Vision Magazine December 2011 Random Acts of Kindness by Vision magazine

Maitreya’s promise While

many people continue to believe that the very puzzling. A conjuring, a confidence trick, you present banking and stock exchange systems are would think, has been played on half the world. necessary and unalterable, more and Will the old ways, the old time, return? more are coming to the conclusion Do we really want them to return with that they have passed their usefulness the wealth of the rich doubling daily and must soon be replaced. Too and the poor picking up the coppers* many are suffering from the effects they let fall? of unfettered greed, and yearn for greater justice and fairness in order Change to survive what is so glibly called ‘the “Occupy Wall Street” activist The people everywhere are sensing a current economic climate’. Before the economic collapse of 2008, at least in the developed change and are lending their voices to its call. They world, there was plenty of money. People had work are sensing, too, their power to act, and many die and houses to live in; new millionaires were born to prove it. They sense that the old ways are almost everyday. Elsewhere, of course, millions still starved over and have spent their force. They feel that there and millions more went hungry, but for some there are other, better ways to live and look forward to tomorrow. Verily, the old ways are dying and hold was plenty of money and life felt good. back the race. The wheel turns and mighty Rome is Where has all the money gone? What has happened falling once again. Maitreya’s fire is lit in the hearts of to it? Now, no one has work and the money has countless millions and they respond, eager to build a disappeared – into the banks and disappeared. new world where justice and harmony rule. Maitreya’s u And the millionaires are now billionaires. It is all promise is that this new world is on its way.

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This article, published in Share International magazine, was written by a Master of Wisdom. The Masters, headed by Maitreya, the World Teacher, are highly advanced teachers and advisors of humanity who are planning to work openly in the world very soon. *”Coppers” is the British equivalent of “pennies”.

photo: Meryl Tihanyi

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34-37 vision café artist’s manifesto for beating urban blues intended kindness 38 holistic business gogh jewelry 42 calendar 45 visionary artist Katherine “Kat” http://paintedonmysole.deviantart.com/ Editor’s Note: In our previous issue, we published an article entitled, “Dreaming Bhutan: A Passage Into Grace,” which included an interview with Nicole Grace. Unfortunately, Vision Magazine unwittingly produced a piece that was a misrepresentation of Ms. Grace’s speech, thoughts, and intention. After reviewing the errors, we have provided an edited version of the article with Ms. Grace’s approval. Please read it online at http://www. visionmagazine.com/archives/1111/1111_ feature_Dreaming_Bhutan.html.

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v i e w p o i n t

onsidering we spend more than 80 percent of our time indoors, it’s vital that our home is supportive and nurturing, that it serves as a haven for self-love and support. When you enter, it’s almost as if your abode is hugging and embracing you. This starts with you being kind to yourself, as your home is merely an outward expression of what’s happening inside. As a Feng Shui teacher, people often ask me the best first step. Most importantly, I suggest that your home is clutter free. That means letting go of anything that no longer serves or honors you—clothing you haven’t worn in a year, appliances that are broken, objects you don’t need, use, or love. And if someone gave you something that you don’t love, re-gift it or at least pass it on to someone who can truly use it. Find a charity you believe in and exercise a random act of kindness. You will probably receive even more in return. I often drop off carloads of discarded clothes and housewares to a battered women’s shelter and watch the women’s faces light up with joy, which in turn fills me with joy. It seems synchronicity abounds when we look to share. I recently did a consultation for a single mom of a darling little girl. The springs on their couch had gone out and the cornerstone of their living room was falling apart. The very next day I happened to consult a client in La Jolla who was eager to discard a beautiful white sofa. A friend with a truck offered to deliver it, making one delighted mother. “Wow, Feng Shui works fast!” my client exclaimed with wonder, as she snuggled with her daughter in their gently used couch. The truth is, it’s gratifying to give to others. You will also find yourself feeling lighter, with more V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

room to think and dream in your living space. Through the process of letting go, I feel blessed to witness transformation on a regular basis. I had one client who lost her husband three years ago and was frozen in time and grief. Her house had become a shrine to her ex-husband, filled with large posters and photos of him everywhere. For six months, we worked on letting go of the pieces that caused her to relive the suffering over and over again. While initially unthinkable, she found tremendous healing in letting go while still honoring the deep love she had for him. In the process, she realized her departed husband would want her to be happy and she deserved to be. She is now happily dating a wonderful man. Feng Shui offers plenty of opportunities to commit random acts of kindness to your partner, or even your future mate. If you want to attract or enhance a romantic relationship, dress up your home like you’re already in that relationship. Think in twos. Buy night stands and lamps in pairs—one for you and another for your beloved. As anyone who’s ever been in a relationship knows, love also means giving your partner space. Start with the closet, clearing shelves and hangers for your ideal mate to spread out. Not only is it practical, but it also energetically sends the message that you have room in your life for a relationship. Collect artwork and statues that reflect intimacy. The bedroom is best suited for rest and romance, so remove anything that doesn’t support this, such as that pile of unpaid bills, which can subliminally quash amorous moments. Also, keep photos of your family, friends, and past lovers out of your bedroom. One of my clients had a beautiful photo of her late grandmother hovering over the bed. Once she moved her grandmother’s watchful eye to another room, her love life blossomed! Want more abundance? Make sure your home reflects that, too. This can be simple and celebratory. Get yourself fresh flowers every week. Make your front entrance warm and welcoming to invite good energy into your home. Pointed objects or plants, such as cactus, by the front door can deter abundance from entering. Position your bed in the “command position,” with a solid wall behind you and a clear view of the door. The same rule goes for your desk positioning. The power position is one where you can see the door from your desk. Your nervous systems will relax so you can be more focused on what you’re doing. You also invite opportunities into your life by facing them, rather than turning your back on them. You can also enact little acts of kindness to your bodily temple in your very own kitchen. To improve health and well-being, keep your kitchen clean and bright. This includes minimizing electromagnetic fields, or EMFs. Get rid of the microwave and cook your food with good old-fashioned heat. This will help nourish your body more fully with every meal. Also, allow natural light and fresh air into your home. Besides being beautiful and alive, fresh plants will clean up the air. In Feng Shui, we want to invite all the elements of nature into the house—natural gems, gentle water fountains, fresh flowers, and natural sunlight for the fire element. As an act of self-kindness, create an altar where that you can meditate, dream, and journal. It can be simple, with photos of saints or people who inspire you, a flower, or a crystal gem. Even if it’s just the corner of a room, create a sacred space that’s private for you. By every choice to re-gift, reuse, or recycle, we are also being kind to Mother Earth, which gives us everything we have. Be grateful for all she provides and inspires. Love our planetary home, your own home, and ultimately, love yourself. There’s nothing random about that. Amanda Collins is a Feng Shui expert, yoga teacher, singer-songwriter, and spiritual guide. Though she was born and raised in Ireland, Collins now calls San Diego her home. For more information about her Feng Shui training, yoga classes, and other services and events, please visit www.sdfengshui.com. Contact her at amandacollins. me@gmail.com and 858.736.7241.

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h o l i s t i c

Random Acts of Kindness

h e a l t h

“When they laugh, I laugh. When Laughing With the Wise Ones they kvetch, I still laugh.”

by Elyse Briggs

t happens without thinking. You spot a situation, quickly access, act, and BAM—you’ve done something that affects someone else’s life, and for that matter, yours, too. (Hopefully that action is a positive one.) What just happened? A random act of kindness, according to Webster, is defined as: “a selfless act performed by a person or people wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual person or people.” Maybe it was the year I spent as a Brownie at age 6 when I learned that we’re supposed to help each other! Gravitating towards helping kids and animals, and assisting the elderly—my favorite, simply because I’m headed in that direction—is a passion of mine. (Not to take away from the injustices done every day that involve kids and animals—my heart bleeds every day for all of them.) Given that I’m a Type A, middle-aged (is 60-ish still middle-aged?), neurotic Jewish woman, my heart is always bleeding for something. However, I’ve learned lately to fight my own ADD (did I mention that yet?) and focus on one particular topic that helps with my own frustration level and lets me focus on those who really need the help! Being a yoga teacher and movement/massage therapist, I have the fortunate opportunity to work with folks in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and, yes, 100s! 100 and beyond is not a big deal these days if you do it right. I meet these wonderful seniors, or is it more PC to say the mature, in assisted living facilities, at my private office, or my yoga studio. I call them, “The Wise Ones.” The Wise Ones and I work on movement problems or on their inability to move the way they want to. We talk about why they’re not moving and what caused the immobility and the frustration around all of it. Maybe it’s due to a recent surgery or tumble, or maybe the fact that they’re just “plain old lazy,” as one of my clients just told me yesterday. As we work individually or in a group setting, they kvetch (“complain” in Yiddish). I listen. They show me what they can’t do any longer, and as they try, they laugh and shake their heads. I assist by teaching them how to move themselves. There’s more kvetching and more listening and a lot more laughing. As we laugh, they notice they’re breathing differently, better. I’m saying, “Deep breath in, deep breath out, but only through your nose and deep into the belly.” One Wise One says, “I don’t have a belly, I have an abdomen. I’m svelte! ” There’s more laughter. Then the realization comes, and it happens every time with every group or individual: if you can still laugh, and particularly at yourself, you thrive. Together we stretch and kvetch, but mainly we laugh. I have hundreds of rich stories and experiences with the Wise Ones, but here’s the best one to date. Last week I worked with a particular group of Wise Ones in the Pico/Robertson neighborhood (mostly Jewish). Toward the end of our session, we reviewed how proper breathing affects the central nervous system. It was determined that mouth breathing, rapidly and high in the chest, triggered the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight response) and made them feel bad, anxious, and out of control. In their words, it was more like, famisht and fahrblunget (feeling like you should lie in the ground like a piece of garlic) and fakakta (something that is not working well or is really crap.) Whether you’re Jewish or not, and most people I work with are not, you’ve got to agree, Yiddish certainly is colorful and to the point! I know I’m learning a lot. Then, upon reviewing and experiencing the pleasant effects that the parasympathetic nervous system triggered, by breathing calmly through the nose V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

into the belly (or abdomen, with all due respect to our svelte Wise Ones), they all agreed that they felt good and relaxed and calm. I asked what the Yiddish word for “calm” was. There were glances, dead silence, shrugged shoulders. No one knew. Again, laughter. Lots of it. And it was unanimous. They felt taller, more mobile, and most importantly, younger. With respect to having the honor of being asked to write about random acts of kindness, this is what came to mind: bringing joy to those who are otherwise ailing emotionally or physically, and inspiring laughter. BIG laughter is what living to the fullest means to me. When they laugh, I laugh. When they kvetch, I still laugh. They call me “mean.” I tell them to work harder, and then we’re all hysterical. Performing a random act of kindness doesn’t take much. You take what you’ve got and put it to work. You don’t have to be superhuman. Just be a mensch. (Look it up.) Elyse Briggs, NCTMB, RTT, ERYT-500, is Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, a Licensed Massage Therapist, and a certified and nationally registered teacher of therapeutic massage and yoga with a private practice in Glendale, CA. She is also the author of the DVD series, Stretch In Time®, which helps seniors improve the health of their spines and stretch major joints and muscles with five simple exercises. This motivational DVD is closed-captioned for seniors who are deaf or hard of hearing, and emphasizes the importance of building strength and endurance as people age. Please visit http://www.stretchintime.com.

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h o l i s t i c

h e a l t h can visit the authors in their offices in San Diego, CA and receive a thorough treatment—including balancing disorganizations in your unconscious fields— you can also do it yourself. The significance of ESM is to heal “stuck emotional states that seem to result from some form of traumatic experience,” Dr. Lambrou explains. As he delineates further in the book, “The interaction of the thought energies with the meridian energy system is believed to be the source of emotions, or emotional distress… Each type of thought seems to vibrate at a specific frequency and affect specific meridians in the body. Thought fields created by strong negative emotions appear to deliver a shock to the system, causing blockages in the meridians.” Their work, while decidedly Western in tone and approach, is based on traditional Chinese medicine and its conception of meridians or energy rivers in the body. The authors found their way from the Middle Kingdom to the States on the shoulders of George Goodheart, founder of applied kinesiology, and Dr. John Diamond, founder of the Diamond Path of Life and originator of the Acupuncture Emotional System. “Dr. Diamond’s approach,” Dr. Lambrou relates, “was to identify which organ systems and meridians correlate to which emotion using neuromuscular feedback and applied kinesiology.” For example, according to Dr. Diamond, the heart is the meridian of forgiveness and its healing affirmation is “my heart is filled with love.” In traditional Chinese medicine, the emotions of each organ turn into each other as the body’s life energy, or chi, flows through the meridians. The heart’s Joy leads to the spleen’s Thought. As Thought keeps forming, it implacably turns to the lung’s Worry and Sorrow as surely as the sun sinks into night. We inevitably feel the sorrow from dividing our world too much; too much is painful to our knowing all-ness. This is natural. Thus, the ESM treatment for obsessive thinking uses the lung meridian, transferring energy into its calming emotional circuit to create balance. Like its forefathers of acupuncture and acupressure, ESM organizes itself around the fireworks splayed out over the body like dots along the energy flows of the meridians. These are sacred sites—here lies Sedona, or here lies Machu Picchu. Indeed these points have holy names: Gates of Consciousness or Bubbling Spring. Through the simple practice of tapping these points with your own fingers, ESM cracks open our façade and opens “the floodgates for the trapped energies to flow freely and self-correct.” Anyone who thinks there is only one place in the body worth stimulating is in for a serious treat. There are different “tapping” procedures for a wide range of deep emotions, such as grief, trauma, or rage. As I enthusiastically read last week, I used their techniques for relaxation and their tapping sequence for anxiety and guilt. I was pleasantly surprised. With an assumption that this technique would be superficial—reinforced by the authors’ simple language—I nonetheless found that these taps went deep. I felt layers of emotions peel off as danker, older ones from my child-home surfaced. I was mesmerized. The authors explain that much like “an onion only reveals its top layer at any one time, emotions may stack up

e are in a far different relationship with our thoughts and emotions than we have believed. Less as inventors, we are more like collaborators with the collective unconscious, receiving its thoughts and emotions. We eventually form attractions to certain frequencies and they become our home. We then want to invite the same guests over and over for our fireside chats. We are, as Ph.D.s George Pratt and Peter Lambrou analogize, radios. In their broad book, “Instant Emotional Healing: Acupressure for the Emotions,” Pratt and Lambrou explain with toothsome practicality how you can change radio stations even when the knob has oxidized and become encrusted. It’s an easy, crunchy read; if the book is a shake long, the practice is gold. Even in our age of instant this and instant granola, we new-agers know it’s not all industrial; many miracles are in a moment. Besides instantaneity, one of the strengths of Pratt and Lambrou’s system of Emotional Self Management (ESM) is in its self-empowerment. While you

