friends and family members and that I would have hundreds of people to deal with. Less than a dozen women showed up for the first meeting. I realized I did not know the people I was caring for and their will to live. If you do not grow up with parents who love you and give you mottoes to live by and teachers, clergy and other authority figures who love and respect you, then you are into guilt, shame, blame, addictions and self destructive behavior. Those who showed up became labeled exceptional cancer patients because they were a minority but what they reveal to us is our potential. Difficult patients do not die when they are supposed to. Statistics do not determine their outcome or results. Those with inspiration who transform their lives and rebirth themselves give their bodies live messages and the body then does the best it can for them. Our bodies love us but if we do not love our life and bodies it sees illness and death as a way to be free of our afflictions. Monday morning supports that with more heart attacks, strokes, illnesses and suicides. When you let an MD, or Medical Deity, determine whether you live or die you are giving away your power. I have seen people whose hope was taken away by doctors. Tehy commit suicide or go home, climb into bed, and die. I have also seen others get damn angry at their doctors and go on to survive for many years or be cured of their disease. You have to start with a belief in yourself and faith in all the things you incorporate into your life and choose as therapy. I know people who have left their troubles to God and been cured of cancer. A patient of mine who was a landscaper, refused treatment for his cancer after surgery because it was springtime

and he wanted to go home and make the world beautiful before he died. He lived to be ninety-four and became my teacher. The mind is indeed a powerful thing and not emphasized enough in the medical information we receive during our training. We do not receive a true medical education because it does not contain the tools to help people with their life experience. It is focused on disease and prescribing for them. We do not ask patients how may I help you but rather what is your chief complaint and then we prescribe for them without knowing their life story and why they might be sick at that time.

she labeled herself as bald, ugly and horrible and the cancer is crying and saying help me because it is going though the same hell she is. She is sticking a spear in her doctor because of what his treatment did to her. I know a young man who had a high powered water gun in his hospital room and whenever anyone intruded upon his privacy he drenched them. The nurses and intern respected him for it and when he died his water gun became a gift to empower other children. I created a Siegel Kit for all hospitalized patients. In it are a water gun, noisemaker, magic marker and vital signs. The water gun you know about. The magic marker is for anyone going to the operating room to write “cut here” on one side and “not this one, stupid” on the other. The noisemaker is to get attention when you need it. To quote several patients, “You

When you let an MD, or Medical Deity, determine whether you live or die you are giving away your power. I have seen people whose hope was taken away by doctors commit suicide or go home, climb into bed and die. I have also seen others get damn angry at their doctors and go on to survive for many years or be cured of their disease. The mind and body are a unit and communicate with each other. I have yet to meet a medical student who has been told that Carl Jung interpreted a dream and correctly diagnosed a brain tumor. I have had the same experience using dreams and drawings by patients to help me guide them to the proper diagnosis and treatment. When patients become empowered they do not just respond from their intellect but use their intuition too. There are times people do not want chemotherapy and yet draw a beautiful picture of it while those receiving it draw the devil giving them poison. It is not hard to know who will have more side effects. When you are submissive and let others prescribe for you, you are in trouble. One young woman refused further treatment and when she drew a picture for me

are guaranteed an hour of uninterrupted silence if you push the call button.” I know a woman who would be dead today if she didn’t have a room mate who went for help when no one responded to her pushing her call button while she was choking on food she had aspirated. The vital signs are not about your pulse, blood pressure, temperature and respiratory rate but about your needs and desires. These are signs you hang on your hospital room door or over your bed telling people what your needs are and how you want to be treated. I also recommend hanging your baby pictures there too. So when people ask who the cute kid is you answer, “It’s me.” Last but not least one must also choose the therapy you believe in and you can reprogram your mind and body through guided imagery if there are any conflicts. I know of a case where, after repairing www.superconsciousness.com

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the radiation therapy machine, the radioactive material was not replaced. So for one month people were not being treated and yet the radiation therapist did not know this until their routine inspection of the machine was done a month later. He was telling me how terrible he felt about not treating anyone for a month when I said, “You’d have to be an idiot to not know you weren’t treating anyone. So obviously people had side effects and their tumors shrinking because they thought they were being treated.” His response, “Oh my God you’re right.”

The vital signs are not about your pulse, blood pressure, temperature and respiratory rate but about your needs and desires. These are signs you hang on your hospital room door or over your bed telling people what your needs are and how you want to be treated.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Believe me if your doctor or their loved ones have suffered a major illness they are no longer a spectator or tourist. They are now a native and understand the experience and a much better health care provider.

That is why I work at deceiving people into health by working with their beliefs and communicating with them in a positive way rather than listing all the side effects they will have and none of the advantages of therapy. Doctors need training in communication and hypnotic techniques. Wordswordswords can become swordswordswords. We can kill or cure with words or scalpels. That is why patients need to be respants and keep their power and feel free to change doctors and criticize them in a constructive way. The best doctors are criticized by patients, nurses and family.

Why? Because they do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes. Believe me if your doctor or their loved ones have suffered a major illness they are no longer a spectator or tourist. They are now a native and understand the experience and a much better health care provider. So love yourself, take responsibility for and participate in your life and state of health. This is not about avoiding dying but about living and its beneficial side effects.

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PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF

Dr. Joe Dispenza and the Power of the Mind

r. Joe Dispenza is many things: an internationally recognized lecturer on the role and function of the human brain, a noted consultant on the film What the Bleep do We Know, a chiropractor and an author. He is also a spectacular example of what Dr. Bernie Siegel terms the “bad patient” – one who takes responsibility and control over their own healing, questions their doctors and refuses to accept recommended treatment without first exploring all other options. At age twenty-three, Dispenza was provided with only two potential outcomes by his medical advisors: either agree to have eight to twelve-inch steel rods surgically implanted in his back and live ever after in a state of constant pain, or refuse the surgery and run the risk of never walking again. After he had been hit by a car while participating in the bicycle portion of a triathlon, his extensive spinal injuries required immediate attention. All of his doctors agreed that surgery was his only choice.

But Dispenza was not ready to sign away control over his recovery. As a chiropractor with a thriving practice, he had extensively studied the spine and had a deep understanding of how it worked. Perhaps more importantly, he had trained his mind for years through prolonged sessions of yoga and martial arts. He possessed a formidable will and an audacious spirit that was unswayed by medical authority, no matter how irrefutable it seemed. He had four days to make up his mind. He was told if he waited any longer, as part of its own healing process the body would begin to lay down strings of calcium within the bone and the surgeons would have to navigate around it, meaning they would have to surgically open up his chest as well as his back. Yet Dispenza took his time; he weighed his options, gathered information, and in the end decided to forego the surgery. It was a radical decision, and it worked. After ten and a half weeks of intensive inner work and physical therapy, he began walking, returned to his practice and has been seeing patients ever since. Twenty-five years later, we asked him to reflect back on how the experience changed his life. Joe Dispenza

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Joe Dispenza

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SC: As a patient, even knowing everything that you knew at the time, how tempting was it to go along with your doctors, who were all saying essentially the same thing?

facing a bombardment of unconscious and subconscious representations through the media and through stories that he stands for. There was a part of me that was fearless enough to face off JD: When you’re faced with trauma, often with him. Not fearless in the sense of you’re so stunned and knocked out of balance that you want some type of immediate relief from the physical and emotional arrogance, but really inquisitive about my discomfort. You want someone to take state. So you face off with a huge façade responsibility for your condition so that you can actually give your power away, or of some of the things you don’t even relax into somebody else’s control. So for know you’re conditioned to. four experts to give the same prognosis SC: Time really was of the essence, and treatment, there was a part of me because they were telling you that if that was questioning if it was the right things went longer than four days, the choice. But there was another part of calcification around your spine would me that was educated. It just happened complicate the operation. to be about the spine, which I knew a lot about; I think if I was attending a patient, JD: I took four days to gather information, I would probably have had to consider not make a decision, sit down, consult recommending surgery as well. But this with some was me, and I couldn’t just rush into it. friends, take moments to think So because I was actually educated for myself, bring enough at the time to explore other another doctor possibilities, most of the surgeons got in, ask another really frustrated with me because I was question and see going to take my time and begin to ask questions that they may or may not know if they viewed it differently. I didn’t the answers to. sleep a lot, just The Medical Director at Scripps Hospital took my time in was the Man. He was handsome, salt and making a decision within that period. I didn’t want to feel rushed. pepper hair, polished and fit. Everybody was just moving around him. He had SC: What was the role of your friends, a kind of picturesque, Marcus Welby in the whole process and in the decision credibility going. And that’s what you’re especially? facing. You’re not facing him, you’re

JD: The number one role of my friends was emotional support. They knew that I was pretty strong willed at the time and they basically gathered to be there for whatever I needed. However, when it came down to the decision, only one of them actually stood on my side because he had the same principles and the same vision that I did. You get to see how alone you are when it comes down to a critical choice. You literally experience a sense of complete disassociation. I’m so glad I made the choice that I did.

You want someone to take responsibility for your condition so that you can actually give your power away, or relax into somebody else’s control.

SC: In taking your time, it sounds like you were kind of waiting for something. What were you waiting for? JD: I wanted to make a choice that felt right to me. So the thought of surgery, the thought of getting the back parts of my spine cut off, going through that process and putting in stainless steel rods, I just couldn’t actually believe it. One day I spent four hours living in the decision that I was going to have the surgery, and it was utter torture for me. Then I spent four hours living in the decision that I wasn’t going to have the surgery, and that felt better. But then you weigh that against this sound medical history and advice, research and experience, and it gets to be a little bit of a toss up.

