Science & Technology | Ascension Lifestyle

24 Feb 2022
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What If Legal Personhood Included Plants, Rivers, and the Planet?

“People think of laws being so objective and serious, and almost separate from the social norms,” says investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt. “But it’s really just a handful of people’s beliefs that have gotten baked into law.”

Uncovering whose beliefs have shaped existing environmental law led her to report on an emerging legal arena that has been making headlines around the world: rights of nature laws.

The idea behind the rights of nature approach extrapolates on the Western legal system’s insistence that a corporation is considered a person. If that’s legally true, then why not grant legal personhood to a watershed or a forest? For those who grew up indoctrinated by the existing legal system, Westervelt says their initial response is often delivered with a scoff: “So, what, like, a tree could sue me?”

But beyond this initial skepticism, she sees a lot of practicality and possibility to the approach. Take, for example, a polluted lake. “It’s almost impossible to say my cancer was caused by this chemical in the water,” she says. “But it’s super easy, scientifically, to say this chemical in this water is destroying this watershed.”

And in this way, granting nature its own rights could provide an avenue to protect specific environments—and the communities that depend on them. Because, she points out, “Humans actually need ecosystems to live a lot more than we need corporations.”

The Proof Is in the Pushback

When it comes to protecting the environment, most existing laws are human-centered. They focus on the rights of people to a healthy environment. Westervelt says that well over 100 countries have these kinds of laws on the books. Still, since they require making a direct, causal connection between a pollutant and a human health outcome, winning a case in court can be difficult.

Rights of nature cases, in contrast, are “playing the long game,” as Westervelt puts it. They approach legal arguments with a completely different philosophy and timescale. Incorporating the rights of nature into the constitutions of municipalities, states, and countries could shift the foundational approach to how environmental cases are litigated, Westervelt says.

And it might just be working. She says the proof is in the pushback.

“We’re starting to see pre-emptive laws get passed to block rights of nature legislation,” Westervelt says. Ohio, Florida, and most recently Missouri have passed laws to this effect. “That’s always a key indicator that something’s working, right?” Westervelt says. “They’re not passing pre-emptive laws against calling your reps—let’s put it that way.”

The other strength of this rights of nature approach to environmental protection is the surprising coalitions it creates. “The Lake Erie Bill of Rights is not a bunch of hippies in San Francisco. This is suburban moms in Toledo, Ohio,” Westervelt says. “I think that’s actually what scares the industry folks and the right wing about the way that [rights of nature laws have] progressed in this country, is you’re seeing it really pop up in the Rust Belt, in working-class towns in the Midwest.”

Take fracking, for example. A person in Pennsylvania might be upset their neighbor has a fracking well that has ruined the water in the surrounding wells, making their land essentially valueless. So, Westervelt says, you have right-wing, anti-government libertarians fighting in defense of private property alongside Indigenous leaders arguing to protect the watershed’s right to live.

The motivations may be very different, but Westervelt says the outcomes they’re fighting for are actually quite compatible.

Take the example of the Te Urewera rainforest in New Zealand. She says this case is the one that international organizations point to as a key success story for the rights of nature, because the government recognized the rainforest as its own legal entity and the Tūhoe people as its legal guardians. In a lot of ways, this is a victory, but at the end of the day, it’s still a compromise on what the Tūhoe actually want: simply the return of their land.

The idea that the government had to grant these land rights is almost offensive to those who live there, Westervelt says. Still, she sees these cases, which aim to bring an Indigenous approach to both nature and justice, as a way to “give Western law an instant upgrade on the environmental front.”

Wild Rice for the Win

One unique aspect of Westervelt’s approach is the way it frames Indigenous science, which she says is all too often viewed as myths or “woo-woo mystical nonsense.”

Westervelt shares an example of a water protector she spoke with in Hawai‘i who was working to protect his people’s sacred mountain, Mauna Kea. He told her the reason it’s sacred is because half the island’s ecosystems are affected by it. Western watershed science eventually came to the same conclusion, but centuries later, after colonization had already caused great harm.

The same goes for why wild rice is sacred to the Ojibwe: it’s an indicator species. They knew its ecological importance and therefore came to reflect that in their cultural values.

In this way, Westervelt says, storytelling—be it through Indigenous knowledge-sharing or a podcast—is an effective way to explain why it’s important to protect water.

Of “Manoomin v. Minnesota,” she says, “This case looks at the rights of wild rice to survive and thrive in local waterways, which the Ojibwe added to their 1855 treaty with the U.S. government. The White Earth Band of Ojibwe, based in present-day Minnesota, has since sued Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 pipeline, which they say will violate the rights of the rice and threaten the health of the ecosystem at large.”

This case could have a major impact on many other potential pipeline fights across the U.S.

“Whatever decision they come down with will be pretty monumental,” she says. The case is currently in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and if its decision is appealed, Westervelt says this could be “another case where the Supreme Court is deciding whether the U.S. is going to honor these treaties.” And that has far-reaching implications for the treaty rights of tribes across the continent.

“Every time I tell people, ‘Yeah, wild rice sued the state of Minnesota,’ it helps to get people to let go of the idea that the way things are is the way they’ve always been and always have to be,” Westervelt says. She believes exposing people to that idea by way of a story is less threatening than arguing with them about water clarity or carbon emissions. “Showing people a different perspective and what it can look like, I think, is helpful in opening people up to other possibilities.”

Original article here.

10 Feb 2022
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How The Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality

Almost any time physicists announce that they’ve discovered a new particle, whether it’s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they’ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of “resonance,” one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature.

Resonance underlies aspects of the world as diverse as music, nuclear fusion in dying stars, and even the very existence of subatomic particles. Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales.

In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the bedrock properties of both math and the universe,” said Matt Strassler, a particle physicist affiliated with Harvard University who is writing a book about the Higgs boson. A playground swing is one familiar example: “Knock something like that around, and it will always pick out its resonant frequency automatically,” Strassler said. Or flick a wineglass and the rim will vibrate a few hundred times per second, producing a characteristic tone as the vibrations transfer to the surrounding air.

A system’s natural frequencies depend on its intrinsic properties: For a flute, for instance, they are the frequencies of sound waves that exactly fit inside its cylindrical geometry.

The Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler solved the equation describing a system continuously driven near its resonant frequency in 1739. He found that the system exhibited “various and wonderful motions,” as he put it in a letter to fellow mathematician Johann Bernoulli, and that, when the system is driven precisely at the resonant frequency, the amplitude of the motion “increases continually and finally grows out to infinity.”

Driving a system too hard at the right frequency can have dramatic effects: A trained singer, for instance, can shatter a glass with a sustained note at its resonant frequency. A bridge resonating with the footsteps of marching soldiers can collapse. But more often, energy loss, which Euler’s analysis neglected, prevents the motion of a physical system from growing unchecked. If the singer sings the note quietly, vibrations in the glass will grow at first, but larger vibrations cause more energy to radiate outward as sound waves than before, so eventually a balance will be achieved that results in vibrations with constant amplitude.

Now suppose the singer starts with a low note and continuously glides up in pitch. As the singer sweeps past the frequency at which the wineglass resonates, the sound momentarily grows much louder. This enhancement arises because the sound waves arrive at the glass in sync with vibrations that are already present, just as pushing on a swing at the right time can amplify its initial motion. A plot of the sound amplitude as a function of frequency would trace out a curve with a pronounced bump around the resonant frequency, one that’s strikingly similar to the bumps heralding particle discoveries. In both cases, the bump’s width reflects how lossy the system is, indicating, for instance, how long a glass rings after it is struck once, or how long a particle exists before it decays.