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continued on page 44

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Kind of Extremely Kind

“P

ractice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” —Anne Herbert

“God gives you lemons, make lemonade. God gives you a lemon grove, make a lemonade stand. God gives you a lemon car, you’re stuck.” —my Uncle Tasso

Do you ever just wake up and think that these are extreme times and that the world is an extreme place? And if you needed proof you would note that things have reached such an extent that there are actually multiple movements devoted to exploring the margins of any given experience. It’s extremely, um…extreme. Have no fear, though. No matter where you fall on the continuum, there is a group for you. Tired of working? There is the Extreme Early Retirement Movement, a group devoted to you spending the rest of your life on a recliner, watching bad made-for-TV movies as early as sometime next week. For those of you with a penchant for redundancy, there is the Extreme Movement Movement, also known as parkour. It advocates navigating around obstacles with efficiency and speed by climbing, jumping, rolling, running, and vaulting your way past them. This group is popular with those trying to avoid paying back their college loans. Thankfully, I am well ahead of the extreme curve. With no hubris whatsoever, I have been at the forefront of a few extreme movements of my own. There was the Extreme Horniness Movement, aka my adolescence; the Extreme Boredom Movement, those sixteen weeks in law school when I had to take a federal income tax course. Oh, and this: the Extreme Embarrassment Movement. When I was thirteen, being cool meant dressing the part. And I never wanted to be cooler than when my family went on our annual vacation to the ramshackle cluster of cottages on Lake Michigan that we called the Greek Riviera. Showing up dressed in a way that conveyed how much I had matured in the intervening year was very important, as many of my friends, some of whom I saw only once a year, were there. At the time, the Beach Boys and surf fashion were still in vogue. One day the week before we left for vacation, while strolling through the cheapest store in town (think K-Mart but not as tony), I was lucky enough to score the perfect bathing suit for the occasion—a pair of what were known as surfer’s trunks. They came down almost to my knees, had a draw string, and were made of this psychedelic floral print that screamed ‘cool.’ That first day on the beach took on the stature of my coming out party. (‘Coming out’ proved to be tragically prophetic.) We had all gone for a swim, and as we exited the water I hung back wanting to be the last one out for dramatic effect. The beach was jammed with kids whose opinions I held dear. As they stood on the shore toweling off, they saw me striding toward them, my bathing suit radiating California chic. They all stared at me, but something was wrong. There were no glances of admiration, no looks of approval. In their place was a communal gaze so unspeakably sharp I almost turned around to see what it was that had bewitched them so. But they were staring directly at me. Or, more specifically, at my bathing suit, doing so in a way that conveyed sheer disbelief. In one of those instances where life comes in time-lapse bursts, I looked down and had a profoundly in-body/outof-body experience: there, positioned precisely over my crotch, was a flower. And in the middle of said blossom, a hole had formed in the seam of my bathing suit. Somehow, exiting the water had formed a perfect vacuum between my body and the fabric, pulling a part of my anatomy through the hole just enough so that protruding perfectly from the middle of the flower was…well, let’s just say the phrase “pistols V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

g r e e k t o m e and stamens” took on new meaning. I dove back into the water, intent on swimming to Canada. I turned a shade of red so intense that I should have been able to boil myself into a cloud of steam and evaporate, but I didn’t. I survived, though my dreams of cool drained out through the traitorous hole. No one sought to comfort me that week. In fact, no one said a word. From which I learned that kindness could sometimes be measured by something not said or mentioned. A compassionate result could be achieved from not acting, which introduced me to kindness’s mysterious nature. Now, in these extreme times, I think it’s only natural that kindness evolves, too. From this moment forward, I am advocating we relinquish random acts of kindness in favor of inadvertent acts of extreme benevolence. Anyone can be kind when the mood suits them. The type of kindness we need to lead us into the next millennium is one that is not only independent of the good spirits of the source of said generosity, but is given in total disregard of the person receiving it. In other words, when you’re feeling least like extending kindness to someone who least deserves it, that is precisely the time to act. Did someone cut you off to snag that parking space on the street while giving you the finger? Pull up to them, smile, and fill their parking meter as you thank them for demonstrating how to park one’s car in the event of a small stroke. Is someone talking so loudly on their cell phone that you can’t hear yourself think while standing in line at your local café? Buy them their drink and thank them for the one-man tutorial on the perils of boorish behavior. And if any of what I am suggesting leaves you feeling a little vulnerable and more than slightly exposed, take it from me, you’ll get over it. Just make sure your fly is zipped. Author’s note: Thank you for the gift of your continued readership. May you be filled with the Spirit of the season. All the best and then some, —MR Michael Raysses is a writer/NPR commentator who lives in Malibu, California. E-mail him at MichaelRaysses@hotmail.com.

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L i f e Q u a k e ™

first, sexually. This man was my first and my husband was my second, but my former boyfriend has been divorced for 10 years and has had a lot more experience than my husband. Can you help, Dr. Toni? What should I do? Dazed and Confused

Ask the

LifeQuake Doctor ™

Dr. Toni Galardi

he holidays are upon us. I think there is a really good spiritual reason why Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season—and it is not the nirvana that comes with getting great deals at Target the day after “turkey overload.” I would like to challenge each and every one of you to stoke the fires of gratitude in your heart the entire month of December. A great way to do that is by keeping a file on your computer of daily incidences you experienced or witnessed that you are grateful for. When your mind starts to turn towards areas of lack in your life, pull out that list; it will instantly uplift your spirits and allow you to have a peaceful holiday season and 2012. Dear Dr. Toni: I have been a widow for four years. We were married for 30 years. My husband was a prominent lawyer in San Francisco who fought legal battles for both the rich and famous and those cases that were pro bono. We had a very exciting life together. I have not been interested in meeting anyone else. Last summer I went to my 40-year high school reunion and reconnected with my first boyfriend. He expressed interest in seeing me and I refused at first. He pursued me long-distance and I finally agreed to him visiting me. We have been dating now long-distance ever since. Recently, I broke it off. We really come from different worlds now, and I don’t think I want to be with someone who cannot afford the lifestyle I have become accustomed to. Although my children are adults and do not live at home, they are very threatened by this man’s presence in my life. They do not want to see another man in their father’s home. I have told them that this is my home now. My sister, who still lives in the same town as this man, thinks I am crazy for giving up someone who has been so good to me emotionally. I am confused. I don’t know what to do. I have to admit that the sex with this man and the devotion I received, I did not have with my husband, although he was generous and a good man. He just wasn’t experienced. I was his

Dear Reader: Opening up sexually again after the death of your husband has probably been made easier through reconnecting with someone who knew you when you were young. Loving sex for a woman produces large amounts of oxytocin. This chemical creates bonding and well-being. If you broke it off recently, you may be feeling the effects of the “love chemical” withdrawal. This man may have come into your life to reawaken you to life. When a partner that we’ve enjoyed a good marriage with dies, a part of us goes with them. You have been in a winter-like mourning for some time, and perhaps spring has come through this man. I suggest you take the time to go through this withdrawal and then evaluate how important a common lifestyle is to your happiness. As we age, we are not as flexible about downsizing or simplifying our lives for another. Women who have been well-supported financially by their husbands tend to look to men to upgrade them economically—not the reverse. Look at your values. Is it more important to be with someone who is kind and loving and with whom you are sexually compatible, or is it more important to be with someone who can pick up the tab for a certain lifestyle? Are you in love with this man, or is he safe because he was your first lover and now your first again since losing your husband? Give yourself six weeks and then decide in the new year if your feelings for him remain the same. My sense is that you will never know if he is truly the one until you venture out and risk dating other men. If you give yourself time to move beyond the identity of widow and actually become single again, you will discover if your old high school sweetheart is the guy for you. I also would suggest that you stop listening to other people’s opinions about this and get quiet and listen to your own heart. Do what is good for you, not your family. If you have a question for the LifeQuake Doctor, write to DrToni@LifeQuake.net. Dr. Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist, life transitions strategist, and author, and is available for consult by phone or SKYPE. Dr. Toni will be giving a teleclass called “Designing your 2012” in late January. You can reach her through her Web site, http://www.lifequake.net, DrToni@LifeQuake.net, or 310.890.6832.

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m i n d

I Saw a Stranger Crying by Raquel English

s t a t e s

If I saw a stranger crying On the street lost and alone I’d sit down beside them And my ears I’d gladly loan. I’d ask, “What’s the matter? What’s the reason for these tears?” Life is far too short, dear stranger To waste such precious years.

If I saw a stranger crying And falling off of hope I’d share with them my promise that There’s an up to every slope. I’d say, “Don’t give up, Don’t give pleasure to your strife, Believe in yourself that you’re strong enough To defeat the obstacles of life.”

If I saw a stranger crying Distraught and unaware I’d offer them my shoulders So their burden I could bear. I’d say, “You’re okay now, I’m here to help you stand.” And if their legs were too weak I’d offer them my hand.

If I saw a stranger crying With a sense of disarray I’d help them up only to find That they’d turn and walk away. They didn’t say a word But they did help me to see That if I were a stranger crying No one would sit next to me.

e’ve all had our moments of feeling completely broken, like life would never get better, and like hope was pointless. We may wallow in selfpity, but secretly we yearn for someone, anyone, to comfort us and assure us that things will get better. We long for this, yet we feel uncomfortable or awkward being that someone. A crying family member or friend is tough enough to deal with. What do I say? Do I say anything? Should I ask what’s wrong, or would that be prying? Should I offer advice or just listen? Do I stay, or do they want to be left alone? These are the questions we ask ourselves when we’re faced with a loved one’s breakdowns. So, what do we ask ourselves when we see a stranger crying? Nothing. We ignore it like we don’t see it, and we go about our mundane business. How amazing would it be to live in a world where people weren’t constantly self-consumed, where strangers weren’t titled “strange,” and individuals could strike up a conversation without it

being labeled “weird?” How about we give it a try? In honor of Random Acts of Kindness, I encourage everyone to delete the word “strangers” from existence. Say hello to someone you don’t know, hold the door open for a fellow human, and take the risk of making a person’s day who may be going through a rough patch. The next time you see a stranger crying, set aside any preconceived notions. You might make a bigger difference than you think.

Raquel English is a 19-year-old aspiring writer. She is currently a sophomore at Palomar Community College in San Marcos and will be attending California State University, San Marcos in fall of 2012. She is a Literature and Creative Writing major with the determination and passion to express life through the limitless power of words. EarthTribe_CD_Ad.pdf 11/29/2011 8:33:29 PM You can reach her by e-mailing raquel.g.english@gmail.com.

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The Beauty in Random Acts of Kindness by Brennan Lagasse

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e’ve all seen the bumper sticker by now, “Practice Random Acts of Kindness.” As cliché as many argue it to be, corny and overused, perhaps that’s exactly what the world needs right now. We have no idea how our intentions to be kind will be felt as ultimately some people’s “kind” intentions are often felt by others as the complete opposite. But in the randomness to act kindly, something special is sown into the social fabric of the cosmos, as there’s something very special about honoring the simplicity of inspiration through kindness. There are numerous reasons that random acts of kindness are so important. Part of the reason is that the random act itself, the intention, the choice to try and pass along something kind, is random. It’s a very beautiful thing to be well thought out, manifest your intentions to be kind, then skillfully act when the opportunity is just right. The world and humanity need that, too. But by being random, something even greater is arguably possible.

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Brennan Lagasse is a writer and environmental consultant living in Lake Tahoe, CA. He is also the backcountry reporter for Unofficial Networks, www.unofficialnetworks.com. Brennan can be reached at brennanlagasse@ hotmail.com. V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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There is no way or reason to take away from or denounce well thought out acts of kindness—trust me, we need it all! But when “random” is in play, it means there were no prior thoughts, prior intentions, time to actually think about what one is doing or might be doing. Already you should be able to tell that in just that sentence alone the slippery slope of employing random acts of kindness is located. It’s also where the magic is found. When you’re acting randomly, you’re acting without purpose. I’m usually one to argue the merits of acting purposefully because I strongly feel that such energy is at the core for what’s needed to bring about peace, justice, and true holistic sustainability in our current day and age. But on the flip side, there’s such a profound beauty in acting without a particular direction. It is in this mode of human action that some of the greatest acts of our “one love” human race can come about. It doesn’t matter what your age, race, ability, gender, religion, or class is. In today’s generally fast-paced lifestyle it’s incredibly easy to avoid any random acts, never mind random acts of kindness. The truth is there are perpetual opportunities to act in such a way, but ultimately it’s a risk; it’s a challenge to embrace randomness and see how it lives in your everyday existence because it’s always all around us. It’s actually harder to see because it’s so prevalent. Think about how many random interactions you come into contact with on a given day. Let’s say you’re on your way to work, school, a place you’ve planned to visit on that particular day. Did you stop on your bike commute for some coffee? Pull over on the way to your job for gas? Rush through the market at the end of a given day for some groceries? How about all the random students you have yet to meet on your campus that you walk past daily? Even coworkers you sort of recognize after having been at your place of employment for some time, but have never formally acknowledged? Even if these examples don’t speak directly to you, I believe you understand where I’m headed with this, right? We all have the opportunity to embrace a random act of kindness. What would happen if you just started talking to the man at the checkout line of the grocery store or the woman running your local gas station? Maybe nothing, but how will you know if you just keep your head down, refuse to make eye contact, and stay in a self-serving sort of mode? You see, random acts of kindness beg for us to be selfless. We don’t know what’s going to come of our action nor do we know if the action will be well received. We certainly don’t expect to receive anything beneficial to ourselves by acting randomly, which again speaks to the beauty of the action—it’s for someone else, it’s for something else. The next time you head out on your day, try and keep your head up, make eye contact with passersby, engage the people in your community or the area in which you find yourself. Smile. Listen. Offer something. Be kind. You have no idea where your kind act and its intention will ripple out in life. And there are countless opportunities to share such sentiments every day. There’s no reason the nonhuman world doesn’t benefit from random acts of kindness as well. The earth is as deserving of kind acts as anything, because without it and its resources we cease to exist. So why not act? That’s the point. In being random and being kind, the sky is the limit for where these acts can lead. To show concern for our planet and all its beings is the definition of being kind and is found in every important historical text every created. Wouldn’t you smile and be thankful for someone else practicing a random act of kindness on you? Then maybe you should think about the beauty you can share by being random yourself, so that when that next opportunity shows itself, your random act of kindness is already happening before you have time to realize it.

