mindfulness

This Documentary is a remarkable eye opener to the nature of our universe and the power of electricity. This is a must see for everyone but particularly for anyone who is interested in learning about the nature of the magical universe we live in. Details of the Electric Universe Thunderbolts of the Gods by David Talbott and Wallace Thornhill introduces the reader to a former age of planetary instability and earthshaking electrical events. The 108-page full-color monograph, based on the life’s work of the two authors, offers a revolutionary synthesis of historical investigation and the newly discovered “Electric Universe.” Talbott and Thornhill claim that cosmic upheaval occurred so recently as to have profoundly affected early human cultures, provoking “incomprehensible” myths, symbols, and commemorative practices. Through a synthesis of ancient testimony, high-energy plasma experiments, and space age discoveries, the authors bring the ancient world to life. If their hypothesis is correct, it will surely alter many paths of scientific investigation as well. The little-known study of powerful electrical discharges in plasma is a new and exciting development in plasma cosmology, with profound implication for space age astronomy. Talbott and Thornhill have followed these developments because they see plasma science as a bridge between the ancient and modern worlds. To advance their case, they present side-by-side comparisons of laboratory plasma experiments and globally recurring symbols of the ancient sky. The evidence, they report, shows an ancient obsession with extremely violent electrical discharge formations in the heavens. At the core of this reconstruction lies the unique behavior of plasma. Plasma, often called the “fourth state of matter,” has been studied for less than a hundred years, and only in the recent decades of the space age have some physicists begun to realize its importance to the understanding of structure in space produced by electric currents. All stars and astronomical objects ranging from supernovae to beautiful filamentary nebulae are now known to be constituted of plasma—a conductive medium that permeates the near-vacuum of space. Charged celestial objects move within insulating cells of plasma that may discharge spectacularly upon close encounters. The plasma discharge currents take complex filamentary forms resulting in the panoply of astonishing structures seen by Hubble and other new telescopes. From these discoveries, a new approach to the understanding of the physical universe is emerging. This approach is called plasma cosmology. Through unimaginable labors, our ancestors carved unexplained pictures on stone, numbering in the tens of millions. But what inspired this massive endeavor around the world? The laboratory experiments make clear that the ancient artists were copying spectacular electrical phenomena in the heavens. Indeed, the global correspondence between laboratory discharge forms and the pictographs on stone is so detailed that same-scale images.

As women, our roles are traditionally nurturing ones. We tend to put the needs of others—children and partners mostly—before our own. This role is shaped both by society and our genetics. Sadly, though, this position is a limiting one when it comes to expressing our divine spark of individuality. All too often, we begin to neglect our own needs. Then we wonder why our lives are so empty. Fortunately, the time has come to break away from convention and become the free, radiant woman hidden within you. It’s time to walk your authentic path… LOSE THE GUILT Often we feel guilty if we aren’t constantly sacrificing our own desires in order to tend to other people, our homes or jobs. But it’s vitally important that we release this guilt. Remind yourself that you are more than just a mother, wife, housekeeper, or employee. You are first and foremost your own person, and your needs are just as important as everyone else’s. Learning to apply the following ideas and actions to your own life will also enable you to give more abundantly. So if you have others depending on you, all the more reason to stop the self-sacrifice and start responding to your heart’s desires with love and respect. Everyone benefits as a result. LOVE THYSELF The next step on this thrilling journey is to start learning how to nurture yourself. In doing so, you can begin to create the life you really want. Think about all the things you do for others. Then, begin to redirect some of those giving acts towards yourself. For example, you might take your children for regular pleasant outings to the park, the beach, the movies and so on. But how often do you go out, on your own, to pursue leisure activities? These could be active: Going for a run, playing a game of tennis—or relaxing: a massage or an art exhibition. You can even practice self-nurturing at home, as long as you won’t be disturbed. Try a long hot bath with essential oils, or listen to an audio book. The more time you can spend in your own company, the better. This will allow you to more deeply connect with—and learn about—your essential self. DARE TO GET REAL Another key to unlocking your authentic woman is to become brutally honest in your relationships: especially how you relate to all other people. This means learning to stop censoring yourself. Doing so requires a good amount of self-acceptance. It also requires that you allow the expressions of how you feel and what you think to come to the surface. To face someone else just as you are, without trying to behave in the way you think they are expecting, can seem a bit daunting at first. However, the more you practice it, the easier it will become—and the more rewards it will bring you. DIVE INTO BLISS The phrase “follow your bliss” is often bandied around, but what does it really mean? There are limitless answers to this question since it is 100 percent specific to you. What do you love doing most? Swimming, dancing, bird-watching, taxidermy? Perhaps it has been a long time since you were able to do any of things you adore, as you simply “don’t have the time”. Try, with all your might, to make the time on a regular basis. CALL TO ACTION Here are a few simple ways to heighten the bliss experience in your daily life. Enjoy discovering how doing this helps you more deeply to become aware of the desires of your soul and live your life more and more fully from your authentic core. If you don’t already have a journal, start one now. Write down and answer questions such as “What matters most to me?” “What did I love most as a child?” “How can I begin to live what I love most, right now?” Answering these questions over time will be an ongoing process. Just keep listing the things that bring you bliss in your journal. Then, come back to what you’ve written whenever you feel in need of guidance or direction. Delight your senses every day. Indulge in a cup of amazing coffee, a glass of red wine, or a piece of the very best dark chocolate you can find. Moderation is key, along with using the very best quality of everything. Get into the joy of movement: for its own sake, not out of fear or a sense of duty. Do what fulfills you—be it dancing, walking, horse riding. If you haven’t yet found out which physical activity you love, start exploring the multitude of possibilities… Bliss is not a luxury...it’s a necessity when it comes living your truth, creating the life you want, and connecting with the deepest levels of your being...go for it the rewards are endless both for yourself and for what you bring to the lives of those you love.