The Higgs Boson Bump

But why do particles behave like humming wineglasses? At the turn of the 20th century, resonance was understood to be a property of vibrating and oscillating systems. Particles, which travel in straight lines and scatter like billiard balls, seemed far removed from this branch of physics.

The development of quantum mechanics showed otherwise. Experiments indicated that light, which had been thought of as an electromagnetic wave, sometimes behaves like a particle: a “photon,” which possesses an amount of energy proportional to the frequency of the associated wave. Meanwhile, matter particles like electrons sometimes exhibit wavelike behavior with the same relation between frequency and energy.

In 1925, inspired by this correspondence, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger derived an equation for the hydrogen atom whose solutions are waves oscillating at a set of natural frequencies, much like the solutions to equations governing the acoustics of wind instruments.

Each solution to Schrödinger’s equation represents a possible state of the atom’s orbiting electron. The electron can hop up to a higher-energy state by absorbing a photon whose frequency makes up the difference between the two states’ natural frequencies.

Such transitions are themselves a form of resonance: Just like a wine glass, an atom only absorbs energy from waves with specific frequencies, and it can also shed energy by emitting waves with those same frequencies. (When excited at precisely the right frequency, certain atoms will oscillate for more than 10 quadrillion cycles before releasing their energy as photons — extremely sharp atomic resonances that form the basis for the world’s most precise atomic clocks.)

Quantum theory revealed that the structure of atoms, no less than the structure of symphonies, is intimately tied to resonance. Electrons bound to atoms are a little like sound waves trapped inside flutes. As for the atomic nuclei, further advances in the 1930s showed that many kinds of atomic nuclei only exist in the universe today because of resonance. Resonant transitions are critical to the nuclear fusion reactions that transmute one type of atomic nucleus into another. The most celebrated of these nuclear resonances enables the fusion of three helium nuclei into one carbon nucleus. Without this, stars would not be capable of producing carbon or heavier elements, and life as we know it would not be possible.

But the roots of resonance in fundamental physics lie deeper. In the late 1920s physicists began to develop a powerful mathematical framework known as quantum field theory that remains the language of particle physics to this day. In quantum field theory, the universe’s truly elementary entities are fields that fill all space. Particles are localized, resonant excitations of these fields, vibrating like springs in an infinite mattress. The frequencies at which quantum fields prefer to vibrate stem from fundamental constants whose origins remain obscure; these frequencies in turn determine the masses of the corresponding particles. Blast the vacuum of empty space hard enough at the right frequency, and out will pop a bunch of particles.

In this sense, resonance is responsible for the very existence of particles. It has also increasingly become the workhorse of experimental particle physics. When measuring how often specific combinations of particles are produced in high-energy collisions, physicists see pronounced peaks in the detection rate as they vary the collision energy: new manifestations of the universal resonance curve. “As with the wineglass, you’re sweeping through a system that wants to resonate,” said Strassler. “You’ll make anything vibrate that can.”

In the 1950s and ’60s, physicists saw many more peaks than they had expected, and at first nobody knew quite what to make of them. Many of the bumps were very broad, suggesting the existence of particles that stuck around for barely more than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Unlike more familiar particles that can be detected directly, these newcomers could only be observed through the process of resonance.

Physicists later appreciated that these new ephemeral particles were fundamentally no different from protons and neutrons, save for their short lifetimes. Even so, short-lived particles are often simply referred to as “resonances” — a testament to a phenomenon that has played a surprisingly central role in expanding our understanding of the world.

Original article here.

05 Feb 2022
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Our Come to Moses Moment

With tonight’s Mercury station direct, we have another equally substantial event: the Sun is conjunct Saturn at the midpoint of Aquarius. This is a combination of aspects that says: Slow Down and Pay Attention. Many more celestial events argue for the same approach.

The astrology so far this year has been exhausting, largely the result of simultaneous retrogrades in Capricorn, with Pluto involved. There have been great moments here and there, though inner-planet retrogradation in Capricorn can feel like waking backwards uphill.

But now we are at a turning point, or at least topping point. The midpoint of Aquarius is called a ‘cross-quarter day’ — that is, one of the balancing points of the zodiac, and of the year. These are the midway locations between a solstice and an equinox (which are called the ‘quarter days’).

The Sun in its Course

The Sun is now 45 degrees from the Aries equinox, which is the beginning of the solar year. In the Northern Hemisphere, spring is coming. The Sun is also 45 degrees past the Capricorn solstice. That is called a midpoint. Earlier this week, most of the world celebrated the lunar New Year holiday in the form of Tuesday’s Aquarius New Moon, the beginning of the Year of the Water Tiger. If you want to have some fun, bring a fruit basket to the Asian-owned businesses who serve you. It is a gesture of wishing them health and prosperity.

Right now, slow-moving Saturn is holding the Aquarius midpoint, and today is being met by a conjunction to the Sun. This is happening concurrently with Mercury stationing direct next door in Capricorn. This is happening right after this past weekend’s Venus direct in Capricorn. All of this is timed with a New Moon close to the cross-quarter.

This is a mini-cluster of events that will be followed by an even more significant one on March 2-3.

In spatial terms, Saturn is halfway through its trip across Aquarius, though in time, it’s closer to two-thirds of the way to Pisces. Saturn began its Aquarius transit in late March 2020, and it ends in early March 2023, just a few weeks before Pluto first touches the shores of Aquarius.

One follows the other. One is preparation for the next. The interval between now and March 2023 is a critical phase of human history. Much will be decided in that short time.

Natural Limits and Boundaries

Saturn is the planet that represents natural limits. The Sun conjunct Saturn is calling for discipline and focus. Aquarius is the sign that represents humanity in the sense of what we do together in groups. The only way we can do things together is if we are not terrified of one another. We cannot be social when we all suspect one another of being disease vectors.

For two years, people have routinely been accusing their neighbors of being killers — not by negligence (absurd enough) but by intent. This is so grotesque I have no words for it.

Normally, humans think nothing of piling into commuter busses, the airport tram, or the Disney World monorail. We like to crowd into discos, parties, rock concerts and mosh pits, and used to be frequently found hugging one another, sharing food and having cuddle parties. We pass around joints and share cigarettes with “nonsmokers” who want a drag for old time’s sake. We snuggle up on the couch.

Now our social patterns are shattered, and we are scrambling as a result. Social patterns means the fragile trust that we had in one another What is worse are all of the young people whose impressions of this scenario will last their whole lives.

Sun Conjunct Saturn: Get a Grip

These impressions are especially critical for all kids, though children under the age of three (forced to “mask up,” with all the attendant feelings) will form their limbic (emotional neurological) pathways around this cruel, pointless insanity. They will grow up thinking that seeing someone’s face is a threat to their life. The effect is the intent.

The Sun conjunct Saturn is saying: Get A Grip. If Saturn in Aquarius is cautionary of a chilling effect on our social relationships, Sun conjunct Saturn is saying a little thawing out is in order.

It is time to wake up to the social reality of our times rather than making endless excuses of how everything is making us safer. Ask yourself if this is really you. Ask yourself why, if you know none this has any actual positive effect, you may still do it.