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Random acts of kindness on the road to peace: An interview with peace soldier Paul Chappell By Leslee Goodman

aul Chappell was born in 1980 and raised in Alabama, the son of a Korean mother and a half white, half African American father who had served in Korea and in Vietnam. Chappell’s father returned from war a deeply troubled man, with bouts of rage and paranoia he often directed at his young son. Nevertheless, the young Chappell chose to pursue a military career himself, graduating from West Point in 2002 and serving in Iraq as an army captain in 2006. But even as he signed up for a tour of duty, Chappell was starting to doubt that war was ever truly going to bring peace—in the Middle East, or anywhere else. A year later, while still an active-duty officer, he published his first book, “Will War Ever End?: A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century.” “I am twentyeight years old,” he writes, “and I have been obsessed with the problem of war for most of my life.” He went on to write his second book, “The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our Planet, and Our Future.” Both books are written in a direct, accessible style that avoids blaming the Left or the Right, and his arguments for peace have appealed to people of all political persuasions. His third book, “Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity’s Survival,” will be published on March 1, 2012. He was recently added to Robert Shetterly’s portrait series, “Americans Who Tell the Truth” (www.

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americanswhotellthetruth.org). Chappell now works at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and travels the country talking about “waging peace” and the necessity of ending war. He trains peace activists, a pursuit he believes should be undertaken with at least as much forethought and strategy as training soldiers for war. Being an effective peace activist, he says, requires the same qualities as being an effective soldier. He emphasizes that activists must learn to be persuasive, to control their emotions, and to empathize with their opponents. Finally, they must take their calling seriously—as seriously as soldiers going into battle. In “The End of War,” Chappell quotes civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette: “Nonviolence means fighting back, but you are fighting with another purpose and other weapons. Number one, your fight is to win that person over.” Leslee Goodman: How have “acts of kindness” contributed to your development as a peace activist? Paul Chappell: When I was 15 years old, I had to write a short story for an English class. A few days later my teacher, Mrs. Vaughn, said, “I really liked your story. You should think about being a writer.” As I pondered her advice I realized that I enjoyed writing that story. So I wrote another, and another, and another. My life is proof that even the smallest acts of kindness can dramatically shape our lives, because Mrs. Vaughn’s nudge of encouragement—a small act of kindness— completely changed the trajectory of my life. I have been writing seriously ever since, so I have witnessed how acts of kindness are like pebbles that create ripples in a pond. You don’t know what effect the ripples may have, or how far they might reach. Writing, for example, allowed me to explore my humanity and understand the “three kinds of positive change.” Understanding not only how positive change happens, but why it happens, is something that I have devoted much of my life to. LG: What are the three kinds of positive change? PC: The first kind of positive change is “societal change.” 200 years ago, anyone in America who wasn’t a white male landowner was oppressed. African Americans were enslaved in large numbers, women could not vote or own property, Native American tribes were being decimated, and most white people could not vote unless they owned land. My ancestors were African American slaves and my father lived

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m i n d under segregation, but now I have the freedom to express my viewpoints. It used to be illegal to teach slaves how to read, but today I am allowed to write books, even though I am a descendent of slaves. If politicians today said, “We should bring back slavery and segregation, and women should not be allowed to vote or own property,” people would look at them like they were insane. But 200 years ago the majority of Americans supported those viewpoints. I have devoted a lot of time to understanding how progress has happened, and how we can also change attitudes toward war, nuclear weapons, environmental destruction, and the other problems that threaten humanity. The second kind of change is “ideological change.” I grew up in Alabama in a very conservative community, and I used to believe so strongly in the effectiveness of war. But now I am working every day to wage peace, which is a form of service our country needs during these difficult times. I have seen how ideological change can occur in my own mind and heart, and I have developed tools for reaching the minds and hearts of others. The third kind of change is “spiritual change.” I had a violent and traumatic upbringing, and because I grew up in Alabama with a Korean mother and father who was half white and half black, I experienced the kind of racism that led to a lot of self-hatred. Like all people who have suffered deep agony, I am struggling to make peace with myself. If we want to help our world move toward global peace between countries, we must also seek inner peace within ourselves. LG: Can random acts of kindness promote the three kinds of positive change? PC: The three kinds of positive change are interconnected, and by promoting one kind of change we often promote the others. Practicing random acts of kindness is one form of waging peace that helps create positive change, and it is also a practical and powerful way to live. I saw an interview where martial artist Jet Li said, “The best martial arts self-defense is smiling at people, because if you smile and are nice to people, they usually don’t want to fight you. Anyone who gets in a lot of fights has very poor martial arts self-defense.” Like many people with traumatic upbringings, I had a difficult time trusting people and was suspicious of their kindness. When those closest to us have hurt and betrayed us, our hearts can harden and it can become difficult for us to accept the kindness of others. But like drops of water that gradually erode away rock, if we persistently practice kindness we can make an impression even on the most hardened hearts. Also, when I meet someone who is angry, I try not to think, “What a jerk,” but instead I say to myself, “That person is having a bad day.” Even the most wonderful people occasionally get in bad moods, and sometimes a random act of kindness can help them feel better. When I think about all the suffering in the world and how short and fragile the gift of life is, I am encouraged to treat others kindly and gently. This does not mean that we should let others take advantage of our kindness, but that we should always make an effort to be generous with our kindness. LG: I can see how these actions can spread peace among individuals, but how can we apply them to nations? How can we stop war and wage peace? PC: In my books I discuss the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Mahatma Gandhi, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., and many other peaceful pioneers, and I explore new ideas that reveal the road to peace and refute the myths of war, such as that human beings are naturally violent and therefore wars are inevitable. If you want to know whether people are naturally loving or violent, all you have to do is examine war propaganda. War propaganda manipulates our most powerful instincts, which are love of family, love of freedom, and the desire to help others. According to propaganda, wars are always about liberating people and self-defense. There has never been a war in history where the invaders openly said, “We’re going to war for the money.” Also, war propaganda never portrays the other side as human. It hides the fact that we’re killing other human beings. Instead, we’re killing monsters, we’re killing cockroaches, we’re killing sub-humans. If we were naturally violent, our leaders could openly tell their people, “I’m going to give you a chance to kill people so that I can get richer, and I’ll even pay you!” That would be a very ineffective form of propaganda. I’ve never seen a military recruiting commercial that even mentions killing people. To end war and create a better world we must not only practice random acts of kindness, but also “deliberate acts of waging peace.” In the 21st century, the survival of humanity will not depend on our ability to wage war, but our willingness to wage peace and practice kindness. For more information on Paul Chappell, his speaking tours, and his books, please visit his Web site, www. paulkchappell.com. To learn more about the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, got to www.wagingpeace.org. V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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by Steven Tokeshi

stayed in Byron Bay for five months during my travels. Byron is situated on a cape that is the easternmost point of the Australian continent. The surrounding hills and the small, rocky islands off its shores are said to outline the crater of what was once one of the largest shield volcanoes in the southern hemisphere. Many locals had told me that Byron rests atop a layer of solid obsidian, or even solid rose quartz, giving the area a special, resonant energy that magnifies whatever positivity (or negativity) anyone brings with them. It was no wonder Byron Bay was the de facto New Age capital of Australia. Anyway, in mid-December I had a dream: I was cooking a vividly colorful stirfry of bright green asparagus and translucent pink shrimp. My dream ended with me finding a bright green-colored stone. This dream made an impression on me, and shortly after I awoke at the hostel where I had been staying, I sought my friend, Rachel, from Melbourne, another hosteller, and asked for her interpretation. She said that, as I had been working as a cook, my job required that I provide nourishment for others, not only in the form of food, but possibly also in the form of spiritual nourishment. The green stone I found in my dream is one of the colors of the heart chakra, which represents compassion. The other color of the heart chakra, pink, represents the complement of compassion: love. And while I might not feel I have enough to give, if I open up

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and connect through my heart, I would have enough. (Did I mention Rachel was a bona fide dreadlocks-wearing hippie chick?) Needless to say, this was a lot of food for thought for my skinny breakfast appetite, before I’d even poured myself a glass of orange juice. The word “compassion” had never been much of a part of my vocabulary, and it was my understanding that it meant wishing for the end of suffering of others. I did not think much of it and went about my day. Later that day, Rachel ran up to me and excitedly said, “I just came back from the arts and crafts market and found this. It reminded me of your dream, so I bought it for you.” It was a green, uncut stone the size of a pebble and the color of jade. (For this reason, Rachel told me, it is often mistakenly called “Australian jade” when, in fact, it is chrysoprase.) Of course, I was touched by this gesture. Not too many days later, I ran into my friend, Nathan, from Oregon. We both worked at the hostel’s outdoor eatery selling tortilla wraps. He asked if I could cover his shift that evening, to which I replied, “Of course.” He went on to tell me that he had been bitten in the leg by a spider and the wound had contracted a staphylococcal infection. He had visited a doctor who had given him antibiotics, but the infection had not ceased. In fact, it had continued to spread to the point that he could not stand for longer than 10 minutes without feeling pain in his leg. I could plainly see the concern on his face as he spoke of having heard of people’s limbs needing to be amputated as a result of unchecked staph infections. I could easily imagine how he must have felt, being so far away from home and family and friends over the holidays. I was in the same boat, and my heart went out to him. And it just so happened that I had recently completed my first massage course with an amazing Australian teacher who created her own healing art by combining elements of shiatsu, Swedish oil massage, reflexology, and aromatherapy. I was so inspired that I felt as if these hands could heal just about anything. So, not to make light of the Steven Tokeshi

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subject, but rather as a way of injecting some levity, I asked Nathan, “Have you ever thought of trying faith healing?” “You mean where a group of people gathers around to heal a person?” He slightly smirked. “Basically, yeah.” “No, but right about now, with the way my leg has been feeling, I would be willing to try anything.” I leaned closer to him and said in a hushed tone, “Meet me after I finish my shift, and we’ll go heal your leg.” About halfway through my shift, I took a break and sought my friend Warren— “Wazza” in Aussie slang—a charismatic young man whose mother was one of the original Byron Bay hippies, and whose father was a full-blooded Australian aboriginal. Wazza worked at the front desk of the hostel, and I figured if anyone could help me heal Nathan’s leg, it would be Wazza. (Besides, I had no idea what the hell I would be doing myself.) I found Wazza at the front desk and asked if I could have a word with him in private. “I need your help,” I whispered. Then tears began to flow uncontrollably from my eyes. “Is it family?” he asked, putting a warm, solid hand on my shoulder. Truth be told, my grandfather was in extremely ill health back in the States at the time, and I was considering flying back to be with my family. At the same time, with my newfound, New Age-style logic, I thought I could send love and healing energy to my grandfather through Nathan, and thus avoid feeling completely helpless. But I did not reveal any of this. I gathered myself enough to say, “I want to heal Nathan’s leg. Can you help me?” “Of course I can.” he stated firmly. “Steve, you have so much compassion.” There was that word again.

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c u l t u r e As it turns out, I had come to exactly the right person. Wazza had studied Reiki, a healing art of Japanese origin which enables universal healing energy to flow through the hands of the practitioner. The three of us met later that night, and upon Wazza’s instruction, we went to the beach nearby because of the abundance of cleansing energy it provided in the form of the waves, the wind, the sand, and the bright stars in the sky. The three of us sat facing each other as Wazza spoke of infections being the body’s way of saying there is a blockage of energy, and that we had gathered at the beach to help Nathan cleanse himself of that blockage. Wazza had brought a pink rose quartz crystal and put it in Nathan’s hand. By sheer chance, I had brought the green chrysoprase stone and put it in Nathan’s other hand. Wazza placed his hands on Nathan’s leg and began the Reiki healing ritual, while I sat cross-legged in meditation, visualizing that I was sending love and healing energy to my grandfather by focusing on Nathan’s leg. Unwittingly, we had created a “circuit” for Nathan to heal himself by allowing him to receive love and healing energy into his heart via the pink rose quartz, and allowing compassion out through the green chrysoprase stone. After what seemed like a miniature eternity, the three of us left the beach and returned to the hostel, chatting about everyday things as if nothing out of the ordinary had preceded. A couple of days later, Nathan approached me. “Hey Steve, my leg is feeling a lot better and the doctor has taken me off the antibiotics. Thank you.” Within a week, his leg had completely healed. Christmas Day soon came, and one of the hostel’s managers asked if I could help prepare the Christmas barbecue that was to be served to the hostel guests. (Remember, December falls during the Australian summertime, so they all barbecue for Christmas.) I felt extremely honored to be asked to serve so many people on such a special occasion. Six of us, including Nathan, made heaps of food, including barbecued steak, vegetables, and potato salad. We served chow line-style, dishing out plate after plate after plate, to the point where we feared we might not have enough. Yet in the end, we were in fact able to serve everyone—over 200 hostel guests from around the world—and only the last two people missed out on the potato salad. When we cooks were finally able to sit down and enjoy our own meal, I thought to myself, that was my dream that had just come true. Steven Tokeshi is a Travel and Lifestyle Coach and an experienced long-term world traveler who lives in San Clemente, CA. He and his wife, Diane Jaquet, are the co-founders of Bardo Travel Coaching, a coaching practice that helps people fulfill their dreams of long-term world travel and lifestyle balance. You can reach him at bardotravelcoaching@gmail.com, 949.444.3399, and www.bardotravelcoaching.com. Specializations Include:

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forecast

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Adrienne Abeyta presents a unique forecast blending the tarot with astrology. A gifted reader of intuitive arts, she offers private consultations and psychic entertainment for parties and events. AdrienneAbeyta.com. To set up an appointment, she can be reached at 619.917.0998 or Adrienne@AdrienneAbeyta.com.

Aries: Magician (Nine of Pentacles) 3/21 – 4/19 You’ve got the magic touch this month. Focused energy and strong resources give you the power to create abundantly in several desired areas. The time is right for the fruits of your past labors to be plucked, but if you procrastinate, your harvest will spoil and rot. Follow through with your projects and obligations, and be prepared to see big changes. Be mindful not to overspend your earnings on trivial souvenirs. On a personal note, be sure to honor someone’s seemingly small achievement; your recognition will give them the confidence they need to keep going.

Libra: World (Six of Cups) 9/23 – 10/23 Emotional memories from the past may trigger feelings of nostalgia. Rather than getting caught up in the “used to” or “should have” woes, find relevance in the present. This could be a great indicator of unresolved issues. With reflection, you’re likely to free yourself from the past, either by accepting, forgiving, or acknowledging. Family dynamics, though complex, will change when you decide to change your perspective on them. In your relationship, this may suggest a new development—a beginning or end. Marriage, children, and commitment are also a possibility during this time. Make a special note to honor your siblings.

Taurus: Wheel of Fortune (Ace of Pentacles) 4/20 – 5/21 A new phase is developing in the realm of the material relating to work, finances, or your body. It could be a pregnancy, relationship, or you might be considering pursuing something in the realm of health. This is also a great time to initiate any plans for expansion and to collect the rewards of your small investments. If given the chance to gamble, go for it. You will likely receive money or notoriety from a creative venture you undertook this year. You will either see positive results from past networking or you’ll make future connections when you follow up on past efforts.