Allow an hour for the whole process of taking a delicious treat of a bath from beginning to end. Make sure you have everything you need - towel, loofa or hemp glove, and another towel to use as a headrest. Add essential oils to the water as the bath is filling, using about ten to fifteen drops total of either a single essence or of a mixture for a large bath. Each essence has a different effect on the mind and body (see below).  When you get into the bath, gently scrub yourself all over with a hemp glove or a loofa. Then just relax and soak for a few minutes, letting the heat penetrate your muscles.  Keep a cool cloth nearby to smooth over your face when needed. Let the essential oils work their wonders while you carry out a relaxing and waste-eliminating self-massage.  Water is the perfect medium for self-massage. The heat (remember not to have your bath too hot and stimulating) of the water works silent wonders, and it supports your body so that you have easy access to feet, legs, arms and torso while still remaining relaxed. When your bath is finished, lie down for ten minutes with an eye mask or a piece of dark fabric across your eyes and keep warm. the massage message Self-massage is nothing more than stroking, kneading, pushing and pressing your skin and muscles. Start with your feet. Grasp one foot between thumb and fingers and press in between the tendons, gently at first, then harder and harder, moving from the toes up towards the ankle. Then, using your fingertips and knuckles, go over the soles of your feet. Wherever you find a sore spot, work harder until you feel the discomfort melt beneath your hand. Now do your heel, grasping it between thumb and fingers and working around the area of the Achilles tendon. This is also a good time to make circles with your foot to loosen the ankle joint. Repeat this with the other foot, and then go on to your legs. Lift each leg in turn and deeply stroke the flesh on the back, from the ankle up to the knee. Then go back to the ankle again and repeat the same motions on the side and front of the calf. Keep working and, as you massage a little deeper with each stroke, you will gradually find that any tautness softens. Now go over your thighs with the same movement, and afterwards knead and squeeze around the knee area wherever there are trouble spots, just as you did on the feet. Now knead each thigh and hip. Then go on to your arms. Knead and squeeze every spot you can reach on your shoulders and neck, looking for sore spots and focusing on the areas between joints and muscles. Pay particular attention to the tops of shoulders, where most of us lock away our tension. Grasp this area in your thumb and fingers and insistently ease away any hardness you find there. Finally, go over your ribs, doing each side with its opposite hand. essence alchemy As part of the benevolent bath, choose essential oils not so much for what they can do for your skin as what they can do to expand your consciousness and lift your spirit. Whatever your mental state may be, it has an enchanting antidote from the world of flowers: Negative State Essential Oil Remedy anger: ylang ylang, rose, chamomile resentment: rose sadness: hyssop, marjoram, sandalwood mental fatigue: basil, peppermint, cypress, patchouli worry: lavender feeling jaded: neroli, melissa, camphor feelings of weakness: chamomile, jasmine, melissa irritability: frankincense, marjoram, lavender, chamomile physical exhaustion: jasmine, rosemary, juniper, patchouli anxiety: sage, juniper, basil, jasmine

Did you know that biochemical changes brought about by the things you eat can affect your brain and alter consciousness dramatically? So much is this true that foods can produce imaginary fears and even hallucinations. But, as a result of several generations of psychologically-oriented doctors influenced by Freudian theories, only recently have we begun to chart the exact mechanisms of how the foods you eat can have such a powerful effect—both positive and negative—on your brain. You need to know about this. It matters enormously. YOUR CONTROL CENTER Your brain is the center of thought, emotion, mood, perception, drive and memory. Few people are aware that your brain is also the control center for an abundance of important hormones and other neurochemicals responsible for changing the way you think and feel. Joy, paranoia, even despair are thanks to the delicate balance or imbalance of these important chemical substances that come from our foods. If, as many researchers now know, we can influence this without causing adverse side effects—such as those which result from the use of tranquilizers, antidepressants, drugs or sleeping pills—we are able to exercise enormous control over destructive moods and feelings, and to increase our enjoyment of life tremendously. Here’s the biggest surprise: Nothing is more powerful in influencing all of this than making very careful choices about the foods that you eat. Because each one of us is unique, this is highly individual. Some foods work beautifully for us, other foods are absolutely destructive. CHOOSE YOUR FOODS CAREFULLY Food sensitivities were once uncommon. Now they’ve become so widespread that