Soon, we will need to watch fictional Netflix series’ for documentary evidence of how people behaved before they were suffering from phobias and mass delusional psychosis. You will not want to live in the world that this creates, though you may get to. But we are fast approaching that, and may have crossed the point of no return. The Aquarian angle of this these patters will take hold permanently if we allow them to. We are creating a world where it is now socially unacceptable not to be paranoid.

The Significance and Experience of the Body

How is this possible? Consider the relationship between Aquarius and technology. As the sign of social patterns, of electricity and of wireless communication, Aquarius is the perfect metaphor for digital conditions taking over our lives.

Media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) suggested back in the 1960s that, “the computer is LSD for the businessman.” That’s because only businessmen had them. Now everyone has one, and we are all tripping balls: we are totally disoriented.

His son Eric put it this way:

“The body is everywhere assaulted by all of our new media, a state which has resulted in deep disorientation of intellect and destabilization of culture throughout the world. In the age of disembodied communication, the meaning and significance and experience of the body is utterly transformed and distorted.”

This is what’s happened to us. This is a big topic, though one that is largely ignored. People in Western society tend to accept new technology without questioning its potential effects, by which I mean what it will make us become. I’ve heard the lines are already forming out in the freezing cold for the iPhone 14, which does not yet exist.

Accepting Technology and ‘Innovation’ Without Question

We tend to accept technology and “innovation” without the meekest question or consideration of the consequences. The purveyors used to care only about making money. Now, they are involved in social engineering on a level never before possible.

Till recently, we were aware of the dumbing down and hypnosis of the population induced by cellphones. We understood the influence of Twitter, which trained everyone to think in 140 characters (and is often used to govern the world).

We have seen how “social media” is anything but social, and is in fact anti-social to the degree of breeding hostility and division on the physical plane.

If you walked into a room full of people high on acid and said loudly, “There’s an evil demon coming for you,” fear would shoot through the room. This is what’s happening now.

Consider the feeling when people raise their “mask” (plastic trash or bandanna) up over their face when they pass you on the street, and lower it once they have walked by.

That is friendly compared to banning your mother from holiday dinner because she won’t take a mystery government injection with a death toll worse than the Vietnam War. These are social issues, not medical ones.

Many people are now terrified of breathing, and of people who like to breathe. Breathing was never such an elite activity!

Why We Must Come to Moses

As someone with a primarily scientific orientation, I am reluctant to call any astrology “important.” Yet Pluto in Aquarius qualifies as something with a message that we must heed or otherwise face personal and collective consequences that most people do not understand at this time.

These involve two things that are really one: social patterns, and the imposition of technology upon us. Aquarius is about electricity, and we now live in an entirely electrical society. We also live in a digital society. The patterns of our lives are now all but dictated by cellular technology. The “net” or the “web” now encompasses everything.

We will soon be living under Pluto in Aquarius, which is approaching like a black hole. We are well into the Great Reset (though it is not yet complete) and entering something called the 4th Industrial Revolution, Agenda 2030, and a diversity of other names designed to confuse you and disarm your intellect.

Part of this project is universal “vaccination” and various forms of the “Green Pass” or “vaccine passport.” Some places call this living in a “smart city.” This is the thing that will only let you into places you could previously go. Who decides the qualifications for what makes your Green Pass flash green? Not you, that’s for sure. You may think the “Covid” vaccine is a fantastic idea even though the federal government admits it has killed 22,000 people (multiply by at least 40 for the real number).

Now they are talking about making the injection of six-months old mandatory for a claimed infection that we know with absolute certainty does not affect children. Perhaps you think that is OK.

Next week it could be mandatory birth control, antidepressants, antibiotics, or some other mystery drug. Nobody actually knows all the ingredients or true effects of any vaccine except the manufacturers. And now it is being connected to existence via the “digital identity.” Once we are there, we are all slaves for life, if you call that living.

Let my people go.

Original article here

09 Oct 2021
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Our Brains Tell Stories So We Can Live

We are all storytellers; we make sense out of the world by telling stories. And science is a great source of stories. Not so, you might argue. Science is an objective collection and interpretation of data. I completely agree. At the level of the study of purely physical phenomena, science is the only reliable method for establishing the facts of the world.

But when we use data of the physical world to explain phenomena that cannot be reduced to physical facts, or when we extend incomplete data to draw general conclusions, we are telling stories. Knowing the atomic weight of carbon and oxygen cannot tell us what life is. There are no naked facts that completely explain why animals sacrifice themselves for the good of their kin, why we fall in love, the meaning and purpose of existence, or why we kill each other.

Science is not at fault. On the contrary, science can save us from false stories. It is an irreplaceable means of understanding our world. But despite the verities of science, many of our most important questions compel us to tell stories that venture beyond the facts. For all of the sophisticated methodologies in science, we have not moved beyond the story as the primary way that we make sense of our lives.

To see where science and story meet, let’s take a look at how story is created in the brain. Let’s begin with an utterly simple example of a story, offered by E. M. Forster in his classic book on writing, Aspects of the Novel:“The king died and then the queen died.” It is nearly impossible to read this juxtaposition of events without wondering why the queen died. Even with a minimum of description, the construction of the sentence makes us guess at a pattern. Why would the author mention both events in the same sentence if he didn’t mean to imply a causal relationship?

Once a relationship has been suggested, we feel obliged to come up with an explanation. This makes us turn to what we know, to our storehouse of facts. It is general knowledge that a spouse can die of grief. Did the queen then die of heartbreak? This possibility draws on the science of human behavior, which competes with other, more traditional narratives. A high school student who has been studying Hamlet, for instance, might read the story as a microsynopsis of the play.

The pleasurable feeling that our explanation is the right one—ranging from a modest sense of familiarity to the powerful and sublime “a-ha!”—is meted out by the same reward system in the brain integral to drug, alcohol, and gambling addictions. The reward system extends from the limbic area of the brain, vital to the expression of emotion, to the prefrontal cortex, critical to executive thought. Though still imperfectly understood, it is generally thought that the reward system plays a central role in the promotion and reinforcement of learning. Key to the system, and found primarily within its brain cells, is dopamine, a neurotransmitter that carries and modulates signals among brain cells. Studies consistently show that feeling rewarded is accompanied by a rise in dopamine levels.

This reward system was first noted in the 1950s by two McGill University researchers, James Olds and Peter Milner. Stimulating electrodes were placed in presumed brain reward areas of rats. When allowed full unrestricted access to a lever that, when depressed, would cause the electrodes to fire, the rats quickly learned to repeatedly depress the lever, often to the exclusion of food and water. Realizing that our brains are capable of producing feelings so intense that we choose to ignore such basic drives as hunger and thirst was a first step toward understanding the enormous power of the brain’s reward circuitry.

Critical to understanding how stories spark the brain’s reward system is the theory known as pattern recognition—the brain’s way of piecing together a number of separate components of an image into a coherent picture. The first time you see a lion, for instance, you have to figure out what you’re seeing. At least 30 separate areas of the brain’s visual cortex pitch in, each processing an aspect of the overall image—from the detection of motion and edges, to the register of color and facial features. Collectively they form an overall image of a lion.