Scorpio: Strength (4 of Pentacles) 10/24 – 11/22 In your attempt to establish yourself in the world, you’ve depended upon the strength of your character to survive. It’s time to bring forward and utilize some less-refined qualities. You are a mixture of many different aspects, none of which are wholly good or bad. However, choosing to adopt one over the others banishes important parts of yourself. Maintaining the status quo may be important, but it can easily breed complacency and deprive you of a dynamic life. Loosen your hold and give in a bit to the pressure. At least then you can mindfully unleash some pent up passion.

Gemini: High Priestess (3 of Swords) 5/22 – 6/21 Wisdom is often concealed in the illusion of pain. Your mind, when aggravated, begins to search for deeper meaning, and at this time a painful perception will reveal an unwanted truth. Unfortunately, this may cause a situation to occur in which you feel betrayed. However, in facing your greatest fears and past sorrows, you have the divine ability to learn about yourself. It’s only from your human perspective of pain that you turn away from important lessons, thus causing anguish. Remember the most heartbreaking experience of your life and notice the amazing insights that were birthed as a result.

Sagittarius: Hanged Man (5 of Swords) 11/23 – 12/21 Feeling trapped is an illusion, for life is perpetual and stops for nothing. Ego leads you to believe that you’re a victim of your life. In your attempt to control, you resist, and this is the cause of suffering. It is at this point that you’re called to rise above the circumstances and let go. Facing your own limitations is humbling and teaches you that life is a paradox. Using the power of acceptance to face life challenges, you can adjust your perspective to any situation, thereby alleviating suffering. Peace comes through your ability to see the larger picture. Capricorn: Lovers (2 of Swords) 12/22 – 1/20 Every thought, deed, or action (past or present) creates a karmic consequence. Thus, your choices are not always as conscious as you might think. Making conscious choices requires a peaceful mindset, unfettered by fear and desire. When faced with a decision, take note of which emotion is driving your choices; this will likely determine the effect of your cause. For example, if you stay in a relationship out of fear, then that will be the foundation and magnet for the experience. Indecision and over-analysis are simply avoidance. Every experience is an extension of you. Be honest and take responsibility for your part.

Cancer: Devil (Queen of Wands) 6/22 – 7/22 Pride can obscure your ability to see the truth, especially when your independence prevents you from accepting the support of others. You don’t always need to be the rescuer. In fact, sometimes by accepting help, you allow others to recognize their own power. Detach from your need to be perceived as strong and you will begin to feel the deep love you desire. You will likely face your vulnerability as well. Take note of how you avoid responsibility by denying that there’s a problem, and don’t be surprised if the person you’re protecting turns around and bites the hand feeding them—yours. Leo: Emperor (Six of Wands) 7/23 – 8/23 Acting with dignity is the surest means to achieve respect from both others and yourself. People who you hold in high esteem will see your growing confidence and they will likely honor or reward you as a result. You may get that raise, bonus, or promotion you have been wanting. You’ll succeed if what you seek is in alignment with your values because you will still be who you are whether or not you achieve or acquire something. When you regard yourself with integrity, so will others. You’re in a position to help someone close, be it materially or spiritually.

Aquarius: Justice (8 of Swords) 1/21 – 2/18 Allowing yourself to be influenced by others’ beliefs, fears, and judgments leads you to uphold a standard with which you don’t necessarily agree. Why abandon your power to be judged by society, religion, parents, or anyone else? When you do so, your mental attitude will slowly suffocate your willpower, and you’ll become a puppet to fear. It requires great courage to follow your own truth. In doing so, you become aware of the nuances of right and wrong; what’s right for one may be wrong for another. By adjusting your perspective and following your own truth, you’re living authentically and transcending judgment.

Virgo: Temperance (5 of Pentacles) 8/24 – 9/22 Through the integration of personal experiences, a self-image is built. Although it’s more convenient to identify with what’s positive, it’s more common to hold on to the negative. An example is how people commiserate and complain about their woes. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong, make an effort to transform it into something meaningful. When you feel fearful of losing something or someone, realize that loss will create space. To connect with this inner knowing, it is necessary to find harmony in opposition. Like a chef combines ingredients, so must you to make the most of your life.

Pisces: Hierophant (Knight of Cups) 2/19 – 3/20 Life is an enigma; the more you learn, the less you know—that is, until you begin asking the important questions. While the quest to discover deeper meaning is inherent, the paths often searched are either safe or serve only to reinforce what you already know. For example, if compassion is your lesson, then you must experience each end of that polarity; you’ll be hurt and you’ll hurt another as a way of fully understanding its meaning. It’s empowering to understand a deeper meaning, but sometimes unsettling to see it expressed. Don’t sacrifice the lesson for the illusion of comfort.

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Random of Kindness

Acts

by Christian Martinen

hile the holidays are just around the corner and another year is about to come to an end, for many people, keeping up with life has never been harder. This is evident in many of the faces we come in contact with on the street, the bus, running errands, or at work. I would love to begin the trend of giving these strangers a random act of kindness in the form of an unexpected smile. Dale Carnegie, in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” best summed up the lasting impacts of a smile: “It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.” A smile does wonders for those who give it and those who receive it. A smile lifts not only the willing recipient, but also has incredible power for those generous providers of this simple gift. Smiling boosts the immune system, lowers bloodpressure, releases stress, and improves one’s mood. Giving a smile is a random act of kindness delivering numerous unnoticed benefits to those generous people. In turn, these benefits improve many other peripheral aspects of life. Research has shown that positive emotions improve learning and decision-making. Individuals who experience daily positive emotions are less likely to catch a cold, for example. A smile has many wonderful powers we do not realize. You can change somebody’s entire outlook and lift one’s spirits with just a simple smile. The person receiving the smile will immediately feel welcomed and appreciated. The power of a smile grounds us in the present moment and connects us momentarily with the other person. This connection may only last for a fleeting moment but can create an emotional response that can literally save lives. For example, a man in his thirties living in San Francisco left a note in his apartment that said he would not jump from the Golden Gate Bridge if on the way to the bridge he met one person who would smile at him. Unfortunately, he didn’t find that person and he ended up taking his life. We never know how tremendous of an effect this random act of kindness has on other people. It costs one person nothing to give, but may mean the world to another. Furthermore, a smile can connect us to our community. Research has shown that feeling socially connected to our community enhances happiness and health and even prolongs life. The simplest way to connect and make other people feel like they are a part of the community is by exchanging smiles. The person receiving the smile usually will be returning the smile and a connection will have been made. Many unexpected acts can come from this gesture of kindness—long lasting friendship, business relations, community outreach initiatives, and much more. Remember, a smile is a gift, a random act of kindness. So give it freely and do not expect anything in return. Many hesitate to smile because they feel embarrassed if their smile is not returned. This should not be the case, as a smile is a gift without an expectation for an exchange. On Christmas a couple of years ago, I felt uncomfortable receiving an unexpected gift from a friend. I voiced my feeling awkward by accepting the gift without being able to give my friend one in return. She looked at me puzzled and said, “This is called a gift and not a trade, so please enjoy my gesture without reservation.” I have always remembered her statement, especially when I smile to strangers.

A while back, a driver parked in an illegal zone, and before walking to his meeting he tucked a note under his windshield wiper. The note read, “I’ve circled the block for 20 minutes. I’m late for an appointment and if I don’t park here I’ll lose my job. Forgive me my trespasses.” When he came back, he found a parking ticket and a note that said, “I’ve circled the block for 20 years, and if I don’t give you a ticket, I’ll lose my job. Lead us not into temptation.” I hope this brought a smile to your face! Harvest this smile and continue to give it to others. Our world will be a better place if we all share smiles more readily. Christian Martinen is the author of, Soulistic Living—A Life in Oneness, and radio host of “THINK! Oneness Radio” (www.adrenalineradio.com). Please visit Martinen’s Web site at www.lifeinoneness.com and his blog at www.soulisticliving. wordpress.com. Contact him at chrismartinen@gmail.com.

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Base Your Act of Kindness on Your Heart by Jonathan Barber

kind and creative act can have the heart as the source of it. It sounds obvious, but there is more to this than meets the eye. The heart chakra, or heart center, is the place in the body where the soul places an extension of its awareness. It is fair to say that the soul resides in the heart. In this way, the soul can experience what the person is experiencing and learn from it. Happily, it can also provide stimulation, information, emotions, and creative and inspiring guidance. It is straightforward if you know how to connect with the heart and soul and understand the soul’s energy and information. Moreover, young souls, who have not had so many incarnations in human form on earth, can receive the advice of older souls who have built up knowledge, wisdom, and common sense from several millions of human incarnations. Young and old souls can then attempt to pass on information to the person down here based on this overview. There is still more. The soul is part of a massive collection of all souls called

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the Oversoul, and the Oversoul is part of God. It is God who sets the Plan for Creation and for every soul in Creation. The information from the Plan, or the parts of it a soul needs to know at any one time, can be filtered down, and the connection between God and the soul is used for giving a soul additional prompts. What this means is that a person can go into the heart center and connect with information that is just right for them at that time, and which comes from a source with access to the big picture. This connection has been there since the very beginning of time and is straightforward to use, or live, as it would be better to say. The first step in accessing this information and energy from the heart and soul is to simply meditate on the heart center. Just focus on the heart center daily for five minutes initially, building up to twenty minutes. In this way, become familiar with the qualities of the heart center and the love and the light that radiates from it. It is very important to take time to build up the connection and to do something grounding as a daily practice as well; exercise, going for walks, and gardening all helps. Being grounded really helps the process works best, and just having this heart connection allows more of the heart’s energy to flow around you. The next step is to meditate on the heart center and then place your awareness inside your heart center, and meditate on this for five minutes or so a day to start with. There may be a color or colors, peace, silence, and stillness. The soul follows its own timing and may provide an infusion of its energy when it is right. Building up familiarity with the space inside your heart center may happen quickly, which leads you on to the next step. You can go inside the heart and simply ask for, and then wait to receive, creative input about an issue. It’s quite important to remember here that the soul may view matters very differently to someone’s personality, so a person will get what they need and not necessarily what they want, though any creative input will be relevant. At this stage, the heart and soul can train the personality to understand the language of the soul and appreciate what is important to the soul. The information given will provide you with understanding, and will also help to create positive and loving change. In this way, the energy and information is very creative, and what is happening here is heart based creativity. If extra help is needed in connecting with the information and energy, it is possible to use guided meditations to access the soul’s creative input and energy. This creative input and energy comes from a source that takes into account everything from a knowing of the past, present, and future. Applied to yourself, it knows the best path or the best timeline for you to be on. Another way of saying this is that your soul will know what it is that is best for you to do for your long-term happiness and development. Your soul’s information and energy can cover every single aspect of your life and help you to make changes in all these aspects, for instance, in what work to do, how to set up and run

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For a heart based random act of kindness by an individual or group, first meditate on the heart center for several minutes. Then go inside the heart center, place yourself in the middle, bathe in the energy. Ask for an image of who or what needs an act of kindness. This information will most likely seem to come down from on high. Next, ask for what it is you can do for them, and when and how to act. Let the information flow down and flow into you. Be calm and open to images and feelings. When the meditation feels complete, come out of meditation and make a note of what you received. Enjoy giving your heart based act of kindness. For more details on heart based creativity, and for guided meditations that you can use, visit www. lovelightandjoy.co.uk. Jonathan Barber likes to help people make changes in their lives for the better, helping them find the best path for themselves and then stay on that path. His aim is to assist people in expressing who they really are, which makes life richer. Barber often works with guided meditation to help people access remarkable and useful energies such as those for heart based creativity. He lives in South Wales with his family and enjoys meditation, beaches, woods, and hills.

a business, relating to people, understanding your children, nutrition, health, what to have in your life, daily routine, and so on. The qualities of any act or choice utilizing this source will have the qualities of the heart and soul in it, so the acts will be loving to the self and others, freeing, trusting, and supportive. As the information is from a source that considers the benefit of everything in Creation, it will also take into account what is good for the planet and the people around you. It truly is a very powerful source of energy and creative information, and it is crucially important to note that your soul will have its own viewpoint, which is likely to be different than conventional wisdoms which are not necessarily based on the heart or on the latest and most up-to-date information available through this route. It really is a method that everyone can use, as everyone has a soul and has that connection to God. Groups of people can use this approach for all manner of interests and activities. They can achieve this by all participants being well connected to their heart centers and by pooling each facet of information and creative input they gather. Group activity based on the heart and soul could have quite a powerful impact on the community, environment, and the world around them. Now, when it comes to doing a random act of kindness for somebody or something, a group act would provide a significant input of love and light.

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appy Holidays to all. Happy Chanukah, Merry Christmas, a joyfilled Kwanzaa, festive Pancha Ganapati, and serene and soulful winter solstice. Whatever holiday you observe, I wish you a festive celebration and peaceful and fulfilling New Year! And now for the multi-dimensional perspectiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;what might that be? Let me start by sharing what it is not. It is not Christmas trees or menorahs, brisket, delicious fruit cakes, eggnog, latkes, or Yuletide logs. It is not holiday lights, decorations, or gift-giving. Well, it is all those things, but it is also much more. While all of those aspects are nourishing and fun for us human (physical)

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participants, they have only the smallest connection to the holidays from a multi-dimensional or energetic perspective. For that we must look to the energies present, to the individual vibrations of each person in the room, as well as to the vibrations between all those present. Are they calm and harmonious, or chaotic and disturbing? Are the vibrations in the people at your celebration slow or rapid, of a high or low frequency? This refers to the level of consciousness or awareness of those beings. Are they caring, gentle, and loving, or jealous, greedy, and resentful? Are there undercurrents of conflict, antagonistic feelings felt but not expressed, resentments, buried and hidden but nonetheless affecting all those open to feeling at the subtle levels?

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This year my entire family, my four children and their partners, and all nine grandchildren will be together. My grown children are very close and supportive of each other, and the cousins, ranging in age from 2 to 17 years old, love hanging out together. I anticipate very joyous, harmonious, and resonant energies in the group. I believe that old resentments and grievances have been resolved and will not bring their negative vibrations to this year’s table. Holidays tend to be times for the gathering of families, and family gatherings are often fraught with old, hidden and unresolved issues. I remember one particular Chanukah celebration many years ago just before my ex-husband and I separated. The antagonism between us was palpable to me. My children were unusually high strung as they tried to cope with the tension between their parents. None of the other guests present were aware of what was going on between us, but the invisible heavy energy hung over the room and subtly cast a shadow over all present, whether it was labeled or not. If such feelings exist, especially if they are unexpressed, they are as real as the food on the table and decorations in the room. If the room feels yucky, you can be sure the vibrations present are the unseen cause. If the room feels soft, uplifting, and joyous, and you just feel like smiling, sharing, playing, and laughing, then you can assume that the energies present are of a high and positive vibration. Now let’s take a look around the room. What colors are present? What messages are they sending? The colors of the clothes being worn, decorations on the tree, paint on the walls, carpets on the floor, flowers on the table, as well as the color of the candles in the menorah, the Kwanzaa Kinara, or Christmas candles on the mantel, all affect the overall feeling of the space.