nutritionally-trained doctors estimate between 70 and 90% of us experience symptoms associated with food reactions, although few of us realize what is taking place. There are major reasons for this exponential rise in food reactions: First, our immune systems are increasingly challenged by the presence of chemical and energetic pollution in the environment. Next, our massive consumption of convenience foods has rendered large segments of the population deficient in minerals and vitamins, which would once have helped protect us from sensitivity reactions. And the packaged foods on which most of us live these days are chock-full of the foods highest on the list of reactive substances, such as cow’s milk products including cow’s cheese, milk, and yoghurt; wheat, grains and cereals; junk fats and chemical additives. As a result, your body’s enzymes, whose job it is to digest milk products and grains—and protect you from chemical pollution—have become gravely overtaxed. So you can become addicted to a food to which your body reacts negatively, without realizing it’s the very act of eating that has caused your addiction. HOW IT WORKS Let me explain. When you are sensitive to a food or chemical you react negatively on first contact, although it sometimes takes a day or two to experience the negative reaction. But if you eat or drink this food again and again, so that you are continually exposed to it, this negative reaction—together with the symptoms it produces—becomes “masked”. It’s very much like the alcoholic who feels OK so long as he has a drink in his hand. Then, when alcohol is withdrawn from him, he goes “cold turkey” and feels terrible. If you stop eating a food (or drinking the alcohol) to which your body reacts negatively, WHAM—you get withdrawal symptoms, just as the alcoholic does when he or she is deprived the “fix.” I’ve seen a lot of this happen to people at the start of the Cura Romana program, especially those who’ve been drinking a lot of coffee or diet sodas, or eating a lot of grains, cereals and sugar-based convenience carbohydrates. Symptoms often include no energy, a bad headache, depression and cravings. Fortunately—thanks to the power of the changes that take place in the brain on Cura Romana—such experiences usually clear within a few days. ADDICTIONS DESTROY Experts in clinical ecology have discovered that alcoholism and food reactions share a common cause, common triggers, and a common biochemistry. When you eliminate the foods to which your body is sensitive—those your body literally hates, in fact—false hunger, cravings and addictions completely disappear. When you’re tired, upset, depressed or anxious without apparent cause, the problem most often results from the kind of foods you’ve been eating. I know this is hard to believe. It is something that most people would never dream of. But this is how potent the effect is that foods can exert upon us. You can not only suffer from food sensitivities and allergies to specific—sometimes even highly nutritious—foods which set your mind and emotions whirling, or make you lose confidence in yourself and blame yourself in negative ways; you can also experience an upset in mineral balance in your body, or low blood sugar. On the positive side, some foods can be used to alter states of consciousness, improving mood and inducing relaxation. Understanding how the foods you choose to eat can affect your own moods and mental states, and discovering the foods that work for you in a positive way, can be life-changing. But you also need to learn the foods that are destructive to you. This is a highly individual thing, which you learn only by testing your foods. UNTOLD TRUTHS What is hard to believe is that the question of food sensitivities is still met with hostility, even scorn, by most doctors—who, ever since Freud, have been taught that problems such as chronic anxiety, depression, hysteria, psychosomatic illness and other functional disorders arise entirely from psychological factors. It just ain’t true. The work of some brilliant biochemists and psychiatrists such as Dr. Abram Hoffer in Canada, and allergists Dr Ted Randolph and Albert Rowe, as well as British psychiatrist the late Dr. Richard Mackarness, has shown quite clearly that factors in our physical environment—such as chemicals in our foods and water, as well as certain foods themselves—cause mental and emotional symptoms, as well as weight gain and the development of degenerative conditions and rapid aging. They do this by inducing sensitivity or allergic reactions that involve the central nervous system. The study of this phenomenon is called clinical ecology. SHOCKING SECRETS For many years, clinical ecologists have tested patients with psychiatric problems, from simple depression and anxiety to schizophrenia and even psychosis, to see if the cause of these things comes from reaction to specific foods. In general, all of us react to certain groups of foods in a negative way, such as manufactured foods; sugar; carbohydrates; packaged and convenience foods. But the more serious food sensitivities and allergies tend to be highly specific to the person experiencing them. The way all of this is tested is quite