You get to see how alone you are when it comes down to a critical choice. You literally experience a sense of complete disassociation.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

65 I was trying to make a decision by using the educated, intellectual mind but at the same time trusting in my heart, in what I felt. In the end, I wanted to know. When the last surgeon spoke with me and I started asking him questions, I saw that he was basically doing his best and he understood it very differently than I did. The moment I disagreed with a couple of things that he said, it clicked for me. That was it. I was clear that I wanted to leave the hospital, I didn’t want to talk to anyone any longer, and I didn’t want to see the staff psychiatrist. I knew what I was doing and I was willing to take the chance. SC: Having made the decision, it seems like you never looked back. JD: I never did. I remember leaving the hospital really happy. The nurses and the surgeons were all shaking their heads, like “This guy is crazy.” I believed in a very simple principle, that the power that made the body heals the body. I honestly, absolutely accepted it. I wanted to connect with it and give it a template, give it a very clear message, and get out of the way and let it do what it did best. I went from 1,000 miles an hour in my life to zero, and so I had all the time in the world to actually do it. It was a great opportunity for me to really change my life, in many ways.

I was trying to make a decision by using the educated, intellectual mind but at the same time trusting in my heart, in what I felt. In the end, I wanted to know. remember saying to one of my friends that I didn’t want to let a thought go by that I didn’t want to experience. That was when I started to take on some of the fear that you have after you make the choice and you say, “What in the heck did I do?” The first couple of days were really challenging, because I was all over the place. After a period of time, my friends were saying, “You have to sell your practice.” I said, “If I sell my practice, that means I’m not going to walk again. I can’t do that.”

that I understood pain pretty well. I had a lot more compassion for people who were or are in pain. I’ll say to somebody to stay off their feet for two days, and they’ll say, “I can’t do that.” I was face down for ten and a half weeks, and I know exactly what those days are like. Through experience, I have developed some trust around the unseen and the power that exists in every human being. SC: Has anything changed about the way you view the whole time period around your accident, twenty-five years later?

I think it was more than just visualization. JD: I very rarely think of it. I don’t really talk about it much. It was a point in my I saw it as a very specific desire or life where I had to slow down enough to template I wanted to empower, and it ask some bigger questions. I asked those questions, and it opened my mind up to the life I live today, the beliefs that I currently have happened to be something that I knew a and the experiences that I’ve had in the lot about. Working on seeing the spine last twenty-five years. I don’t know that I and rebuilding it got easier and easier. would have had them, had I not had that What once took me two hours wound up experience. Unfortunately, usually it’s taking me forty minutes, because it got really familiar. I got it wired. Then I would trauma that wakes us up to decide that start thinking about watching the sunset, we can’t go on with business as usual. and using the toilet, running on the beach I can look back and say with clarity that the life I was headed for was not the life again. I think that was a fundamental that I had probably negotiated on some part of the healing as well. level to have. So I see it as a blessing. SC: How did your experience change you Dr. Joe Dispenza is the author of Evolve Your as a healer?

Through experience, I have developed some trust around the unseen and the power that exists in every human being.

SC: What was your understanding at the time of visualization and how it works? JD: I always believed in human potential, and I always believed in that innate intelligence. I had some great experiences in doing hypnosis, so I knew the power of the subconscious mind. I

JD: The first thing, without a doubt, was that I experienced first hand my own mortality. I was humbled by it. I became a lot more sensitive. The second thing was

Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind and can be seen in the DVD’s The Art of Change, Evolve Your Brain, What the Bleep do we Know, and The Moses Code. For more information visit http://drjoedispenza.com/

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66 Ellen Langer

ELLEN LANGER on Living “Counterclockwise”

Aging in Reverse I

s getting old inevitable, or do we have a choice? The answer appears obvious: if an antidote to aging existed, surely we would have heard about it by now. As for growing younger, entire industries are devoted to the appearance of youth but under the surface it would seem that time marches on. How, then, is it possible for men in their late seventies and early eighties to suddenly improve their memories, hearing, eyesight, dexterity and appetite without any pharmaceutical aid? As Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer discovered in her now famous “Counterclockwise” study, the key is the human mind. In the 1970’s, Langer and her graduate students embarked on a quest to discover the biological impact of “acting as if” it were twenty years earlier on a group of elderly men. One of their first surprises came when they asked leading geriatricians how they could measure the biological markers of age before and after the study: they were told there are none. SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

The only way to actually know someone’s age is to ask him or her. They decided to continue with the study, in which a control group of older men were told that they would attend a retreat where they would spend a week “reminiscing” about the past; the experimental group, by contrast, would spend a week surrounded by paraphernalia from twenty years earlier, listening to radio shows and discussing news from the period. They were not allowed to bring up any events that happened after 1959, and they were to refer to themselves, their families, and their careers as they were at that time. The point was not living in the past; rather, it was about giving mental signals to the body to reflect the energy and biological responses of a much younger person. By “acting as if” they were in their late fifties and early sixties, the men in the experimental group actually changed their performance on benchmark tests. At the end of the study, the experimental group demonstrated marked improvement

in their hearing, eyesight, memory, dexterity and appetite. Some who had arrived using canes, dependent on the aid of their children, walked out under their power, carrying their own suitcases. Langer concluded that by expecting them to function independently and engaging with them as individual minds rather than as old people, she and her students gave them the opportunity to see themselves differently. This, then, had an impact on them biologically. For Langer, the “Counterclockwise” study showed the power of possibilities. If the mind could have such an impact on the body, what other potentials might exist in terms of healing? How important are the words that doctors use when talking with patients, or that patients use about their disease? Langer has continued to study what she calls mindfulness and its effects. A film based on her book is currently being made, starring Jennifer Aniston. SuperConsciousness caught up with Langer at her Harvard office.

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67 different from different perspectives, then language wouldn’t matter so much.

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SC: Before the Counterclockwise study, you consulted geriatricians and discovered that there are, in fact, no reliable biological markers of age. How did that change your thinking about aging? EL: I’m not sure that it did. It changed my idea about how easy it was going to be to run a persuasive study, because if there were clear biological markers how could I change them so nobody would disagree. But if you just notice people in the world, you’ll see that some of them stand tall, some of them slouch, some still have their teeth, some don’t, and these things are not perfectly correlated with the age of the person. I think it was this great variability that led me to some of the ideas in the first

One of the things I talk about in Counterclockwise is the difference between a chronic and an acute illness. Chronic means uncontrollable, but it turns out you can never prove uncontrollability. All you can say is that we don’t yet know how to control it. That’s very different, because if I take the medical language seriously, then if I have a disease that’s called “chronic”, I don’t do anything to try to help myself, because after all, why knock your head against the wall. If it can’t be controlled, it can’t be controlled. If you understood that we can never prove uncontrollability, that this is a disorder that we don’t yet know how to control, then you don’t feel quite as foolish trying to do things to help yourself.

to come up with the ideas that this doesn’t When you start paying attention, you start have to be. to see that whatever your symptoms are, they change from moment to moment, SC: How important is language in terms of the way that both doctors and patients from day to day. That gives rise to the question “Why? Why is it that I feel a little talk about health and aging? better now than I did before?” And you come up with ideas and test them out, and in doing so you may find a solution which may lead to fewer symptoms. Interestingly, all of my prior research suggests that EL: It’s a little complicated. Because this mindful search process is good for people are brought up to seek certainties, our health even if we don’t directly solve they become vulnerable to language the problem. But when words have been in ways they need not. If I tell you conditioned to lead to single thoughts we something is a particular way, given don’t question them and just accept that that you’re eager, mistakenly so, to they are true when they may not be, we seek certainties, you say “Well, that’s don’t give it any more thought, we just the way it is” and that’s the end of it. If accept the outcome, and thus give up you were brought up to seek multiple control over our health.

We often let our mindsets about aging rule. If you forget something, for example, you say, “Ah. That’s because I’m old.”

If everybody lost their eyesight, if everybody lost their teeth, if everybody lost their memory, then it would be less likely to come up with the ideas that this doesn’t have to be. understandings of things, or to recognize place. If everybody lost their eyesight, if everybody lost their teeth, if everybody lost that we simply can’t know because their memory, then it would be less likely things are always changing and they look

We often let our mindsets about aging rule. If you forget something, for example, you say, “Ah. That’s because I’m old.” If you hadn’t bought into the notion that as you become old you necessarily become forgetful you might not overlook all the other reasons why you might have forgotten this particular thing. As I’m fond of saying, much of what old people think they are forgetting is not forgotten www.superconsciousness.com

HEALTHY

BETTER EYESIGHT

20 YEARS YOUNGER

GREAT MEMORY

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SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

If you see disease as in some ways guided by your thoughts and you know you have control over your thoughts, then that would mean that there’s at least a modicum of control that we can exert over any of our diseases. I actually believe our minds have almost complete control over our diseases. – they didn’t learn it in the first place because they didn’t care enough about it. So if you didn’t learn it in the first place and you don’t know it in the second place, it’s not because you’ve forgotten it. They just don’t consider alternative explanations to being forgetful. We all would if we were more mindful.

looking. When you buy into the mindset, you assimilate all of your behavior to that mindset. If you’re not supposed to be able to do something, you don’t try to do it. SC: In Counterclockwise, you say “How would things be different if we viewed all disease as psychosomatic? At that point it would be unreasonable and almost irresponsible to not try to heal ourselves.”

If you let the mindset rule, then you don’t engage in lots of activities, because after all, you’re too old for them. If you’re in the present, that will necessarily lead you to be more differentiated, and in being more differentiated, you’re going to be more mindful, which is again literally and figuratively enlivening. If you let the mindset rule, then you don’t engage in lots of activities, because after all, you’re too old for them. You don’t notice that your back that was killing you yesterday now feels a little better. If you’re in the present, and you notice that, you might say to yourself, “Maybe it’s not because of these dread disorders, but rather that I was gardening yesterday.” And if you recognize that, that suggests that tomorrow you’re going to be even better. You do things, then, that are forward-

EL: The problem is that the medical world has helped us see the word “psychosomatic” as pretending. The symptoms are real. Now, if you see disease as in some ways guided by your thoughts and you know you have control over your thoughts, then that would mean that there’s at least a modicum of control that we can exert over any of our diseases. I actually believe our minds have almost complete control over our diseases.

many people will see it and hopefully be influenced by it. The film is going to be entertaining, so it’s not as if I’m standing there lecturing. Hopefully, when people see the movie, they’ll have enough interest to read the book, and that will give them some of the finer points to all the information and over time, that could have considerable benefits to the whole culture in terms of how we might become healthier. There are lots of people studying different aspects of this right now, and the more that are out there, the more interested people become, the more research that’s done, and the more change that hopefully will follow. Another part of all of this it is that because there are so many baby boomers who refuse to get old, they’re going to be hungry for ways to keep themselves strong. Maybe they will take all of this information to heart. We have a lot more control over our health and well-being than many people realize. My hope is that people will come to that realization.