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h e a l i n g a r t s Crimson holly berries radiate brightness, offer vitality, and speak to us of fire, action, and activity. The red stimulates while the green of the tree grounds and centers our attention. In a home celebrating Chanukah, the bright blue star against a white background lifts our spirits and balances our energies. The daily changing colors (canary yellow, royal blue, ruby red, emerald green, and brilliant orange) of the adornments of Ganpati create a different energetic vibration each day. The red, black, and green candles of Kwanzaa contribute to the energetic vibration that washes over the people gathered. I invite you to sense/feel the rainbow of colors present at your holiday celebration. Are they harmonious or dissonant? Might there be an unexpressed energetic reason for many guests pulling out that special red or green sweater on Christmas morning? Might it feel odd and just plain wrong if one person wore a pink or chartreuse sweater? Such an outfit would be physically and energetically dissonant on that particular morning, but perfect and appropriate for a different occasion. Add into this mix of individual and interpersonal vibrations—the vibrations in the room, house, neighborhood, town, state, and country, on the continent, in the geography and the geology—and you will get a sense of how complex is this study of Energetics and how multi-layered is the multi-dimensional perspective. Everything present, seen and unseen, contributes to the energy present, and the feel, comfortable or uncomfortable, of that one place on the planet at that moment in time. And to complete the picture, we really must also include the energies coming onto that spot on the globe from the great beyond, from the energy grid that surrounds the earth and contributes to our three dimensional world every moment of every day. Right now, for example, it is said that there are heightened (rapid) energies coming from beyond the physical world that are focused on two areas of the planet: Sedona, Arizona and Lake Titicaca in Peru. If you were having a celebratory continued on page 44

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f e a t u r e that becomes our reality. Gratitude and kindness for some of us may be a shift in and of itself. To see through the eyes of love may be just what the world needs now. Certainly, it’s what you and I need to be the peace we seek. VM: Have we changed spiritually over the last decade? PS: Spirituality really hasn’t really changed very much. A lot of hopes for our society have changed in the last decade, and experience from challenges that actually, I would think, would bring people towards spirituality. But I think people think of church as religious and they think of the spirituality as something separate than a religious experience. Reverend Paula Swavely Our spiritual community is really different than traditional church communities. We celebrate, we applaud, we sing, we laugh. We believe that they are all spiritual practices. I think people are as spiritual as they ever were. I think religion is experiencing some changes and that’s a part of what’s happening to our culture. I think that all the tried and true spiritual practices—prayer, meditation, and spiritual community—have always been available to us. I think practice is the issue at hand. I think that our spirituality is immersed in our culture and so you can get spirituality watching Oprah on television, or with popular music. I personally need to commit to a spiritual life and I need classes and people who support me in that practice which is community. It is a spiritual practice to be in community, and if you’re learning the practical application of how to be a good person, that’s what your spiritual community is supposed to be for. It makes a difference in your life and your practice with your spiritual community. VM: What led you to create your spiritual community? PS: People asked me to and I had served in another spiritual community in Orange County and I was not experiencing the joy and the service of that spiritual community. So in a leap of faith, I said I didn’t want to be here if it wasn’t a joyful experience. And a group of people asked me to stay and be their teacher, and we created a community out of wanting to be together and believing that spiritual communities have spiritual practice and that we could do it in a unique way that would bring joy and shift our consciousness and support each of us in [a] shift of consciousness. We try to create a celebration of life. We really look to what’s the celebration of life. VM: If there is one, what is the greatest spiritual truth that has affected your life? PS: You know, for me it is laughter as a spiritual practice. It is the joy and enthusiasm about your life to recognize that there’s a life force that’s bigger than any one of us, and it’s having its life through all of us and it has a purpose to celebrate itself. And to really align with that joy that allows us to feel blessed in everything we do. We all face challenges and obstacles in life and that’s our humanity. To rise up in our spirituality is to rise up in our perfection, in our wholeness, in our connectedness, and to come from that bigger place so we can really manage our challenges. So I would

The Joy and Kindness Found in Community A Conversation with Reverend Paula Swavely by Sydney L. Murray

hen I think of kindness, it is often found in those acts by the people I know. The people who act from a place of kindness, whether they are strangers or friends, touch my heart and mind by a word, a gesture, an act, or even a prayer. Recently I spoke with one of the people who helped create a spiritual community in Orange County. Her name is Paula Swavely and many refer to her as Reverend Paula. She helped illuminate our theme this month of Random Acts of Kindness, and sometimes that kindness can extend to ourselves. Vision Magazine: Our theme this month is Random Acts of Kindness. What does that term mean to you? Rev. Paula Swavely: We are the co-creators of the world we live in. We have been given this amazing ability to create our worlds with our attention and focus. For example, generosity blesses us and anger curses us. “Random Acts of Kindness,” termed by Anne Herbert, can affect us and up-level our ability to be happy. Not only do these acts bless the receiver, random acts of kindness can have a profound blessing on the giver. Current researchers, such as Dr. David Lykken, believe that we inherit our baseline for happiness. It appears that our happiness baseline is not significantly affected by our day-to-day experiences, only by two traumatic events—the loss of a partner or the loss of a job. Even events like winning the lottery or becoming paralyzed only affect our level of happiness for one year, after which our inherited happiness baseline returns. That can sound discouraging if happiness is the goal. And who doesn’t want happiness for ourselves, our loved ones, and even our children? Thankfully, there appears to be two ways in which we can directly affect our happiness baseline and raise it. One is keeping a gratitude journal in which we record three things we’re grateful for every day for six weeks. The more detail we record in our gratitude, the greater the effect. The other way is to practice random acts of kindness. These are anonymous acts of altruism and generosity, and if practiced five times a day, are reported to raise our inherited baseline happiness levels. Just think, in our present economic times, who hasn’t been affected by someone experiencing the loss of a job or a loved one? If that diminishes one’s capacity for happiness, aren’t we all walking around in a slightly depressed, collective group-think? Turn on the news and see what’s being broadcast into the average American home nightly. The prescription for today’s challenges may lie in the simple acts of kindness we do for others—hold open the door, stop to compliment a child, notice those around you and smile, send ‘thank you’ notes and ‘I love you’ notes, and take a few minutes every day to count your blessings. What we give into the world is what we experience. We create the quality of each and every situation by what we contribute. Many of us are waiting for the world to change, when in reality, our experiences are mostly defined by our perceptions and focus. When we see and contribute love and generosity, V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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f e a t u r e say, it would be joy and to be joyful about the life that I’m experiencing.

that communication and connection is really important to us. I think as we move forward and awaken, that I would hope for all of us that we would all understand how precious we are to each other. That the greatest gift God gave us is each other and that we could move into a more respectful relationship with one another. We could be less judgmental. We could be more accepting. We could be more forgiving and even more helpful. I just imagine that we would awaken more on those important dates. There’s a lot of consciousness around that, so if we all agree that something is going to happen, something might happen and hopefully we understand that. It’s important to look at that, and that when we age we think it’s about what our accomplishments are, we think it’s about what we get or do in life. And the older we get the more we understand it’s about just stopping in the moment and being present with one another and recognizing that we do love and care and that it matters and that we matter and that each person matters. I would like to think that not everybody has to get to be 60 to understand that. That we can all awaken to that and we would all love our children just that much more. VM: What can each one of us do to open up to a better life? PS: I say, for probably 5-10 minutes a day, sitting and being grateful and recognizing that there is a power in the universe and it’s greater than any one of us and it guides us and it blesses us when we recognize it. It’s a spiritual practice, whether you call it prayer, whether you call it meditation. I teach my spiritual community that it’s an everyday practice. It’s not a Sunday morning experience. The capacity to love and the capacity to be patient and forgiving and have compassion grows in us when we spend just a few minutes of time listening to it instead of telling that greater sense what we think we need in order to be okay. I have hope for our world. But my idea is that it keeps getting better and better for each and every one of us. It’s not getting back to something that was, or it’s not in the future; it’s now for us, as we open ourselves and give thanks for it. We can bring it into the moment, any moment that we’re grateful and that we’re joyful about it. I think it’s, again, an everyday practice. It’s not something that’s going to happen to us. It’s something that we bring to our experience. It’s something within us that we have to share. VM: Do you have any new projects at the Spiritual Center that are coming up? PS: Our spiritual community has a couple of activities we do regularly. We do prayer beads once a month and we do prayer shawls once a month. We also do spiritual support Wednesday nights. We do classes. We just moved in February, so right now we’re sort of in the recovery from the move. We have activities that happen all the time in addition to our Sunday morning worship service. Right now on the calendar, I teach classes regularly on spiritual practices. I’m teaching treatment in meditation, which is our way of praying and meditating. I think we are going to have a nutritionist come and talk to us about how to be healthy in body as well as how to be healthy in mind and thought. The Orange County Center for Spiritual Renewal is a place that offers the opportunity for community, for kindness, and for the growth that will take you where you want to live. Visit their Web site and you will see the joy and fun they have as well as the support they offer to anyone who wants to become part of the practice of their community.

VM: And if there is one person who you admire, who would that be? PS: A woman that I highly admire is Oprah because she has brought spirituality to so many people and has shown that you can make a change in your personal life by the way that you manage the things that come to you. I admire her as a woman. She’s about my age. Also those who have touched and changed my life are teachers from antiquity—Buddha, Jesus, messengers who have come and taught all of us how to be that which touches you in your life. VM: If there is one thing that people could do every day to shift their lives, what would you think it would be? PS: I would say to practice gratitude. I would say to be grateful. To put our focus or attention on our blessings. To be joyful about the things that we have instead of to focus on what we think is lacking. I think laughter and joy are important, but the spiritual practice of gratitude is really positive and it’s not a response to getting something. It’s something that creates energy in me and allows me to be in the world in a way that I notice the things that I get to be grateful for because I have that attitude. VM: In the coming year, in the coming months, what is your most important goal? PS: My most important goal… Gosh, I just turned 60 and I just think my life is amazing. I did a moral inventory coming to 60 and I’m amazed at how up until [the age of ] 60, I didn’t think I had enough time to get all the things done that I need to get done. And when I crossed that milestone, all of a sudden I realized that there’s more than enough time, and so I’m have a little bit more patience and I’m surprised [laughs]. I would have never expected that I would be older and have more faith in time. VM: When you say moral inventory, what did you examine? PS: I looked at just about everything I could look at in my life. I looked at relationship life, and my career life, and my health life and my prosperity and then I cleansed myself. You know, I did it at 50 also, and I looked back 10 years and I thought I had such a different focus and I really came out in a place where I feel good about things. I feel optimistic about my life and what I have accomplished in the last six years. I don’t intend to retire. I intend to work another 20 years and I’m excited about that. I think any birthday that has a zero at the end of it is a moment to pause. It’s important to look back over your decades and see what was important to you. Even to share. I’ve shared with a woman who is 7 or 8 years younger than I am who still wants to be rescued from her life. She wishes someone would come along and save her, and I felt that at 50 and I don’t at 60. I realize what’s meant to be is up to me and I’m excited about getting in there and doing whatever it is that’s left for me to do. VM: What does the new year bring to mind? PS: I think that we are collectively in a shift. The technology has gotten fast enough that all of our ways of communication are modeling or showing to us V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

Visit www.occsr.org or call 714.963.3516 for more information. E-mail Rev. Paula Swavely at Rev.Paula@verizon.net or prayerrequest@occsr.com.

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GATE

f e a t u r e

Opens the Way to Transform Us: A Conversation with John Raatz by Sydney L. Murray

For the first time, we humans hold in our hands—and in our minds—the most immediate power to either destroy life on Earth as we’ve known it…or transform our relationship with ourselves, each other and the planet so that life for us all can not only continue, but revivify, blossom, and thrive.” — John Raatz

hen I think of the term Random Acts of Kindness, it is often the small but important gestures that come to mind—a smile at someone you pass on the street, or assisting someone with a flat tire, or going to visit a stranger in the hospital who needs comfort. What I wonder is, can we go beyond these random acts and reach out in kindness to all of those people and organizations who are committed to transformation and conscious living, to come together at this point in history to unleash a massive movement of consciousness worldwide? Ever since I interviewed Paul Ray in the late ‘90s I have sought to reach out to others in the spiritual and holistic communities to combine their resources for a larger purpose. I am still seeking that outcome. Ray had coined the term “Cultural Creatives,” and when I discovered what their attributes were I thought, “That is our target market.” I asked him why so many Cultural Creatives were immune to gathering together in unity. He had replied it was due to their highly individualistic nature. Now, at a time when I believe we need it most, there is a gathering of those in the media and entertainment fields who are seeking to join forces to empower and strengthen the whole as well as the parts. I have been lucky enough to work with John Raatz and David Langer of The Visioneering Group for years and was so heartened to hear that their goal is one of unity and empowerment and to stand up and demonstrate to mainstream media and America that power of transformational movies, books, music, and media is ready to step out of the socalled alternative realm and move into alliance with all peoples of the world who believe in the power of transformation. I am so thrilled to have the chance to speak to John Raatz and illuminate their mission. Vision Magazine: What is GATE? John Raatz: GATE is an acronym that stands for the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment. And GATE is a non-profit organization that was formed for the expressed purpose of transforming the world by transforming entertainment and media. The basic belief of GATE is that the entertainment and media businesses have a role, and some might even say responsibility, to assist V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

in the facilitation of social and global transform. So that is the vision and mission of the organization. VM: If you could name them, what would be the objectives of GATE? JR: Well there actually are three of them: education; connection and collaboration; and advocacy. And we are a trade membership organization, so what that means is we are an organization composed of professionals in the entertainment and media businesses. In terms of education, we want to provide the membership of GATE with not only information about such things as how to make a transformational film, for example, or how to create transformational art, but we also want to speak to the inner component or the inner aspect of that process. So most people, in fact, I would say all people who are involved with GATE have already some transformational orientation in their lives personally, and now they’re bringing that into the business. So in terms of the educational objective or mission, we look at both inner and outer. The second aspect is connection and collaboration, and probably one of the strongest or most potent aspects of GATE is the idea of bringing people together in a professional setting to consider what transformational entertainment and media is and then to go about creating it and distributing it and marketing it. So we want to encourage everyone who belongs to GATE to meet one another, to convene, to explore mutual projects, to begin creating more content that reflects humanistic, holistic, universal ideas. We do that through a variety of offerings, such as what our upcoming conference, GATE 2, is about. The third element, advocacy, we believe [is] that transformational entertainment is a genre, just like comedy or just like drama. It’s a legitimate genre. And there is an audience; the audience is the Cultural Creative. Basically, we are advocates for creating and establishing the genre of transformational