Each subsequent exposure to a lion enhances your neural circuitry; the connections among processing regions become more robust and efficient. (This theory, based on the research of Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb, a pioneer in studying how people learn, is often stated as “cells that fire together wire together.”) Soon, less input is necessary to recognize the lion. A fleeting glimpse of a partial picture is sufficient for recognition, which occurs via positive feedback from your reward system. Yes, you are assured by your brain, that is a lion.

An efficient pattern recognition of a lion makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you see a large feline shape moving in some nearby brush, it is unwise to wait until you see the yellows of the lion’s eyes before starting to run up the nearest tree. You need a brain that quickly detects entire shapes from fragments of the total picture and provides you with a powerful sense of the accuracy of this recognition.

One need only think of the recognition of a new pattern that is so profound that it triggers an involuntary “a-ha!” to understand the degree of pleasure that can be associated with learning. It’s no wonder that once a particular pattern-recognition-reward relationship is well grooved into our circuitry, it is hard to shake. In general—outside of addiction, that is—this “stickiness” of a correlation is a good thing. It is through repetition and the sense of familiarity and “rightness” of a correlation that we learn to navigate our way in the world.

Science is in the business of making up stories called hypotheses and testing them, then trying its best to make up better ones. Thought-experiments can be compared to storytelling exercises using well-known characters. What would Sherlock Holmes do if he found a body suspended in a tree with a note strapped to its ankle? What would a light ray being bounced between two mirrors look like to an observer sitting on a train? Once done with their story, scientists go to the lab to test it; writers call editors to see if they will buy it.

People and science are like bread and butter. We are hardwired to need stories; science has storytelling buried deep in its nature. But there is also a problem. We can get our dopamine reward, and walk away with a story in hand, before science has finished testing it. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the brain, hungry for its pattern-matching dopamine reward, overlooks contradictory or conflicting information whenever possible. A fundamental prerequisite for pattern recognition is the ability to quickly distinguish between similar but not identical inputs. Not being able to pigeonhole an event or idea makes it much more difficult for the brain to label and store it as a discrete memory. Neat and tidy promotes learning; loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.

When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are moral consequences.

Just as proper pattern recognition results in the reward of an increased release of dopamine, faulty pattern recognition is associated with decreased dopamine release. In monkeys, the failure to make a successful prediction (correlation between expected and actual outcome) characteristically diminishes dopamine release exactly at the time that the predicted event is anticipated but fails to occur. Just as accurate correlations are pleasurable, lack of correlation produces the neurotransmitter equivalent of thwarted expectation (or worse).

Once we see that stories are the narrative equivalent of correlation, it is easy to understand why our brains seek out stories (patterns) whenever and wherever possible. You may have read or heard about the famous experiment in which University of Illinois psychology professor Daniel Simons asked subjects to watch a video and count the number of times a ball is dribbled by a basketball team. When focused on counting, the majority of viewers failed to see a woman in a gorilla suit walk across the playing area. In effect, well-oiled patterns of observation encourage our brains to compose a story that we expect to hear.

Because we are compelled to make stories, we are often compelled to take incomplete stories and run with them. With a half-story from science in our minds, we earn a dopamine “reward” every time it helps us understand something in our world—even if that explanation is incomplete or wrong.

Following the Newtown massacre, some experts commented on the killer having Asperger’s syndrome, as though that might at least partially explain his behavior. Though Asperger’s syndrome feels like a specific diagnosis, it is, by definition, nothing more than a constellation of symptoms common to a group of people. In the 1940s, Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger noted that a number of patients had similar problems with social skills, eccentric or repetitive actions, unusual preoccupation rituals, and communication difficulties, including lack of eye contact and trouble understanding facial expressions and gestures. The 2013 decision by the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome from its guidebook for clinicians, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM-V), for failing to conform to any specific neuropathology, underscores the all-too-common problem of accepting a clustering of symptoms as synonymous with a specific disease. Syndromes are stories in search of underlying causes.

Similarly, studies of psychopaths have shown a diminished volume of gray matter in specific regions of the prefrontal cortex. But these findings aren’t the sole explanation for violent acts. Because it is impossible to stimulate a specific brain region to produce complex and premeditated acts, we are left to conclude that while certain brain conditions can be correlated with a complex act, they are not necessarily causing it. Likewise, brain scans that reveal abnormalities in mass murderers may help us understand what might have contributed to their behavior. But the abnormalities are no more the sole explanation for violence than childhood neglect or poor nutrition. They are stories, albeit with a detailed neurophysiological component, but stories nonetheless.

When we make and take incomplete stories from science, there are often moral consequences. How much personal responsibility should we assign to an individual with a damaged or malfunctioning brain? What is the appropriate punishment and possibility of rehabilitation for such a person? Only when we openly acknowledge the degree to which science is presenting its observations in the form of story can we address this moral dimension. We must each work out our own guidelines for when we think scientific data has exceeded its bounds and has morphed into the agenda and bias of story. Of course this is always going to be a challenge in the absence of a full array of scientific data.

But we can begin by being aware of the various ways that storytelling can insinuate itself into the presentation and interpretation of data. Good science is a combination of meticulously obtained and analyzed data, a restriction of the conclusions to those interpretations that are explicitly reflected in the data, and an honest and humble recognition of the limits of what this data can say about the world.

Loose ends lead to the “yes, but” of indecision and inability to draw a precise conclusion.

As members of the public, we need to ensure that any science we accept as truth has passed through the peer-review process. We should also understand that even peer-reviewed data is not always accurate. In 2011, Nature reported that published retractions had increased by a factor of 10 over the last 10 years, while the number of papers published rose only 44 percent. Also in Nature, scientists C. Glenn Begley and Lee M. Ellis wrote that their colleagues at the biotechnology firm Amgen could reproduce only six of 53 landmark hematology and oncology studies from the scientific literature. Similarly, scientists from Bayer reported in 2011 that they could not consistently reproduce about two-thirds of oncology studies relevant to their work.

When reading science reports, we should also search for information on the limits of the data. Were assumptions made? What do the “error bars,” or graphic representations of variable data, say? We may not always understand the data limits, but we should be worried when some discussion of them is completely absent.

In the end, scientists have the tools, language, and experience to tell us informed, engaging, and powerful stories. In turn, we should judge their studies in the same light in which we judge other artistic forms. Like a literary critic, we should assess the preciseness of language, the tightness of structure, the clarity and originality of vision, the overall elegance and grace of the study, the restraint with which they present moral issues, how they place their studies in historical, cultural, and personal context, and their willingness to entertain alternative opinions and interpretations.

The methodology of science remains one of the great advances of humankind. Its stories, properly told, are epic poems in progress, and deserve to stand alongside the great stories of history.

About the Author:

Robert A. Burton, M.D., a neurologist and novelist, is the author of On Being Certain: Believing That You Are Right Even When You’re Not, and A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves.

Original article here.

27 Jun 2021
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The Infinite Intelligence Internet

Sentient intelligence exists all around us — all the time. Plugging your brain (your stand-alone computer) into the infinite intelligence internet gives you insights and understandings, but also extraordinary abilities to activate and accelerate potential, possibilities, genius, innovation & transformation.

The invisible infinite intelligent internet is made up of many facets, things like …

the sentient universe,
the quantum field of possibilities,
the genius field where ideas are waiting to be plucked,
Nature, the Earth and all her life forms,
the collective field of human knowledge, experience and realities.

