05 Nov 2015
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DOCUMENTARY OF THE MONTH – November – HUMAN

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight ? That we laugh ? Cry ? Our curiosity ? The quest for discovery ?
Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.

The VOL.1 deals with the themes of love, women, work and poverty.

The VOL.2 deals with the themes of war, forgiving, homosexuality, family and life after death.

The VOL.3 deals with the themes of happiness, education, disability, immigration, corruption and the meaning of life.

The inspiration for this film started a few years ago for filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand, when his helicopter broke down in a rural part of Mali. While he was waiting for his helicopter to get fixed, he spent a day with a local farmer, talking about the farmer’s hopes, concerns, priorities, and examining the basic questions about life that transcend all cultures. It was the first time the filmmaker threw himself into the experience of someone else from a completely different part of the world. Fast forward, with the help of Google, the United Nations, and 2020 everyday people around the world, Arthus-Bertrand is bringing his experience to all of us. HUMAN has become the first film to premeire at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations. It premeired to an audience of over 1,000 people, including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

During the film’s creation, Arthus-Bertrand interviewed 2,020 people in 60 countries with his team of 16 journalists. Every interview comprised of the same 40 questions, discussing heavy subjects from religion and family to ambition and failure.

The visual elements of the film include single-frame interviews with a black backdrop, interspersed with signature sweeping shots of deserts and mountains which Arthus-Bertrand is known for, all of which is blended with a soundtrack of Armand Amar composed world music. The filmmaker’s intention was to portray the world through three voices: people, landscape, and traditional music.

“Getting at the heart of what it means to be a human can be a little heavy” Arthus-Bertrand

17 Oct 2015
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DOCUMENTARY OF THE MONTH (October)- Billions In Change

The world is facing some huge problems. There’s a lot of talk about how to solve them. But talk doesn’t reduce pollution, or grow food, or heal the sick. That takes doing. This film is the story about various groups of people trying to make the world a better place through the elegantly simple inventions they have made to change the lives of billions of people, and the unconventional billionaire, Manoj Bhargava spearheading the project.

Manoj Bhargava is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder and CEO of 5-hour Energy. When 5 Hour Energy was introduced to the market in 2004, retail sales skyrocketed to over $1 billion by 2011, and now the company owns 90% of the energy shot market. The genius of his innovation included the 2 oz. packaging, stating that people who needed energy were also not necessarily thirsty enough for an 8 ounce drink. The smaller size packaging enabled retailers to strategically place the product near checkout counters and point-of-sale locations.

Bhargava’s foundations include Knowledge Medical Charitable Trust and Rural India Charitable Trust. The charities have funded medical research in the United States and over 400 charities in India. Two of the major initiatives are hospitals for the poor and education for disadvantaged women in rural areas.

The Hans Foundation is solely supported by the Rural India Charitable Trust, and in five years it has given $48.1 million U.S. In November 2014, Bhargava committed $80.2 million to develop villages in Uttarakhand, India. In September 2012, Bhargava joined “The Giving Pledge” and has pledged 90% of his wealth to charity, with an emphasis on a common sense approach to philanthropy. Rather than simply giving money to charity, Bhargava believes that personal involvement is necessary.

The Center for Public Integrity dubbed him the “political kingmaker nobody knows” after finding out that “he makes donations through several of his more than 70 limited liability companies”. Michigan politicians have said that Bhargava has never tried to influence a piece of legislation nor has he asked for anything in return for the donations.

Check out his documentary above and leave a comment. If you want to get involved with his organization you can join the movement at:

billionsinchange.com

facebook.com/billionsinchange

twitter.com/billionsnchange

15 Oct 2015
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Deep “E”-cology: Coming Home to Ourselves

There’s a war going on, and it’s not with Iraq. (Or Afghanistan. Or Syria.)

This war is on a scale so vast it’s difficult to see, so ancient we’ve taken it for granted.

It’s a war that has been gathering momentum since humanity first became conscious. It cuts to the very core of existence. It’s what drives the corporations and the deep ecologists, the religious right and the lovers. It’s woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that we’ve accepted it blandly, without knowing there was ever a choice. It’s caused untold human misery for millennia, and still it burns on, more vividly in the digital age than ever before, as our collective awakening arches toward Armageddon — or quantum evolution.