fascinating. They do this either through a complicated procedure called cytotoxic testing—checking how your blood reacts to specific substances—or by putting you on a fast for five days, then introducing a few drops of water containing the suspected food under your tongue, and charting your reactions. These may include changes in your pulse rate and other physical symptoms, as well as natural shifts of mood or emotional outbursts, indicating that this particular food is the troublemaker. Reactions vary from person to person. They can be something as simple as a feeling of mental confusion, grief, or fatigue, to as dramatic as a psychopathic outburst in which someone tries to slash his wrists or attack those testing him. Once the offending foods are known—they could be milk, grain, cheese, vodka, sugar, or almost anything—the patient is told to eliminate them from his diet. Provided he does so, his aberrant emotional or mental state does not reoccur. If the allergies are mild, they can sometimes be controlled by a “rotation diet”, in which food intake is carefully planned so that you only eat a particular food once in any four-day period. Food sensitivities and food allergies are far more common than people realize. Some of the worst offenders are grains, cereals, wheat, milk products, and all convenience and packaged foods. People find that when they exclude these foods completely from their diet, their energy levels increase and their disposition transforms. What is also interesting is the sense that people have of themselves. Whether they trust themselves, and whether they feel good about being who they are, depends tremendously on the foods that they are eating. HEAVY METALS Heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, or too high a concentration of copper—one of the trace minerals necessary for good health—can create interference with the brain and nervous system, as well as the endocrine system, resulting in aberrant emotions. An excess of copper, for instance, can produce hyper-emotionalism, hallucinations, and even psychic experiences for some people. A high level of lead in the body is linked to mental retardation in children and is often a significant factor in over-aggressive behavior. It’s also indicated as a cause of hyperactivity and learning problems in kids. Excess cadmium, from a lifestyle that includes taking several cups of coffee a day, often leads to a low blood-sugar problem, so you feel you need more coffee or something sweet just to keep going. So does eating too many carbohydrates, which themselves turn into sugar. Low blood sugar is common amongst people living on a typical British or American diet. There are some simple tests to determine mineral balance and the levels of heavy metals in the body. These tests are not foolproof by any means, but they are still valuable. They are often done by burning a small sample of hair cut from the head, and then analyzing its mineral content. If any imbalances are found, they can be corrected by giving chelated minerals and/or by drying out excessive heavy metals from the tissues using natural substances such as pectin, high doses of vitamin C, garlic and kelp. HOW TO TEST YOUR FOODS Learn to test your own foods—it’s not hard to do. It’s all about becoming conscious of what your body thrives on and loves, and what it dislikes. In fact, it’s all about honoring yourself and your life. Say, for instance, the first food that you decide to test is cow’s yoghurt. You eat a nice big helping of yoghurt at one meal, then you don’t eat any more yoghurt for 48 hours, and you don’t introduce any other new foods. If, during this period, you find your energy levels have dropped for no apparent reason; you’re ravenously hungry or craving something; your bowels are upset; you feel emotionally unsettled or low; or you develop aches or pains in your body, then you can be pretty sure that your body has reacted badly to the food you have been testing. If, on the other hand, after 48 hours you experience none of these reactions, you can safely assume that the food you have tested can be incorporated into your meals as a food that your body is happy with. If you do have a negative reaction to the food, it’s important to realize that you haven’t done anything wrong. This is the way you learn about the foods that your body can handle and which you need to stay away from. Of course, it’s important to learn by your body’s unique rules, and test each food one by one. Give thanks to your body if it says “no” to a food. Meanwhile, get plenty of top quality proteins and fresh, green, non-starchy vegetables, no matter what else you’re eating. It’s important to remember that your digestive system is, in truth, your second brain. (See “Secrets of the Second Brain” ) It boasts as many nerve endings as the brain itself. When you eat foods that antagonize these nerve endings, you experience all sorts of physical and emotional states that hold you back. Discovering the foods that work for you is sheer joy. These are foods that you can eat with impunity, without gaining weight or worrying about undermining your health—provided you avoid the foods that you discover your body does not work well with.