SC: What would you see as the greatest potential of both your book and the movie For more information about Ellen Langer that’s being made based on the book? and Counterclockwise, visit www.ellenlanger.com EL: The exciting thing is to be able to teach some of the work on mindfulness on the big screen, meaning that many,

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Young at Heart

Happy and Healthy at Ninety-Eight I

n the ongoing search for the key to longevity, researchers may have overlooked an unlikely tool: ice cream. Ninety-eight year old Eleanor Langford* eats it at least once a day, in addition to regularly enjoying chocolate bars and cookies. Mentally sharp and possessed of a dry wit, Langford delights her caregivers and tends to leave the nurses laughing whenever she visits her doctor – her current doctor, that is. She’s already outlived several.

her long life, Langford developed certain characteristics that may play a vital role in keeping her young – independence,

had to take care of him, which was in a way hard but was very useful. He couldn’t have gone to work if I hadn’t driven him there and brought him back. He was very proud and didn’t like to be helped, but if I did it, it came naturally.”

Langford developed certain characteristics that may play a vital role in keeping her young – independence, humor, a concern for others, interest in the world around her, and a very active role in family life.

Of course, ice cream isn’t really the key to Langford’s durability. As Maureen, one of her caregivers puts it, “Not only is she healthy, she’s happy. She’s very lighthearted. She jokes.” In the course of SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

When Langford was just fourteen, her mother attempted to go humor, a concern for others, interest in to California. However, there was one the world around her, and a very active problem – she couldn’t drive, either. role in family life. “She lasted for ten minutes,” Langford Growing up near Celilo Falls, Oregon, she explains. “We didn’t get out of the city limits before she changed her mind. I learned independence early by helping was young, didn’t know what was ahead her father in his lumber and tool store of me, and I loved to drive. I got into when she was a teenager. In fact, it was the front seat and away we went.” The because of her that he was able to work family spent almost a year in California, at all. “My father couldn’t drive,” she explains. “He had a form of Parkinson’s. I with Langford driving the crowded

71 streets of Los Angeles and San Diego, even venturing into Mexico. It was 1925. The early years also taught her to think for herself, beyond the social mores of the day and even the mindsets of her own family. Some of the best customers at her father’s store were members of the local Celilo tribe, especially during fishing season. “They had a little village that they lived in during fishing season,” she says, “and they bought all their fishing poles from me. They’d come and buy lumber.” She knew all of them by name and also knew their children, who were regularly weighed on the store scales by their parents to see how they were growing. Her mother, however, didn’t feel nearly as comfortable around the tribe. “She was as sweet as can be, but she was from Missouri,” says Langford. “One day we walked to the bank and saw these two Indians, and I’d known them forever, so I stopped and talked with them. Mother was just embarrassed to death that I would talk to Indians. I explained to her, “Mother, that’s your bread and butter.” Today Langford’s daughter Sue says, “We were brought up to treat everybody equal.” That independence of mind is still in evidence. “She loves politics,” says her daughter Sue, “but she votes for the person – not the party.” Every day, she reads the paper and watches the news. Her favorite shows are Meet the Press and anything to do with Tiger Woods. An avid golfer in her youth, Langford eventually had to give it up (“old age caught up with me,” she says) but still enjoys watching it on television. She continues to live in her own home, with the assistance of caregivers like Donna Stemme. “She lives a very disciplined life. She eats well, sleeps well and her life is wellrounded,” says Stemme. “She dresses herself and makes sure that her hair and make-up are done right, especially on days when visitors are coming.”

“She loves politics,” says her daughter Sue, “but she votes for the person – not the party.” Every day, she reads the paper and watches the news. Her favorite shows are Meet the Press and anything to do with Tiger Woods. Langford married late for her time, at age twenty-eight. Daughter Sue describes the relationship between her parents as “outstanding. She always said she had a temper, but when she and dad would get mad, they would just end up giggling at each other. She would throw something and dad would catch it, and then they would just end up laughing.” Her husband died in 2001, at the age of eighty-eight. Perhaps as a result of her early experience taking care of her father, Langford grew up to become the person in the neighborhood you could always go to with your troubles. “She’s a good listener,” says Sue. “The neighborhood listener. Girls on the block would call every day to get mom’s opinion.” Additionally, she would take care of local children when their parents were away.

“She’s changed how I think about age,” says Donna Stemme. “It’s not about standing on a bandbox saying ‘this is what I need to do to be healthy.’ For Eleanor, it’s such a non-thing because she’s living it.” Despite her love of ice cream and chocolate, Langford raised her children with a very healthy diet, based on what would now be considered “organic” food. “We weren’t brought up on processed foods,” says Sue. “We always had fruit and vegetables, a little bit of fish, a little bit of beef. Mom really taught us how to eat healthy. She and dad would can a lot. They’d have gardens with fresh vegetables.” When her three children became parents, Langford babysat regularly. “Being older and being around little kids helped her remain younger,” says Sue. Today, she is clearly a focal point for her children and

five grandchildren. All family holidays take place in her home, and she is in daily contact with at least one of her kids. Sue takes care of her grocery shopping and drives her to appointments, and her son Doug takes care of her finances. Jan, her other daughter, visits at least once a month. Visits with the grandchildren are something Langford obviously looks forward to. “The kids keep me young,” she says. Langford’s attitude and approach to life has impressed her caregivers. “She’s changed how I think about age,” says Donna Stemme. “It’s not about standing on a bandbox saying ‘this is what I need to do to be healthy.’ For Eleanor, it’s such a non-thing because she’s living it.” As for her health? “I do overeat on sugar, but so far it hasn’t killed me, so I don’t worry about it,” she says. She is eager to become one hundred. Meanwhile, she says, “This summer my grandkids will come home from school, so I have that to look forward to.” *Not her real name. Her family requested that her actual name be withheld to protect her privacy. Photos: Thinkstock

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Why Meditative Practice Creates Well-Being in Our Bodies and Minds MINDSIGHT: THE NEW SCIENCE OF PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION Excerpts and Interview with

Dr. Daniel Siegel

Daniel Siegel has accomplished a feat that no brain scientist has before or since: A working definition that answers the question â&#x20AC;&#x153;What is mind?â&#x20AC;? The importance of coming to some kind of clarity about what the mind is, even as a starting place from which to assess and advance research, can not be underestimated. His definition is simple: Mind is a regulatory process that can be monitored, measured, observed and modified.

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n an extensive interview with Dr. Siegel, he shared the process of coming up with this definition of “mind.”

I am trained as a scientist in both biological sciences and chemistry, and also in narrative sciences, the study of how we create meaning in our lives and our sense of identity of who we are. I’m also a scientist in studying relationships and how they are involved in wellbeing. I’m trained through the National Mental Health Institute in studying attachments. In addition to all of that, I’m also a physician. I’m a health care provider and specifically a psychiatrist for adults, adolescents, and children. As a psychiatrist, what I found was that the systems used to categorize states of mental illness didn’t really make a coherent picture of how to understand people when they became ill. It was quite frustrating to not have an overarching, conceptual framework to understand wellness or lack of wellness. Over twenty years ago, I began by thinking deeply about the nature of wellbeing and what it might be.

I ran a group composed of forty scientists and our job was to simply discuss the connection between the mind and the brain. The brain was the easy part: The brain was easy to define. But none of them could come up with a definition of the mind.

What I discovered was that the fields of mental health, psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, occupational therapy, and educational therapy, didn’t have a definition of the mind. We didn’t even have a definition of mental health. Over the course of the last nine years, I have asked almost 90,000 officials from every discipline of mental health around the globe if they ever had even one lecture about what the mind is or if they ever had a lecture defining what mental health is. Well over 95% of professionals in the field of mental health don’t have a definition of the mind or mental health. I personally felt this was a crisis because after all, if we are mental health practitioners, what is it we are practicing? Eventually, I ran a group composed of forty scientists and our job was to simply discuss the connection between the mind and the brain. The brain was the easy part: The brain was easy to define. But none of them could come up with a definition of the mind. They were even arguing about the description of the mind. The group was about to dissolve. I took myself for a walk and thought there must be some kind of phrasing that can serve as a working definition of the mind. I came up with a definition that 100% of the academics agreed on. This definition revolutionized what we could do as parents, as mental health professionals, as teachers. The definition helped us to understand how to make the mind stronger; how the mind is working well and when it is not working well, and it actually gives you a place to begin to deepen the discussion even with people in various sciences as well as practitioners, and even philosophers.

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74 In this short excerpt from his latest book, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation Siegel provides us with insight into his “over-arching framework.” His many references to “mindsight” include all forms of meditative and contemplative practices.

lets us “name and tame” the emotions we are experiencing rather than be overwhelmed by them.