D EC E M B ER 20 11

f e a t u r e entertainment and media. And not only that, but even within the business itself, there are a great many people who obviously do not have an interest in such things, or maybe they do and they just don’t know quite where to go to find out more information. So we are hoping that by raising our hand and saying, we’re here, here’s what we believe in, here’s what we’re attempting to do in the world, we believe a great many people in the business will join with us to help establish this genre and this category. Those are the three basic missions of GATE. VM: What was the initial impetus of creating GATE? Where did the idea come from? JR: I’ve been reflecting on that for a long time because I thought that when it came in its most recent incarnation, if you will, it came with rather a lot of thunder and applause, so to speak, inwardly. Yet it didn’t feel to me as if that was the only origin. I can go back to probably when I was about 13 years old, sitting in my room, playing my guitar. And I had a particular experience that I actually connected with the emergence of GATE. Rather than do that, I’d think I’d rather just start and say that in 1979 I was part of an organization, a rather loosely formed organization, but nonetheless an organization, called The Council for the Enlightenment of the Entertainment Industry. And that was an organization founded by actor Ned Beatty, magician Doug Henning, and myself. And there were many, many other people who were practicing a particular type of meditation—transcendental meditation—like Mike Love from the Beach Boys and Clint Eastwood and Christopher Reeves, and I forget who else [was] sympathetic to what we were doing. Basically what we were doing was teaching TM [transcendental meditation] to people in the entertainment business. During that time, there was a thought to create more of a formal organization, but nothing ever happened. Then flash forward almost 30 years to the date—actually it was a couple of years before that, so it wasn’t quite 30 years to the day—the inspiration came very strongly to start this organization, and the name GATE emerged and along with what the acronym represents (Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment). I had been working with Eckhart Tolle for a number of years, and I expressed or shared the idea with Eckhart, and he thought it was very good. And I asked him if I create this, would he participate in a launch event with me. He said yes. Then I shared the idea with actor/activist Jim Carrey, who liked the idea as well, and I asked him if I created this event, would he co-host it with me. And he said, yes, I would. So that put the wheels in serious motion to create the organization. And then literally 30 years to the date, we inaugurated it on Thursday, June 4, 2009 at the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. And since that time, we’ve been exploring organizational infrastructure—what form do we take—and we did opt to become a 501(c)(6), non-profit membership trade association. We developed our Web site, and our philosophy, if you will, started doing screenings and other kinds of educational events, in keeping with our mission. We developed the Imaginal Awards, which is our version of the Oscar or Grammy award. We created the GATE Seal, which is akin to a Good

V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

Housekeeping Seal of Approval, but for transformational content, keeping in mind with our advocacy mission. Many, many people from around the world, in fact, people from over 70 countries, have now contacted us about becoming members or establishing chapters in their respective countries. VM: For people that don’t know, who are the Cultural Creatives, or how would you describe them? JR: Well, first a little background. The term “Cultural Creatives” was coined by two sociologists, Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson. And they did a study in the late ’90s/early 2000s, because the Fetzer Institute and the Institute of Noetic Sciences wanted to know how many of “us” there are in the United States. They developed criteria—a set of 18—describing who the Cultural Creatives are in terms of values and lifestyle preferences. You don’t define Cultural Creatives by the usual demographic or psychographic profiles, but rather, values and lifestyle preferences. And my own shorthand experience of Cultural Creatives is, it’s typically people who are involved in holistic lifestyles. So they probably meditate. They probably have an interest in spirituality, pro-women’s rights and children’s rights, pro-peace, pro-environment. They probably pursue some form of eco travel. Perhaps when they invest, they invest their dollars in a socially responsible manner. They probably drive or want to drive eco-friendly cars. They probably eat a very healthy diet, maybe not vegans, but maybe vegetarians or simply a very healthy diet, etc. At the time this study was done, they believed that about one in every four adult Americans could be considered to be Cultural Creative. Now, the study was revisited in 2008, and at that time they discovered that the Cultural Creatives had grown from 26 percent of the United States adult population to 35 percent. And not just here in the United States, but actually in other countries around the world, there were comparable percentages. So it appears to be the fastest growing marketing segment in the world. VM: Why, in your opinion, do you believe the audience is ready? JR: I think there are probably many ways of answering that. Number one, when I started marketing what I call transformational films in 1990—and that’s when I actually coined the terms “transformational entertainment and media”—I could see [that the audience was ready]. In fact, the first film that we marketed was a film called “MindWalk,” based on the works of Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics” and “The Turning Point.” And it was interesting to watch the audiences who came to see “MindWalk.” They responded to the film in a way that I have never seen an audience respond to a film before. They were taking notes during the film. They were staying behind after the movie and having in-depth, extended conversations to the point where theatre owners had a hard time getting people out of the theatre, and they [the audience] would carry the conversation from inside the theatre to outside the theatre. The word of mouth on this film was strong, and people were telling people, you’ve got to go see this film, you’ve got to go see this film. And it seemed to strike a chord with people in a way that I continued on page 41

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Artist’s Man ifesto for Beatin g the Urban Blues An

by Daphne Carpenter

ecently I had a meltdown.

It was my fault, really. I let someone else’s actions bother me and invade my inner realm. Then I acted as though the world were coming to a crescendoing halt. For days I wandered around in a downward spiral of “desperate” despair—feeling sorry for myself, walking through shadows, wandering around the city like a ghost, no, like a phantom, an insomniac who couldn’t even look at anyone. And I’m no stranger to hating myself; I’ve been in this awful state before. But as an artist I’m pretty good about being able to create something that absorbs my selfloathing like a rag. Then whatever the creation, I can hang it up (metaphorically and literally) like a trophy and feel like I’ve overcome. I’m feeling better now. Luckily this last bout of depression was short-lived. With the intensity of a hundred thirsty elephants racing towards an oasis of water, I dug through my sorrow for inspiration and remembered how to escape. In an epiphany moment on a long bus ride home one night—where people at the back of the bus were screaming to others at the front about who was a “buster” and who wasn’t—I started to cryptically scribble some words into my journal. It was there that I unearthed a prescription to conquer the sorrow. With this month’s Vision Magazine theme being Random Acts of Kindness, today I’m here to share with you some supplies from my anti-despair toolbox. If any of you are like me, the chill of winter may bring in with it a confusing sense of melancholy. Well here’s a little artistic support to help keep you warm. Remember, you are not alone.

LoseAll-natural, Your Pain, Not Your Health. herbal extract from hops relieves pain without the dangers of drugs. New Vinoprin softgels contain concentrated humulones extracted from hops flowers, which are used to provide flavor in beer, and have been used medicinally for over a thousand years. Vinoprin relieves ordinary aches and pains quickly by reducing the level of pain-causing cox-2 enzymes, while maintaining the important enzymes that protect the heart, digestive system and other organs. In double-blind clinical tests, those taking the supplement were able to reduce or eliminate the use of over-the-counter pain relievers such as Ibuprofen, reporting significant improvements in comfort while walking, standing, climbing stairs and lying down. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

For more information, or to try a free sample, visit vinoprin.com/vision or call 877-484-6664 Vinoprin is proudly made in the USA from hops grown in Oregon and Washington. V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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v i s i o n Make Art—Outside As December looms near, the naked, mysterious skeletal structure of trees is revealed and it’s up to us artists to continue to highlight the sheer radiance and beautiful complexity of Mother Nature. Now would be a good time to pull out the camera, the charcoal pencils, or that imaginative vocabulary. With your favorite warm drink, take your supplies outside and capture the splendor of your surroundings—rooftops, city lights, nature. While you’re there, try to communicate with the animals. (I think I’m turning into one of those weird cat ladies.) We can learn a lot from them. Take Notes, Any and Everywhere I’d like to say I hate TV, but I don’t. When I have a TV, sometimes I enjoy nothing more than to just lop out in front of it, in my best slippers, hugging my blanket and pillow, getting lost in knowledge. While watching The Discovery Channel or your favorite television channel, have a pen and paper ready. You never know when the most incredible combinations of words will spill out of that idiot box. Here are some notes I took from a program on “Cavern Creatures of the Deep” (I made a wild poem from these concepts): cave dwellers; ghostly blue light; subterranean grave; infinite array of forms; underwater gallery; the hour of departure; animals that never emerge. I incorporated these concepts into prose and unearthed a small poetic masterpiece that has yet to be rivaled. Journal (as a verb) Let’s face it, we’re creative beings. And our ability to heal ourselves through art is so underrated. I spent my sixteenth birthday in a psychiatric hospital for adolescents because I was “depressed and difficult.” But in reality, at the time, I was actually coming to terms with some serious childhood trauma that had unrelentingly anchored itself to all of my cells. It wasn’t the Prozac (they forced on all of us) that made a difference. It was my time in Art Therapy that finally helped initiate the ejection of the demons. Try this: stuff your backpack or bag with some Sharpies, paint, pens, charcoals, glue sticks, stencils, cut-outs, etc. You can create something while waiting for the bus, while at a coffee shop, or while on break in the break room. Keep this gig-bag stocked and ready for random moments of inspiration—especially during emotionally spastic moments and spur of the moment cityscape adventures. Omowale, one of my dance teachers, used to remind us that “we have a responsibility to the universe to harness and to develop our talents.” I like this. Stay Mindful of the Shift in Seasons Last month at Occupy LA after an anti-police brutality march, I had a quiet zone-out moment for myself amidst a flurry of concerns and protests. I had just opened my eyes after a necessary two-minute grounding meditation. Just then, right above me, these reddish purple leaves began an amazing and almost surreal, slow-motion descent down from the trees and onto the ground. I was hypnotized. I felt myself dissolve away from the crowd. As people waved fists and chanted slogans like, “Accountability for killer cops!” and “Jail time for human rights violators!” there was nature, seemingly detached from it all. The leaves spiraled in the air and floated away from the trees. I don’t even think they noticed the human commotion. I picked a leaf up and traced it with the flat side of my pencil. I hope to make a stencil out of it. And speaking of nature, I went to a workshop on Haiku poetry at this time last year, and for a while, I drove myself crazy making Haikus out of everything! (In my own demented way, of course.) After an insomniac night of self-induced paranoia, I scribbled this:

Tonight is so f***ing weird Will I ever rest? Are those birds I hear? The five-seven-five syllable thing had me acting compulsively. And since Haikus are based on continued on page 46 V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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Random Act of Intended Kindness! by Sharon Lewis

he random act of kindness that I wish to tell you about relates to the suicide of my late fiancé, Stan, who took his life because he believed he was helping me by removing himself from the world and my life. I believe that he planned his irreversible action almost on the spur of the moment. To his way of thinking, at the time, when the balance of his mind was disturbed, it was the biggest sacrifice and act of love and kindness he could give to take his own life for my well-being. It has not been easy for me to live with the knowledge of his intention, to give his love for me in this manner. Some people have said his action was self-centered. I think this sometimes, especially in dark moments, when I blame him for his final action and the repercussions it had for me in my life. The most painful aspect is that his decision destroyed the good life that I had built with him, one based on mutual understanding and trust. He expected his death would help me, but instead it incurred much suffering for me and radically changed the life I had chosen and built for myself with much care and hard work. This tragedy could have been avoided. In the following months, litigation with his ex-wife and her family over his Last Will and Testament ensued. Eventually I withdrew from the proceedings as my health was suffering and I could no longer afford the expensive legal costs.

Stan had intended that I become the beneficiary of his estate, but the elderly witnesses of his Will became confused under questioning and it was deemed that Stan died intestate. Stan was over 20 years older than me. We met originally on a professional basis; he was my financial advisor. He was a very distinguished and smart gentleman, with a warm smile and easy manner. I never imagined on our first meeting that we would have a romantic relationship. Stan was in his second marriage and had three children from his first marriage. He told me that he was very unhappy in his second marriage. After knowing him for a year, we became involved. I was very interested in healing and Sharon Lewis holistic therapies and was initiated into Reiki in 2005. I became a Level 2 Reiki practitioner in 2007 and mainly used it for my pets, horse, and friends. I had learned from Reiki about the importance of having love for yourself, but I didn’t experience closeness with anyone until I met Stan. Stan lived in my home during 2007 and then we planned to buy a bigger home. There was a beautiful house for sale near where my horse was stabled. It had a spare room which would be suitable as a therapy room. I felt we should wait until Stan’s divorce from his second wife was finalized. We went to view it and we both were delighted that this would be our home together. I had struggled for so many years with traveling to care for my horse and also working full time. This “dream” home

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would locate me five minutes from my horse and allow me to give up work and practice as a Reiki healer. I put my home that I had lived in for 23 years on the market and it sold very quickly. Stan’s matrimonial home had a mortgage and he couldn’t take on another mortgage with me until his divorce settlement was through. However, I was fortunate to be able to buy the house on my own. It was a much higher mortgage than my original home, which I had virtually paid off, but when his divorce was finalized, his settlement would bring the repayments down. We went ahead. What a dreadful mistake! We moved into our new home in May 2008. I believed it was the beginning of a new life. I was happy and believed that my aspirations would materialize. Then Stan’s ex-wife became very difficult over the divorce arrangements. She refused access to their home for sale viewings, refused to accept offers made on the property, saying that they were not sufficient for her accommodation needs. Because Stan was so desperate to finalize the divorce, he unwittingly signed the terms of agreement which gave 75 percent of the proceeds from the sale of the matrimonial house to his ex-wife, as well as agreeing that he would pay for everything until there was a satisfactory sale of the property. Stan took advice from a new lawyer who informed him that it would be expensive and risky to change the terms of the contract. We were both sad and disappointed and had lengthy discussions until the early hours of the morning. I believe that night Stan decided what he would do the following day. On Friday, October 24, 2008 as I left the house, Stan said, “Sharon, I love you.” I was due in my boss’ office at 2 p.m. for dictation when my mobile rang. It was Stan, but I couldn’t hear anything, and my boss was waiting for me. When I came out from dictation just after 3 p.m., I saw there were two messages on my mobile from Stan. The first one explained that there was bad reception because he was in the garage. The second message said that he loved me. These were the last words Stan would ever say.

