When The Universe Tests You Quotes

There comes a moment in every life when the Universe presents you with an opportunity to rise to your potential. An open door that only requires the heart to walk through, seize it and hang on. The choice is never simple. It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But those who travel this path have always looked back and realized that the test was always about the heart. ...The rest is just practice.

But when I look at you, I just know instinctively, that despite the odds against you and although life will always find a way to test you, someday you’ll have everything you want. Your ending will be a happy one.

From her thighs, she gives you life And how you treat she who gives you life Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator. And from seed to dust There is ONE soul above all others -- That you must always show patience, respect, and trust And this woman is your mother. And when your soul departs your body And your deeds are weighed against the feather There is only one soul who can save yours And this woman is your mother. And when the heart of the universe Asks her hair and mind, Whether you were gentle and kind to her Her heart will be forced to remain silent And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity, Very much like the seaweed in the sea -- It will reveal all that it has heard and seen. This woman whose heart has seen yours, First before anybody else in the world, And whose womb had opened the door For your eyes to experience light and more -- Is your very own MOTHER. So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel, Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish How you treat her is the ultimate test. If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. And always remember, That the queen in the Creator's kingdom, Who sits on the throne of all existence, Is exactly the same as in yours. And her name is, THE DIVINE MOTHER.

I stumbled upon Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 17, following the usual trail of existential candies—Camus, Sartre, Beckett—that unsuspecting teenagers find in the woods. The effect was more like a drug than a philosophy. I was whirled upward—or was it downward?—into a one-man universe, a secret cult demanding that you put a gun to the head of your dearest habits and beliefs. That intoxicating whiff of half-conscious madness; that casually hair-raising evisceration of everything moral, responsible and parentally approved—these waves overwhelmed my adolescent dinghy. And even more than by his ideas—many of which I didn't understand at all, but some of which I perhaps grasped better then than I do now—I was seduced by his prose. At the end of his sentences you could hear an electric crack, like the whip of a steel blade being tested in the air. He might have been the Devil, but he had better lines than God.

But then I think about what I’ve learned here in the last year, and I don’t mean in my classes, but what I’ve learned from watching my friends face their futures and search for their purposes. I’ve learned that a storm isn’t always just bad weather, and a fire can be the start of something new. I’ve found out that there are a lot more shades of gray in this world than I ever knew about. I’ve learned that sometimes, when you’re afraid but you keep on moving forward, that’s the biggest kind of courage there is. And finally, I’ve learned that life isn’t really about failure and success. It’s about being present, in the moment when big things happen, when everything changes, including yourself. So I would tell us, no matter how bright we think our futures are, it doesn’t matter. Whether we go off to some fancy university or stay home and work. That doesn’t define us. Our purpose on this earth is not a single event, an accomplishment we can check off a list. There is no test. No passing or failing. There’s only us, each moment shaping who we are, into what we will become. So I say forget about the future. Pay attention to now. This moment right now. Let go of expectations. Just be. Then you are free to become something great.

On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses. You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon. There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind. The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values. For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible. Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light. While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.

In experiments at Baylor University where people were given Coke and Pepsi in unmarked cups and then hooked up to a brain scanner, the device clearly showed a certain number of them preferred Pepsi while tasting it. When those people were told they were drinking Pepsi, a fraction of them, the ones who had enjoyed Coke all their lives, did something unexpected. The scanner showed their brains scrambling the pleasure signals, dampening them. They then told the experimenter afterward they had preferred Coke in the taste tests.

Know that change is always challenged! When you decide that you want to make a change, it is the way of the universe to throw obstacles in our way. It is like we are being tested to see how serious we really are about what it is we have said! See it for what it is, don't get discouraged & always keep going!

I believe sometimes medical issues just happen--they're not cosmic tests; they're not retribution for all the naughty things you've done over a lifetime. It's not some moral righting of the universe. It's just something going wonky with the wiring...And I think God cries when we're in pain; he cries with us and he supports us. But I also believe he stands back and lets us sort things out. Lets the doctors do their work. Lets your body heal itslef.

Only a few centuries ago, a mere second in cosmic time, we knew nothing of where or when we were. Oblivious to the rest of the cosmos, we inhabited a kind of prison, a tiny universe bounded by a nutshell. How did we escape from the prison? It was the work of generations of searchers who took five simple rules to heart: 1. Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me. 2. Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. 3. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. 4. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment. And perhaps the most important rule of all... 5. Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history -- they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human. Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other.

KINGDOM OF THE WOMB From her thighs, she gives you life And how you treat she who gives you life Shows how much you value the life given to you by the Creator. And from seed to dust There is ONE soul above all others -- That you must always show patience, respect, and trust And this woman is your mother. And when your soul departs your body And your deeds are weighed against the feather There is only one soul who can save yours And this woman is your mother. And when the heart of the universe Asks her hair and mind, Whether you were gentle and kind to her Her heart will be forced to remain silent And her hair will speak freely as a separate entity, Very much like the seaweed in the sea -- It will reveal all that it has heard and seen. This woman whose heart has seen yours, First before anybody else in the world, And whose womb had opened the door For your eyes to experience light and more -- Is your very own MOTHER. So, no matter whether your mother has been cruel, Manipulative, abusive, mentally sick, or simply childish How you treat her is the ultimate test. If she misguides you, forgive her and show her the right way With simple wisdom, gentleness, and kindness. And always remember, That the queen in the Creator's kingdom, Who sits on the throne of all existence, Is exactly the same as in yours. And her name is, THE DIVINE MOTHER.

Knowledge of physical laws can, in some cases, give you the confidence to confront surly people. A few years ago I was having a hot-cocoa nightcap at a dessert shop in Pasadena, California. I had ordered it with whipped cream, of course. When it arrived at the table, I saw no trace of the stuff. After I told the waiter that my cocoa was plain, he asserted I couldn’t see the whipped cream because it sank to the bottom. Since whipped cream has a very low density and floats on all liquids that humans consume, I offered the waiter two possible explanations: either somebody forgot to add the whipped cream to my hot cocoa or the universal laws of physics were different in his restaurant. Unconvinced, he brought over a dollop of whipped cream to test for himself. After bobbing once or twice in my cup, the whipped cream sat up straight and afloat. What better proof do you need of the universality of physical laws?

In answer to modern requests for signs and wonders, Our Lord might say, 'You repeat Satan's temptation, whenever you admire the wonders of science, and forget that I am the Author of the Universe and its science. Your scientists are the proofreaders, but not the authors of the Book of Nature; they can see and examine My handiwork, but they cannot create one atom themselves. You would tempt Me to prove Myself omnipotent by meaningless tests...You tempt Me after you have willfully destroyed your own cities with bombs by shrieking out, "Why does God not stop this war?" You tempt Me, saying that I have no power, unless I show it at your beck and call. This, if you remember, is exactly how Satan tempted Me in the desert. I have never had many followers on the lofty heights of Divine truth, I know; for instance, I have hardly had the intelligentsia. I refuse to perform stunts to win them, for they would not really be won that way. It is only when I am seen on the Cross that I really draw men to Myself; it is by sacrifice, and not by marvels, that I must make My appeal. I must win followers not with test tubes, but with My blood; not with material power, but with love; not with celestial fireworks, but with the right use of reason and free will.

Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's arms,—God made tangible,—what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows.

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change. Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't. A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages. Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities." The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be. Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't. Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy. Everything above may be wrong!

Einstein was filled with good humor and sagacity, both qualities lacking in Gödel, whose intense logic sometimes overwhelmed common sense. This was on glorious display when Gödel decided to become a U.S. citizen in 1947. He took his preparation for the exam very seriously, studied the Constitution carefully, and (as might be expected by the formulator of the incompleteness theory) found what he believed was a logical flaw. There was an internal inconsistency, he insisted, that could allow the entire government to degenerate into tyranny. Concerned, Einstein decided to accompany — or chaperone — Gödel on his visit to Trenton to take the citizenship test, which was to be administered by the same judge who had done so for Einstein. On the drive, he and a third friend tried to distract Gödel and dissuade him from mentioning this perceived flaw, but to no avail. When the judge asked him about the constitution, Gödel launched into his proof that the internal inconsistency made a dictatorship possible. Fortunately, the judge, who by now cherished his connection to Einstein, cut Gödel off. ‘You needn’t go into all that,’ he said, and Gödel’s citizenship was saved.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

Now Van Ness claimed already to have died, more than once, in various other universes. Who can refute that? Is there any proof otherwise? Imagine a slight revision in Nietzsche’s myth of eternal return: not that at history’s end all matter collapses back to the center, Big-Bangs, and starts again identically; but that it starts again with one infinitesimal difference in the action of a single molecule— every time, and an endless number of times. When you die, your consciousness blanks out, but it resumes eons later, when the history of molecules has been revised enough to preclude your death due to those particular circumstances: the bullet hits your brain in this world, but in a later one merely tickles your earlobe. You die in one universe and yet in another go on without a hitch. You don’t mark the intervening ages—subjectively you experience nothing other than almost having died. But in fact you’ve edged into another kingdom, ruled by another king, engaging other potentialities. If this were true, the person who understood it would have conquered death. Would be invulnerable. Would be the Superman. There’s a dizzying thrill in a philosophy that can only be tested by suicide— and then never proven, only tested again by another attempt. And the person embarked on that series of tests, treading that trail of lives as if from boulder to boulder across the river of time— no, out into the burning ocean of eternity— what a mutant! Some new genesis, like a pale, poisonous daisy.

Napping is sleep, too. In a series of experiments over the past decade, Sara Mednick of the University of California, San Diego, has found that naps of an hour to an hour and half often contain slow-wave deep sleep and REM. People who study in the morning—whether it’s words or pattern recognition games, straight retention or comprehension of deeper structure—do about 30 percent better on an evening test if they’ve had an hour-long nap than if they haven’t. “It’s changed the way I work, doing these studies,” Mednick told me. “It’s changed the way I live. With naps of an hour to an hour and half, we’ve found in some experiments that you get close to the same benefits in learning consolidation that you would from a full eighthour night’s sleep.