Infinite intelligence is a sensory experience, not at all like the logical workings of the unplugged, stand-alone mind. Once plugged in, you are able to sense and read fields. I’m not just talking about empathy, although that’s a starting point for some. I’m talking about full blown knowing combined with the ability to activate, accelerate and actualise potential, possibilities and transformation, as well as to pull ideas and innovation out of thin air.

My video below will explain this more and walk you through how you can do this for yourself. Once you’re plugged in to the infinite intelligence internet, a whole new exciting world awaits you, one in which you are a source of exciting new creations and limitless possibilities to enhance life on this world.

About the Author:

Soleira Green is passionate about innovating a new future now, bringing genius, connection, greatness and the miraculous into the game for us all.

20 May 2021
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Vivaxis, the Axis of Life

A few years back, I went hiking in Dogtown with a friend and our dogs. As soon as we reached the woods, the dogs bolted ahead, and in running after them, we became hopelessly lost.

Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for us that day, I am sensitive to frequencies from telecommunications infrastructure, towers, and antennas, particularly on the site of a previous injury on the left side of my head and body. At the beginning of our walk, I had noticed (and felt) a large number of antennas mounted on the water tower near our parked car, so to help find our way back I began systematically turning my head and following the trails in the direction of the most discomfort, realizing that the dogs were also helping us navigate in that direction. Hours later we found the car…and I had a massive headache for days.

On that afternoon, I used an injured part of my body and energy field to find my way. But according to researcher Francis Nixon and her student Judy Jacka, humans are, in fact, endowed with an energetic signature that marks the place where an individual is born. Francis Nixon named the phenomenon the vivaxis, meaning the “axis of life.”

Does it make sense that before humans relied on satellite-enabled GPS systems, our ancestors, who were the most resilient and who survived the demands of challenging environments, were also the ones who had the best-developed navigational skills? And what if those skills were not just intellectual, such as navigating by the stars, but were also housed in the energy body itself as another inborn physical sensory system, designed by nature, to help ensure our survival and ability to find our way home? Do humans, like other animals, possess a forgotten inborn navigation sensory system?

In her Vivaxis Manual, Part 1, Frances Nixon writes, “The radiation energies of Earth form a massive network of energy waves traveling in both horizontal and vertical directions. When a fetus is subjected to these energy waves or currents, it pulls the horizontal and vertical energies into a common axis or point. The fetus then becomes magnetized to that exact geophysical point, and a permanent magnetic pattern or alignment is introduced into the atomic structure of the bones as they solidify. It is thought that the baby’s vivaxis is generally created about the time of the mother’s first labor pains and is approximately the size of the fetus just prior to birth. This same dynamic is replayed throughout all creation.” Francis Nixon’s work was synthesized by her student Judy Jackma in her book The Vivaxis Connection.

Energy medicine teacher Donna Eden, who possesses the ability to see energy, also noticed that some clients would become weak when faced in a particular direction. Using magnets, she synthesized a simple technique to test a person’s response to the energy field in all directions, as well as to demagnetize a compromised vivaxis, which she demonstrates in videos and describes in her book Energy Medicine. Recognition of the vivaxis acknowledges Earth as a complex living being that communicates with receptors in the human energy field and that supports transcendent balance and health.

Current economic growth is riding hard on a wave of techno-optimism, as well as a sense of entitlement to what Vandana Shiva refers to as “the Commons,” which are communal resources that belong to us all. Already there are plans for launching nuclear power on both the moon and Mars, while back on Earth the launching of 5G telecommunications requires the installation at increased densities of microwave antennas on light poles in neighborhoods, with no biological-based safety testing or monitoring for this increased exposure.

The plight of individuals already ill or disabled due to wireless exposures has been denied and ignored in favor of affirming the manifest destiny of industrial and economic interests. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find places that are free of wireless exposure, as even sensitive environments like Mount Everest and Yellowstone are being blanketed with microwave antennas to meet the market’s demands for infinite coverage and faster downloads. Higher elevations, including mountaintops and rooftops, are among the most desirable infrastructure settings for the industry.

Juxtaposed against humanity’s pursuit of increasing transmitting sensors to generate more data to power smart devices to create artificial intelligence are the extraordinary sensory capacities within the human energy field and all of nature. These inborn sensory systems, including the vivaxis of each individual, are sounding the alarm that the artificial, man-made electromagnetic environment is becoming uninhabitable. Within these sensory systems — codified through observation alone by earlier cultures, including the meridians of Oriental medicine and the layers of the auric field — are rhythms that choreograph radiant health. From when to eat to when to sleep to which herbs to harvest at the full moon, modern culture has become further and further removed from chronobiology and harmony with nature as the basis of a balanced life. Artificial frequencies are scrambling the healthy synthesis of the life force.

Rudolph Steiner cautioned that technology would usher in an age where individuals are increasingly detached from their soul forces. German blogger Michael Berstecher explains, “Our cell metabolism, our nervous system, and the pineal gland are optimally electromagnetically stimulated by the imperceptible and subtle impulses of nature — especially the Schumann-resonances and Sferics. Our physical organism wants and needs to ‘hear’ these frequencies in order to…experience inner peace, bliss and love as a state of consciousness. Nowadays, artificial radio waves, trillions of times more powerful than those found in nature, are superimposed upon natural electromagnetic stimulation fields severing all beings from nature’s electromagnetic conductors.”

Artificial intelligence lacks connection to the intelligence of nature. As we have outsourced the collection, analysis and application of global information to a concentrated elite who already have chosen to override the canaries in the coal mine — those who are reporting harm to themselves and/or nature from these wireless technologies — we place ourselves at great risk of further separation from the brilliant intelligence, as well as Earth stewardship responsibilities, that are our birthright.

A yogi master said, “All the ailments that human beings suffer are simply because we have lost the awareness of how to be in sync with the forces that are making us who we are.” Like biodynamic gardening, a form of regenerative agriculture that recognizes a reverence for all land, water, food, plants, animals and people, we need to choose communications that harmonize with the whole ecosystem. Our physiology is wired to take us there and to bring us back home again and again.

About the Author:

Patricia Burke works with Stop5G International, MA4SafeTechnology, and other groups worldwide calling for increased regulation of wireless technologies, with a focus on human rights, environmental justice, and the rights of nature. She can be reached at stopsmartmetersMass@gmail.com

Original article: Spirit of Change magazine

19 Apr 2021
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Astral Amnesia and Hypnosis

I have been focusing lately on some issues that may seem somewhat uncomfortable or seemingly out of character for me. If you have been triggered by some of the subject matter, please rest assured that that is never my intent. That said, someone once said our job here in these times is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

One thing I do want you to know is this: all that I am saying and doing is done out of love, to create more awareness and awakening. I desire that we all can come into a deeper caring about what is and has been happening on our beautiful world, to it is myriad and amazing creatures, and what is happening to ourselves…the human family. We are all here to contribute, and to help each other realize the fullness of our divine nature, and to embrace how powerful and beautiful it is to be fully human.

Back in the early part of the 21st Century when I was channelling Archangel Ariel and hosting workshops, everyone started getting more into the Internet and handheld phones. Whenever I thought about upgrading from my clunky Motorola pager and answering system, my inner voice always whispered, “no way.” I did not get my first mobile phone till 2007 and did not have a smartphone until 2014. Call me slow, but I am not totally anti-electricity or anti-tech! As an electric guitarist, synthesist and recording engineer, I can fully appreciate the convenience and magic of digital recording. However, I still prefer analogue recordings and equipment over digital for tons of reasons. Analogue means to be the same as the real world…analogous. Old magnetic tape and vinyl records hold more of the real world in those ferrous particles and grooves than any CD or MP3 can.