Heavy emotional stress from anxiety, resentment or depression can drain us of energy. Such delinquent influences also lower your immunity, make you vulnerable to catching colds and flu, and susceptible to premature aging and the development of degenerative conditions. For lasting high energy the energy thieves in your life need to be cornered, collared and dealt a fatal blow. the energy drainer scenario A woman is in a job which she hates. She feels unmotivated and resentful (inner energy-drainers). After work she goes out to drink (alcohol-addiction drainer). Sometimes she drinks too much and this creates friction with her husband (relationship energy-drainer). She feels bad about herself as a result of arguing (emotional energy-drainer). Her poor self-image leads her not to care for herself (poor self-esteem energy-drainer). She eats badly (biochemical energy-drainer). She feels worse and suffers depression. Nothing in her life seems to work and she has nothing to look forward to... You see the pattern. She is stuck in a rut. The energy-drainers have stolen her personal power and she can only see everything in the worst light. Now let's look at the flip side. Energy-enhancers tend to attract other energy-enhancers, creating positive feedback loops and making you feel empowered and in control of your life. Compare the following situation with the previous sketch. the energy enhancer scenario A woman is in a job which she hates. She discovers an inspiring exercise class (physical energy-booster). The class makes her feel good about herself and inspires her to eat better. (biochemical booster). She loses a few pounds, feels better in her body and begins to dress in a more flattering way (self-esteem booster). She meets some new friends whose company she really enjoys (relationship booster). As her self-esteem increases, the people she works with begin to appreciate her more. Her job becomes more enjoyable (work booster). She feels excited about her life and confident about looking for a new job, something she will really love. Identifying your own blockers and drainers, and making the choice to let go of even one or two, sows the seed for more positive feedback loops in your life. It is an important step to take in accessing more core energy and developing your personal power. Sometimes even awareness itself is enough to get the ball rolling. wasting anxiety On an internal level few emotions drain energy like anxiety. While you dash about (either physically or in your consciousness) feeling unsafe and unstable and trying like mad to make everything all right, you deplete your body and your creativity. Where there is anxiety there is a high level of electrical, electropositive magnetic activity and chemical acidity which affect the sympathetic nervous system and encourage feelings of fear, irritability, nausea and headache, as well as an inability to concentrate, muscle pain and insomnia. Even minor attacks of nervousness can dramatically undermine your work performance and make it almost impossible for you to enjoy yourself. Anxiety is frequently related to food allergies. Realigning your diet can help. So can physical exercise which calms electrical and chemical overactivity, replacing it with a more balanced energy, which you can call on, and a feeling of mental and physical well-being. Depression can be a big energy-drainer as well. Sometimes depression develops as a result of blocked emotions which you may not even be aware you are feeling - like grief. Often depression is rather like an anger turned in on yourself to block you from doing harm to anyone else. To break through and release the energy that has been blocked by depression you may need to examine your experience of depression carefully as well as change your lifestyle. Resentment, too, can be an enormous energy-blocker. Anger immediately felt and expressed keeps energy flowing. As adults we tend to swallow our anger, turning it into resentment. Fear can also block energy. In a measurable physical way it freezes you into inactivity and makes all things seem impossible. So can negative feedback loops. When you feel low in energy you tend to attract energy-drainers which in turn attract other energy-drainers and before you know it you find yourself caught up in a negative feedback loop. You feel helpless - a victim of circumstances over which you have no power - and you lack the energy or the incentive to break out of the loop.