It is the struggle between truth and heresy. Between subservience and sovereignty. Between opening our minds to wisdom, and clinging to what we’d prefer to believe. Between following a well-worn path, and cutting a swath through the wilderness of our souls.

This war marshals all of our natural resources. Passion and commitment. Love and communion. Faith and ecstasy. If we use them well, our stores will increase. If we use them foolishly, a barren landscape is certain. Because this war is taking place inside each one of us.

World Wide Web

$fractal-ying-yang-jaroslaw-grudzinski$

It is a clarion call to yinify: to wed our masculine and feminine energies for internal and external balance, harmony and peace at every level of co-creation.

Becoming whole — embracing our assertive/dynamic/solar/yang side and our receptive/magnetic/lunar/yin side, both within ourselves and as a planetary organism — is the creative quest of our time. It’s a homecoming, a re-membering (making membership again). As we are able to celebrate this marriage first in our own hearts, the joy and the love we then have available to share with our sisters and brothers increases exponentially.

Evolution through relationship defines the true “world wide web”: weaving our oneness through the meeting of minds and the holding of hands.

No lasting outer peace is possible without this inner reunion. The absolution of duality is the key to living Heaven on Earth, because it means the end of judgment. As the cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda says, “Nonjudgment Day is coming.”

With nothing to choose between, we are integrated, living in integrity, whole. In the seventh century, Zen master Sengstau expressed this potential eloquently in Verses On The Faith Mind:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction however
and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.

Understandably, this is not an easy task for most of us to master — or to choose to master.

Many have run, continue to run, for apparent refuge, either into religious doctrine, which tells us how to think and what to believe, or into other well-organized movements masquerading as paths to freedom. Some groups purport to focus solely on spiritual love, ignoring the truth that matter is Spirit in form. Others emphasize sexual union as the ideal path to oneness, omitting the sacred element, and once again it is a lie.

It can be comforting to be a foot soldier in someone else’s army. You don’t have to do any real thinking. You don’t have to take responsibility for the outcome you help create. You can externalize your role: it’s terrorists, it’s the government, it’s anybody who looks or acts or sounds different from me. This is the old, patriarchal view that’s held sway for five thousand years. This Weltanschauung has run its course and is completing its earthly cycle, now.

If you choose not to acknowledge the war at all, you can still go on raising a family behind a white picket façade, with Sunday suppers and comfortable routines that mark a life. But the time for hiding out in this delusion is deliquescing, like Dali’s famous clocks. The light of universal fire is bleaching falsehood from our souls, enlightening and enlivening us, one by one, cell by cell, bringing more joy to the journey.

What we can learn from the limbic brain

The truth is, we’re all equal backstage, when the make-up and the costumes and the constructs come off. We are all rays of the One Being, sharing the same life support system, Mother Earth. Our similarity is the great leveler, because it humbles our unique, snowflake selves into awareness of a greater whole.

This was brought home to me recently when I was having dinner in a Chinese restaurant where I’ve eaten many times. I like a certain dish on the menu, substituting a sweet and sour sauce for the standard garlic sauce. One waiter, who is Chinese, knows my order so well he even “recognizes” me over the phone when I place a to-go order.

The other evening, dining at the restaurant, I ordered that same dish. The place was bustling. When I went up to pay, the waiter, who happened to be standing by the cash register, did not know me as the woman who always orders the dish with the different sauce.

I had a flash of insight and asked him kindly, “Please don’t be offended, but Caucasians — do we all look alike?” With a relieved grin he said, “Yes.” The Caucasian cashier was amazed by my question, but I understood. I told her, “It’s like this for every race, every culture. Isn’t it more difficult to differentiate between Asian or African-American people whom you don’t know, than other Whites?” She admitted it might be.

We’re coded with an innate affinity for our own small portion of the whole. This is the ancient, limbic brain in action, defending our “territory” against invaders; limbic means, “forming a border.” To bridge this chasm is the beginning of world healing. Recognizing the Other through conscious understanding takes both patience and practice.

To see the big picture we have to widen our scope, extend our artificial boundaries. There are no actual map lines on Earth, delineating this country, this language, this religion, this culture from the next. We’ve created it all. It’s our collective game. As we become technologically proficient, the playing field shrinks to a more agreeable size, and the game starts to seem superfluous.