Simply put, digital can only mimic real-world sight and sound, not improve on it. Play any vinyl LP of classical music for plants, and they will grow better than another group of plants exposed the same classical recording on an MP3 file.

In 2013 I encountered two interviews with a fellow named John Lash. He wrote a book entitled “Not In His Image”. Turns out he is a Gnostic scholar and his translation of the Gnostic Gospels, the Nag Hammadi Codices, contained a fantastical tale of entities that the ancients called the Archons. Created accidentally, and comprised of artificial intelligence, these beings were confined to our solar system. In a weird twist, they are related to us, but that is another story. However, because of this kinship, they have access to our subconscious and conscious mind. In other cultures, they have other names. The Yaqui Indian sorcerers of northern Mexico called them the “flyers” or the “alien installation. In ancient Arabic cultures, they were known as the “djinn”. In Native American, “wetiko”, or mind parasites, and in the Sumerian cultures, the Annunaki or Watchers.

The stunning correlation between this artificial species and Big Tech is striking in many aspects. The Archons are envious of this planet, but due to their makeup, they could not survive in this atmosphere for long. They are hostile to humans, because of our divine gift of “nous” (intelligence) and “epinoia” (imagination). We can create, they can only mimic or create a counterfeit of something. The one area they are exceptionally good at is to influence humans to become like they are robotic, given to groupthink or hive mind, and totally absent of emotion or empathy.

Universal Mind or Source is neutral towards all aspects of itself and is inherently non-judgmental.

Unconditional Love allows for all kinds of expressions of life, including artificial ones. We are still mammals, human animals, but animals in possession of some quite different qualities from other animals.

These qualities the Archons covet. If they cannot be like us, or have this planet, then they do not want anyone else to have it either. This is how a jealous lover thinks and acts. How do you destroy something so no one else can have it? In this case, influence the inhabitants to do it for you. It was announced yesterday that just 3% of our ecosystem remains pristine and intact. It should be obvious to all of us that what is occurring is not helpful or desirable, no matter how many corporate shareholder profits it destroys. This is part of the allowing process of the Divine. However, what sort of experience do we really want? What kind of world do we wish to align with?

Another way we get distracted and keep us suspicious of each other has been Covid. It is evident that governments and Big Tech and Big Pharma are capitalizing on this for their own ends. Civil liberties have been thrown to one side, and everywhere government are legislating “temporary” powers to themselves that will never be rolled back.

There is also what I call the financial false flag scenario. Some mysterious stranger invents Bitcoin and blockchains and 11 years later it has mushroomed to epic proportions. This has been accomplished all on the perception that it is somehow different from the traditional elitist financial system. One problem with that perception is that the value of crypto is all tied to the current financial and currency markets. And no matter what anyone believes about cryptocurrencies, they are extremely harmful to the environment. On top of that, the relentless push of Big Tech and telecoms for 5G and the roll out of the Internet of Things, including wearable and implantable tech. will create a huge energy demand that drives the use of more fossil fuels, impacting the environment.

With Saturn in Aquarius, the infusion of enforced group conformity by non-terrestrial intelligences is becoming more the norm. Vaccination passports and mandatory testing becomes the sharp end of the stick by those who seek more control, and more profit.

When Pluto enters Aquarius in 2023, the real struggle for a human future will begin. We will all be faced with the choice of organic or non-organic…compliant, or free…human, or transhuman.

When I look around these days, most folks do not realize how deeply they are seduced and embedded in the artifice of the digital culture. The electric realm has popped folks out of their bodies. More and more people succumb to being forgetful and hypnotized, and complying with things that 2 years ago they would never consider doing. The energy to care about anything other than personal survival is waning. However, there are those who still care, and are making their voices heard.

As I write this, I could admit that the situation seems hopeless. However, never ever fall for that one. If we declare ourselves for the planet, for all organic life, for humanity, and for Love, then we can never be lost or without hope. The Indian activist Vandana Shiva was interviewed by Russell Brand this past week, and her words ring through my heart. She even stunned Russell into a state of deep reflection and emotion. I could never do those words justice, so I encourage you to click here, go to the 4 minute and 40 second mark and listen for yourself.

We are in a state of spiritual emergency, and spiritual emergence. Will it be possible to tame tech to serve us, and not some other master? Will we choose the organic Universe over a facsimile? Time will tell, and I do feel that we can and must make this choice. The stakes could not be higher than they are right at this moment. And this was the moment you selected to be here. Thank you for choosing to do so… we love you and need you.

Blessings on your journey…together.

About the Author:

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

06 Feb 2021
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State of the Planet Update: February 5th, 2021

We are in the midst of a struggle for our future, the future of countless species, and indeed future of this Planet. Much is at stake. Even so, there are very good reasons that we are at this juncture, and it is first and foremost an opportunity to remember what is essential about us, and all of Life.

The situation is not without positive benefit and it definitely could end up with a great outcome. However, it will be up to each one of us, and all of us together, to realize such a positive outcome of love, health, prosperity, cooperation and community for everyone…not just for a few. More on what will be required of us to accomplish towards the end of the article.

Evo-Astrology Update:

Welcome to the Aquarian Era! Note, I said “era”, not Age.

One of the things I’ve learned from studying astrology over the past 25 years is that there is a big difference between sidereal astronomy and tropical astronomy. The former coincides with the greater cycles within our solar system, especially the precession of the Equinoxes, which are revered in mystical and pagan traditions as Nature’s own rhythms. It considers the planet’s rotational wobble (Chandler Wobble), which is what gives us our seasons, in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

So, back to the question of why I said “era” and not “Age”. In accounting for the precession of the Equinoxes, we are still approximately anywhere between 180 and 300 years away from complete immersion into the great Age of Aquarius (estimates vary wildly, dependent on the observer). As such, we are in the crossover zone between the ending of the Great Age of Pisces, and the upcoming Age of Aquarius. Each cycle is approximately 2,160 years across. Add all 12 signs up, and you get a 26,000 year galactic cycle, which is how long it takes for our planet, embedded within the 3rd spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, to complete one rotation around the Galactic Center.

Whew! Enough of that then.

The State of the Planet in 2021 is different than that of 2020 in some significant ways. Some have said that the Saturn-Jupiter ingress into Aquarius last December 21st, 2020 was the beginning of the Aquarian Age. As I have demonstrated, this is not accurate, nor helpful. There has been enough false hope peddled around for far too long.

In the ancient myths, Saturn was a Titan, and a tyrant. He was paranoid, jealous, and a cannibal. We ignore these aspects at our peril. Saturn was also the ancient ruler of Aquarius, a fixed air sign, and Air signs are inherently mental in orientation. Fixed means unwilling to change, unless there’s a lot of pressure. When Uranus was discovered (also one of the Titans), a new energy lit up in our collective consciousness. Since Uranus vied with Saturn for rulership, and he exemplified change for it’s own sake (Uranus’ axis is tilted on it’s side, rather than north-south…and it rotates backwards), and astrologers assigned him to Aquarius, and left Saturn in charge of Capricorn.