All of us believe you belong here,” I’d said to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson girls as they sat, many of them looking a little awestruck, in the Gothic old-world dining hall at Oxford, surrounded by university professors and students who’d come out for the day to mentor them. I said something similar anytime we had kids visit the White House—teens we invited from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; children from local schools who showed up to work in the garden; high schoolers who came for our career days and workshops in fashion, music, and poetry; even kids I only got to give a quick but emphatic hug to in a rope line. The message was always the same. You belong. You matter. I think highly of you. An economist from a British university would later put out a study that looked at the test performances of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson students, finding that their overall scores jumped significantly after I’d started connecting with them—the equivalent of moving from a C average to an A. Any credit for improvement really belonged to the girls, their teachers, and the daily work they did together, but it also affirmed the idea that kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in. I understood that there was power in showing children my regard.

Do not be afraid of your difficulties. Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of adversity, it becomes the stepping-stone to a splendid opportunity.” When I first read this, I could not stop smiling. This beautiful passage, which was written over a hundred years ago, supported something that I had intuitively known to be true: That when we overcome tests from the universe, we are rewarded with new opportunity.

We need a test!" I jump up out of the chair and pat my body down. "Where's my wallet?" "In your pocket," she replies dryly. "I'll be back!" I race out of the house and drive the short distance between Dom's estate and the nearest village. After I find a drug store and buy one of each kind of pregnancy test they have, I race back to my hopefully pregnant wife. "That was fast," she murmurs with a grin. She was still sitting in the lounge chair, sipping her coffee. "Should you be drinking coffee?" I ask. "Let's not get crazy," she responds. I need coffee. "I got one of each kind," I announce and opened the bag, sending small white and blue boxes scattering. "Uh, Caleb, we only need one." "What if we can't figure them out?" I ask and pick one up to examine it. "All of the instructions are in Italian." She laughs hysterically and then stands, wiping her eyes. "It's not funny." "Yes, it is. Pregnancy tests are pretty universal, Caleb. You pee on it and a line either appears or it doesn't." She rubs my arm sweetly and kisses my shoulder before plucking the box out of my fingers. "I'll be back." "I'm coming with you." I begin to follow her but she turns quickly with her hands out to stop me. "Oh no, you aren't. You are not going to watch me pee on this stick." I scowled down at her and cross my arms over my chest. "I've helped you bathe and dress and every other damn thing when you were hurt. I can handle watching you pee." "Absolutely not." She shakes her head but then leans in and kisses my chin. "But thank you for helping me when I was hurt." She turns and runs for the bathroom and it feels like an eternity before she comes back out, white stick in her hand. "Well?" I ask. "It takes about three minutes, babe." She sits in the lounge chair and stares out over the vineyard.

Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians close their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant: He was being stupid. 'Would-would you mind telling me,' he said to the guide, much deflated, 'what was so stupid about that?' 'We know how the Universe ends,' said the guide, 'and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets wiped out, too.' 'How-how does the Universe end?' said Billy. 'We blow it up, experimenting with new fuels for our flying saucers. A Tralfamadorian test pilot presses a starter button, and the whole Universe disappears.' So it goes.

Making money in the markets is tough. The brilliant trader and investor Bernard Baruch put it well when he said, “If you are ready to give up everything else and study the whole history and background of the market and all principal companies whose stocks are on the board as carefully as a medical student studies anatomy—if you can do all that and in addition you have the cool nerves of a gambler, the sixth sense of a clairvoyant and the courage of a lion, you have a ghost of a chance.” In retrospect, the mistakes that led to my crash seemed embarrassingly obvious. First, I had been wildly overconfident and had let my emotions get the better of me. I learned (again) that no matter how much I knew and how hard I worked, I could never be certain enough to proclaim things like what I’d said on Wall $ treet Week: “There’ll be no soft landing. I can say that with absolute certainty, because I know how markets work.” I am still shocked and embarrassed by how arrogant I was. Second, I again saw the value of studying history. What had happened, after all, was “another one of those.” I should have realized that debts denominated in one’s own currency can be successfully restructured with the government’s help, and that when central banks simultaneously provide stimulus (as they did in March 1932, at the low point of the Great Depression, and as they did again in 1982), inflation and deflation can be balanced against each other. As in 1971, I had failed to recognize the lessons of history. Realizing that led me to try to make sense of all movements in all major economies and markets going back a hundred years and to come up with carefully tested decision-making principles that are timeless and universal. Third, I was reminded of how difficult it is to time markets. My long-term estimates of equilibrium levels were not reliable enough to bet on; too many things could happen between the time I placed my bets and the time (if ever) that my estimates were reached. Staring at these failings, I realized that if I was going to move forward without a high likelihood of getting whacked again, I would have to look at myself objectively and change—starting by learning a better way of handling the natural aggressiveness I’ve always shown in going after what I wanted. Imagine that in order to have a great life you have to cross a dangerous jungle. You can stay safe where you are and have an ordinary life, or you can risk crossing the jungle to have a terrific life. How would you approach that choice? Take a moment to think about it because it is the sort of choice that, in one form or another, we all have to make.

In a blind taste test at the University of Bordeaux, students in the faculty of enology were given two glasses of wine, one red and one white. The wines were actually identical except that one had been made a rich red with an odorless and flavorless additive. The students without exception listed entirely different qualities for the two wines. That wasn’t because they were inexperienced or naive. It was because their sight led them to have entirely different expectations, and this powerfully influenced what they sensed when they took a sip from either glass. In exactly the same way, if an orange-flavored drink is colored red, you cannot help but taste it as cherry.

the sweet and wild rebellion in you… the poetry in those eyes… those dreamer's eyes learning to see in the dark. and all that beautiful madness tangled in your hair. toes dangling over the edge, testing a new universe. it's ok to take small steps and deep breaths, love… but also, let yourself start to take up your space. and don't you dare say you're sorry when you do. and you'll be rejected for these wings, these fires, for this sweet and wild rebellion in you. but these are such. beautiful. things. so keep choosing you… because nothing will matter if you reject you. if it needs you small, don't let it hold you anymore. don't let anything that needs you ordinary tame you ever again.

Three years ago, researchers at Purdue University began monitoring every hit sustained by two high school teams. The goal was to study the effect of concussions. But when researchers administered cognitive tests to players who had never been concussed, hoping to set up a control group, they discovered that these teens showed diminished brain function as well. As the season wore on, their cognitive abilities plummeted. In some cases, brain activity in the frontal lobes—the region responsible for reasoning—nearly disappeared by season’s end. "You have the classic stereotype of the dumb jock and I think the real issue is that’s not how they start out," explained Thomas Talavage, one of the professors of the study. "We actually create that individual.

Every year before the Days of Awe, the Ba-al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, held a competition to see who would blow the shofar for him on Rosh Hashanah. Now if you wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov, not only did you have to blow the shofar like a virtuoso, but you also had to learn an elaborate system of kavanot — secret prayers that were said just before you blew the shofar to direct the shofar blasts and to see that they had the proper effect in the supernal realms. All the prospective shofar blowers practiced these kavanot for months. They were difficult and complex. There was one fellow who wanted to blow the shofar for the Ba-al Shem Tov so badly that he had been practicing these kavanot for years. But when his time came to audition before the Ba-al Shem, he realized that nothing he had done had prepared him adequately for the experience of standing before this great and holy man, and he choked. His mind froze completely. He couldn’t remember one of the kavanot he had practiced for all those years. He couldn’t even remember what he was supposed to be doing at all. He just stood before the Ba-al Shem in utter silence, and then, when he realized how egregiously — how utterly — he had failed this great test, his heart just broke in two and he began to weep, sobbing loudly, his shoulders heaving and his whole body wracking as he wept. All right, you’re hired, the Ba-al Shem said. But I don’t understand, the man said. I failed the test completely. I couldn’t even remember one kavanah. So the Ba-al Shem explained with the following parable: In the palace of the King, there are many secret chambers, and there are secret keys for each chamber, but one key unlocks them all, and that key is the ax. The King is the Lord of the Universe, the Ba-al Shem explained. The palace is the House of God. The secret chambers are the sefirot, the ascending spiritual realms that bring us closer and closer to God when we perform commandments such as blowing the shofar with the proper intention, and the secret keys are the kavanot. And the ax — the key that opens every chamber and brings us directly into the presence of the King, where he may be — the ax is the broken heart, for as it says in the Psalms, “God is close to the brokenhearted.

Before leading us onto the path of success and glory, the Universe tests how serious we are to pursue our dream...how passionate we are. And, it has a very interesting way to find out. Example, after much cajoling and inspiration, when we start our fitness regime, exercising, yoga, etc, our body starts aching on 2nd or 3rd day...so much so that we find it difficult to walk...and as a result...we stop our fitness regime. So, nature filters us out. Then there is the 2nd level of filtering. Within 10-15 days of embarking our fitness regime, we come across a situation when we are required to travel or attend a function or report at workplace early or work till late in the evening. After this gap of 3-4 days, many people don’t resume exercising. When you want to pursue your dreams...you will be deprived of resources and will find yourself surrounded by naysayers and negative thinkers. Result: You stop pursuing your dreams. The key is – “Never ever give up”. Believe in Yourself. Let the Universe know that you will pursue your dream and goal, no matter what.

What if every dream you ever dreamt was a part of a dream that you're living? To my Smiling Soul, If there is one thing I have learnt over Time that stands solid and can pass the test of Time in every Universe then that is the Strength of our Soul when we live through the Smile of our Heart. It doesn't matter, how much time goes by, how many detours or losses fell on your path, as long as you stand your ground, as long as you don't let regret or failure to get the better of you, you win, you walk with slow but steady steps knowing there is someone watching over you, holding onto integrity and grace. You remember to bury your pain, your loss, your sorrow and plant a seed of Love instead with a Hope that someday, Somewhere in some corner of this Universe you will find your due, something that only He alone can give you, something that is yours, entirely yours. Until then, keep reminding the world that a Unicorn doesn't need to be a lion or a wolf in the wilderness of Life. - your Smiling Dream To every Dreamer, keep weaving that halo of dream for you never know where you might end up in the Smile of Time, because Life knows exactly the Dream that Life weaves around us. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

If you can’t make a good prediction, it is very often harmful to pretend that you can. I suspect that epidemiologists, and others in the medical community, understand this because of their adherence to the Hippocratic oath. Primum non nocere: First, do no harm. Much of the most thoughtful work on the use and abuse of statistical models and the proper role of prediction comes from people in the medical profession.88 That is not to say there is nothing on the line when an economist makes a prediction, or a seismologist does. But because of medicine’s intimate connection with life and death, doctors tend to be appropriately cautious. In their field, stupid models kill people. It has a sobering effect. There is something more to be said, however, about Chip Macal’s idea of “modeling for insights.” The philosophy of this book is that prediction is as much a means as an end. Prediction serves a very central role in hypothesis testing, for instance, and therefore in all of science.89 As the statistician George E. P. Box wrote, “All models are wrong, but some models are useful.”90 What he meant by that is that all models are simplifications of the universe, as they must necessarily be. As another mathematician said, “The best model of a cat is a cat.”91 Everything else is leaving out some sort of detail. How pertinent that detail might be will depend on exactly what problem we’re trying to solve and on how precise an answer we require.