One of the simplest ways of meditating, this technique involves nothing more than just being aware of your breathing. But don't be deceived by its simplicity. It is a potent tool for stilling the mind and regenerating the body. And concentrating your awareness on the breath is not as easy as it sounds. You need to find yourself a quiet place where you will not be disturbed. You can sit cross-legged on the floor with a small cushion underneath you, or you can sit in a chair if you prefer, but your back should be straight. This straight-back position is a requirement for many meditation techniques, since it creates a physical equilibrium which makes calm mental focus possible. Let your hands rest quietly in your lap. count your breaths Close your eyes. Take several long, slow breaths, breathing from your abdomen so it swells out with each in-breath and sinks in again when you breathe out. Now rock your body from side to side and then around in large, gentle circles from your hips to the top of your head. Rock in increasingly smaller circles until you gradually come to rest in the center. Now breathe in and out through your nose quietly without doing anything to your breathing - that is, don't try to breathe deeper or slower or faster, just breathe normally. With each out-breath count silently to yourself. So it goes: in-breath, out-breath `one'...in-breath, out-breath `two'... and so on up to ten, counting only on the out-breath. When you get to ten, go back and begin again at one. If you lose count halfway, it doesn't matter. Go back and start the count at one again. Counting isn't the point. It is a way of focusing your mind on your breath. After fifteen minutes - sneak a look at your wristwatch if you must - stop. Sit still for a moment, then open your eyes and slowly begin to go about your everyday activities again. If you are like most people, the first few times you do the exercise you will find you lose count often and you are frequently distracted by thoughts or noises. It makes no difference. It works just as well anyway. Each time some random thought distracts you, simply turn your mind gently back again to counting the breaths. Distractions don't change the effectiveness of the meditation. The exercise, like most techniques, is best done twice a day, morning and evening. A beginner will usually notice positive results by the end of a week, but they become increasingly apparent the longer you go on doing it. Some Buddhist monks do this exercise for two or three years before beginning any other form of meditation. beyond relaxation Once you are familiar with the practice of deep relaxation or meditation and with all the benefits it can bring you, you might be interested to go on to investigate other, more complex forms of meditation. There are many, for meditation is not a word that is easy to define. It takes in such different practices. Some forms such as zazen or vispassana (sometimes called insight meditation) demand complete immobility. You sit watching the rise and fall of your abdomen as you breathe, and whenever your mind wanders you gently turn it back to this observation. This simply concentrated attention, which can be likened to the `continuum of awareness' in Gestalt theory, is capable of bringing up many repressed feelings and thoughts that have been stifling your full expression and of liberating them. The Siddha Yoga of Muktananda and the chaotic meditation of Rajneesh, where the body is let go to move as it will, are examples of this sort. They often involve spontaneous changes in muscle tension and relaxation and in breathing, and they demand a sense of surrender to the physical body for the release of the mental, emotional and bodily tensions. These kinds of meditation can be particularly good for someone with a tendency to be physically rigid. Then there are the visualization meditations such as those used in Tibetan Buddhism in which you focus your mind on a particular image, fine-tuning it to the specific beneficial energies or influences this symbol carries (the creative imagery techniques in the next section are also an example of this kind of meditation). They have been used recently to cure serious illness and also in the sports world to improve athletic performance. Another form of meditation is that of "mindfulness," where you go about your daily activities simply being aware of each thing that you do, as in Gurdjieff's "self-remembering," shikantaza or mahamudra. These are just a few of the possibilities worth investigating if you want to go further. Each has something worthwhile to offer, and the mere act of learning a new method and the set of ideas and attitudes that go with it can be an exciting experience as well as tremendously beneficial.

I once spent the night lying on a platform above an animal watering hole, staring into the vastness of space beholding the great, fathomless mystery of the African sky. Aaron, my youngest son, then three years old, lay curled up next to me like a kitten lost in his dreams. Dazzled by the inconceivable expanse of the sky whose darkness was so overcome with the light from billions of stars that lived in it, I lost myself in timelessness and infinity. That night, I came not to think or to wonder but to know, with absolute certainty in every cell and molecule of my body, that this cosmic world was not something separate from myself, nor I from it. We were, in a way I will never be able to understand rationally, one being. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Like the proverbial iceberg, most of us live with the lion’s share of our potential for freedom, joy, creativity and authentic power submerged beneath a sea of unknowing. We go about our day-to-day duties and pleasures conscious only of what comes to us through our five senses. How does it taste and feel? What does it sound like? What do we see in front of our eyes? Meanwhile, beneath the vast ocean of consciousness that constitutes what it is to be fully human, our greater selves hibernate, waiting to be awakened. Sometimes—when we fall in love perhaps, or when we are faced with an event of life-shattering proportions like a critical illness or the death of a close friend—a submerged area of our being erupts in magic or horror, and often in surges of passion, energy and beauty. Then, for a time, the mundane quality of everyday life is replaced with a sense of expanded being. Not only do we feel more alive, we wake up to find that familiar things—the tree that stands outside a bedroom window, the cat that greets us when we come home each day, a simple shell we picked up and slipped into our pocket while walking on the beach—have taken on a luminosity which we can’t explain. Other times, without warning while listening to music or walking down a city street, we are suddenly gripped with a sense that the world is far greater than we ever imagined it to be, and a certainty that all we see around us somehow is us. While the experience lasts, everything seems right in the world. Then, like the sun at the point of setting, everything fades beneath the mundane horizon, leaving only the faintest wisp of color to remind us that we once stood in its glory, felt its rays on our bodies and knew that being at one with the universe brings a sense of meaning to our own life and to the lives of others that is simply indescribable. The greatest desire I have is to live my life conscious of the oneness to which we all belong. After all, the magnificence of that African sky not only stretches out to infinity above us, it lies within us, calling to us—asking us to discover that it is who we are.