Consider the difference between speaking or thinking, “I am sad” and “I feel sad.” Similar as those two statements may seem, there is actually Excerpt provided with permission from Mind a profound difference between them. “I Your Brain, Inc. ©2010 am sad,” is a kind of self-definition and a very limiting one. “I feel sad,” suggests ithin each of us there is an the ability to recognize and acknowledge internal mental world – what I a feeling without being consumed by have come to think of as the sea it. The focusing skills that are a part of inside – a wonderful rich place filled with mindsight make it possible to distinguish thoughts and feelings, memories and between the feeling over the identity, dreams, hopes and wishes. It can also be accept the present moment of that a turbulent place where we experience feeling, let it go, and then transform it. the dark side of all those wonderful feelings and thoughts – fear, sorrow, Mindsight acts as a very special lens that dread, regret, nightmares. gives us the capacity to perceive the mind

When the inner sea seems to crash in on us, threatening to drag us down below to the dark depths, it can make us feel as if we are drowning. Who among us has not at one time or another felt overwhelmed by the sensations generated from within our own minds? Sometimes these feelings are just a passing thing … but sometimes they seem to be something much more intractable, so much part of the very essence of who we are that it might not even occur to us that we can change them. This is where the skill that I call “mindsight” comes in. It has the potential to free us from patterns of mind that are getting in the way of living our lives to the fullest.

with greater clarity than ever before. This

Mindsight is a kind of focused attention that allows us to see the internal workings of our own minds. It helps us to be aware of our mental processes without being swept away by them, enables us to get ourselves off the autopilot of ingrained behaviors and habitual responses, and moves us beyond the reactive emotional loops we all have a tendency to get trapped in.

that underlies everything we mean when we speak of having social and emotional intelligence.

We now know from the findings of neuroscience research that the mental lens is something that virtually everyone and emotional changes we can create can develop, and once we have it we can through cultivation of the skill of dive deeply into the mental sea inside, mindsight are transformational at exploring our own inner lives. A uniquely the very physical level of the brain. human ability, mindsight allows us to By developing the ability to focus our examine closely in great detail and depth, attention on our internal world, we pick the process by which we think, feel, and up a “scalpel” we can use to resculpt our behave. It also allows us to reshape and neural pathways, stimulating the growth redirect our inner experiences so that of areas that are crucial to mental health. we have more freedom of choice in our everyday actions, more power to create But change never just happens; it’s the future, to become the author of our something we have to work at. Though own story. Mindsight is the basic skill the ability to navigate the inner sea

A uniquely human ability, mindsight allows us to examine closely in great detail and depth, the process by which we think, feel, and behave. It also allows us to reshape and redirect our inner experiences so that we have more freedom of choice in our everyday actions, more power to create the future, to become the author of our own story.

Though the ability to navigate the inner sea of our minds â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to have mindsight â&#x20AC;&#x201C; is our birthright, it does not come automatically, any more than being born with muscles makes us athletes. The reality is that we need certain experiences to develop this essential human capacity.

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equilibrium that enables us to cope with the small and large stresses of our lives. Through the ability to focus our attention, mindsight also helps the body and brain achieve homeostasis – the internal balance, coordination, and adaptiveness that How do we develop the ability to perceive forms the core of health. Mindsight a thought – not just have one – and to know it as an activity of our minds so that also improves our relationships we are not taken over by it? How can we be receptive to the mind’s riches and not with our friends, colleagues, just reactive to its reflexes? How can we spouses, and direct our thoughts and feelings rather than be driven by them? And how can we children, but know the minds of others so that we can most importantly, truly understand “where they are coming the relationship we have with our from” and can respond more effectively and compassionately? The ability to look own selves. within and perceive the mind and to reflect on our experiences is essential to Creating well-being – in our mental life, in our close relationships, and our well-being, can help us build social even in our bodies – is a learnable and emotional brainpower, move our skill. When we exercise mindsight, lives from disorder to well-being, and we actually change the physical help us create satisfying relationships structure of the brain. Developing the filled with connection and compassion. lens that enables us to see the mind more clearly stimulates the brain to In our individual lives, mindsight offers grow important new connections. This us the opportunity to explore the revelation is based on one of the most subjective essence of who we are, to exciting scientific discoveries of the create a life of deeper meaning with a richer and more comprehensible internal last twenty years: How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the world. We are better able to balance brain. Neuroscience supports the idea our emotions and achieve an internal of our minds – to have mindsight – is our birthright, it does not come automatically, any more than being born with muscles makes us athletes. The reality is that we need certain experiences to develop this essential human capacity.

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that developing the reflective skills of mindsight activates the very circuits that create resilience and well-being and that underlie empathy and compassion as well. Well-being emerges when we create connections in our lives and help the brain achieve and maintain integration, a process by which separate elements are linked together into a working whole. Integration is at the heart of how we connect to one another in healthy ways, honoring one another’s differences while keeping our line of communication wide open. It is also important for releasing the creativity that emerges when the left and right sides of the brain are functioning together.

Through the ability to focus our attention, mindsight also helps the body and brain achieve homeostasis – the internal balance, coordination, and adaptiveness that forms the core of health.

Integration enables us to be flexible and free; the lack of such connections promotes a life that is either rigid or chaotic; stuck and dull on the one hand or explosive and unpredictable on the other. Integration comes with a sense

of vitality and without it we can become imprisoned in behavioral ruts – anxiety and depression, greed, obsession, and addiction. With mindsight, we can alter the way the mind functions and move our lives towards integration and away from the extremes of rigidity or chaos, and are able to focus our mind in ways that literally integrate the brain and move it towards resilience and health. Being mindful, having mindful awareness, is often defined as a way of intentionally paying attention to the present moment without being swept up by judgments. Practiced in the East and the West, in ancient times and in modern societies, mindful awareness techniques help people move towards well-being by training the mind to focus on moment-tomoment experience. Oftentimes people hear the word mindfulness and think “religion,” but the reality is that focusing our attention in this way is a biological process that promotes health – as a form of brain hygiene – not a religion. Various religions may encourage this healthpromoting practice, but learning the skill of mindful awareness is simply a way of cultivating what we have defined as the integration of consciousness.

promotes the growth of new connections among existing neurons and seems to stimulate the growth of myelin, the fatty sheath that speeds nerve transmission. Novelty can even stimulate the growth of new neurons – a finding that took a long time to win acceptance in the scientific community. Neuroplasticity can be activated by attention alone, or when we participate in an activity that is important and meaningful to us, but if we are not engaged emotionally and the experience is less memorable, the structure of the brain is less likely to change. Dissolving fixed mental perceptions created along the brain’s firing patterns and reinforced relationally within our cultural practices is no simple accomplishment. Our relationships engrain our early perceptual patterns and deepen the ways we come to see the world and believe our inner narrative. Without an internal education that teaches us to pause and reflect, we may tend to live on automatic and succumb to these cultural and cortical influences that push us toward isolation. Part of our challenge in achieving well-being is to develop enough mindsight to clear us of these restrictive definitions of ourselves

Practiced in the East and the West, in ancient times and in modern societies, mindful awareness techniques help people move towards well-being by training the mind to focus on moment-to-moment experience. The brain changes physically in response to experience, and new mental skills can be acquired with intentional effort, with focused awareness and concentration. Experience activates neural firing, which in turn leads to the production of proteins that enable new connections to be made among neurons, in the process called neuroplasticity. Besides focused attention, other factors include aerobic exercise, novelty, and emotional arousal. We learn more effectively when we are physically active. Novelty, or exposing ourselves to new ideas and experiences,

interconnection, being considerate and concerned with the larger world becomes a fundamental shift in our way of living. In a lengthy interview with Dr. Daniel Siegel, SuperConsciousness Editorin-Chief Danielle Graham discussed the many implications for the human experience as a whole as a whole when we utilize Mindscope. Here is an excerpt from that discussion:

art of the reflective practice, ironically, is that it makes our senses stronger and bodily well-being clearer, and increases empathy towards others, which then strengthens our connections to people in our lives. We become more open in a loving and wonderfully exciting new way. In fact the real definition of self becomes we, and all of a sudden we begin to think that there is hope for the planet. We begin to realize this is our collective home. There is real hope to turn things around. I am incredibly optimistic that with reflective practices there is hope for our species. We have to understand the brain so that we can grasp how non-integrated thinking puts us at risk for planetary destruction, but also to harness the power of our creativity to turn it all around and turn this into a much more integrated home in which we live.

When we understand how our social networks interconnect in that intimate way, we realize the potential is huge. so that we can grow towards higher The ultimate outcome of integration degrees of integration. is compassion. When we talk about integration within the context of Seeing the mind clearly not only personal health, we are also talking catalyzes the various dimensions of about implications for cultural integration as it promotes physical, evolution. In that way, health becomes psychological, and inter-personal wella secular essence that all people have a being, it also helps us dissolve the optical right to receive, and we can all work to delusions of our separateness. We bring that healthy state of integration to develop more compassion for ourselves the world. and our loved ones, but we also widen our circle of compassion to include Dr. Daniel Siegel’s work can be followed other aspects of the world beyond our at http://drdansiegel.com/ immediate concerns. With integration, we Photos: Thinkstock see ourselves with an expanded identity. When we embrace the reality of this www.superconsciousness.com

The Paranormal Healings of

John of God By Miceal Ledwith

In 2009, Dr. Miceal Ledwith traveled to Brazil as the guest of Joao Teixeira de Faria, also known as the legendary healer John of God. We are honored that Dr. Ledwith’s has chosen to share his perceptions and experience with SuperConsciousness Magazine readers.

very week thousands of people from all over the world congregate on a small village about an hours drive from the capital of Brazil. Most of them have at least one thing in common, some crippling physical or mental disease that conventional medicine has failed to remedy. Between four hundred to two thousand people per day process before an individual who must by any standards be regarded as a phenomenon in the field of spiritual surgery and healing.

19th century Portuguese poet. All three of them attained worldwide renown despite their total indifference to public opinion or the cultivation of personal fame.

When he arrived there, he lost consciousness, and when he came to he was told that he had healed many individuals and performed several surgeries on the people at the Center.