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I arrived home at 7:20 p.m.; the house was in complete darkness. I wondered where Stan was. His car was parked outside. I could hear my cat meowing very loudly. I entered the house and put on the lights. There was a deathly silence and I knew instantly that something was seriously wrong. I walked into the kitchen and saw two notes and two beautiful peach colored roses in full bloom. These had been cut from the garden. In the notes, Stan made it clear that he hoped he was doing the right thing for me. He asked me to forgive him; he said that he would always love me, that he wanted me to go to his family for help. He told me that his spirit would never leave me. My reaction was frantic. I ran upstairs to his office, calling his name. He had left his files and work with notes methodically organized, explaining what I was to do. I was so confused. I called his phone, but it continued to ring. So I sent a text message saying, “Please don’t do this, I love you. Where are you?” My actions became driven by something outside myself, but I felt strangely protected. I grabbed my jacket and keys and ran outside the house. Two weeks prior, Stan had rented a lock-up garage close to our home. He had decided to bring over all his belongings from his matrimonial home so that he had no reason to go back there except to finalize the sale of the house. I had not been to the garage before, but something led me to run down the road and pull open the door. It was very dark, but I heard a voice saying the words, “There he is.” As I peered into the blackness, it was as if his body was illuminated. I could see him very clearly. I thought he was standing, awestruck, wondering what to do, with his head down. I ran over to him and called his name, “Stan, Stan!” He was standing sideways from me and I took hold of his arm, and as I did this, he swung towards me and I realized his feet were not on the ground. As he swung towards me, I could see his face. He had hanged himself in the garage. The consequences which followed were very traumatic for me. I had lost the only person in my life who had shown me affection and cared for me. His family expressed resentment towards me. They blamed me for his actions. His eldest daughter, who had never wished to meet me previously, arrived at my house the next day informing me that they would contest his Will and that I would receive nothing from her father’s estate. I was not Stan’s legal wife, so I was not treated fairly; all the rights were with his ex-wife. Stan’s family prevented me from visiting the Chapel of Rest and also tried to stop me from attending the funeral. My lawyer told me that I could attend but advised that I stay at the back of the chapel. I felt like I was a stranger. I used my small and precious savings on legal battles trying to fight for what Stan had wanted to leave to me from his estate. His wishes, of course, were to continued on page 44

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Are you an entertainment or media professional – actor, acto writer, producer, director, musician, composer, agent, manager, studio or network executive, technical pro? Have you experienced a personal transformation in your life? Are you seeking to share that experience with the world through your work? Do you believe that entertainment and media content can play a larger role in social and global transformation? GATE – the Global Alliance for Transformational Entertainment – is the pioneering nonprofit membership trade association founded specifically to create, establish, and grow the transformational entertainment and media genre – and to support your journey and your work as an industry professional. We were launched in 2009 by Founder and transformational marketing pioneer John Raatz, and Honorary Co-Founders Eckhart Tolle and Jim Carrey.

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Barbara Marx Hubbard N orman Seeff Louie Schwartzberg For a complete list of our stellar presenters, performers, more information and tickets Visit www.GATEcommunity.org Advance sales only! Limited seating. Both events are benefits for GATE. Proceeds will endow the organization, providing operating funds for our next year. A discounted first-year GATE membership will be available at both events. Join with us and with others from around the world to help establish GATE and further our vision of Transforming the World by Transforming Entertainment and Media.™

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had never seen such a chord struck before. And then other films that we marketed that you’re well aware of, “Baraka,” “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” “Peaceful Warrior,” “The 11th Hour,” and most recently, Tom Shadyac’s film, “I AM.”—they all had a very similar kind of pattern and a similar kind of response. So, one way is just through watching and observing and seeing, wow, people are responding differently to this particular genre. There is something about it that strikes a universal tone. And then, if you look at other forms of entertainment and media, whether it’s a book or a piece of music—of course, so-called New Age music has been around for a few decades now—many people use it for the purposes of healing. And, of course, books are probably the most established genre of transformational entertainment or media. They have, for decades and decades, been bringing people to wisdom-thought. And so now it’s time for film and for television programming to extend itself in the way that music and books have, and live events, for that matter. That’s basically what we’re advocating at GATE. It’s really all forms of entertainment and media, but in particular, film and television programming. The other thing is, I think it’s in tune with the times. We live in transformational times. Everything around us is transforming, and I believe that it’s natural that every particular area of human consideration would undergo somewhat of a similar kind of transformation. We see it happening in business, we see it happening in education, we see it happening even in science. And we ask: So why not entertainment and media? And most especially, why not in entertainment and media, because in our [GATE’s] estimation, it is the most powerful vehicle for bringing forth the ideas of the wisdom culture, these transformational ideas. And at this moment in our collective history, we so, so desperately need the voices of transformational teachers to be heard in the world. And actually, I shouldn’t say teachers. We need transformational ideas to be heard and experienced in the world. They’re out there, and I think probably multiple solutions exist already for every human problem we’ve encountered. There just isn’t enough media and entertainment content catering to that. VM: When we spoke last, you had mentioned an organizing thought as integration and mobilization. Can you expand upon that? JR: Absolutely. In recent times, my mantras—my personal mantras—have become integration and mobilization. In a way, we, the Cultural Creative, or whatever term someone would want to apply, we are the “Herbal Tea Party.” And our voice has not been heard, or perhaps our voice has not been used in the way other groups have used their voice. There are reasons for this, and those reasons aside, I think it’s time that we bring together, that we integrate, all the different aspects or facets of the Cultural Creative market into a unified whole, that we mobilize ourselves so that we can have a powerful voice, economically and in every other way—economically, politically, spiritually. There is an economy supporting the cultural creative, or rather there is an economic infrastructure that the cultural creatives participate in. There’s media, such as Vision Magazine, that is part of the transformational media genre. And again, as you and I discussed before, Vision Magazine, along with others in the United States, are pioneering what media can be. I’m not suggesting, by the way, that we have to eliminate existing media or existing entertainment. I think there’s room for more. And I would love to see transformational entertainment and media as an established genre. VM: Why do you think at this point in time that it’s really opportune for us to come together as Cultural Creatives and as people who are like-minded? JR: I think because people are desiring to be part of a tribe. I think for a long time, people have been pursuing their individual efforts, whether it’s been a spiritual practice or trying to create a business that caters to the Cultural Creative’s community. I think it’s the need of the time, and the need of the time is for the collective consciousness to rise up. And I think we can see that in the Occupy Movement, as one example. And to be fair, we can see that even in the Tea Party Movement, even though it has a different set of values; it’s still a group coming together to express itself. And it’s the same thing that the Cultural Creatives need to do at this moment in our history. VM: What does the phrase “Random Acts of Kindness” mean to you? JR: It means the spontaneous upwelling of a desire to be helpful to somebody. These days, there is so much to be grateful for, and I’m speaking personally, now, this isn’t an official GATE position. There’s so much to be grateful for, and I find myself, and I think a great many people find themselves feeling that they want to do something to be of service, to be helpful, to be supportive. It may only be sharing some kind words. It may be doing something more expressive. But it’s spontaneous and it comes from the heart of desire to want to support and to share and to uplift and to give of oneself. “The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are those that are aimed at the good of all. Inclusive, not exclusive. They join; they don’t separate. They are not for ‘my’ country but for all of humanity, not for ‘my’ religion but the emergence of consciousness in all human beings, not for ‘my’ species but for all sentient beings and all of nature.” —Eckhart Tolle To learn more about GATE’s vision/mission, programs and initiatives, event tickets, and how you can become involved, visit their Web site at www.gatecommunity.org. V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

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YOGA NEW STUDENT SPECIAL 10 Classes in 10 Days for $30!! Annual Teachers’ Training 200 and 500 hour levels available. Voted the “Best Non-Threatening Yoga Studio in LA” by LA Weekly! 1306 Sonora Avenue, Glendale, CA 91201, 818.265.9833, www.yogaatthevillage.com 12.11 SUMMER SPECIAL: PERSONAL YOGA COACHING Private sessions and yoga classes. La Mesa & San Diego. YourYogaCoach@gmail.com 619.813.6733 www.youryogacoach.blog. com 11.11

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Calendar “star’ heralding Maitreya shown on NBC, CBS

Jerusalem Dome of the Rock

Learn about the World Teacher Maitreya Introductory Presentations 3 pm 1st Sunday of month Controversial Bookstore 3063 University Ave - SD 6:30 pm 2nd Wed. of month Philosophical Library 2091 E. Valley Parkway #D Escondido SD cable public access channel Wed 9:30 pm Cox Sat 5:30 pm Time Warner Visit our booth at local street fairs

Line Listings are 20 words for only $20! Each additional word is only .50¢/word.

Introductory Offer: Prepay for 3 ads and get the 4th free. Prepay for 6 ads and get a FREE standard 2x2 display ad. Large vertical ads (2 x 3.25) are $159. Standard size (2x2) ads are $135. Discounts for multiple issues. Call today at 866.804.8444 or listings@visionmagazine.com. Visa & MC accepted. Deadline is DECEMBER 15 cial day. Seaside for Spiritual Living. 1613 Lake Dr., Encinitas, Ca. www.Louix.org or DECEMBER 1-5 Thurs. - Mon. call 888-288-3735 NLP Practitioner Certification Scholarship Training. Dec. 1-5 Discover how NLP Dec. 29, 2011 Thurs - Jan. 1, unlocks everything you need to know to 2012 Sun succeed in any area of you life. Visit www. LIGHT & RENEWAL MEDITATION RENLP.com or Call 1-800-800-6469(MIND) TREAT Learn Sunburst Kriya I meditation.

DECEMBER Maitreya manifests Cairo Horseman

Discover a pathway to your own direct experience of the Divine. Energize your spiritual journey among a gathering of likeminded souls! Explore conscious practices to integrate your inner experience in your daily life. We provide beautiful vegetarian meals, yoga, meditation, and quiet time. Rest amid the oaks or hike with new friends. Leave rejuvenated and purposeful! Email contactus@sunburstonline.org, or call 805.736.6528 for more information and suggestion donation.

DECEMBER 3 SATURDAY Ayurvedic Nutrition. Includes learning nutritional programs for each dosha or constitutional type, more. Natural healing NBC 1/28/11 www.Naturalnewscast Institute, 760-943-8485, HealingInst.com

Learn about the World DECEMBER Teacher 3-4 SAT. Maitreya - SUN. LIVING AS OMNIPRESENCE Presentations Weekend Introductory workshop with Peter Francis Dz3 pm 1st Sunday ofIsmonth iuban, author of Consciousness All. Experience Life as Omni-Present-ness, and Controversial Bookstore the ever-brand newness of All That Is. 3063 University Ave - SD Universal Spirit Center, 3858 Front St. San Diego, 92103 Dec.3 Saturday 10 5:30 PM 6:30 pm of month - Dec.4 Sunday 1 - 52nd PM Wed. $150 Friday LecPhilosophical Library ture 6:30 - 8:30PM $5 Info/details: or Contact 2091928-759-9943 E. Valley Parkway #D page at www.ConsciousnessIsAll.com Escondido Visit these powerful YouTubes http://youtube.com/PeterDziuban?feature=mhee SD cable public access channel

Wed 9:30 pm Cox Sat 5:30 pm Time Warner

DECEMBER. 11 SUNDAY

Visit our booth at local street fairs

Dec. 8-12 Thurs. - Mon. MAPS- Multidisiplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: Celebrating 25 years of research and education. Carthographie Psychedelica. Oakland Marriott City Center. 831-429-6362. www.MAPS. org/25 Dec. 11 SUNDAY Yoga at the Village Dec.11th – Pranayamas, Drishti and the Bandhas with Nancy Goodstein. 1306 Sonora Glendale, Ca. 91201 www.YogaattheVillage.com or call 818-265-9833

Serve through Transmission Meditation 9:30 am Sun, 7 pm Tue and 8 pm Fri in San Diego meditation.meetup.com/430 (619) 223-6703

Serve through Transmission Meditation Dec. 17th SATURDAY 9:30 am Sun, 7 pm Tue and SARVA DHARMA & WORLD BEAT CENTER SOLSTICE ACTIVATION with SIM8 pm Fri in San Diego RIT KAUR and guests. 8p.m. A Chant, meditation.meetup.com/430Electronica & Ecstatic Dance Event. Also check out the Eco-Gift Bazaar, Yoga (619) 223-6703

For LA/SF info about events & Transmission Meditation groups in other cities:

For LA/SF info about events & available from the World Famous, Prophet Restaurant. Please call 619-230-1190 or Transmission Meditation groupsVisit www.WorldBeatCenter.org for more in other cities: information and music lineup.

LA: (818) 785-6300 SF: www.sharingforpeace.org

LA: (818) 785-6300 Louix 50th Birthday Celebration: 6 p.m. SF: www.sharingforpeace.org This event will feature devotional singing

www.share-international.org

demos and International cuisine will be

www.share-international.org V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

with Panam, delicious vegan food, and Louix will be giving darshan on this spe-

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Dec. 30- Jan. 1 FRIDAY 2012 Raw Spirit Festival. NEW YEARS EVENT. Bring in the New Year in a healthful, fun-loving and conscious way. Call 928-308-2146 or e-mail info@rawspirit. com DEC 31- JAN 1 SATURDAY - SUNDAY Got 2012? Dec 31st - Jan1 Sat - Sun. Light up the grids New Years Eve party & retreat. ALL singles and couples welcome. Attend one or all of the events at www.angelvalley.org (lodging & retreat location) in the Sedona, Az Vortex! Be part of this prophesy and partial fund-raiser to usher in the Golden Age of Aquarius. Workshops, music, dancing ,food, and more... For detailed information contact www.LaurieReyon. com LaurieReyon@yahoo.com (619) 2719461 or Nancy at (619) 364-6591. Can’t attend? Unite with 144,000 spiritual people to send light, prayers, and positive invocations to the planet anytime on Dec 31st.

JANUARY 2012

JAUARY 6 – AUGUST 12 2012 Raja Yoga Advanced Studies & Teacher Training. Jan 6-Aug 12, La JollaYoga Center. Michele Hébert & Mehrad Nazari, PhD. http://www.rajayogis.net/ raja-yoga/training

Upcoming seminars and Training San Francisco, Ca. Levels 1& 2. Jan. 27 - Jan. 30, 2012. Alberquerque, NM. Levels 1 & 2. March. 2 – 5, 2012. Scotsdale, Az. Level 3. March 31- April 1. 2012. www.MatrixEnergetics.com JANUARY 28 SATURDAY Thai Therapeutics & High Desert Yoga Present: Thai Massage, kirtan & Yoga in Troncones, Mexico. Jan 28 - Feb 2/ Feb.2 - Feb.8/ Call 541-488-4006 and visit our website at www.ThaiTherapeutics.com JANUARY 29 SUNDAY NEW YEARS EVE RETREAT with Louix Dor Dempriey. Enjoy 6 love-filled days at the Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Az. Dec. 29, 2011-Jan. 3, 2012To register please visit www.LouixNYE.org or call 888-288-3735

FEBRUARY 2012

Feb 4, 2012 SATURDAY YOGA AT THE VILLAGE. Introduce your mind to your body. 200 Hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training. We also offer 300 Hour on-going Training. Call and drop in to sample any training session. We are a Yoga Alliance approved RYT school. Your always welcome. Visit us at www.YogaattheVillage.com or Call 818-265-9833 GATE 2.0 Transformational Story Conference. 9am to 5pm at The WADSWORTH THEATER, 11301 Wilshire Blvd. For more information, complete list of performers, presenters and tickets, please contact www.GATEcommunity.org

MARCH 2012

MARCH 15-23 Thurs. - Friday Peru sacred adventure equinox in Machu Picchu. For more information Please visit www.StarEssence.com, call 888-2774955 or email Bliss@StarEssence.com

ONGOING FENG SHUI MASTER TRAINING

CERTIFICATION 4 weekends of January 2012 at The International Feng Shui School with Amanda Collins. Please visit www.AmandaCollins.com for more information 3.11 JANUARY 27 FRIDAY MATRIX ENERGETICS The Science and Art of Transformation

FREE MEETUP GROUP with SPIRITUAL COACH John Abe. Learn Universal Enlightenment with “I Am Totality.” Build your life to order, do nothing to accomplish everything. Join Meetup.com to learn times V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

and locations of “I Am Totality” Meetup Group. 1-800-584-1640, www.iamtotaltiy. com.