Buffett declared the best inflation hedge is a company with a wonderful product that requires little capital to grow. As a test, he invited each of us to look at our own earning ability. In inflation, your compensation can go up without any additional investment. As a business example, Buffett noted that when See’s Candy was purchased in 1971, it had the revenues of $25 million and sold 16 million pounds of candy annually with $9 million in tangible assets. Today, See’s sells $300 million of candy with $40 million of tangible assets. Berkshire needed to invest only $31 million to generate a more than 10-fold increase in revenues. In aggregate, Buffett noted that Berkshire has earned $1.5 billion in profits at See’s over the years. See’s inventory turns fast, has no receivables and has little fixed investment – a perfect inflation hedge. Buffett allowed that if you have tons of receivables and inventory, that’s a lousy business in inflation. The railroad and MidAmerican Energy both have these undesirable characteristics, but that is offset by their utility to the economy and subsequent allowable returns. Buffett rued that there simply aren’t enough “See’s Candys” to buy. Buffett added that being an investor has made him a better businessman and that being a businessman has made him a better investor.(125) Munger noted that they didn’t always know this inflation-business element, which shows how continuous learning is so important.

On the other hand, some of the family’s impatience with the public is justified. When I use Federal Express, I accept as a condition of business that its standardized forms must be filled out in printed letters. An e-mail address off by a single character goes nowhere. Transposing two digits in a phone number gets me somebody speaking heatedly in Portuguese. Electronic media tell you instantly when you’ve made an error; with the post office, you have to wait. Haven’t we all at some point tested its humanity? I send mail to friends in Upper Molar, New York (they live in Upper Nyack), and expect a stranger to laugh and deliver it in forty-eight hours. More often than not, the stranger does. With its mission of universal service, the Postal Service is like an urban emergency room contractually obligated to accept every sore throat, pregnancy, and demented parent that comes its way. You may have to wait for hours in a dimly lit corridor. The staff may be short-tempered and dilatory. But eventually you will get treated. In the Central Post Office’s Nixie unit—where mail arrives that has been illegibly or incorrectly addressed—I see street numbers in the seventy thousands; impossible pairings of zip codes and streets; addresses without a name, without a street, without a city; addresses that consist of the description of a building; addresses written in water-based ink that rain has blurred. Skilled Nixie clerks study the orphans one at a time. Either they find a home for them or they apply that most expressive of postal markings, the vermilion finger of accusation that lays the blame squarely on you, the sender.

can be horribly fallible, and is over-rated in courts of law. Psychological experiments have given us some stunning demonstrations, which should worry any jurist inclined to give superior weight to ‘eye-witness’ evidence. A famous example was prepared by Professor Daniel J. Simons at the University of Illinois. Half a dozen young people standing in a circle were filmed for 25 seconds tossing a pair of basketballs to each other, and we, the experimental subjects, watch the film. The players weave in and out of the circle and change places as they pass and bounce the balls, so the scene is quite actively complicated. Before being shown the film, we are told that we have a task to perform, to test our powers of observation. We have to count the total number of times balls are passed from person to person. At the end of the test, the counts are duly written down, but – little does the audience know – this is not the real test! After showing the film and collecting the counts, the experimenter drops his bombshell. ‘And how many of you saw the gorilla?’ The majority of the audience looks baffled: blank. The experimenter then replays the film, but this time tells the audience to watch in a relaxed fashion without trying to count anything. Amazingly, nine seconds into the film, a man in a gorilla suit strolls nonchalantly to the centre of the circle of players, pauses to face the camera, thumps his chest as if in belligerent contempt for eye-witness evidence, and then strolls off with the same insouciance as before (see colour page 8). He is there in full view for nine whole seconds – more than one-third of the film – and yet the majority of the witnesses never see him. They would swear an oath in a court of law that no man in a gorilla suit was present, and they would swear that they had been watching with more than usually acute concentration for the whole 25 seconds, precisely because they were counting ball-passes. Many experiments along these lines have been performed, with similar results, and with similar reactions of stupefied disbelief when the audience is finally shown the truth. Eye-witness testimony, ‘actual observation’, ‘a datum of experience’ – all are, or at least can be, hopelessly unreliable. It is, of course, exactly this unreliability among observers that stage conjurors exploit with their techniques of deliberate distraction.

Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.

A famous British writer is revealed to be the author of an obscure mystery novel. An immigrant is granted asylum when authorities verify he wrote anonymous articles critical of his home country. And a man is convicted of murder when he’s connected to messages painted at the crime scene. The common element in these seemingly disparate cases is “forensic linguistics”—an investigative technique that helps experts determine authorship by identifying quirks in a writer’s style. Advances in computer technology can now parse text with ever-finer accuracy. Consider the recent outing of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as the writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling , a crime novel she published under the pen name Robert Galbraith. England’s Sunday Times , responding to an anonymous tip that Rowling was the book’s real author, hired Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola to analyze the text of Cuckoo , using software that he had spent over a decade refining. One of Juola’s tests examined sequences of adjacent words, while another zoomed in on sequences of characters; a third test tallied the most common words, while a fourth examined the author’s preference for long or short words. Juola wound up with a linguistic fingerprint—hard data on the author’s stylistic quirks. He then ran the same tests on four other books: The Casual Vacancy , Rowling’s first post-Harry Potter novel, plus three stylistically similar crime novels by other female writers. Juola concluded that Rowling was the most likely author of The Cuckoo’s Calling , since she was the only one whose writing style showed up as the closest or second-closest match in each of the tests. After consulting an Oxford linguist and receiving a concurring opinion, the newspaper confronted Rowling, who confessed. Juola completed his analysis in about half an hour. By contrast, in the early 1960s, it had taken a team of two statisticians—using what was then a state-of-the-art, high-speed computer at MIT—three years to complete a project to reveal who wrote 12 unsigned Federalist Papers. Robert Leonard, who heads the forensic linguistics program at Hofstra University, has also made a career out of determining authorship. Certified to serve as an expert witness in 13 states, he has presented evidence in cases such as that of Christopher Coleman, who was arrested in 2009 for murdering his family in Waterloo, Illinois. Leonard testified that Coleman’s writing style matched threats spray-painted at his family’s home (photo, left). Coleman was convicted and is serving a life sentence. Since forensic linguists deal in probabilities, not certainties, it is all the more essential to further refine this field of study, experts say. “There have been cases where it was my impression that the evidence on which people were freed or convicted was iffy in one way or another,” says Edward Finegan, president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. Vanderbilt law professor Edward Cheng, an expert on the reliability of forensic evidence, says that linguistic analysis is best used when only a handful of people could have written a given text. As forensic linguistics continues to make headlines, criminals may realize the importance of choosing their words carefully. And some worry that software also can be used to obscure distinctive written styles. “Anything that you can identify to analyze,” says Juola, “I can identify and try to hide.

It takes a lot of courage to choose to do nothing when you aren’t certain of the outcome. We believe this is an important lesson to impart to all University students and one many students find almost impossible to accept. I’m happy to learn that most on this team are more . . . open-minded.

General Kennedy raised his hand. “Once we’ve destroyed these pigs, are we going to get our payback for their crucifixions?” he asked. The Marine commanders, who were beyond enraged, jumped in. “We found over 153 Marines crucified when we re-secured the Ben-Gurion University campus near Negev the other day,” blurted General Peeler, eyes burning with rage. “I know everyone wants payback for the crucifixions, and I assure you we will have it. Once the battlefields have been secured and the grave registration units move in, they are going to bury the IR forces in mass graves. They will do their best to identify the IR soldiers so that they can be properly marked. Prior to the graves being filled in, they have been instructed to cover all the bodies in pig’s blood, which the Germans and Brits have supplied. We have documented over 5,000 crucifixions of US Forces, so we will bury their dead in pig’s blood in retaliation. They believe that this will prevent them from entering Paradise, so we will test that theory.” A few laughs, snickers and whoops could be heard, mostly from the NCO’s. This was a tactic used by General “Black Jack” Pershing in the Philippines prior to World War One. The US had taken possession of the Philippines during the Spanish American War of 1898. In 1911, a Muslim uprising took place in Mindanao, and General Pershing had the insurgents shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and then their bodies were buried with the guts of the pig. This discouraged future Muslim attacks by future Jihadis because they believed they would be prevented from entering Paradise if they were buried with the blood from a pig and its guts. General Gardner’s staff wanted to take a page from history and see if it would make a difference in this war--any small advantage that could be gained was something worth pursuing, no matter how strange or unconventional it may be.

Post-Modernism (n.): That period that comes between Modernism (q.v.) and Post-Post-Modernism. Modernists think that Science makes it possible for us to know everything perfectly and objectively, and that therefore all claims to know anything that can't be put into a test tube or under a microscope are illusory. Post-Modernists think that Modernism was wrong and that therefore we can't know anything at all. This is considered a great advance in human knowledge. Modernists think that anyone (except a Scientist) who makes a universal truth claim is a great fool; Post-Modernists think that anyone at all who makes a universal truth claim is a sly devil who is trying to gain power over you. Both are relativists, but while the Modernist is absolutely relative, the Post-Modernist is relatively more relative. The Post-Modernist also uses more jargon, like "metanarrative," "totalizing discourse," "sexual politics," and "hegemonic power structure," words which, when fully "deconstructed," all basically mean "My, look how devilishly clever and up to date I am!