It wasn’t until de Faria was sixteen that his life began to show signs of what he would later become. When he was out The person at the center of all this is sixty-eight year old Joao Teixeira de of work, penniless and hungry, he went and sat by a stream and waterfall in deep Faria, more affectionately known as “John of God,” a name he shares with two despair. He says a beautiful lady came other significant historical figures, the and told him to go to a local Spiritist renowned Portuguese/Spanish Mystic center where he was expected. When he of the sixteenth century, and the great arrived there, he lost consciousness, and

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when he came to he was told that he had healed many individuals and performed several surgeries on the people at the Center. He had no recollection of it and said he had simply fainted because of lack of food but after being given an excellent supper he was invited back the following afternoon when he once again lost consciousness and healed a large number of people. This was how

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his healing career was launched that has continued now for over fifty years. For five or six years he traveled throughout Brazil healing and counseling. Inevitably he incurred the severe displeasure of both the medical and religious establishments. He says he lost count of the number of times he was arrested for illegally practicing medicine.

About thirty years ago, Joao received a message that instead of endlessly traveling, he should establish a permanent Healing Center where people could come to him. The place designated was the small town of Abadiana. In the beginning, he sat in a chair near the

a fraud. Failing in that effort, many sought to discredit him personally in any way possible, the age-old technique of those who have despaired of winning in any other manner. People very often freak out when they see powerful manifestations that cannot be explained in terms of current scientific knowledge.

He quietly continued his healing work in the barracks, but once after he had operated on a doctor’s leg which healed remarkably quickly, his secret was out and he soon found himself recognized as the spiritual healer for the civil and military authorities.

Joao Teixeira de Faria does not like the name “John of God” (“Jaoa de Deus” in Portuguese) but prefers to be known as “Medium Joao,” even main road and attended to whatever When the military government came sick people came to see him, but in 1993 though the word ‘medium’ is a damaged into power after the 1962 Brazilian term in the English language because Revolution, Joao went to the new capital, the Mayor donated a site outside the town where Joao built his Center, called of its unfortunate nineteenth century Brazilia, and sought a job as a tailor associations. To be a medium, he has “The Casa Dom Ignacio”, “The House of for the military, following the trade stated, “requires loving God above all Ignatius” named in honor of St. Ignatius he worked as a child. On the side, he of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order. The else, and your fellow human beings as quietly continued his healing work in yourself.” His healing work at the Casa State Medical Association guaranteed the barracks, but once after he had Dom Ignacio is based on the principles of that he would be allowed to practice his operated on a doctor’s leg which healed Spiritism, a system that has no dogma, healing there in peace. remarkably quickly, his secret was out but consists of teachings that investigate and he soon found himself recognized the relationships between the physical Few will contest that in his work at the as the spiritual healer for the civil and and non-physical worlds. The beings for Casa Dom Ignacio, Jaoa Teixeira de military authorities. During this time he which John of God becomes the medium Faria, in the full glare of publicity, has was protected from persecution by the are individuals who no longer have a become the world’s most documented military authorities and traveled a great physical body but who wish to intervene and respected spiritual healer. The deal throughout Brazil with the army. in the world to relieve suffering. If being administration of the Casa Dom Ignacio a medium requires loving your fellow have as a deliberate policy invited the His great passion in those years was to become a successful businessman, and world’s media to witness his work without human beings as yourself, there can be no greater form of it than laying down he eventually acquired a large ranch and restriction, because of the numerous a gold mine, which removed his financial attempts over the years to dismiss him as one’s conscious self into a state of sleep, concerns and allowed him to focus on his work of healing the sick and helping the poor.

To be a medium, he has stated, “requires loving God above all else, and your fellow human beings as yourself.”

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80 while disincarnate entities use your body as a vessel to perform their work. Joao acts as a medium for about thirty of these ‘spirit doctors’ who claim to be able to heal all manner of physical, spiritual and psychological illnesses, and on each Wednesday, Thursday and Friday between four hundred to two thousand it more difficult for the incarnating people from all over the world come to Entity to read the energy fields of those the Casa Dom Ignacio to ask for help. seeking assistance. Joao states that divine consciousness is Participants are then taken into the the guiding force that inspires all of the First Current Room. ‘Current’ refers work of these entities at the Casa Dom to the creative life force which Joao Ignacio that have identified themselves. teaches can be intensified in every The principal beings are individuals living person by focus and meditation. who were physicians in Brazil during In the First Current Room the their physical incarnations such as Dr. Bezerra de Menezes (+1900), Dr. Augusto participants are requested to reflect on what it is they wish to have healed and de Almeida (+1908), Dr. Oswaldo Cruz to become aware of what it is that is blocking their full health. These procedures admirably fulfill what Professor Amit Goswami has described as “the process of preparation and surrender before the quantum leap of healing takes place.” (+1917), and Dr. Jose Valdivino, about After a period in the first Current whom very little is known. Above all Room, the participants go into the of these is the presence of Ignacio of Second Current Room when the entity Loyola, in whose honor the Casa is incorporating into the body of Joao is named. Ignacio was born into a Basque seated in a chair. He is referred to as noble family in 1491 and after a full life “the Entity” when incarnating some of adventure as a Spanish Knight at the of these spirit doctors. Each person court of King Ferdinand of Spain he was seeking healing passes before him and is severely wounded in both legs at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521. This brought ‘scanned’ by the Entity who will perform about a profound change in his life, which the healings. The healings may be led to his becoming a priest in 1537, and mental, emotional, physical or spiritual. The Entity may prescribe healing herbs his founding of the Jesuits in 1540. He or an operation. had once come under suspicion by the Inquisition but after intense questioning The operations are done in the Surgery was released. Room and may consist of spiritual surgery, where the physical body is not The central building at the Casa Dom touched, or physical surgery for those Ignacio is known as the Great Hall who may feel the need for some more where the participants gather at 8.00 tangible evidence that something has a.m. and 2.00 p.m. They are asked not been done for them. According to Joao to wear colored clothing as it makes

If tumors or other growths are to be removed the skin is cut open to do so. There is no anesthesia used and there is minimal bleeding, while the patient feels almost no pain, if any at all.

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the healing is the same, whether the operation is spiritual or physical. Some of the techniques used in the physical surgeries may include inserting a hemostat or medical forceps several inches into the nasal cavity, or the scraping of the eyeball with a knife. This treatment is not just for eye ailments, because according to the Entities the eye represents the entire system of the body. If tumors or other growths are to be removed the skin is cut open to do so. There is no anesthesia used and there is minimal bleeding, while the patient feels almost no pain, if any at all. Several years go John of God suffered a stroke and was paralyzed on one side. He also suffered a heart attack more recently. In both cases the Entities did physical surgeries on his body and he was restored to normal. John of God cannot stand the sight of blood, but fortunately for him he was not aware of any of these operations on himself. Many individuals have had physical surgeries without their bodies being physically touched. My friends witnessed a woman who had opted for a physical surgery become panic-stricken when she stood before the Entity. She had a cancerous tumor beneath her left rib cage. He asked for her to be seated in a chair next to him in order to calm her down, and after he had seen the four or five hundred remaining people in the line, he then asked her how she felt. She said she was much better. He then asked her to lift up the left hand side of her shirt in the place where the problem was. The marks of an incision were there and

John of God says that what he does is ultimately possible for anyone to do.

81 the cancer had been removed, without her ever being touched or being aware of anything. There are many similar accounts, some of which have been featured in the various documentaries made about John of God.

quantum states of reality than we have customarily had. And of course John of God says that what he does is ultimately possible for anyone to do.

The day my friends and I were departing from the Casa Dom Ignacio, to say goodbye we went to meet John I believe any fair minded person who of God in a small living room beside is willing to look objectively at the the Great Hall where he was taking a phenomena surrounding John of God rest between sessions. I had purchased will have to concede that something extraordinary is happening here, however a volume that recounted his recorded healings and asked him to autograph much it may insult their view of how it for me. I knew he was not able to reality actually is. read and write but also knew that a few years ago he had learned to sign How one explains that is of course his name. I had seen his autograph, another matter entirely. Some will a childish, unformed hand with a see the occurrences as magical in backward slope. He signed the book nature, others will locate them in that and handed it back to me. It was only borderland area of religion where later when I opened it on the journey superstitions thrive. And of course for home that I saw the autograph. It was seasoning’s sake there will always be not in the childish hand of Joao Teixeira the sprinkling of those who believe de Faria, nor was it even his name. In it is the work of the devil. Others will a stylish, mature, and flowing hand was see it as a ‘blick’ into possible future states of humanity, when healing comes boldly written “Ignacio.” from a larger understanding of the Photos: Miceal Ledwith

A VISIT TO JOHN OF GOD I had first met John of God at the Omega Institute in northern New York. Later my friends and I were guests of John of God and his wife Ana in their own home in Brazil for most of a week. I suppose there are some who would say that disqualifies my objectivity credentials, but it also allowed me an unparalleled access to everything that took place at the healing center and afterwards when we left the Casa to travel to the privacy of their home. I saw the strain that these incorporations bring to the physical body of the medium, and how briefly flipping in and out of these altered states was occurring all the time, not just at the major assemblies of healing. We saw the amazing friendliness and hospitality of the local Brazilian people and the care taken by each of the staff members at the Casa to make sure the participants were treated as they themselves would wish to be treated; which would be extraordinary in itself even if nothing else extraordinary was taking place.

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ANCIENT WISDOM Ramtha: Words of Power and Blessing for Ourselves and Our World — Becoming and Speaking As the Observer Excerpt adapted from: Ramtha, Gandalf’s Battle on the Bridge in the Mines of Moria — The True Story of a Master. Fireside Series, Vol. 2, No. 6, Revised Edition. JZK Publishing, 2007. Copyright © 2002, 2007 JZ Knight Ramtha the Enlightened One is a Master Teacher and Hierophant who learned to transcend the experience of the physical world and the entanglement of human emotions during the dynamic times he lived 35,000 years ago. His mission now is to teach others what he knows. JZ Knight began channeling Ramtha publicly around the U.S. and abroad beginning in 1978. Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (RSE) was established in 1988. Combining Ramtha’s ancient wisdom and the latest discoveries in neuroscience, genetics and quantum physics, RSE provides students with knowledge that enables them to access the extraordinary abilities latent in their brains, and the tools to Become a Remarkable Life®. In 2009, more than 6,700 students in over 60 countries trained at RSE events worldwide.