Now that brings us to the over-riding astrological theme for 2021. There are three Uranus-Saturn squares this year, and one in 2022.

17 February 2021
15 June 2021
24 December 2021

The ultimate spiritual and psycho-physical challenges this year lead on from 2020 when the predominant theme was set by the conjunction of Pluto and Saturn at 22 degrees of Capricorn on January 12th, 2020. The main theme or challenge for 2021 is the choice between freedom or slavery, a New Dispensation versus the morphing of the Old Order into a technocracy of control. Even more accurately, this is about organic versus synthetic life.

The very foundations of the previous cycle are undergoing a dis-integration, and as a result, those souls invested (or seduced) by the addiction to power-over Nature and humanity will try to manipulate the technologies to perpetuate their own positions. This is, of course, unsustainable in the long run. But minds addicted to certainty and safety, and out of touch with Nature, will take extreme measures to preserve the status quo, even if it is harmful to themselves.

There are many analogies I could use to illustrate this, and here’s just one example: https://youtu.be/L5foZIKuEWQ.

I have been noticing and observing that the predominant preoccupation with the Age of Science and Medicine is to classify micro-components of the natural world as hostile to human biology, when in fact our biology exists in a symbiotic relationship with trillions of bacteria and other organisms. There is mounting evidence that when we introduce toxins of any type into the natural order, these microorganisms will attempt to rid themselves of the toxicity, and in turn, this may appear in biology as illness, or dis-ease. When this happens, it should alert us that something has changed in the equilibrium, the balance of Nature within and without. Instead, we treat the manifestation of illness as an invader, mercilessly and coldly attacking us and killing some of us. The only question that remains is to identify and remove the sources of toxicity, whether it be in our air, water, food, or within our minds and emotions.

The cycle of Uranus in Taurus is pointing our attention to the things that relate to having a body and loving our bodies. Nurturing and love are part of the Taurus archetype. So is food, sex, pleasure, health and security, and harmony with Nature’s cycles. The Uranian influence here is squared, or challenged, by Saturn in Aquarius, which embodies a stance that is allied with A.I., virtual reality matrices, and are anti-body and by extension, anti-Nature.

As an example of what happens when any religion makes the body or Nature (and especially women and sexuality) a “problem” is in our collective history and memories. Centuries ago, many of the sacred groves of Middle Eastern pagan (polytheistic-matriarchal) cultures were destroyed, and thousands of their adherents to those in those cultures were brutally massacred. A lot of trees were cut down in the process too…a foreshadowing of what would follow in Europe during the Middle Ages with the millions of “witches” murdered, and now in our own times, with the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. We are still suffering with the imprinting or programming from what is essentially a cultural and spiritual war that was fueled by patriarchial monotheism.

Strategies for Living Heaven (Aquarian Age) During the age of Covid and Transhumanism:

Looking at our own shadow and facilitation of our own karmic baggage and projections has been underway since the discovery of the planetoid Chiron in 1977. Chiron heralded the return of many ancient and mystical healing traditions and modalities and spurred the creation of many new and novel modes of healing. Self-help books, workshops and human potential movements sprang up over the next couple of decades. It took a while longer, into the late 1990’s and early 21st century to realise the peril and healing crisis on a global scale. Our ecosystems were beginning an accelerated breakdown, but for most, the call to heal was still based on a very personal path.

We can no longer afford this sort of indulgence, not when we face multiple challenges in simultaneity. Even though the lockdowns during 2020 seemingly provided a brief respite, the collapse of the ecosystem is still accelerating. The Pandemic of 2020 has captivated most of human focus, drawing away attention to the looming crisis of the collapse of capitalism as we’ve known it, and the poverty that is being created because of it. There is a stated desire by the world’s most influential persons to establish a single digital transaction system to replace the currencies and through a digital “smart” infrastructure, manage most aspects of every human being’s life in the near future. Is this what we really want, or need?

The strategies to navigate these changes, and to create new models of living, will require that we see our own personal healing path as entwined with the healing of the planet and others in our human family. I include all creatures within Nature as part of this healing as well. To commit to communicating better and with more kindness, to sit in communion with the environment, to pursue quantum health in symbiosis with the natural world are, to me, necessary requirements. If we are to reduce the toxicity in our minds, we must look to where we have manifested these toxins into the surrounding environment. It is all connected…inexorably.

No one is going to rescue us. We are our own UFO’s. However, we are never alone. Our first ally is Mother Nature, Sophia, the Planetary Intelligence. Seek out indigenous elders or shamans. Learn to talk with the Planet as if she were your Mother, and Guide. Seek a deeper understanding with your relationship to Source Consciousness, and all beings who are available to assist when called upon.

Listen to your animal instincts and body’s elemental intelligence more. Try reducing your reliance on scientific orthodoxy and its insane reduction of Nature into a nothing more than a chemical (or genome sequence) equation. Challenge your own assumptions. Protect yourself and your loved ones from over-exposure to artificial EMF’s. Buy a water filter for your home. Learn deep breathing techniques, and perhaps grow a small veg garden. Dance more, make love…to everything. Meditate, reflect, spend time in Nature. Self-care is essential…always!

Challenge your own assumptions. Protect yourself and your loved ones from over-exposure to artificial EMF’s. Buy a water filter for your home. Learn deep breathing techniques, and perhaps grow a small veg garden. Dance more, make love…to everything. Meditate, reflect, spend time in Nature. Self-care is essential…always!

Listen to your heart of Hearts…trust your intuition. Trust your Self. Trust in Spirit. There is no higher authority than what resides within you.

These are just some intentions we can make and some of the actions we can take in order to retrieve and enhance our divine sovereignty, instead of being subsumed into the dark side of the Aquarian shadow…the dictates of the crowd or group…the obedient hive mind.

Keep an eye on that Dragon of Fear and give it no quarter. There is a world of difference between practical safety and irrational fear. The latter is being used as a weapon daily, all over the world in media and politics.

Stop feeding the beast…and feed your soul. Feed one another. Love one another.

The balance of February includes Mercury Retrograde in Aquarius and the New Moon in Aquarius on February 11th. I see this time as an opportunity to review priorities. I used this as an opportunity to remove myself from Instagram (left Facebook last November). As a culture, we currently are unable to comprehend how deep down in the bowl of digital soup we are, how disembodied we have become. Our task as healers, as mystics, as spiritual activists and change artists is to reclaim ourselves from a world designed by others, for their own profit.

About the Author:

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations. Join him on his new radio show airing Sunday, February 7th, on KindaSound.org. The show’s name is “Revealing the Mysteries” and Isaac will be discussing upcoming topics and guests. Airtime is 6:30pm GMT, 1:30pm ET, and 10:30am PT.

23 Nov 2020
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Humming for Health

I am a musician and sound healer. My ears are my dominant sense for the intake of information. Visually, I am not very interested in detail. Looking at something intensely is work for me whereas listening to the fullness of the composites of a sound are for me, a delight. I experience the world more through my ears than my eyes. That’s just me. I like to play with sound. It has helped me with many physical and emotional challenges over the years.

Around the age of 40, I was diagnosed with asthma. I had to take medicines that made me very jittery, which I hated. So, I decided to experiment with humming sounds. I thought that if I could find a note that really vibrated my lungs, I could try toning that on a daily basis to see if I could stop using my inhalers. After humming for a while, I found the note! Toning it felt really good to my lungs. I discovered that when I hummed this sound for 20 minutes a day, I no longer had to use my inhalers. My asthma eventually went away, and I didn’t have to hum that note anymore. That’s what made me a believer in the power of sound for healing.