A meta-field is beckoning. We’ve called it outer space. Again, we put the cart before the horse, our eagerness ahead of our readiness. Inner space is the foreign territory we must master first. Yinification begins at home.

Deep “E”-cology

This is the potential of the Internet: to help us come home to ourselves, as a species, as a people, as one culture united through whatever we choose to call the animating energy that informs our existence. The ‘Net is a universal connector, a universal translator, the key to deep ecology in the most profound sense. “Eco”, from the Greek oikos, means home. “Logy” is a branch of learning or study. Ecology is, literally, learning about home!

Coming home to ourselves means owning the truth that there is no separation, except what we allow to exist, through fear. Fear contracts our hearts and minds; love expands them. Many of us learn to open our hearts through sacrifice, which means, “to make sacred.” Releasing our deepest attachments is a crucial part of the initiation on our journey to self-awareness. Our gift is as great as our grief. The poet David Whyte says, “The rest of creation is waiting, breathless, for you to take your place.”

We can start by detaching from what numbs us (like television), and focusing on what feeds us — like “tell-a-vision,” a subtle shift that transmutes suppression into inspiration. The price of freedom is your voice. Begin to share your vision of the world you want to co-create! As you do, you become a “rainbow warrior,” awakening and balancing your energy throughout your being in order to realize the full spectrum of your purpose and potential.

Heaven on Earth exists in being fully alive in the infinite Now. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as The Fifth Dimension sang ‘way back in 1969. They were early messengers, carrying our Divine blueprint via the medium of music.

Let’s revisit the lyrics: “When the Moon is in the seventh house”. In Western astrology, the Moon is symbolic of feminine, receptive energy, what we draw in; the seventh house is about intimate interaction with other people. I’ve dubbed this new way of relating a call to yinify: to unify in the Divine Feminine essence. “And Jupiter aligns with Mars”. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, of expressing our truth through storytelling; Mars is the planet of pure desire and, when dishonored, of war. To have them align means telling ourselves a new, expansive story: transmuting war in the alchemical fire into spiritual warriorhood.

Then, as the group sang, “Peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars.”

How clear the message becomes, once we are able to truly hear. The battle cries dim; the masks fall off. A layer of separation evaporates as we become transparent to the truth of who we are. People start to seem somehow familiar, even though we’ve never met them before. It’s the resonant déjà vu of realizing there are no strangers. “Service with a smile” suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

Getting there calls for a subtle shift in perception and behavior: from acquire to inquire, from escalate to elevate, from scared to sacred. As we cease consuming planetary resources and each other at the speed of greed, let go of buying more in favor of being more, we reclaim our true heritage as Earth stewards. And then barrenness transmutes into bounty. Separation into synergy. Fear into faith. Longing into Love.

We use the expression, “Live and learn.” Implicit is the understanding that what we learn, we will also teach. We become self-renewing by gathering knowledge from our experience, forging it into wisdom in the alchemical fire, and serving as vessels to share the gift that is uniquely ours, but not meant to remain arcane.

Conscious evolution favors the curious and kind mind. Truth nourishes us in ways we might never have imagined. Synchronicity takes us by the hand and we laugh in child-like wonder as we witness Spirit-in-action, again and again and again. This is the Garden, and it is good.

Welcome Home.

By Ascension Lifestyle Contributor Amara Rose:

Amara Rose is a catalyst for quantum evolution. Her services include transformational coaching, talks, e-courses, and an inspirational monthly newsletter. She is widely published in health, business and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Learn more:

http://www.liveyourlight.com
http://twitter.com/Amara_Rose
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amararose

23 Sep 2015
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Thinking About Thinking

The Idea of Idea

Ideas do not happen from nothing; they do not miraculously strike like rare comets, but are ever present. Ideas are a reflection of a person’s immediate needs and deepest desires. Ideas are birthed from a need to find a solution. An idea occurs when a person develops an attraction to something that does not yet exist, or has only existed in a different context.

The idea chooses you.

You may notice the idea blatantly; it may immediately overwhelm you with its enrapturing potential. It may subtly reveal itself at first, but persistently drop signs that it seeks you to court it. When an idea chooses you, it entangles with the emotions, possessing a person like a spirit. The idea will run you through a spectrum of emotions, you become like a puppet on the strings of idea. You get excited talking about it, in the hopes that it resonates with another person, because it is something special to you. You feel guilty for not executing or neglecting it. You may feel crazy for being the only one that holds it, sees its value. You get dissatisfied for living in a world with no evidence of its existence. Seeing someone else do it makes you jealous. Pursuing it terrifies you, but those wild enough to devote their immediate gratifications to bring down heaven find that the process fills the person with a joy and fulfillment unparalleled to anything else. This is what many describe as fulfilling their purpose.