TUITIVE INSIGHTS Clairvoyant Program, 4455 Morena Blvd. #108, 858.509.7582 www.MyIntuition.Net 11.11

SUNDAYS

$8 BEGINNERS YOGA CLASSES Monday @ 6:00p.m. Tuesday @ 5:30 p.m. 2333 Camino del Rio South #240 92108 www.yogawell.com 619.917.0998

Harmony Grove Spiritualist Association

Services

Incorporated and Serving ALL in California Since 1896

SaturdaysHealing 1:00pm Church 2:00pm Sundays Healing 10:00am Church 11:00am

Psychic Fair

1st Sat. of Month, 10:00am-4:00pm

Certification and Personal Growth Classes

• Mediumship • Healing • Ministerial • Ordinations

Private Readings Available Information about Speakers & Directions

760-745-9176

Escondido, CA www.harmonygrovespiritualist.org FIND THE CENTER OF DIVINITY WITHIN! Inspirational prayers, metaphysical teachings, music, social hour to follow. 10:30a.m.-11:30a.m. Teaching of the Inner Christ 1100 N. Second St. Suite 1114 El Cajon, CA 92021. 619.447.7007 10.11 SPICA – WAY OF LIGHT INSPIRATIONAL SERVICES 2nd Sunday of the month at 10am, 4th Sunday at 9am. Myztic Isle Bookstore, 8036 La Mesa Blvd, La Mesa, CA. 619.588.6483 for information. LOOKING FOR A SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY? You are always welcome at the Celebration of Light Church. Visit our website for program. www.CelebrationOfLightChurch.org. Vicente @ 23rd St. – San Francisco.

THEOSOPHY CLASS IN JULIAN/ SAN DIEGO, “What is Theosophy and How Does it Apply to Life?” 760.765.1090 619.283.0142 theosophy@theosconf.org www.theosophysandiego.org Sally & Jim Colbert Meets: 1st & 3rd Sunday Mornings 10:30 a.m. to Noon with cookies CALL FOR DIRECTIONS SOLAR RAIN WATER – Good for you and Good for the planet. Find out more. www. solarrainwatery.com.

MONDAYS

FREE PSYCHIC READINGS every FIRST Monday 7:30p.m. by students in Vessa’s IN-

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TUESDAYS

CLINICAL NUTRITIONIST CONSULTANT (CNC)™. Introductory or full Certification. Special Discounts. Most comprehensive training from nationally honored Nutritionists. Revised! 7:00-9:55 pm. Natural Healing Institute, 760-943-8485. www.naturalhealinginst.com

WEDNESDAYS

MIRACLE CIRCLE MEDITATION Connect with your inner divinity through deep meditation, inspirational prayers, and group discussion. 7p.m.-8p.m. Teaching of the Inner Christ 1100 N. Second St. Suite 1114 El Cajon, CA 92021. 619.447.7007 10.11 2nd Wednesday of every month: FREE Feng Shui Classes. Please visit www. AmandaCollins.com for more information. 3.12 Ongoing Wednesdays: CLINICAL MASTER HERBOLOGY (CMH)™. Introductory or Full Certification. Special Discounts. Most comprehensive training from nationally honored Master Herbalists. Revised! 7:00-9:55 pm. Natural Healing Institute, 760-9438485. www.naturalhealinginst.com

THURSDAYS

FREE DETOXIFICATION AND WEIGHT LOSS CLASS 1st Thursday of every month. 6:30p.m. Easy and successful program. Register @ Body Basics Health Center, San Diego. 619.296.7390 11.11 GODDESS Gatherings 3rd Thursday of every month. Please visit www.AmandaCollins.com for more information 3.12

FRIDAYS

HAPPINESS CLASSES - Based on the life-healing teachings of VERNON HOWARD, Fridays - 8p.m.; Sundays - 10a.m. New Life Foundation, 5779 Westminster Blvd., Westminster, CA. 714.899.9300 Conquer stress, handle difficult people with ease, banish problems. Donation basis. 09.11

“Chi” continued from page 8

one on top of the other, so that only the most intense or recent is noticeable.” Anxiety, as a golden rule of thumb, is a predictor of deeper, scarier emotions. Dr. Lambrou describes that “anxiety is often a top level emotion, meaning it’s the thing people experience and are aware of. So many people come in because of anxiety for one reason or another, and actually have a level of anger they are not aware of. A lot of our upbringing, especially in Western society, doesn’t allow children to be angry.” This is why, in the last chapter of their book, Drs. Pratt and Lambrou use ESM with children. They teach us how to calm “stresses from building up to the point where the child becomes trapped in an emotional loop that she can’t quickly break out of. The procedures can nip habits in the bud that, unchecked, might carry into larger and more complex problems in adulthood.” For example, Miguel and Lily’s child, Javier, a patient of Dr. Lambrou’s, was inconsolable during tantrums. Is the cure to punish the child, threaten him, or place him in time-out? Much to the chagrin of our Western logic, this is how ESM heals: you tap on the side of the child’s hand and say, “I love you, Javier, even when you are angry and upset.” And it works—Javier calms down. All the work of ESM starts with love and acceptance, whether for a 2-yearold child or a 65-year-old father. Dr. Lambrou, in his decades of experience with psychology and medicine, tells me that “the healing power of love cannot be overemphasized. It is a powerful force in nature and human experience. Perhaps one of the most powerful components of the therapeutic process is unconditional acceptance—appreciating and loving a person even if they don’t change.” And that’s precisely what ESM heralds us forth to do in our self-therapeutic work. In a book so dedicated to help and change, it is realistic to hear that where we start with all our sticky, totalizing problems is in deep acceptance. That wise woman of love, Mother Teresa, said that in this life we can do no great things, only small things with great love. Is there no smaller act of kindness than to tap your forehead, and no wiser healing than to do so with currents of great love? Adam Jacobs is unemployed and still writing. Contact him at bowofrain@gmail. com. His friend, Michael Ahn, is the artist of the article; his portfolio can be viewed at http://michaelahn.wordpress.com. Dr. Peter Lambrou, Ph. D. is the co-author with Dr. George Pratt, Ph. D. of Instant Emotional Healing: Acupressure for the Emotions. Their next book, Code to Joy, will be on healing core belief systems. Look for it next year through Harper Collins. Dr. Lambrou holds a private practice in San Diego, CA and is Vice-Chairman of Psychology at Scripps Memorial Hospital. His Web site is www.PeterLambrou.com. “Intended Kindness” continued from page 37

improve my situation rather than make it worse. In the early months of my bereavement (made all the worse by accusations and expenses), I hoped that his wishes would be honored and that justice would prevail. His sacrifice was a random act of intended kindness to me and I felt I owed it to him to try to gain the life he so greatly wanted me to have. When my financial resources were depleted, the battle was still not complete. I withdrew from the legal proceedings. I was up against 15 people with disposable incomes who were determined to fight against me. I had no choice but to admit defeat. We had been in our new home for five months, and after Stan’s death, I had mixed feelings about it. Of course, I would not be able to leave work and become a full time healer; my living expenses had increased significantly. I began to have free floating anxieties. I had intense fears and was especially terrified of the dark. I experienced panic attacks. With incomprehensible thoughts and a mixture of fractured emotions, I have managed to pull through. A combination of suicide bereaveV I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

ment counseling, Reiki and spiritual healing, and practicing self-healing and relaxation techniques all helped to regenerate me. After 17 months, our home was sold. I was soon drawn back to Egypt on a sacred journey, and have continued to return since then, realizing that this is my spiritual homeland. Over the past two years, I have also discovered the loving Sekhem energy which derives from Ancient Egypt. The wisdom held within it resonates with me and strengthens me. If you or anyone you know is contemplating suicide, please seek help. There are many organizations worldwide offering help and counseling. Sharon Lewis wrote this, her first article, with the encouragement of her friend, Wendy Stokes, who manages her Web site, www.sharon-in-egypt.info. Sharon is a Reiki Master, Reyad Sekh Em Level 2 Practitioner, Body Massage Therapist, and Professional Relaxation Therapist. Wendy is the author of The Lightworkers Circle Guide: A Workbook for Spiritual Groups. This book explains how to facilitate a spiritual circle and helps to raise money for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust which helps to protect endangered species. “Holiday Season” continued from page 23

feast in either of those places, you would be well served to remember that there is more going on than just dinner with your family and friends. You will be relating and adjusting to those more rapid energies as well. Why bother to concern ourselves with all these confusing unseen layers of vibratory frequencies? Why not just enjoy our holiday celebration? I write about these vibrations because they affect us. All these vibrations contribute to our sense of well-being or our slight or extreme discomfort. In the past, we explained our feelings from a psychological, sociological, or cultural perspective. When we were fully three-dimensional beings, that explanation worked. But we are changing, the world is changing; the vibrations on the planet are shifting. The old explanations no longer suffice to explain why we are experiencing or feeling what we experience. We need to look elsewhere. We need to explore the unseen realms in order to understand this new world into which we are moving, step by small step, every day. I am not in any way suggesting that we change our celebrations or make a big fuss over what we sense when we are open to the vibrations present during these festive days. I am, however, wondering what we might learn about ourselves, others, and the world around us when we question and observe from a vibratory or energetic perspective. The world is so rich, so multi-layered, and so full of overt and covert messages. I find it fascinating to dig down into the subtle level to mine for what is not so obvious on the surface. When I hear people bemoaning the state of the world, the decline of the economy, or the Occupy protests spreading like wildfire around the planet, I remind myself that this seeming social and political chaos is only chaos from a three-dimensional perspective. From the multi-dimensional perspective, it is the energetic reflection of the breakdown of the old that is no longer serving or appropriate, to make space for the birth of the new. Here are some hints for anyone who encounters a stressful energetic environment during the holidays (or at any time). First, stop—step back energetically (not necessarily physically). Then detach from the conflict or the disturbing dissonant energy. Finally, move into a neutral zone. In that neutral zone, you will be able to think about and focus on positive, joy-filled vibrations. In doing that you become a magnet of those positive vibrations and a catalyst to send them rippling out into the field. When you do this, you will find that the energies in the room or gathering gradually change. Practice it! You will find this little process works. And the more you practice, the more successful you will be. I wish each of you a very happy and joyous holiday and hope you find love, continued on page 46 D EC E M B ER 20 11

v i s i o n a r y

Katherine (“Kat”) My name is Katherine, (Kat for short) and I go by the name of PaintedOnMySoul when doing art. I’ve worked in digital art for approximately 10 years now, and it’s my passion. I work in photo-manipulations, mixed media, and 3D art. I find digital art to be challenging and fulfilling, and a way to express my emotions. Most of my time is spent running a site [pngtubes. com] that includes several artists from around the world. We create and sell pre-made backgrounds and tubes for other artists to use in their creations. You can find more of my artwork at http://paintedonmysoul. deviantart.com/.

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a r t i s t

laughter, fulfillment, and peace on every level. Author and Energetics Expert Elaine Seiler is at the forefront of explaining humanity’s “energetic evolution” and how we can cope and thrive in the face of rapid change. Elaine is a mother, grandmother, life and career coach, and researcher. She is the author of Multi-Dimensional You: Exploring Energetic Evolution and Your Multi-Dimensional Workbook: Exercises for Energetic Awakening. Learn more at www.transformationenergetics.com and www.multi-dimensionalyou.com. Contact Elaine at Elaine@transformationenergetics.com. “Manifesto” continued from page 35

experienced before—the sound of a train in the distance, small spills of oil (not) mixing with water in rain puddles, but looking like cool abstract rainbows, newly painted graffiti murals in the alley. “The walls will speak to you. You can go to any city in the world and if you start looking at the walls you’re going to find out a lot about the people,” says photographer Gusmano Cesaretti in the book, “Street Writers.” Be one with your city, wander through the neighborhood— even if it’s a crappy place, it’s still yours. I find myself at the bus stop sometimes at 5:45 a.m. and I can’t help but feel proud of myself for handling it and being out there in the cold dark to get to work by seven. (I’m not going to lie, though, sometimes I do feel pretty damn miserable out there.) Invest in a Good Hoodie This hooded sweatshirt is ubiquitous in the urban art scene for a good reason. Warm and cozy, personal and comfortable, the hoodie is your protection from the storm, in all senses of the word. For me the hoodie subconsciously stimulates an in utero sensation. Is that weird? This fine piece of cotton has rescued me from so many uncomfortable situations. In a flash, you become less conspicuous; pull the hood up over your head, and ta da! Less of your face is revealed and you feel like you have more privacy in your thoughts. You can wander around covertly, and in “hood-up-mode,” a signal goes out that says, “I’m not acknowledging you people on the street or on this train at this moment,” without being rude. It’s like shutting out traffic when you need to. And Finally, Compliment a Stranger On an afternoon stroll the other day—in fact, right in the midst

V I S I O N M AG A Z I N E

of my phantom haze—a girl drove up behind me, slowed down and shouted out the window, “I love your hair!” Now, this chick accentuated the “love” as if she truly loved my hair and wanted to marry it. Before she pulled up, my face was ugly and sour, reflecting my negative emotions and evil thoughts about wanting to strangle the lady at the grocery store who was so rude to me five minutes ago. But somehow (even though my hair was dirty and I felt to be having a bad hair day) those four words brought a genuine smile to my face. I turned around in time to smile back, and I thought to myself, “Now, how hard was that? Just to throw a compliment out to some random person (who was wallowing in the depths of their own selfhate), and now they feel just sprite?” Too easy. To sum it all up, I’d like to say this. Whenever I manage to rise up and out from a tar pit of gloomy despair, it’s usually because I finally succeed in shifting my perception—that isn’t making me miserable, I’m making myself miserable. Don’t give others so much power over your emotions. It’s really not that difficult to tap into the present moment and to stop clinging to stormy drama. We can mold our lives in remarkable ways with creative visualization and by letting things go. When I have a thought that’s just too creepy-negative, I try to take a deep breath, and see how to flip it to see the good instead of the bad. Then I reach for my art supplies. Occupy and Resist. Blue Lunar Eagle Daphne can be reached at daph.occupylamedia@gmail.com and at www. paintzflwrs.blogspot.com.

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