Confirmation bias is another of the psychological quirks associated with cognitive dissonance. The best way to see its effects is to consider the following sequence of numbers: 2, 4, 6. Suppose that you have to discover the underlying pattern in this sequence. Suppose, further, that you are given an opportunity to propose alternative sets of three numbers to explore the possibilities. Most people playing this game come up with a hypothesis pretty quickly. They guess, for example, that the underlying pattern is “even numbers ascending sequentially.” There are other possibilities, of course. The pattern might just be “even numbers.” Or “the third number is the sum of the first two.” And so on. The key question is, How do you establish whether your initial hunch is right? Most people simply try to confirm their hypothesis. So, if they think the pattern is “even numbers ascending sequentially,” they will propose “10, 12, 14” and when this is confirmed, they will propose “100, 102, 104.” After three such tests most people are pretty certain that they have found the answer. And yet they may be wrong. If the pattern is actually “any ascending numbers,” their guesses will not help them. Had they used a different strategy, on the other hand, attempting to falsify their hypothesis rather than confirm it, they would have discovered this far quicker. If they had, say, proposed 4, 6, 11 (fits the pattern), they would have found that their initial hunch was wrong. If they had followed up with, say, 5, 2, 1, (which doesn’t fit), they would now be getting pretty warm. As Paul Schoemaker, research director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, puts it: The pattern is rarely uncovered unless subjects are willing to make mistakes—that is, to test numbers that violate their belief. Instead most people get stuck in a narrow and wrong hypothesis, as often happens in real life, such that their only way out is to make a mistake that turns out not to be a mistake after all. Sometimes, committing errors is not just the fastest way to the correct answer; it’s the only way.

Sometimes what’s exceptional about a sign is not the sign itself, but its timing. Your favorite pick-me-up song plays on the radio just when you’re feeling especially down. The number 100 appears on your Starbucks receipt just when you’re worrying about flunking a test. The answer to a crossword puzzle clue is randomly spoken by someone on TV just when you’re about to give up on it. All of these simple, surprising occurrences can be signs from the Other Side, because their timing makes us feel connected to the world in a way we can’t quite explain—as if all we have to do is release our feelings of fear and doubt into the universe, and the universe will respond with playful, wonderful reassurances.

Here are a few notable things that can spark inflammation and depress the function of your liver: Alcohol overload—This is relatively well-known. Your liver is largely responsible for metabolizing alcohol, and drinking too much liquid courage can send your liver running to cry in a corner somewhere. Carbohydrate bombardment—Starches and sugar have the fastest ability to drive up blood glucose, liver glycogen, and liver fat storage (compared to their protein and fat macronutrient counterparts). Bringing in too many carbs, too often, can elicit a wildfire of fat accumulation. In fact, one of the most effective treatments for reversing NAFLD is reducing the intake of carbohydrates. A recent study conducted at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and published in the journal Cell Metabolism had overweight test subjects with high levels of liver fat reduce their ratio of carbohydrate intake (without reducing calories!). After a short two-week study period the subjects showed “rapid and dramatic” reductions of liver fat and other cardiometabolic risk factors. Too many medications—Your liver is the top doc in charge of your body’s drug metabolism. When you hear about drug side effects on commercials, they are really a direct effect of how your liver is able to handle them. The goal is to work on your lifestyle factors so that you can be on as few medications as possible along with the help of your physician. Your liver will do its best to support you either way, but it will definitely feel happier without the additional burden. Too many supplements—There are several wonderful supplements that can be helpful for your health, but becoming an overzealous natural pill-popper might not be good for you either. In a program funded by the National Institutes of Health, it was found that liver injuries linked to supplement use jumped from 7 percent to 20 percent of all medication/supplement-induced injuries in just a ten-year time span. Again, this is not to say that the right supplements can’t be great for you. This merely points to the fact that your liver is also responsible for metabolism of all of the supplements you take as well. And popping a couple dozen different supplements each day can be a lot for your liver to handle. Plus, the supplement industry is largely unregulated, and the additives, fillers, and other questionable ingredients could add to the burden. Do your homework on where you get your supplements from, avoid taking too many, and focus on food first to meet your nutritional needs. Toxicants—According to researchers at the University of Louisville, more than 300 environmental chemicals, mostly pesticides, have been linked to fatty liver disease. Your liver is largely responsible for handling the weight of the toxicants (most of them newly invented) that we’re exposed to in our world today. Pesticides are inherently meant to be deadly, but just to small organisms (like pests), though it seems to be missed that you are actually made of small organisms, too (bacteria

Trance channelers go into trancelike states and believe that they use their bodies as a “vehicle” for a nonphysical “being” to incorporate into and communicate directly via speaking, writing, or movement. My grandmother could withdraw the control of her body and allow another “being” to control it. She was not conscious of what was happening with her body when in a trance. She described it as stepping aside and going to sleep within herself while another “being” took her spirit’s place; it took over her voice and her movements. And even though she was “sleeping,” she felt totally safe. My mother is also a trance channeler. My uncle was tested for psychokinetic skills at John F. Kennedy University and channeled a book through automatic writing.1 Automatic writing is a type of channeling where a person handwrites meaningful statements, but without the writer consciously premeditating the content of what is produced.

Though energy fields are invisible, they shape matter. Albert Einstein said that, “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” Many studies show that human beings are influenced by the energy fields of others. In a series of 148 1-minute trials involving 25 people, trained volunteers going into heart coherence were able to induce coherence in test subjects at a distance. They didn’t have to touch their targets to produce the effect. Their energy fields were sufficient. When you are in a heart coherent state, your heart radiates a coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment around you. This field is detectable by a magnetometer several meters away. When other people enter that coherent energy field, their heart coherence increases too, producing a group field effect. Not only are we affected by the fields of other people; we’re affected by the energies of the planet and solar system. A remarkable series of experiments, conducted by a research team led by Rollin McCraty, director of research at the HeartMath Institute, has linked individual human energy to solar cycles. McCraty and his colleagues track solar activity using large magnetometers placed at strategic locations on the earth’s surface. Solar flares affect the electromagnetic fields of the planet. The researchers compare the ebbs and flows of solar energy with the heart coherence readings of trained volunteers. They have found that when people are in heart coherence, their electromagnetic patterns track those of the solar system. 8.15. The heart coherence rhythms of a volunteer compared to solar activity over the course of a month. A later study of 16 participants over 5 months found a similar effect. McCraty writes: “A growing body of evidence suggests that an energetic field is formed among individuals in groups through which communication among all the group members occurs simultaneously. In other words, there is an actual ‘group field’ that connects all the members” together. The results of this research confirm a hypothesis McCraty and I discussed at a conference when I was writing Mind to Matter: Not only are these heart-coherent people in sync with large-scale global cycles, they’re also in sync with each other. McCraty continues, “We’re all like little cells in the bigger Earth brain—sharing information at a subtle, unseen level that exists between all living systems, not just humans, but animals, trees, and so on.” When we use selective attention to tune ourselves to positive coherent energy, we participate in the group energy field of other human beings doing the same. We may also resonate in phase with coherent planetary and universal fields. 8.16. The brain functions as receiver of information from the field. The Brain’s Ability to Detect Fields The idea of invisible energy fields has always been difficult for many scientists to swallow. Around 1900, when Dutch physician Willem Einthoven proposed that the human heart had an energy field, he was ridiculed. He built progressively more sensitive galvanometers to detect it, and he was eventually successful.

About the Bacharach Leadership Group: Training for Pragmatic Leadership™ “Vision without execution is hallucination.”—Thomas Edison The litmus test of pragmatic leadership is results. The Bacharach Leadership Group (BLG) focuses on the skills necessary to lead and move agendas. Whether in corporations, nonprofits, universities, or entrepreneurial start-ups, BLG instructors train leaders in the core competencies necessary to execute change and innovation. At all levels of the organization, leaders must master ideation skills for innovation, political skills for moving change, negotiation skills for building support, coaching skills for engagement, and team leadership skills for going the distance. The BLG approach: 1. ASSESSMENT BLG will assess your organizational challenges and leadership needs. 2. ALIGNMENT BLG will align its training solutions with your organization’s challenges and culture. 3. TRAINING BLG training includes options for mixed-modality delivery, interactive activities, and collaboration with an emphasis on application. 4. OWNERSHIP BLG provides continuous follow-up, access to the exclusive BLG mobile apps library, and coaching. Whether delivering a complete leadership academy or a specific program or workshop, BLG will partner with you to get the results you need. To keep up to date with the BLG perspective, visit blg-lead.com or contact us at info@blg-lead.com.

FIELD EFFECTS Emotional contagion is just one explanation for the growth of meditation. Another is field effects. Everything begins as energy, then works its way into matter. Though energy fields are invisible, they shape matter. Albert Einstein said that, “The field is the sole governing agency of the particle.” Many studies show that human beings are influenced by the energy fields of others. In a series of 148 1-minute trials involving 25 people, trained volunteers going into heart coherence were able to induce coherence in test subjects at a distance. They didn’t have to touch their targets to produce the effect. Their energy fields were sufficient. When you are in a heart coherent state, your heart radiates a coherent electromagnetic signal into the environment around you. This field is detectable by a magnetometer several meters away. When other people enter that coherent energy field, their heart coherence increases too, producing a group field effect. Not only are we affected by the fields of other people; we’re affected by the energies of the planet and solar system. A remarkable series of experiments, conducted by a research team led by Rollin McCraty, director of research at the HeartMath Institute, has linked individual human energy to solar cycles. McCraty and his colleagues track solar activity using large magnetometers placed at strategic locations on the earth’s surface. Solar flares affect the electromagnetic fields of the planet. The researchers compare the ebbs and flows of solar energy with the heart coherence readings of trained volunteers. They have found that when people are in heart coherence, their electromagnetic patterns track those of the solar system. 8.15. The heart coherence rhythms of a volunteer compared to solar activity over the course of a month. A later study of 16 participants over 5 months found a similar effect. McCraty writes: “A growing body of evidence suggests that an energetic field is formed among individuals in groups through which communication among all the group members occurs simultaneously. In other words, there is an actual ‘group field’ that connects all the members” together. The results of this research confirm a hypothesis McCraty and I discussed at a conference when I was writing Mind to Matter: Not only are these heart-coherent people in sync with large-scale global cycles, they’re also in sync with each other. McCraty continues, “We’re all like little cells in the bigger Earth brain—sharing information at a subtle, unseen level that exists between all living systems, not just humans, but animals, trees, and so on.” When we use selective attention to tune ourselves to positive coherent energy, we participate in the group energy field of other human beings doing the same. We may also resonate in phase with coherent planetary and universal fields. 8.16. The brain functions as receiver of information from the field. The Brain’s Ability to Detect Fields The idea of invisible energy fields has always been difficult for many scientists to swallow. Around 1900, when Dutch physician Willem Einthoven proposed that the human heart had an energy field, he was ridiculed. He built progressively more sensitive galvanometers to detect it, and he was eventually successful.