Deep down, you and the idea both know that the idea is more important than you, your existence, your needs, in your current reality. It seeks to share reveal itself through you. You are an outfit for ideas. You know the idea is essential to improving your life, as well as the greater good of the collective conscious. The perfect time to execute the idea never comes, the level of resistance seems to always elusively matches the degree which you desire the idea.

Ideas are unborn realities that temporarily possess those who are most eligible in potential execution.

To create is to receive from the unseen, and if it chooses you, it can choose someone else too. Ideas are maverick quantum fragments. They belong to no one. The best a person can do is refine themselves to the point they may be worthy of receiving and combining their unique imprint with the best possible ideas from the transcendent plane of all-there-is-and-ever-will-be.

Many people get stuck talking about ideas, because the ideas themselves are so alluring. Ideas are like affection, execution is like childbirth. The land of ideas is pure from messy realities. People talk about ideas to share the excitement they feel about it, the mutual basking of an idea provides an instant gratification and for most people, this is enough. But ideas are not seeking a spokesperson. Ideas deeply desire to be created, just as much as you deeply desire to be involved with its creation.

If the idea gifts you with its presence but you do not fulfill the labor or share with anyone, it will torment you. You will pay. You grow rigid and dissatisfied with your current world for the debt you have not paid for your fantasy; your expectations for people become distorted with residual resentment. You will avoid your responsibilities. You will over-promise and under deliver. You will dislike and lose faith in yourself. You will feel alone and you will make yourself alone. If you do not execute the idea, the idea will make you tell someone who will, just so you can claim some sort of stake in its existence.

If you embark on the manifestation of the idea, you will come in contact with those who share the same ideas as you, or will challenge your idea, which strengthen or alters them. We are all vessels for ideas, meant to intersect to shape, sharpen and improve another, to bring forth better ideas. You will inspire all who bear witness to you. You will feel in control of your life. You will trust yourself and attract people you trust. You will be productive in a direction that is gratifying and beneficial to the universe. You will feel aligned with your desires. You will consistently energized, and alive with excitement. You will be a beacon of light.

Since ideas belong to no one, it is impossible to steal an idea. We mimic or we channel. Stealing an idea is a false concept because ideas are contagious. Ideas choose their best possible vessel, but if the vessel does not execute, the idea will find a way to express itself through someone else. People who have many great ideas often consult others, spreading their greater idea and vision to others who will execute it in their own way. Visionaries are those who manage to shape their fantasy world and manipulate time, space and effort to intersect the dimensions of desire and existence. The nature of ideas follows momentum: the more ideas you have, the more ideas you get, and so forth. The more you cast the net of your subconscious into the infinite world of possibilities, the larger your net gets and the more you know how to eliminate the unnecessary. Ideas are like water that gets used and purified over and over again, changing forms. You can never run out of ideas, and clutching onto ideas is useless. Weak ideas become less relevant as time goes by, since the conditions in which the idea came, constantly evolve. Ideas can be good one month and terrible the next, or the month before. To manifest is to date time, and your chance eventually runs out. Let ideas go. They are supposed to. Better ones come. Great creative careers are built upon a long, consistent stream of new ideas, and occasional bad ones that everyone eventually forgets about. The word “epic” really means “a long story”. This is the true definition of “epic”.

The best ideas are repeated, replicated, reproduced over and over until they become a part of culture. This is what is meant by the old adage “Imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Culture is created through repetition, and repetition is created rampant approval. Ideas find their way into the world one way or another, and their success is measured on its impact. Some ideas may have a great impact on a few people, some may have a minor impact on a mass population, few have a great impact on a great number of people, but ideas find their way. The highest function of an idea is to get as many people to repeat it as possible. Ideas only want to exist through people. The more people share an idea, the more powerful it becomes. If a person is to devote their life to channeling ideas, they must be disciplined in refining themselves as if their existence were a divine tool, because it is. They must inform, train, polish and nurture themselves. Every potential idea recipient is equipped with their unique technique, their executional thumbprint that is sculpted through countless hours of repetition and focus. To create is to court the world of ideas, to intimately receive its vital parts and rigorously improve yourself to execute it the best way possible.