The first thing you need to know about freedom is that it comes from within. It is only by listening to what I call ‘the whispers of your soul’ that you will learn what freedom means to you and how to go about achieving it in your own life. The more frequently you practice the following exercise the more clear the whispers of your soul become and the easier it is to experience your own freedom. I give this exercise in my workshops as a means of beginning to build a bridge between your soul and your outer personality. In practicing it you will discover your own place of silence and natural beauty - a sanctuary to which you can return, no matter where you are or in what circumstances you find yourself. It is here that you will find the space to allow your soul to speak from its deepest levels. Take the phone off the hook so you won’t be disturbed for the next five minutes. Sit on a straight backed chair, or on the floor if you prefer. Take three or four nice deep breaths through your nose letting the air escape gently through your mouth on the outbreath. Close your eyes. Put your imagination into gear. Let your mind go back to some place in nature which you have seen and which you especially like. This is a real place, not somewhere from a dream or a story. It may be a place familiar to you, say at the end of your garden. Or it can be somewhere you have visited only once. When you have found the place you like, sit for a moment quietly remembering as much about it as you can. Now see what happens when you activate your senses. Let yourself BE. Notice what you see, smell, hear, how the air feels, how the earth feels under your body. Is there anyone there with you? Are there any helpful or supporting energies there? Ask your soul to speak to you. Listen to what it says and what it wants. These things may surprise you. Ask for whatever you think you need right now. For example, ask what is the most appropriate thing for you to eat, the best form of exercise, if there is anything you can do to improve your health. When you are ready, give thanks for the friendship and the beauty around you and say good-bye for the moment to your inner sanctuary knowing that you can return to it whenever you like. The more often you return the richer the experience will become. Now, very gently, in your own time, open your eyes and come back into the room. bridge building This is important if you are to make use of what you have learned. Take a notebook and record what you have experienced - where you went, what you saw, felt, tasted, sensed, who was there, what happened there, what were the answers to your questions. Just let the words flow. Remember this is not an essay for school. There is no right or wrong way of doing it. Practice this exercise for five minutes each day for two weeks. At the end of two weeks come back to your notebook and read what you have written. You may find there are themes coming up time and again, something you should be addressing but are putting off, perhaps, or something you have always wanted but have never allowed yourself to have. These are the whispers of your soul. The more you listen out for them the more you will be able to experience authentic freedom in your life.

I have always loved Easter. Not because of the gorgeous painted eggs or the magic bunnies delivering them or even the marvelous laughter of children on treasure hunts. I love Easter because it is a time of death and rebirth for all life including each and every one of us. Of course, the death part of these natural cycles is what we fear greatly. Not only is this fear unfounded; it greatly limits our inner growth. It also prevents us from experiencing the most valuable process in life during which we can discover who, at the deepest level of our being, we really are. I invite you, this Easter, to explore the magnificent gifts available to you when you embrace death/rebirth experiences in your own life. UNIVERSAL CYCLES Death/rebirth cycles are fundamental to all living things—plants and trees, animals, our own bodies and minds, even the stars in the heavens. Easter holidays are a celebration of these cycles which Jesus himself is said to have experienced between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The origins of Easter also have even more ancient roots in pagan death/rebirth festivals celebrated long before the Christian era. In Sumerian mythology, the goddess Inanna was hung naked on a stake, killed and resurrected as she ascended from darkness into light. The Easter Bunny, whom we all so love, is a modern day manifestation of another pagan festival of death and rebirth involving Eostre, the great Northern Goddess whose symbol was a rabbit. Moment by moment, day by day, year by year, even the cells of our body undergo a death/rebirth cycle so we can go on living. WHY I LOVE EASTER Easter Season is a fine time to lay aside fears of death and darkness, and give thanks for rebirth and renewal which continues to be offered us. The thing I love most about Easter is it reminds me that if we want to live a life true to our essential nature, each of us must be willing to experience death and rebirth—to leave what is old and no longer useful in our own lives so we can bring light and expanded consciousness into our lives. Of course this can be a challenge for us humans. We so love to cling to what is most familiar even if doing so prevents us from experiencing new realities. PREGNANT DARKNESS The dark realms are transcendent domains about which our materialistic culture remains naïve. Darkness is a place where seeds lie dormant, a realm of incubation, the womb in a woman’s body where a new being is nurtured so that it can be born. In dark spaces what is old and outdated becomes compost to feed tiny seed of new life. When they open, husks fall away, freeing new plants to grow towards the sun. Within