Heartbreak is the universe's way of giving you a vision test! Sure, they sting like crazy, but they also come with a side of 20/20 clarity. It's like life's saying, "Hey, I'm breaking your heart, but I'm also giving you some serious insight." So, when love decides to play rough, grab your popcorn because you're about to get a seat to a masterclass in self-discovery. Who knew heartbreak could be so enlightening? It's like getting a crash course in emotional intelligence with a side of "ouch.

As much as we hate them, tantrums are very much a part of almost every child’s development. As soon as children are old enough to hold an idea in their head, that is, to remember what it was they wanted, they are old enough to have a tantrum about not getting it. Tantrums can begin as early as six months, but you don’t usually see the classic tantrum until the child is around fifteen to eighteen months old. When they end is a bit less predictable, as that variable has to do with your child’s development and with you, but they usually begin to ease up after three or three and a half years, and they certainly diminish in frequency. What causes a tantrum? Usually it is due to frustration or anger. In their mission to learn about the world, test limits, try out their autonomy, and be in control, young children will be thwarted at every turn. Their frustration level is certainly exacerbated by their lack of language skills and their inability to make things work the way they want. Tantrums are completely normal. And they really do make sense when you keep the young child’s agenda in mind: I know what I want. Yesterday at the birthday party I had ice cream. It was great. I want it again…now. You explain why ice cream is not a choice, and he has a screaming fit. But he hasn’t forgotten, and an hour later he tries again. Yes. Ice cream. That’s what I want. And each time he asks, you thwart his desire, over and over again, until he is exhausted and totally frustrated. Here comes the tantrum. It is universally accepted that the worst time of day is from around 5:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M. or so. Many a parent complains about her child’s behavior being particularly challenging then. Your house becomes a “whinery.” I call it the “Piranha Hour”—that’s when mothers want to eat their young! At the end of the day, everyone in the family is at his worst. Your children have held it together all day, either at school or home, accepting various limits and basically doing what is expected of them. But this can only go on for so long, and there comes a boiling point. The limit testing, the sibling fighting, the back talk has to come out sometime. At the end of the day, it’s game over. Get ready, here it comes. You too have held it together all day long.

My own feminist revolution evolved slowly, and traveled the world with me. To this day I have no idea what dissident professor or librarian placed feminist tests on the bookshelves at the university library in Jeddah, but I found them there. They filled me with terror. I understood they were pulling at a thread that would unravel everything. Now that I am older, I can see that feeling terrified is how you recognize what you need. Terror encourages you to jump, even when you don't know if you will ever land.

An unusually clear statement of the secular view of evil and suffering is made by Richard Dawkins in his book "River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life"- He writes: “The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation....In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.” This is a complete departure from every other cultural view of suffering. Each one sees evil as having some purpose as a punishment, or a test, or an opportunity. But in Dawkin's view, the reason people struggle so mightily in the face of suffering is because they will not accept that it never has any purpose. It is senseless, neither bad nor good- because categories such as good and evil are meaningless in the universe we live in. "We humans have purpose on the brain," he argues. "Show us almost any object or process and it is hard for us to resist the 'Why' question...It is an almost universal delusion...The old temptation comes back with a vengeance when tragedy strikes..."Why oh why, did the cancer/earthquake/hurricane have to strike my child?" But he argues that this agony happens because "we cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous-indifferent to all suffering, lacking purpose....DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker Behind “The Exciting Story of Cuba” It was on a rainy evening in January of 2013, after Captain Hank and his wife Ursula returned by ship from a cruise in the Mediterranean, that Captain Hank was pondering on how to market his book, Seawater One. Some years prior he had published the book “Suppressed I Rise.” But lacking a good marketing plan the book floundered. Locally it was well received and the newspapers gave it great reviews, but Ursula was battling allergies and, unfortunately, the timing was off, as was the economy. Captain Hank has the ability to see sunshine when it’s raining and he’s not one easily deterred. Perhaps the timing was off for a novel or a textbook, like the Scramble Book he wrote years before computers made the scene. The history of West Africa was an option, however such a book would have limited public interest and besides, he had written a section regarding this topic for the second Seawater book. No, what he was embarking on would have to be steeped in history and be intertwined with true-life adventures that people could identify with. Out of the blue, his friend Jorge suggested that he write about Cuba. “You were there prior to the Revolution when Fidel Castro was in jail,” he ventured. Laughing, Captain Hank told a story of Mardi Gras in Havana. “Half of the Miami Police Department was there and the Coca-Cola cost more than the rum. Havana was one hell of a place!” Hank said. “I’ll tell you what I could do. I could write a pamphlet about the history of the island. It doesn’t have to be very long… 25 to 30 pages would do it.” His idea was to test the waters for public interest and then later add it to his book Seawater One. Writing is a passion surpassed only by his love for telling stories. It is true that Captain Hank had visited Cuba prior to the Revolution, but back then he was interested more in the beauty of the Latino girls than the history or politics of the country. “You don’t have to be Greek to appreciate Greek history,” Hank once said. “History is not owned solely by historians. It is a part of everyone’s heritage.” And so it was that he started to write about Cuba. When asked about why he wasn’t footnoting his work, he replied that the pamphlet, which grew into a book over 600 pages long, was a book for the people. “I’m not writing this to be a history book or an academic paper. I’m writing this book, so that by knowing Cuba’s past, people would understand it’s present.” He added that unless you lived it, you got it from somewhere else anyway, and footnoting just identifies where it came from. Aside from having been a ship’s captain and harbor pilot, Captain Hank was a high school math and science teacher and was once awarded the status of “Teacher of the Month” by the Connecticut State Board of Education. He has done extensive graduate work, was a union leader and the attendance officer at a vocational technical school. He was also an officer in the Naval Reserve and an officer in the U.S. Army for a total of over 40 years. He once said that “Life is to be lived,” and he certainly has. Active with Military Intelligence he returned to Europe, and when I asked what he did there, he jokingly said that if he had told me he would have to kill me. The Exciting Story of Cuba has the exhilaration of a novel. It is packed full of interesting details and, with the normalizing of the United States and Cuba, it belongs on everyone’s bookshelf, or at least in the bathroom if that’s where you do your reading. Captain Hank is not someone you can hold down and after having read a Proof Copy I know that it will be universally received as the book to go to, if you want to know anything about Cuba! Excerpts from a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Peter Rommel, USA Retired, Military Intelligence Corps, Winter of 2014.

Oh, yes," Father Mancuso nodded. "As Father Ryan mentioned, I've seen and heard many who've come to me as a psychotherapist and as a parish priest." Chancellor Ryan picked up the thread. "Then there are the so-called extraordinary activities of the devil in the world. Usually these are material things around a person that are affected; that might be what you're up against. We call it infestation. It breaks down into different categories which we'll explain in a minute." "Obsession," Father Nuncio put in, "is the next step, in which the person is affected either internally or externally. And finally there is possession, by which the person temporarily loses control of his faculties and the devil acts in and through him." When Father Mancuso had come to the Chancellors' office to keep his appointment, he had been somewhat embarrassed as to how to approach his problem. But he relaxed as the two priests had shown keen interest. Now with their spelling out the guidelines he must take in this kind of situation, Father Mancuso raised his hopes for deliverance from this evil. "In investigating cases of possible diabolical interference," Chancellor Ryan went on, "we must consider the following: One, fraud and deception. Two, natural scientific causes. Three, parapsychological causes. Four, diabolical influences. And five, miracles. In this case, fraud and trickery don't seem plausible. George and Kathleen Lutz seem to be normal, balanced individuals. We think you are too. The possibilities therefore are reduced to psychological, parapsychological, or diabolical influences." "We'll exclude the miraculous," Father Nuncio broke in, "because the Divine would not involve itself in the trivial and foolish." "True," said Father Ryan. "Therefore the explanation would seem to include hallucination and autosuggestion - you know, like the invisible touches Kathy experienced - and when George thought he heard that marching band. But let's take the parapsychological line. Parapsychologists like Dr. Rhine, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, define four main operations in the science. The first three come under the general heading of ESP-extrasensory perception. They are mental telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, which could explain George's visions and 'picking up' information that seems to coincide with known facts about the DeFeos. The fourth parapsychological area is psychokinesis, where objects move by themselves. That would be the case with the Lutzes' ceramic lion - if it did move," he added. Father Nuncio got up to refill his cup. "All of what we've said, Frank, is part of the suggestion we have for the Lutzes. Have them contact some investigative organization like Dr. Rhine's to come in and look at the house. They'll do extensive testing and I'm sure they can come to some conclusion short of diabolical influence.

How about first ensuring that people within in a twenty-mile radius like the food before worrying about scaling the restaurant? That is, see if the business will work at all. For example, a company that I advise called Tutor Universe provides tutoring service via smartphones. Think of it as Uber for tutoring. The long-term plan was that students could ask questions about any topic and receive help in under fifteen minutes. However, in the beginning, a critical mass of tutors for every subject didn’t yet exist. Many startups face just such a chicken-or-egg challenge: If you had enough tutors, you’d attract enough students. If you had enough students, you’d attract enough tutors. What do you do when you’re faced with this kind of challenge? The answer is simple: you cheat! You use your own employees to answer questions, and hire tutors in the Philippines (highly educated, English speaking, and cheap) until you can reach a critical mass of a marketplace. Skeptics and inexperienced entrepreneurs might object, “You can’t scale if you have to use employees or hire tutors, because they are too expensive.” This might be true, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you establish three key points: you can get the word out, students are willing to install an app, and they will pay for help. Your priority, in short, is proving that people will use your product at all. If they won’t, then it won’t matter if you can’t scale. If they will, then you will figure out a way to scale. I’ve never seen a startup die because it couldn’t scale fast enough. I’ve seen hundreds of startups die because people simply refused to embrace their product.