The world is constantly pulsating with idea, ideas are the source of all. You start off as an idea with capabilities to channel other ideas. To create is to surrender to the world of ideas and sacrifice your surrounding reality to make shape to the idea. Idea gives shape to us and we give shape to idea.

About the Author:

Mreeuh Chang

Mreeuh Chang is a 24 year old tattooer, painter, children’s book author and illustrator. A multi-faceted and extreme personality seeking universality, her work blends the foreign and familiar, ancient and modern, imagination and intellect.

book: www.dronesdontdream.com

portfolio: www.mreeuhchang.com

online shop: www.store.mreeuhchang.com

twitter: https://twitter.com/mreeuh

16 Jul 2015
Comments: 1

How Native American Fashion Looks Without Appropriation

Bethany Yellowtail Is Redefining Native American Fashion In A Beautifully Authentic Way

Cultural appropriation is nothing new in fashion — many designers, brands, celebrities and even editors have been known to repurpose traditional garments for the sake of style.

Twenty-six year old fashion designer, Bethany Yellowtail, is about to change that with her fashion line, B.Yellowtail. Her label draws inspiration from “the sacred and re-imagines it for the contemporary woman,” breathing new life into ancestral knowledge and redefining Native-inspired design.

The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising graduate, who is from Crow (Apsáalooke) and Northern Cheyenne Nations in south eastern Montana, first found herself at the centre of a cultural appropriation debate back in February. London label KTZ sent a model down the runway for its fall 2015 fashion show wearing a dress that was strikingly similar to Yellowtail’s design. Now, she’s making waves on her own terms with her latest collection, “The Mighty Few.”

Named after her home district on the Crow nation, the collection is all about honouring the continuity, beauty and resilience of Native Americans.

For inspiration, she created a mood board centered around a black-and-white photo of her great grandfather, “Hawk with the Yellowtail feathers,” and built around his image with more photos of her relatives from the early 1900s.

“The style from that time period was transitioning from traditional wear to apparel influenced by European assimilation,” she told HuffPost Canada Style via e-mail. “I love these images because they speak true to the resiliency of our people. Regardless of the times or circumstances, there were always strong elements of Crow design and craftsmanship, especially in attire.”

This inspiration translated into stunning pieces including a French lace top with elements of elk teeth hand stitched onto it, a colourfully printed women’s warrior ledger scarf and a floral tea skirt with artisanal beadwork.

She chose to feature only indigenous people in the campaign, from the models (Jade Willoughby, Martin Sensmeier) to the photographer (Thosh Collins) to the video editor (D.E. Hyde) and even the poet (Tazbah Rose Chavez), so she could accurately share an authentic story through fashion and art.

“From my own experience, I’ve often found that people’s perceptions of what Native American people are, is very limited and often times constrained to a stereotypical ideal,” she explained. “The media, film, and especially [individuals] in fashion perpetuate those ideas by creating generic and romanticized versions of our ancestors.”

“I want the people who view my work to see the faces, hear the voices of our people, and participate in an authentic story that honours our diverse nations,” she continued. “My hopes are that the campaign showcases a variety of the immense talent and diversity that exists within our native nations.”

And while she does draw inspiration from Native Americans, B.Yellowtail is for people from all walks of life. The line takes pride in storytelling through fashion in hopes of authentically representing its nations, while sharing its culture and creative an inclusive space.

“For me, my mission is not about trying to combat cultural appropriation,” Bethany explained. “I simply want to carve out a space where an authentic voice and an authentic representation of Native America exists and thrives. If that means we’re combating cultural appropriation while just being true to ourselves, then that’s a bonus.”

You can see more of Bethany’s work on her website, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

About the Author:
Madelyn Chung
Madelyn Chung is the editor of StyleList Canada, and a self-professed shopaholic and fashion/beauty/pop culture junkie. A graduate of Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, Madelyn’s past stints include Lifestyle Editor at MSN.ca and Associate Editor of Digital Marketing at Rogers Digital Media. In her spare time, you can find Madelyn live-tweeting during TV shows, jamming on the piano and ukelele, and indulging in some good eats around the city.