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aints and masters in the past knew an occult knowledge you don’t know. They understood the alchemy of self, and that true self is what the artificial self appeals to. So who are you? You don’t even know who you are yet because all you have been doing is granting the wishes of your emotional body every incarnation. You have never grown wings and flown yet. You think that the high is deluding your body and your brain. Do you think that is it? Woe is you. You think the high is food. You think the high is victimization. You think the high is pity and guilt and shame. Don’t you know that someone is pleading that case to someone?

really observing. Never take the position of the emotions. Never take the position of guilt. Don’t even recognize it. Never take the position of the victim. Don’t even recognize it. Never even take the position of your sexuality. Don’t even recognize it. Never take the position of lack. Don’t even recognize it. I want you to be the Observer, the one to whom the voices you have always been are trying to make a point.

When you are the Observer you have to grow up a lot. Very few people ever find this stage of enlightenment because they are so attached to their humanity, so attached to what is wrong with them and why they can’t be something that they really do deny their God for the There is not a woman who is not sake of feeling good. If there were ever righteously divine. It is just that you have a case for going to the light and having deluded yourself into thinking you are otherwise. You really have. You think your someone with you that was observing enemy is man. The enemy is not man. The your light review, then I want you to enemy is your delusion. That is the enemy. listen to me very carefully. That same situation is happening when you become There is not a man in this audience who the Observer and you are observing your isn’t God. You think the enemy is your sexuality. You think the enemy is conquest. monkey-mind.1 When you can do it here That is not the enemy. The enemy is you, without dying is when you have learned your voices. If you were stripped away the truth, the occult truth of the masters, from your body and you were still here, and then your job is to keep bringing you would be the forgotten Gods who are forth the Observer and laying down the starting to turn on. image to where your Observer is the only thing that you are. Then you can Who would you be and how would your say, “My God, I am God/man, I am God/ relationships be if suddenly the bodies woman manifest. I know what it was to were dispensed with? Would your lovers be Yeshua ben Joseph. I know the truth. still love you? Would your children still I understood what no one could possibly love you? Would you still love them? That understand because they cared too much is what the Observer is like. about their livelihood, their reputation, their bodies.” I want you to work on the principle of 1 The flickering, swinging mind of our emotions and taking the position of the Observer and personality.

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I am giving you the same message that your Observer gives to you: “If you can be me and be greater than your image, your image is going to die and I swear you will know eternal life.” That is the message from your Observer. It isn’t Yeshua ben Joseph that a person follows. He said, “The Father that lives in me is the Father that lives within you, and whosoever shall listen to the voice of the Father — though he should leave his mother’s house, though he should leave his father’s house, and though he should leave his husbandman or his wife — will inherit the kingdom of heaven.”2 This was the message. He was talking about the Observer. Do you have to suffer to become the Observer? In the first consequences you do, but after that it is a breeze because you are really clean and the Observer in you is as happy as a little baby and is connected to the Void. It is just a happy being. It is going to grow up being wiser and happier. I came back to teach you that and tell you I can do a lot of things for you and impress your loincloths off of you — and I have done that before — but what I want to do is teach you what I know and lay down the footprints so you just do it and apply yourself. You are going to reap the rewards. Your wings will get unstuck and you will be able to fly. You will start exercising divine will. You will get up and be bold, just like I was. You will get out of bed and say, “I am tired of being sick and being a wimp. I will never be that again. I am never going to cry again. I am never going to feel lack again. I am tired of it. Never again.” You won’t even care how loud your voice is and who is listening. You will just rise up and it will happen in you and you will be on fire, and that is your one fine morning. You will say, “I don’t care. I am never going to live this way again. I am never going to be a hypocrite again. I am tired of it. I am miserable. I am unhappy. I am tired 2. References to the Gospels according to Matthew 5:1-12; 19: 29-30 and Luke 17:20-21.

of taking pain pills. I am tired of feeling old. I am tired of being sick. I am tired of being rejected. I am tired of living for someone else to make me happy. My God, I am tired of it.” And that is the day you will have your morning and those wings will come unglued. I want you to say this as the Observer: God I Am, Lord God of my being, I have dominion over my life. Of the following I reject from here on out: I shall not allow nor shall I accept the runners, the manifestations, of my past. I reject my victimization and shall not see nor shall I honor that this should have made my life less than God. And I, the Lord God of my being, reject lack in all of its forms, in its connection to my tyranny, to my victimization, for I shall not accept lack, and unto me always I shall have whatever I desire. As the Lord God of my being, I reject utterly and completely diseasements and ill health, for I am a joyous God whose laughter is like thunder, and all the days of my life shall be undaunted and unstained with ill health, as I, the Lord God of my being,

reject this hour that which is termed age and death. I am a forever being that has never died. Therefore the law of eternal life that abides in me I command to abide in my body forever and ever and ever. As the Lord God of my being, the Lord of my genetics, the voice of my DNA, I command a youthful body, I command effervescence of energy, that all the days of my eternal life are lived in the youth of my existence. From the Lord God of my being, I reject this day any less than that which I ordain, nor shall I accept the runners of my personality, and all that shall come to me are the laws that I have ordained this night. From the Lord God of my being, so say I. To life. So be it.

For information on Ramtha and his teachings, please contact Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment: P.O. Box 1210, Yelm, WA 98597. Toll Free USA: 1.800.347.0439. Ph: 1.360.458.5201. Visit us online at www.ramtha. com for a list of workshops and events near your location. Become a Remarkable Life® Copyright © 2007 JZ Knight. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of JZ Knight and JZK, Inc.

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PERSPECTIVES - FUTURE SCIENCE

A Medical Heretic Fesses Up

By Danielle Graham

have a confession: I used to believe that ‘alternative medicine’ and ‘wellness’ were synonymous. I thought that the more “natural” systems of healing that include homeopathy and other forms of energy medicine, plantbased herbal remedies and tonics, whole foods diets and supplements, as well as chiropractics and the entire spectrum of bodywork and touch therapy were fundamental to maintaining health. For me, ‘alternative’ referred to a superior methodology of mitigating chronic and acute disorders, and I dismissed pharmaceutically driven prescription and over-the-counter drugs, surgery, and all other standard and experimental AMA sanctioned practices as dangerously brutal. I considered myself enlightened. It all began in the early 1970’s with my reading of Adelle Davis’ Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit, a book first published in 1954, the year I was born. Recognized as a nutritional pioneer, she was heralded

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010 Winter 2009

for bringing to the public’s attention the inevitable nutritional shortfalls that result from large-scale, soil depleting farming practices. Davis argued for the necessity of vitamin and mineral supplementation due to the nutritional losses from the food grown utilizing those practices. Her authoritative perspective was based on both clinical work and practical study at Purdue, UC Berkeley, Columbia, UCLA, and USC, where she earned a Masters of Science in Biochemistry. At the time, I was an urban dweller and did not grow my own food. I became a vitamin fanatic instead and consumed handfuls of (in hindsight) mostly indigestible pills every day, but I did evolve my system of supplementation well beyond Davis’ recommendations over time. Regardless, the study of her research provided me with a solid basis for understanding nutrition generally and vitamins and minerals specifically

– a knowledge base from which I continued to build. That same year, I also began to explore the world of whole foods including herbs. I was a student in Boston and ‘Beantown’ was a hotbed of nutrition and wellness strategy trailblazers. The Hippocrates Institute (promoting live, raw foods) had located their main offices there, as did an international macrobiotic institute (promoting small amounts of cooked grains and vegetables – heavy on the brown rice.) Erewhon, one of the first organic foods mega-corporations, began as a tiny storefront on Newbury Street, and I shopped there regularly. There was also small specialized shops displaying jars filled with exotic looking dried leaves, barks and berries and I was excited to explore them all. In addition to making my own bread daily and eating home-cooked healthy foods, brewing and steeping creatively combined plant parts to make tonics became a way of

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life. Soon, friends would begin to ask for remedies and I became empowered with a sense of self-righteous autonomy thinking I would never become co-dependent on the AMA system of medicine.

I was pregnant again with my son, my husband and I had decided to birth at home – just the two of us – and all went well.

With two children in diapers and alternative remedies in tow, we moved our family to Washington Another decade passed before I became State to raise them in a healthy, a mother, and early in my first child’s rural environment, and there I pregnancy, I was introduced to another met my spiritual teacher, Ramtha “alternative” healing method called The Enlightened One. He taught Homeopathy. I was fascinated with me advanced knowledge about the knowledge of “energy healing,” the body, the brain, the mind, and and procured an extensive library and a sacred technique of healing that pharmacy to satisfy my new passion. was so profound, my alternative During that time, I had also begun to medicine chest soon found its way practice yoga and tai chi, and read books like Zukov’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters and to the back of the closet. I also learned to create my reality – my Capra’s The Tao of Physics. As I increased experience of life – by utilizing my arsenal of knowledge and alternative many disciplines, including remedies, I was thoroughly convinced seeing myself healthy every day, that the majority of AMA doctors were all day, all week, all year and into practitioners of modern day voodoo. the next decades. I understood the importance of giving my body Becoming pregnant offered new the picture of wellness so that challenges I had not previously my brain’s neurological structure considered: How and where would I give birth? I called every hospital in the phone and functioning would then direct book and asked the same question: What my little DNA machines in the manufacturing of healthy proteins to alternatives do you have to traditional, replenish my body. invasive “delivery rooms”? During a call to the most prestigious hospital in the Yet, despite decades of obtaining and region, the maternity ward head nurse integrating knowledge about health and replied to my question with: If you want an alternative to our delivery rooms, I can wellness, I only recently recognized that I was holding on to the old pictures of roll you out into the hallway and you can ‘AMA versus alternatives’, thus keeping have your baby out there.” my body bound to that dichotomy. I was horrified by the inflexible attitudes Intellectually, I accepted that wellness was all about changing one’s thoughts I experienced from maternity ward and subsequently changing one’s life, personnel, so I began to ask parents but I had not yet completely surrendered at my food co-op about the kinds of the right/wrong attitudes I had built up childbirth choices they had made. My over decades of study and experience. good friend and manager of the store It became necessary for me to let go of told me that his partner was a midwife those long held thoughts so that I could and put us in touch. Thus began my know and experience even greater levels foray into the world of women-managed of wellness – one that more fully unites health care and childbirth: I had found my spiritual practices and experiences an intelligent, kind and compassionate with the physical needs of my body. The support system and I was in heaven. My daughter was born in the quiet comfort of heretic in me had to be disassembled and transformed into wisdom. our home with the help of two confident and experienced lay midwives. I was so elated by the experience that by the time