There’s clearly a tendency for people to attempt multiple, simultaneous—as much as they can—activities,” said Dr. Adam Gazzaley, director of neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco.3 But research shows that our propensity for multitasking and distractions is a bad thing. According to UC Irvine professor of informatics Dr. Gloria Mark, once you are captured by a distraction, it can take up to twenty-three minutes to get back on track.4 And since the average person succumbs to distractions an average of every three minutes, it can be difficult to escape.5 It’s even worse if you are a multitasker. You might think a chronic multitasker would be more adept at switching between tasks, but you would be wrong. A recent study by Stanford professor Eyal Ophir found that “heavy media multitaskers”—those who consumed a large amount of media content—were not only more susceptible to irrelevant stimuli, but they were also significantly slower when it came to switching between tasks.6 Another study, from the University of Utah, found that people who identified as “strong multitaskers” were in fact the least capable multitaskers of the 310 subjects they tested. Heavy multitaskers are far less capable of inhibiting distractions than those who identify as light multitaskers.7

Trials and Wisdom Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. JAMES 1:2–5 NIV Trials and troubles are an everyday part of living here in a fallen world. Pastor and author Max Lucado says, “Lower your expectations of earth. This isn’t heaven, so don’t expect it to be.” Things won’t be easy and simple until we get to heaven. So how can we lift our chins and head into tomorrow without succumbing to discouragement? We remember that God is good. We trust His faithfulness. We ask for His presence and peace during each moment. We pray for wisdom and believe that the God who holds the universe in His hands is working every single trial and triumph together for our good and for His glory. This verse in James tells us that when we lack wisdom we should simply ask God for it! We don’t have to face our problems alone. We don’t have to worry that God will hold our past mistakes against us. Be encouraged that the Lord will give you wisdom generously without finding fault! Lord Jesus, please give me wisdom. So many troubles are weighing me down. Help me give You all my burdens and increase my faith and trust in You. Amen.

Not so. You have been doing that quite frequently now. Rest easy. Later the whole of quantum mechanics will be placed in the context of the ten-dimensional manifold of manifolds, and there reconciled to gravity and to general relativity. Then, if you go that far, you will feel better about how it is that these equations can work, or be descriptive of a real world.” “But the results are impossible!” “Not at all. There are other dimensions folded into the ones our senses perceive, as I told you.” “How can you be sure, if we can never perceive them?” “It’s a matter of tests pursued, just as you do it in your work. We have found ways to interrogate the qualities of these dimensions as they influence our sensorium. We see then that there must be other kinds of dimensions. For instance, when very small particles decay into two photons, these photons have a quantum property we call spin. The clockwise spin of one is matched by a counterclockwise spin of the same magnitude in the other one, so that when the spin values are added, they equal zero. Spin is a conserved quantity in this universe, like energy and momentum. Experiments show that before a spin is measured, there is an equal potential for it to be clockwise or counterclockwise, but as soon as the spin is measured it becomes one or the other. At that moment of measurement, the complementary photon, no matter how far away, must have the opposite spin. The act of measurement of one thus determines the spin of both, even if the other photon is many light-years away. It changes faster than news of the measurement could have reached it moving at the speed of light, which is as fast as information moves in the dimensions we see. So how does the far photon know what to become? It only happens, and faster than light. This phenomenon was demonstrated in experiments on Earth, long ago. And yet nothing moves faster than the speed of light. Einstein was the one who called this seemingly faster-than-light effect ‘spooky action at a distance,’ but it is not that; rather, the distance we perceive is irrelevant to this quality we call spin, which is a feature of the universe that is nonlocal. Nonlocality means things happening together across distance as if the distance were not there, and we have found nonlocality to be fundamental and ubiquitous. In some dimensions, nonlocal entanglement is simply everywhere and everything, the main feature of that fabric of reality. The way space has distance and time has duration, other manifolds have entanglement.

Particularly in physics, science’s fifty-year drift into the unscientific has recently reached a surreal apogee. String theory is widely considered ‘the only game in town’ when it comes to cosmology yet it has not made a single testable prediction about the universe. Ever. This has led some string theorists to suggest that if a theory is ‘elegant’ and ‘explanatory’ enough, it need not be tested experimentally! To put it another way, scientists’ science no longer needs to be scientific but you should still listen to them when they tell you what is true and what is not. And these are the guys telling us magic is irrational?

Bloom where you’re planted. Don’t make excuses. Don’t go through life thinking, I’ve got a disadvantage. I’ve got too many obstacles. I’m the wrong nationality. I come from the wrong family. I don’t have the connections. I could never get out of this environment. You may not see how you will rise above, but God sees. He already has a way. Your destiny is not determined by how you were raised, or by your circumstances, or by how many odds are against you; your destiny is determined by the Creator of the universe. And if you take what God has given you and make the most of it, like Chi Chi did, God will open doors. He will give you good breaks, and He will place the right people across your path. Get rid of your excuses. Quit waiting for things to change. Sow a seed and be happy right now. When you’re in difficult times, remember: Either God is doing a work in you or He’s using you to do a work in someone else. As long as you’re in faith, where you are is where you’re supposed to be. Quit fighting to go somewhere else. Be the best you can be right where you are. If you make this decision to bloom where you’re planted, you pass the test. God promises He will pour out His blessings and favor. You’ll not only live happy, but also God will take you places you’ve never even dreamed of.

Although you set your goal of getting a B, when your first exam score, worth 30% of your final grade is returned, you have received a D. It is now one week after you have learned about the D grade. What do you do?19 Hope made all the difference. The response by students with high levels of hope was to work harder and think of a range of things they might try that could bolster their final grade. Students with moderate levels of hope thought of several ways they might up their grade, but had far less determination to pursue them. And, understandably, students with low levels of hope gave up on both counts, demoralized. The question is not just theoretical, however. When C. R. Snyder, the University of Kansas psychologist who did this study, compared the actual academic achievement of freshman students high and low on hope, he discovered that hope was a better predictor of their first-semester grades than were their scores on the SAT, a test supposedly able to predict how students will fare in college (and highly correlated with IQ). Again, given roughly the same range of intellectual abilities, emotional aptitudes make the critical difference. Snyder's explanation: "Students with high hope set themselves higher goals and know how to work hard to attain them. When you compare students of equivalent intellectual aptitude on their academic achievements, what sets them apart is hope."20

The concept of the Tao originated well before the beginning of recorded history. It is far more ancient than most people realize. What is it about the Tao that gives it such lasting power? [...] Perhaps the answer to one of the mysteries above is that we are not life forms that have become self-aware. Perhaps it is the other way around: we are entities of pure consciousness that have learned how to manifest in the physical universe through the workings of life. If this is true of us, then it is also true of the people around us. Let us put this idea to the test. When you interact with others, see them not as physical bodies, but as spiritual energy.

3. Fear Fear is a completely normal emotion when it comes to trusting in the Universe, which is also the unknown. Fear is an indication that something is very important to us, so this is a great sign. Everything we could ever want is on the other side of fear and deep down you know this is the truth. The test we must pass in order to obtain all we desire is fear itself. The way out is through and going deep within yourself to see and know that you will be okay no matter what. That this fear cannot and will not kill you, but if you do not confront it, it will take the life of all your dreams instead. Thinking is the root cause of fear. If you don’t think, there is no fear. Follow the framework for how to stop thinking to overcome the fear and experience what life can be like without limits.

At other times, he envisioned testing a machine over water while wearing a life-preserver. “You will experiment with this machine over a lake and you will wear as a belt a long wineskin, so that if you fall in, you will not drown.”25 And finally, when all of his experiments were nearing an end, he mingled his plans with fantasies. “The large bird will take its first flight from the back of the great Swan,” he wrote on the last folio of his Codex on the Flight of Birds, referring to Swan Mountain (Monte Ceceri) near Fiesole, “filling the universe with amazement, filling all writings with its fame, and bringing eternal glory to the nest where it was born.”26

Neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen of Princeton University has shown that the more active your ACC is when you flub one step in the Stroop test, the faster you will succeed at the next one.

I’m sorry you lost the game.” His other hand joined the first, both now cupping my face. “Don’t you get it? I don’t care about the game.” “You don’t? But you love it.” “Baby, I love you more. You, and Charlie, Amelia, Jameson, and Beau. All five of you are my world. I choose you. Every time.” Testing the words on my tongue, I asked. “You choose me?” “I knew the first time I saw you that my world was forever changed. I remember thinking I would do just about anything to see your smile, hear your laugh. You were real when so much of my world was artificial. Back then, I only knew what you’d shared on the surface. But now that I know what’s underneath? I want all of you. I want to raise Charlie together with her older siblings. I want to be there for all of you every single day if you’ll let me. I want all of you forever.” “I’ve had some time these past few weeks to reflect on our relationship. Not only this past year, but the past ten years we’ve known each other. I used to curse the timing. That I’d met you too late, and it could have been me in your life if I had now been just a year or two earlier. I know now that I wasn’t enough for you back then. I was this eighteen-year-old-kid—yes, kid—who barely could take care of himself and had a one-track-mind focused on hockey. I wish I could erase all the pain you’ve suffered, but I needed that time to become the man you truly deserved. There was a reason I’d never dated seriously or entertained the idea of settling down. I was always waiting for you. It didn’t matter that you were unavailable. No one could compare to the standard for women you’d created in my mind. And then, one day, the universe rewarded my patience when a little boy threw his ball over my fence. Someone was looking out for me that day because you fell into my lap and gave me everything I’d always wanted but never thought I could have.