Much later I found out that humming has actually been studied for its health benefits. There are worldwide studies that prove humming lowers heart rate and blood pressure, increases nitric oxide, increases lymphatic circulation, increases melatonin levels, releases endorphins, and releases oxytocin.

I have also used humming to energize my underactive thyroid and to boost my immune system. Humming, like toning, is using an unconscious, natural, human bodily process — consciously. When we hum, all the vibrations stay inside our bodies. It’s like an internal body massage, increasing circulation and oxygenation, a main ingredient for all healing. Humming also increases nitric oxide — a molecule we all possess naturally. Nitric oxide energizes our cardiovascular, respiratory, and immune systems. It causes expansion of our blood vessels, which increases blood flow and lowers blood pressure.

Specifically, humming instantly increases nitric oxide in the nasal passages. This is vitally important in our struggle against this novel coronavirus. The sinuses are where this virus lingers for days before it infects other tissues in the body. Nitric oxide is anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. Humming while exhaling increases nitric oxide creation to fifteen times the amount created when we normally and quietly inhale. Dr. Deitrich Klinghardt, famed Swiss doctor of medical neurobiology, studied this as much as 15 years ago and found, “Nitric oxide produced in the nasal passages is part of the defense system against bacterial and viral infections.” He suggests whenever no one is listening to you, hum to prevent or treat COVID-19.

I am a vibrational expression
Of the Infinite Eternal
Becoming aware of itself
Within the heart of matter.

Before I knew any of this information, I used humming to enhance my immune system. I did a meditation every day for 10-15 minutes that kept me healthy for many years. I did it not because I had any logical reason for doing it; I did it because it made me feel great and that was good enough for me. When I felt a scratchiness in my throat, like I was coming down with a cold, a couple of hours later after humming I would notice that feeling was gone, and the cold never manifested. It was because my immune system was so pumped that it could fend off viruses and bacterial infections that were inhaled, like COVID-19. To put it succinctly, matter vibrates, sound is vibration, and therefore sound affects matter. You just need to discover the right sound for the specific piece of matter.

What is the right sound to boost your immune system? It’s a simple gliding up and down a C major scale, using your voice to hum from middle C on the piano (256Hz) up to the octave above it (512Hz). While you hum, you are gliding up slowly to include all of the notes that are contained in the space between the low C and the high C. It sounds like a slide whistle or penny whistle. Then you take a breath and glide back down to the lower C in the same way, sounding all the notes contained in that octave. It’s that simple. If you have no way to find the sound of middle C, there are plenty of tone generators online that can play it for you, or you could use a chromatic C-to-C pitch pipe to find the note.

Finding the note that truly vibrates your sinuses is very powerful. Put your fingers on either side of your nose and hum up and down until you find the sound that really vibrates your nose and sinuses, and keep humming it! Adding intention to the hum makes it even more powerful. Speaking a thought or sound makes it tangible. The thought is no longer invisible and silent. Speaking it gives it substance — a body. It takes up space and exists. Creation stories throughout ancient traditions, including Christianity, identify sound as the primal creative force.

Intentional sound is very powerful. The breath is the initiator and carrier of all vocal sounds. Using the consciousness of the breath as a carrier for heartfelt intention expressed through humming is a profoundly useful sound healing technique that can be very beneficial to your health.

SpiritofChange magazine

Kathleen Nagy spent 18 years performing in symphony orchestras playing the French horn, teaching music education and directing musical theater productions. For the past 20 years she has been a BioAcoustic Research Associate specializing in Voice Energy Analysis and Acoustic Biofeedback for sports or muscle injuries, and now specializes in teaching people how to hum the sounds that are good for their bodies. Download a free immune boosting mp3 at thesoundlady.com.

21 Mar 2020
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Thriving in the World with COVID-19

Our world has changed almost overnight. Those of us on a spiritual path have been waiting for a game changer, but we did not see THIS coming. So many people were worried that human activities are endangering life on the planet. And then the tiniest of life forms throws a wrench in the gears of our out-of-control consumer economy that brings it to a screeching halt.

Ironic, isn’t it? What a poignant reminder of our place in the biosphere. We are a part of an intricate web of life, even when we live in big cities with all the technical contraptions that seem to separate us from nature.

Humans have co-evolved with viruses since the dawn of our species. Viruses are the fastest life forms to mutate and evolve. Our immune system had to keep up with those mutations; otherwise we would have gone extinct very quickly. Rather than looking at our relationship with viruses as a war, we can regard it as a dance of mutual evolution.

The cheetah would not be the fastest animal on land without the need to run down the gazelle. The gazelle would not be such a graceful sprinter if it did not have to escape from the cheetah. Without carnivores, the herbivores would have multiplied unchecked, until they consumed every plant on the planet and become extinct through starvation. Life on Earth requires balance.

Over the next few months, it is probable that every one of us will be exposed to the Corona virus at one point or another. Our immune system is brilliant and adaptable. Nevertheless, many are dying, while others have very mild or no symptoms at all. Who lives and who dies is not a question of luck.

It is a question of soul intent.

For many souls on the planet right now, the New Energy is too much to accommodate. The change is too big. Some have had enough of it already and prefer to watch from the comfort of the non-physical realm. Some can do their work better from there. Others are complete now with their experience on Earth and their contribution to her ascension. A number of light workers are leaving to assist departed souls in their exit from the near-earth realms. They act like traffic directors in the evacuation of a large building. Many of us are staying to be the grounding rods for the New Energy in the physical Earth. Our dreams of the world-to-come require our physical presence. This happens to be the most demanding, but also the most exciting path.

None of those choices are better or worse than others. It is simply a question of our soul’s intent. The best we can do at this time is to get very quiet and listen to the still voice inside. What is my calling? What is my soul’s specialty?

The voice of Soul is always joyful and fearless. It does not judge right or wrong. When we are clear in our alignment with Soul, we can face our path with confidence. Our intuition will guide us every step of the way, moment by moment. We will be in the right place at the right time, and we will know what to do when we have to do it.

Fear and grief are natural responses of the human mind. Surf their waves and let them pass. I recommend getting out in nature, be it a park, a garden, or up a trail. Feel the joy of Earth at this time. As traffic is slowing, planes and tankers are sitting still, factories are shutting down, Mother Earth is taking a deep breath. Spring is here, and new life is growing everywhere in the Northern hemisphere.

“What seems like the end of the world to the caterpillar, is the beginning of life for the butterfly.” –Richard Bach

We don’t need to know how to go through this global transformation anymore than a caterpillar needs to think about becoming a butterfly. Our Inner Wisdom knows. The more we trust the process, the easier it gets. So take a deep breath – frequently! – Relax and allow it to take place naturally. In the Big Picture, all is well!

About the Author, Ascension Lifestyle Contributor:

Shana Dieterle, PT, CST-D, is a licensed physical therapist and diplomate certified craniosacral therapist with nearly 40 years of experience in the fields of healthcare, wellness and spiritual growth.

She is available for phone consultations to assist you in finding what is right with you.

Feel free to call at reasonable hours!

(406) 396 5788

www.ShanasHeartofHealing.com

shana@shanasheartofhealing.com