I now have a greater appreciation about wellness that continues to broaden. It is not only about what I do or don’t do to my body, it’s about nurturing the capacity to grow and evolve my life from what it has been into what it will become. Recognizing limited thinking and then changing those thoughts and attitudes is integral to that process. The field of medicine is slowly catching on, but in the meantime, there are many great scientists and physicians like Dr. Joan Borysenko, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Dan Gleeson, and Dr. Bernie Siegel who are rigorously and passionately integrating the knowledge of our innate transformative capacity into their practices and trainings. I deeply appreciate the challenges they face and honor them: Their efforts do help evolve health care and drive the field of integrative medicine into the future – a future well served by their courage and tenacity. Photos: Thinkstock

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PERSPECTIVES - WRITES OF PASSAGE

It’s Not Easy Being Green By Heidi Smith

or years, “healthy” food and I have had an agreement: I avoid it, and it leaves me alone. Vegetables rarely darken my doorstep, and fruit conceals itself as a pizza topping so that I don’t have to acknowledge its existence. Despite health-conscious parents, nutritionally aware roommates and organically inclined boyfriends, since childhood my eating preferences have leaned towards empty calories and colors not occurring in nature. That’s because food, for me, has been a form of comfort, stress release and even companionship when nothing else will do. Who says you can’t hug a potato chip? It will certainly hug you back, although not perhaps in the way you intended. The habit of food as a private pleasure began early as a way to avoid whatever reality I didn’t want to participate in, whether it was homework, gardening or obligatory visits with people I didn’t want to see. I could shut the door to my bedroom, immerse myself in reading story after story and consume vast quantities of sunflower seeds, while blotting out that eternal parental lament, “It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you go outside and play?” I was just fine in the imaginary world of books, thanks, especially with a trusty bowl by my side. It’s not that my mother, a gardener and excellent cook, didn’t try. She would get up at 5:30 in the morning to prepare a healthy sack lunch before heading off to work. In return, after carefully checking to make sure she was gone, I would promptly remove anything sweet or salty from it and toss the rest under the bed. That way, I reasoned, we were both happy. She thought I was eating well, and I didn’t have to deal with raisins and carrots. Then came the unfortunate day that she decided to clean my room. I wasn’t there when she discovered the heap of decaying apples, rotten bananas and pears gone bad (the fact that they’d gone this long without detection should tell you something about the state of my room), but her reaction sent the dog into hiding. I, meanwhile, did get several valuable lessons out of the experience: 1) don’t hide things under the bed. 2) Try the closet, instead.

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

During the teenage years, my dietary reasoning became downright bizarre. Apparently I’d slept through nutrition 101, because I was convinced that since junk food wasn’t an actual meal, it somehow didn’t count. My body would ignore those calories, and as long as I didn’t eat real food, I would look dazzling in a bikini, a very important consideration at the time. This rationale seemed to work; I stayed thin, grew strong and got regular compliments on my healthy look. Of course, I was also running five miles regularly, torching myself in the sun, and playing soccer six days a week. Under the circumstances, I’m sure Amy Winehouse could achieve a similar glow. Meanwhile, I continued to retreat to my room and enjoy furtive appointments with Lay’s® potato chips. College life brought its own revelations. I was not alone! Cut loose from parental oversight, half the people I knew ate terribly, and many seemed to share my solution to stress. In the face of relationship woes, academic disasters or the fallout from misguided evenings at the bar, we had options:

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chin and expanding waistline to see the real me, at least if I could put down the nachos and unlock the bedroom door long enough to let them in. My final justification for refusing to change occurred about ten years ago, in a truly remarkable example of the mind’s ability to filter out what we don’t want to hear. I’d been studying at a spiritual school and had been taught that our thoughts not only impact the environment around us, but they actually create our reality. What we focus on matters, and the things that we observe are changed by our observation of them. In fact, I learned, even food could be affected by how we thought about it, and our attitudes were at least as important as what we put in our mouths. If we blessed our food or consciously held the intention that it would be healthy for us, those actions would impact the effects it had on our bodies. Since I’d been blithely ignoring the contents of what I ate for the past twenty years, this was good news indeed. I conveniently heard the first part of the message and ignored the rest. In a brilliant twist of reasoning, I figured I could retroactively “bless” all the crap I’d been eating and continue on my merry way, full speed ahead into the land of Chips Ahoy®. The missing piece was the whole concept of being conscious. I can safely say that I was not present with a single kernel of popcorn in all this time. communicate, take responsibility for our actions, tell the truth . How could I be, when my entire aim was to go unconscious, . . or hide out in the apartment, wearing pajamas and eating ice retreat from the world and avoid whatever I didn’t want to deal cream until the stormed passed. I can’t speak for others, but I with? It wasn’t like I suddenly started, either, but instead took know what my roommates and I chose. this new information as an excuse to keep going in the direction I was already headed. So far, I was still playing soccer and disguising my love of junk food under an avalanche of exercise, but that circumstance The actual shift, which is still very much a work in progress, changed abruptly when I was twenty-seven. After a knee came not through some epiphany or dramatic decline in health, injury took me out of commission for four months and severely but in the unlikely form of dogs. In the past year, I’ve acquired altered my active lifestyle, it seemed like a good time to rethink two growing puppies, and from the time they arrived, they my attitude about food and weight. It was a great opportunity have eaten like royalty. I researched their nutritional needs, to begin eating better, to give up the popcorn and embrace consulted with a veterinarian, and made sure no grain or corn salad. Instead, I decided to lower my standards. After all, what products passed their lips. Their coats are shiny, their eyes were a few extra pounds? Better than giving up the undeniable are bright and as they bounce around the house, glowing with joys of disappearing into a mystery novel and a pint of Ben & health, it has occurred to me that there’s something wrong Jerry’s®. Men, I reasoned, came and went. Why should I give with this picture. Why do I take so much better care of them up instantaneous comfort in order to appear attractive to some than I do of myself? No promises, but I am considering a truce nebulous future guy that I might not even meet? Furthermore, on the vegetable front and next week, I meet with a nutritionist. the worthy ones would be able to look past my additional But first, I have to get out of my pajamas. Photos: Thinkstock

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VITALMINDS FOR THE BRAIN

FEATURED REVIEW

The Editor’s picks from the Books and DVD’s that pass our desks. We focus on media that provides insight into our lives and our times, as well as encourages and empowers the self-responsibility that accompanies such knowledge.

Thinkstock

What You Think Matters, Literally The Spiritual Journey Part 1: Our Purpose and Uniqueness – DVD

By Ramtha

What is the “spiritual journey?” Perhaps it is the process of becoming cognizant of our innate, unique conscious self – an awareness that begins to emerge out of the cacophony and constraints of a seemingly endless sea of physical and emotional compulsions. And what better teacher to learn from than one who has already traversed the experience from that of a crippled emotional slave to one who became a supreme enlightened being?

empower by recognition that we create reality. When we pursue the reality that God is in us … then we begin the remarkable journey of the exposé of truth, the journey of knowledge into reality.” Ramtha, who has already passed through the human drama - and conquered it teaches on many levels simultaneously. Experiencing the mind of this master is like falling through an ever-expanding Fibonacci Spiral, and like a proverbial rabbit hole, the deeper one goes, the greater the expansion of a person’s understanding which then increases their capacity to hear and experience even more. There is nothing “fluffy” about Ramtha: His reason is profound and his words penetrate to the eternal, unawakened aspects of ourselves.

In this spectacular teaching, Ramtha adamantly reminds us that one day we will wake up to realize the actionable nature of our thoughts: What we think matters – literally. He addresses the “importance of what we see and hear and This DVD, the first in a series of three, what we think about what we see and is 140 minutes in length, and contains hear,” as well as the brain’s capacity of translations for eight additional unlimited thought: languages: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese And, if all thinking matters, why not and Spanish. It was recorded live think to the loftiest? during an advanced training in 2008, Why not be challenged from the and while there are references made to probable to the un-probable? Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment and Why not be challenged from the past to the audience members’ training, the the future? concepts taught are basic and accessible for anyone interested in learning from the When addressing the “heart of what we are” and our spiritual purpose, he states: mind of a hierophant and master teacher. “The journey to self-enlightenment is to SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

Highly Recommended!

BOOKS FOR PARENTS

Educating Parents NurtureShock

By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Rated as one of the best nonfiction books of 2009, NurtureShock should be read by anyone interested in understanding more about children’s development from toddlers to teenagers. This is not a parenting book filled with advice for raising children; in many ways it actually contradicts what you may find in such books. The authors argue that most insights about parenting are based on wrong assumptions. With the help of neuroscience, psychological research on children has evolved substantially from what was known only a few decades ago and has become the basis for many parenting best practices. In chapter one, Bronson and Merryman cite studies which demonstrate that focusing praise on a child’s intelligence, rather than the effort required to succeed, creates chronic underperformers who

Physics Made Easy How To Teach Physics to Your Dog shy away from risks and challenges out of fear of failure. It is findings like this that make NurtureShock such a compelling read. According to Bronson, “Everything in our book has a 10-year track record and is the result of many different scientific studies.” Three years of in-depth investigative journalism and analysis that led to some of the most provocative articles in publications from Time Magazine to The Washington Post are now available in this single, expanded volume. Highly recommended reading.