Ten best quotes of the book, “Miracles Through My Eyes” "Miracles Through My Eyes " by Dinesh Sahay Author- Mentor {This book was published on 23rd October in 2019) 1. “God is always there to fulfil each demand, prayer or wish provided you have intent; unshaken trust in Him, determination and action on the ground, and when this entire manifest in one’s life, then it becomes a miracle of life. Nothing moves without His grace. It comes when you are on the right path without selfish motives but will never happen when done for selfish and destructive motives”. 2. “All diseases are self-creation and they come due to some cause and it transforms into a disease by virtue of wrong thinking, wrong actions which are against nature, the universe and God. When you disobey the rules set by God. All misfortunes, accidents, deceases, and even death are the creation of negative, bad thoughts, spoken words and actions of man himself, at some stage of his life. All good events in life are also the creation of man through his good and positive thoughts at various stages of his life”. 3. “The biggest investments lie not in the savings and creation of wealth with selfish motives. Though you may find success this prosperity shall not be long lasting and at a later stage, the money and wealth may be lost slowly in many unfortunate ways”. 4. “If you want to have a successful life with ease and at the same time want abundance and wealth then my friend, you must care for others. You must start your all efforts to help by means of tithing, charity, service to mankind in any form, and help poor, helpless, needy and underprivileged.” 5. “The largest investment for a person (which is time tested by many rich personalities) shall be to give 10% of your monthly income for the charitable cause each month if you are a salaried class, and if you are a businessman or a company, then you must contribute 10% annually for charitable cause”. 6. “Nature is giving signals to the mankind that they are moving near to destruction of this earth as it’s a cause and effect of man-made destruction of earth and with all sins, hate, untruthfulness and violence it carried throughout the centuries and acted against the principals of the universe and nature. Those connected to the divine may escape from the clutches of death and destruction of the earth. We have witnessed many major catastrophes in the form of Tsunami’s, earthquakes, Tornado’s, Global warming and volcanic eruptions and the world is moving towards it further major happenings in times to come”. 7. “Let us pray for peace and harmony for all humanity and make this world a better place to live by our actions of love, compassion, truthfulness, non-violence, end of terrorism and peace on earth with no wars with any country. Let there will be single governance in the world, the governance of one religion, the religion of love, peace, prosperity and healthy living to all”. 8.” Forgive all the people who often unreasonable, self-centred or accuse you of selfish and forget the all that is said about you. It is your own inner reflection which you see in the outer world. 9. “Thought has a tremendous vibratory force which moves with limitless speed and, makes all creations in man’s life. Each thought vibrates to the frequency with which it was created by a person, whether that was good or bad, travels accordingly through the conscious and subconscious mind in space and the universe. It vibrates with time and energy to produces manifestation in the spiritual and materialistic world of man or woman or matter (thing), in form of events, happenings and creativity”.

→Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's country, where there was still plenty of everything, was opposed to Communism. It didn’t think that Earthlings who had a lot should share it with others unless they really wanted to, and most of them didn't want to. So they didn't have to. →Everybody in America was supposed to grab whatever he could and hold onto it. Some Americans were very good a grabbing and holding, were fabulously well-to-do. Others couldn't get their hands on doodley-squat. Dwayne Hoover was fabulously well-to-do when he met Kilgore Trout. A man whispered those exact words to a friend one morning as Dwayne walked by: 'Fabulously well-to-do.' And here's how much of the planet Kilgore Trout owned in those days: doodley-squat. And Kilgore Trout and Dwayne Hoover met in Midland City, which was Dwayne's home town, during an Arts Festival there in autumn of 1972. As has already been said: Dwayne was a Pontiac dealer who was going insane. Dwayne’s incipient insanity was mainly a matter of chemicals, of course. Dwayne Hoover's body was manufacturing certain chemicals which unbalanced his mind. But Dwayne, like all novice lunatics, needed some bad ideas, too, so that his craziness could have shape and direction. Bad chemicals and bad ideas were the Yin and Yang of madness. Yin and Yang were Chinese symbols of harmony. They looked like this: [ ] The bad ideas were delivered to Dwayne by Kilgore Trout. Trout considered himself not only harmless but invisible. The world had paid so little attention to him that he supposed he was dead. He hoped he was dead. But he learned from his encounter with Dwayne that he was alive enough to give a fellow human being ideas which would turn him into a monster. Here was the core of the bad ideas which Trout gave to Dwayne: Everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception – Dwayne Hoover. Of all the creatures in the Universe, only Dwayne was thinking and feeling and worrying and planning and so on. Nobody else knew what pain was. Nobody else had any choices to make. Everybody else was a fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the Creator of the Universe. Only Dwayne Hoover had free will. →Trout did not expect to be believed. He put the bad ideas into a science-fiction novel, and that was where Dwayne found them. The book wasn't addressed to Dwayne alone. Trout had never heard of Dwayne when he wrote it. It was addressed to anybody who happened to open it up. It said to simply anybody, in effect, 'Hey – guess what: You’re the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?' And so on. It was a tour de force. It was a . But it was mind poison to Dwayne.

Wow. Please tell me you haven't come up with a way to blame me for what happened that night." Heat flushed across her skin. Suddenly her office was too small, and she leaned back in her chair, which only brought into focus the fact that he was leaning into her. "Sorry, I forgot. Nothing is ever your fault." The smile in his eyes singed away, he straightened up again. "You're serious? You're suggesting that it is somehow my fault that you rage-fucked me? Actually, rage-fucked my thigh." The temperature in the room shot up so fast, Naina thought she was experiencing her first hot flash. Did those happen at thirty-eight? She groaned, because that thought made her feel ancient as she stared into his stupid dewy young face. She was sure her own face had gone some mortified shade. The only good news was that for once Vansh's color rose too, just as fast and fierce. Wait, had he just accused her of rage-fucking his thigh? "You are the world's most infuriating person, you know that?" For a moment Naina thought she might choke on her own incredulousness and the fact that he was not lying. "What kind of person brings that sort of thing up when someone's life's work is at stake?" "I was not the one who brought it up." He mirrored her finger-spinning action and made a circle around her face. "And don't make that face. You didn't say the words but you were thinking them. Never mind. I am actually not here to discuss our night together." "There was no night together." She pressed her hands into her face and tried to breathe into an imaginary bag. If she didn't calm down she was not going to be able to get this conversation back on track, to say nothing of the fact that she was going to pass out from the heat in here. "You were gone before the morning and I am very grateful that you brought me home and helped me when I----" "Got horny." "Threw up." They spoke simultaneously. Because the universe had decided to test how much humiliation it could stuff into one situation. Great, now he was smiling again, and she wanted to shake him even more. "Come on, Naina. Loosen up. It really wasn't that big of a deal." Relief flooded through her. Thank God. Yes, it was not. She was so glad he thought so. "You're right, people drink too much and throw up all the time.

Princeton Tries to Explain a Drop in Jewish Enrollment; or "What is Communism?" by Yggdrasil The sine-qua-non of inner party power is a multi-cultural elite alienated from its tribal and racial kinsmen. It is the native elites - the indigenous leaders who might resist the inner party's drive for power that are always the target. ... For the reform version of communism developed by the Frankfurt School that now dominates the ‘liberal democracies" and the NWO, the masses of the nations are important as consumers ... What remains relevant to the inner party are the inner party's potential competitors, the native national elites with community ties to their brethren. In the Soviet Union, the inner party elites (using Lenin and Stalin as their cover) resorted to murder and forced resettlement to remove the native national elites, a fast, direct and brutal form of decapitation. In the "liberal democracies" the inner party uses a slower and less visibly brutal method of decapitation. Thus, in the liberal democracies of today we have "affirmative action" - a set of laws that places tremendous pressure on private businesses to displace native elites at the top with minorities who will be less plausible targets of discrimination lawsuits. These laws exist everywhere in the European world, and with the exception of the U.S. were enacted long before any significant minority constituencies (other than the inner party itself) existed to lobby for their passage. The entire program of displacement and decapitation within the liberal democracies was carefully drawn up and explained in "The Authoritarian Personality" by Theodor Adorno, et. al.(1947). It is a prescription for identifying any person who displays any bond of obligation to his own kind and the will to resist those who threaten the interests of his kind. Such "authoritarian personalities" are to be denied university admission and consigned to low status occupations, which is precisely what the laws of affirmative action and social rules of political correctness accomplish. Indeed, as I read the tables from the 1939 Soviet census published in Sanning's work [The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry by Walter N. Sanning] I recalled my own research showing that the inner party, representing 2.4% of the U.S. population comprises 28% of the student body at Harvard, while the descendants of European Christendom comprising 70% of the population supply only 18% of the students. The American Majority has been effectively displaced at Harvard. Relative to their share of the Population, they have 2.4 times fewer students than do the inner party's Afro-American coalition partners. ... The United States Department of Labor has maintained a tracking study of 12,000 young people who were between the ages of 14 and 22 in 1979 known as the National Longitudinal study of Youth ("NLSY"). The CD Roms with all the data can be purchased from Ohio State University. These data show that at each given level of IQ (all participants were tested) the income and educational attainment of the descendants of European Christendom is much lower than for Blacks, Hispanics and Inner party members of the same IQ. In what will surely be a surprise to most middle and upper middle-income Euro-Americans, the effects are most pronounced at the highest IQ levels. In other words, it is the majority elite that suffers the widest disparity in income and education when compared with Blacks, Hispanics and Inner Party members within the same IQ range. When the effects are broken down by sex, we find that among males the disparity is most pronounced in the highest IQ ranges and disappears entirely by the time you descend to the 50% mark. The widest disparity exists among the top 2% of the population (those with IQs above 130).

reminded Hayes, not for the first time, that there’s no shoe school, no University of Footwear from which we could recruit. We needed to hire people with sharp minds, that was our priority, and accountants and lawyers had at least proved that they could master a difficult subject. And pass a big test. Most had also demonstrated basic competence. When you hired an accountant, you knew he or she could count. When you hired a lawyer, you knew he or she could talk. When you hired a marketing expert, or product developer, what did you know? Nothing. You couldn’t predict what he or she could do, or if he or she could do anything. And the typical business school graduate? He or she didn’t want to start out with a bag selling shoes. Plus, they all had zero experience, so you were simply rolling the dice based on how well they did in an interview. We didn’t have enough margin for error to roll the dice on anyone.