our own psyche, a thousand such seeds lie waiting to break open and grow. They urge us to nurture them, to trust them, so they too can come forth. If we are riddled with fear we remain deaf to their call. Of course our greatest fear is invariably the fear of our own death. Yet the death/rebirth cycles I’m speaking are not involved in destroying the physical body. They are nature’s renewal transformations in service of new life. After all, the old, decayed leaves of the forest must die to fertilize its saplings. And whatever we still carry about which no longer serves us must be allowed to die to make way for new ways of being. Death/rebirth initiation shappens to us again and again throughout the whole of our lives. They also happen as the moon dies and is renewed every month. And you can see them in the way a snake sheds a skin when it needs to grow. THE HERO’S JOURNEY Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces talks a lot about coming to terms with the experience of these deaths and the rebirths. They are central to the growth and spiritual development of human beings in every culture of the world he says. Throughout history, tribal societies have created rites of passage to celebrate the death/rebirth cycle at times of important biological change like puberty. Initiates are put through rituals involving non-ordinary states of consciousness during which they can connect with the energies of numinous realms in order to experience the power and the meaning of the process. Such rituals celebrate dying to the old role one has been playing in their society—that of a dependent child—and being born into a new one as a powerful and independent adult. A boy dies. A man is born. From that moment onward, nobody in the tribe treats the initiate as a child anymore. For most of us, the death we fear is not death of the body (although we often think it is). It is the death of outmoded beliefs and ways of living our lives that no longer serve us. And, in order to allow an influx of our deeper soul energies to emerge from the darkness and recreate our life anew, we need to become aware of them and welcome change. It is this experience that Campbell describes so well in his mythological hero’s journey. There death and rebirth represent the membrane or interface in the psyche between the domain of the personal and the vast spiritual realms of the universal. Death becomes a frontier to a new way of being. Once we realize this, the whole death/rebirth process becomes a friend. In truth this is a sacred experience with rewards so great it is not possible to put them into words. By the way, one of the most exhilarating gifts that comes with welcoming any death/rebirth process is an experience of authentic freedom that arises from within us. GATEWAY TO NEW LIFE Our own culture lost touch with death/rebirth transformations. This is why we fear them. Sooner later death/rebirth comes to each of us. It can be triggered by the ending of a love affair, the recognition that one is addicted to alcohol, drugs or work, a dawning awareness that what you have always worked for and what you have achieved no longer holds meaning for you, the loss of a job or reputation, even the unexpected release of intense emotion and the spontaneous entrance into altered states of consciousness which challenges every notion about what is real and what is unreal. We approach any kind of death or crisis with anxiety, embarrassment and denial. Thankfully this is beginning to change. The work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen Levine and Ram Dass— all of whom have written wisely about death—is gradually altering our attitude. So is the in-depth research into near-death experiences where people consistently report the survival of consciousness as well as spontaneous experiences of illumination when the soul separates even temporarily from the body. THRESHOLDS The confrontation with birth and death we experience can introduce us to new realities. It can happen in a literal sense to a woman in the act of giving birth or a man sitting at the bedside of his wife who is dying of cancer. It can also happen in your life when you have to face the abandonment at the end of a marriage or the disruption in your ordinary life that accompanies the loss of a job. For many it comes in a life-threatening situation, for instance in a car crash, when you find yourself standing outside your body looking down on what until then you assumed to be the only reality there was. It can even occur in some kind of spontaneous eruption—often labeled a psychotic break—through which the volatile world of expanded consciousness emerges, full-blown, to shake the very foundations of your life. Such events lead people into the transpersonal realms experienced by mystics, great artists and other visionary beings. They are invitations to new ways of thinking and new ways of experiencing reality not through the mind but through the heart. So much for fearing the magnificent darkness which brings forth life. When I tuned into the nature of the death/rebirth cycles in operation this Easter Season, with all the cosmic energies now bombarding our earth, here are the words that came to me. I’d like to share them with you. I move in velvet silence within forgotten spaces of your being. Fear me not. For when you fear me, you fear your own beauty and your own creative power. In the light all is separate. Within my darkness all is One. Whenever your soul calls, I am here to wrap my silent wings of transformation around you. Enter me in friendship. I will introduce you to the magic of angels and archetypes, deities and your own profound essential being. Look carefully at each of these things, no matter how fearsome its face may feel to you. You will find each and every one is a window to the divine truth unique to you alone. I am the Spirit of the Dark