By Chad Orzel

The title of this fun and easy to understand physics book is not 100% accurate: It should read, “How to Teach QUANTUM Physics to Your Dog!” The first nine chapters are simple yet masterful explanations of fundamental quantum concepts like particle-wave duality, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the Copenhagen Interpretation, the ManyWorlds Interpretation, the Zeno Effect, Tumbling, Entanglement, Teleportation, and Electrodynamics. Unfortunately chapter ten is

written from the perspective of narrow-minded opinions disguised as skepticism related to the anomalous edges of quantum theory. Ignorance is always forgivable and in this case doesn’t distract from the overall value of the fundamental theories. Whenever Orzel, a professor of physics, begins to veer too far into the abstract, Emmy the dog always brings him back from the intellectual clouds with comments like, “You know, I’m not getting a lot out of these equations.” The back and forth repartee between the teacher and the dog create a light-hearted context by which these concepts are described in such a way as to be accessible for anyone, even a child. If you have ever wanted to talk quantum physics with children of any age, this book provides insights into how to break down even the most complex concepts into easy-to-understand, chewable bites.

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VITALMINDS FOR THE BRAIN BANTAM REVIEWS

Water, Water, Everywhere

Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It

Apocalypse 2012 An Investigation into Civilizations End

By Lawrence E. Joseph

By Robert Glendon

“The biggest challenge facing water managers today,” says one concerned character in Robert Glendon’s Unquenchable, “is to convince the public that there really is a problem.” Though there are multiple facets to the water crisis, public ignorance remains the greatest threat. This book serves as a timely wake up call. In dryly humorous prose, Glendon presents clear evidence of the dire results of unconscious consumption: droughts, polluted drinking water, wells drying up, and dying rivers. As he puts it, “We consume water as if it had no value, and we consume it in the most ridiculous ways imaginable.” The topic could easily become heavy, the sheer weight of information overwhelming. But Glendon populates the book with interesting characters, and balances the statistics with humorous quotations. After thoroughly making the case for reforming our national water policy, Glendon ends by proposing solutions. Although he does speak of what individuals can do on their own properties, the majority of his ideas are aimed at overhauling the way we use and distribute water. We have the tools and technology, he says. “All we need now is the will and commitment to confront the water crisis.” SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

What is Real about 2012

Many books, blogs and now movies are dedicated to the year 2012 and we should expect to see more as the date approaches. Attempts to attach all kinds of meaning to it will probably also continue. Among them, Joseph’s work, without a doubt, contains the most comprehensive research into the phenomenon of 2012. In order to cover the full spectrum of theories around why 2012 is such an important date and what might happen that makes it so, he traveled around the world, gathering perspectives from different cultures and talking to scientists whose research shows that we are approaching great changes, which may in fact have already begun. The information presented has an empowering effect, rather than provoking fear. It is easier to fear that which we don’t know or understand and this book provides a clear explanation of the different natural events that may seriously challenge our survival. Joseph’s conclusion is to be prepared, as he states: “No doubt more and greater catastrophes, natural and person-made, are on their way soon, regardless of whether they are related to sunspots, Mayan prophecies, or any of the other portents associated with 2012. The only sane response is preparation . . . The mere act of preparing for the coming tumult will save us, perhaps physically, and certainly spiritually.”

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LOCAL NEWS SuperConsciousness Magazine is based in Yelm, Washington, a small but growing rural town situated in the western shadows of Mt. Rainier, south of Seattle. It is home to a bevy of creators, innovators and independent people of all stripes. Our Local News features noteworthy Pacific Northwest residents who are realizing their potential and providing a template for others to do the same.

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Growing Hope EarthBox Creates Self-Sufficient Communities

ike flowers that bloom in the desert, around South Africa today dozens of previously impoverished communities are growing their own fruit and vegetables despite living in barren landscapes. The reason? An innovative product called the EarthBox, which is distributed through the efforts of Yelm, Washington resident Jim Capezio and his organization Operation Lionheart Trust. Originally created by Blake Whisenant, Florida’s biggest tomato grower, after his entire crop was destroyed in a hurricane, the EarthBox is a portable container gardening system that produces a 60% higher yield than a conventional garden — using half the fertilizer and 40% less water. It requires no maintenance and can be reused, which makes it accessible even for the elderly or children. Operation Lionheart Trust

trains local team leaders to work with communities and ensure sustainability. In 2003, The American Horticultural Society recognized Whisenant and Michael Lynch, EarthBox patent holders, with the G.B. Gunlogson Award for the creative use of technology to make home gardening more productive and enjoyable. In 2009, the EarthBox won the Editors’ Choice Award from Organic Gardening Magazine. Capezio’s involvement began with a goal. He had already experienced relative financial success, recognition and the ability to accumulate things. “It was gratifying to know that I could make it on my own in terms of earning a living, but I started to get bored, and started to wonder what thing I could do that would bring more sense of purpose to my life,” he says. Instead, he wanted to create

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www.EarthWaveLiving.com SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

a business that would benefit the world in some way. “It didn’t matter if it was small or big,” he explains, “just that it added value to peoples’ lives, that it truly had a beneficial impact on the quality of life.” He kept his mind open and while visiting his grandmother in Pennsylvania, met Lynch, the man who currently holds the patent on the EarthBox. Since marrying his wife Rebecca, a South African, Capezio had spent at least four months a year in that country and had witnessed the needs of many communities firsthand. “The thought came that these would be really cool boxes to have in impoverished communities because they don’t have a lot of land and it’s not farmable. They can’t afford tractors, and they have very little space,” he says. The next step involved identifying manufacturers for the different components of the EarthBox, and hiring a South African agronomist, who flew to Florida to meet the

inventor. Corporate sponsors began to express interest, and the South African government started to place orders. Meanwhile, in the communities where they were introduced, Capezio saw real change. “They are developing a sense of pride about eating food that they’re growing, as opposed to feeling disenfranchised and lacking hope because of their circumstances. Before, they didn’t even conceive of growing their own food. It’s really selfempowering,” he observes. Their efforts primarily target women because that approach has proven most effective. In that sense, Operation Lionheart Trust differs from many other corporate sponsored programs that have started out well but eventually collapsed. “Sustainability has always been an issue in South Africa,” says Capezio. “There have always been social responsibility departments in corporations, but in many cases with projects that they fund, there’s no follow through, so lots of good ideas fall by the wayside. My wife has helped me a great deal with implementing a system whereby sustainability is

“The relationship is the medicine.”

SoulCare in HealthCare

Joan Borysenko, Ph.D. with Gordon Dveirin, Ed.D. A two-part, onsite, and online certificate program for health professionals through the Omega Institute — Autumn 2010 through Spring 2011 The relationship is the medicine, a transcendent field of energy that embraces both healthcare practitioners and the persons they serve. In the process—an I/Thou rather than I/It encounter—both persons begin to embody the vital soul quality of wholeness. The SoulCare in HealthCare training led by mind/body pioneer Joan Borysenko and organizational psychologist Gordon Dveirin is designed to reclaim the sacred in healthcare and to heal the split between body and soul in our divided understanding of life itself. The goal of this course is to introduce healing presence, generative listening, and the evocation of story as core competencies in the integral practice of medicine, psychology, nursing, social work, and other health specialties.

For full details, please visit www.eomega.org or contact soulcare@joanborysenko.com

SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

wisdom Life-Changing Wisdom

365 Prescriptions for the Soul

101 Exercises for the Soul

Dr. Bernie S. Siegel

“Bernie Siegel dispenses spiritual medicine that’s good for you, and feels good too! I highly recommend these daily doses of eternal wisdom.” — MARIANNE W ILLIAMSON, author of Everyday Grace $14.95 • 384 pages

“Another loving, wise, practical, and life-changing book from Dr. Bernie. This step-by-step fitness guide is for the part of you that has wings.” — RACHEL NAOMI REMEN, MD, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom $13.95 • 208 pages

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achievable in these communities. Our whole focus is on proving ourselves, we’re here for the long term.” Originally, Capezio intended to manufacture all of the necessary components in South Africa, but he quickly discovered that it was not entirely possible. One of the key ingredients for the growing medium is coir, ground up coconut husks which are rapidly replacing peat moss for agricultural purposes. The nearest source was a struggling start-up company in Mozambique, so Operation Lionheart Trust bought a 50% share and imports it from there. Along the way, the EarthBox has been put to some unexpected uses.

After the Haitian earthquake, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) ordered 50,000 of them. In Mexico, a company has duplicated the Operation Lionheart Trust business model and is implementing it in rural communities. Capezio travels to South Africa at least twice a year visiting communities and potential sponsors. Ultimately, he sees the EarthBox being used throughout Africa. “South Africa is the perfect place to start, because it has a pretty welldeveloped economy,” he says. “By word of mouth and references, we’ll roll up through southern Africa and through all of Africa. Hunger is an issue all the time. That’s what I see happening.” He

also foresees introducing additional products and services related to uplifting impoverished communities and ensuring sustainability. For now, interest continues to grow. At least six corporations have sponsored a community, and the South African government just ordered 10,000 EarthBoxes. Around the country, fruit and vegetables are springing up at schools, universities, and clinics. At the Mother of Peace orphanage in Northriding, Johannesburg, surplus vegetables are sold to supplement the organization and bring in much needed cash. Since he first created the goal of a venture that would benefit the world in some meaningful way, clearly Jim Capezio has achieved it. Photos: James Capezio

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AFTERTHOUGHTS HUM OR WIT H A Q U A R K O F E N LI G H TE N M E N T

Cartoon by Dan Berger. Dan lives in western Massachusetts with his beautiful wife and two quarreling cats. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been a professional cartoonist and writer for longer than he cares to remember, and is grateful to have been able to do something that he loves all these years. SuperConsciousness Summer 2010

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