Do you remember Samuel Butler’s attack on Darwin? When I read it, it seemed to me that Butler was very right and very wrong at the same time. He said Darwin banished mind from the universe. And I thought, no, he didn’t; he just decentralized it. Every biological system is intelligent, if you really understand what Darwin is saying. But, it’s not a centralized intelligence; it’s a decentralized intelligence. Darwin’s ruling metaphor is the tangled bank, with every plant trying to maintain its own space to expand its roots, and the whole system is intelligent.

We also tend to undervalue the elementary ideas and overvalue the complicated ones. Most of us get jobs based on some form of specialized knowledge, so this makes sense. We don’t think we have much value if we know the things everyone else does, so we focus our effort on developing unique expertise to set ourselves apart. The problem is then that we reject the simple to make sure what we offer can’t be contributed by someone else. But simple ideas are of great value because they can help us prevent complex problems. In identifying the Great Mental Models we have looked for elementary principles, the ideas from multiple disciplines that form a time-tested foundation. It may seem counterintuitive, to work on developing knowledge that is available to everyone, but the universe works in the same way no matter where you are in it. What you need is to understand the principles, so that when the details change you are still able to identify what is really going on. This is part of what makes the Great Mental Models so valuable—understanding the principles, you can easily change tactics to apply the ones you need.

As described by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a form of empirically based psychological intervention that focuses on mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of focusing on the present to remove oneself from feeling consumed by the emotion experienced in the moment. To properly observe yourself, begin by noticing where in your body you experience emotion. For example, think about a time when you felt really sad. You may have felt despair in your chest, or a sense of hollowness in your stomach. If you were angry, you may have felt a burning sensation in your arms. This occurs within everyone, in different variations. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University traced emotional responses in the brain to different activity signatures in the body through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. If someone recalled a painful or traumatic memory, the prefrontal cortex and neocortex became less active, and their “reptilian brain” was activated. The former areas of the brain are responsible for conscious thought, spatial reasoning, and higher functions such as sensory perception. The latter is responsible for fight-or-flight responses. This means that the bodily responses caused by your emotions provide an opportunity for you to be mindful of them. Your emotions create sensations in your body that reflect your mind. Dr. Bruce Lipton, a developmental biologist who studies gene expression in relation to environmental factors, released a study on epigenetics that sheds light on this matter. It revealed that an individual’s body cannot heal when it is in its sympathetic state. The sympathetic nervous system, informally known as the fight-or-flight state, is triggered by certain emotional responses. This means that when we are consumed by emotion, an effective solution cannot be found until we shift our mind into reflecting on our emotions. Let’s take a moment and test this theory together. Try to focus on what you’re feeling and where, and this will ground you in the present moment. By focusing on how you are responding, you essentially remove yourself from being consumed by your emotions in that moment. This brings you back into your sensory perception and moves the response in your brain back into the cortex and neocortex. This transition helps bring you back into a more logical state where emotions are not controlling your reactions.

Jews ““For you it is good—you are not a Jew. It will be easier for you to enter the University. But Sasha is a Jew — for him, it will be difficult,” Galja said with the burr to her girl neighbor. The girl rushed back home, jumping over two-three stairs, stormed the door and shouted: “Granny, Granny! What does it mean to be a Jew? Is it something bad?” Poor girl, she didn’t know yet that she was also a Jew. He had to hide it from her to make her life easier in the USSR. Here, the Jews were not welcomed. In the USSR, it is good to be Russian.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Russia - Jews and Nicknames). Diversity “Communists noticed that Kazakhstan was incredibly big—the size of West Europe. Perfectly suitable for huge communist projects and experiments, which brought to Kazakhstan many scientists, engineers, agronomists, builders, and … Soviet secret service — to control the situation. “Kazakhs also have culture, their own, different from ours. They are Muslims. Oh, yeah, atheist, Soviet Muslims,” smiled Boris and added, “You said Kazaki, but they are Kazakhs, these two are different people. Let me explain,” Boris was happy to talk about something else than the Communist Party plans.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Kazakhstan - Home for Nuclear Tests). Disabled “Turkmens are very close people, but disabled Turkmens are even more. She decided to give him another—spiritual life, that’s why, each day she spent time telling him stories. He would not be like the millions disabled in the USSR: hidden in prison-like hospitals, with no hope and alone, bad treatment and food, closed to the outside world.” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Turkmenia - Closed People). Traditions ““If I would marry Tajik, I would have to furnish our home and bring everything inside it. All from my father’s money. Because I would marry very young and would not earn yet. So, you have to be nice to your father, otherwise, he gives nothing or little,” smiled Nathalie and continued her wedding story, And … I would have this!” Nathalie jumped out of the sofa to the mirror and quickly drew something with a black pencil on her face. When she turned smiling, girlfriends were shocked …” (- Angelika Regossi, “Russian Colonial Food”. Chapter: Tajikia - Neighbour of Afghanistan).

I look at the augusteum and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic after all it is merely this world that is chaotic b ringing changes to us all threat nobody could have anticipated. The augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who i am what i represent whom i belong to or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday i might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough but tomorrow i could be a firework's depository, even in the eternal city says the silent augusteum . one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. pizzaeria da michele Passato remoto In her world the roman forum is not remote nor is it past. It is exactly as present and close to her as i am. The bhagavata Gita that ancient Indian yogic test says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. So now i have started living my own life, perfected clumsy as it may look it is resembling me now thoroughly. It was in a bathtub back in new York reading Italian words aloud from a dictionary that i first started mending my soul. My life had gone to bits, and I was so unrecognizable to myself that i probably couldn't have picked me out of a police lineup. But i felt a glimmer of happiness when i started studying Italian, and when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grip onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face first out of the dirt this is not selfishness but obligation you were given life it is your duty and also your entitlement as a human being to find somehtign beautiful within life no mattter how slight But i do know that i have collected me of late through the enjoyment of harmless pleasures into somebody much more intact . I have e put on weight I exist more now than i did four months ago. I will leave Italy noticeably bigger than when i arrived here. And i will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person the magnification of one life is indeed an act of worth in this world, Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody s but my own . Hatha yoga one limb of the philosophy the ancients developed these physical stretches not for personal fitness but to loosen up their muscles and minds in order to prepare them for meditation, Yoga can also mean trying to find God through meditation through scholarly study. The yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition which i[m going to very simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Taoists call it imbalance Buddhism calls it ignorance Islam blames our misery on rebellion against god and the jedio Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin, Graduands say that unhappiness is that inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization needs and my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it desire is the design flaw the yogis however say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity we're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals alone with our fears and flaws an d resentment sand mortality we wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature, We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character we don't realize that somewhere within us all there does exist a supreme self is our true identity universal and divine . you bear God within your poor wretch and know it not.

What you believe about climate change doesn’t reflect what you know,” said Dan Kahan, a professor at Yale Law School who studies risk perception. “It expresses who you are." To illustrate this point, Kahan cited the results of yet another survey by the Pew Research Center. This survey was designed to test basic scientific knowledge and it posed questions like “What is the main function of red blood cells?” When respondents were asked what gas “most scientists believe causes temperatures in the atmosphere to rise,” 58 percent chose the correct answer: “carbon dioxide.” There was little difference in the proportion of Democrats and Republicans who gave the right response; among the former it was 56 percent, among the latter 58 percent. (Among Independents, 63 percent chose correctly.) But polls that ask Americans about their own beliefs about global warming show a significant partisan divide; in another Pew survey, 66 percent of Democrats said they believed that human activity was the “main cause” of global warming, while only 24 percent of Republicans did. This suggests there are many Democrats who don’t know what’s causing climate change but still believe humans are responsible for it and many Republicans who do know, yet still deny that humans play a role. And what this shows, according to Kahan, is that people’s views on climate change are shaped less by their knowledge of the science than by their sense of group identity. To break the political logjam, he argues, Americans need to find ways of talking about climate change that don’t require members of one group or the other to renounce their cultural identity. “If you show people there is some way of responding to the problem that’s consistent with who they are, then they’re more likely to see the problem,” Kahan told me. Kari Marie Norgaard is a sociologist at the University of Oregon who has studied how people talk about climate change. She, too, believes there’s a strong cultural component to Americans’ attitudes, but she sees the problem as reflecting the strategies people use to avoid painful subjects. Norgaard argues that it’s difficult even for people who are privately worried about climate change to discuss the issue in public because on the one hand they feel guilty about the situation and on the other they feel helpless to change it. “We have a need to think of ourselves as good people,” she told me. Meanwhile, the very lack of discussion about the issue feeds itself: people feel that if it really were a serious problem, others would be dealing with it: “It’s difficult for people to feel that climate change is really happening in part because we’re embedded in a world where no one else around us is talking about it.” “It becomes a vicious cycle between the political gridlock and the cultural and individual gridlock,” Norgaard went on. What could possibly break this cycle? Norgaard argues that if the nation’s political leaders would candidly discuss the issue “it could be very powerful. It could free up a lot of the hopelessness people feel and allow them to mobilize.” “I think there are probably multiple levels at which we could break this cycle,” she went on. And though, after more than thirty years of ignored warnings, the challenge has grown all the more daunting, she said, “I don’t believe we get to give up.

When you’re being tested the most, is when the breakthrough will come.

So swearing, when used reciprocally and in good fun, might help to bond a team, but does swearing really help you get things done? In their paper “Indecent Influence,” Dr. Cory Scherer and Dr. Brad Sagarin from the Northern Illinois University decided to test the use of a single, mild swear word on the way in which a message is received.6 Scherer and Sagarin knew from previous research carried out in the 1990s that—at least when we hear a message we disagree with—we tend to react with disgust and reject both the messenger and the message. They wondered whether the same effect held true for a message that the audience was sympathetic to. They showed a video of a speech to eighty-eight of their undergraduate students individually. The speech was about lowering tuition fees at a neighboring university. What the students didn’t know was that each person saw one of three different versions of the speech at random. One version included a mild swear word (“Lowering of tuition is not only a great idea, but damn it, also the most reasonable one”), one opened with it (“Damn it, I think lowering tuition is a great idea”), and one had no swearing at all. The actor delivering the speech did his best to keep every other part of his delivery the same between speeches. The students who saw the video with the swearing at the beginning or in the middle rated the speaker as more intense, but no less credible, than the ones who saw the speech with no swearing. What’s more, the students who saw the videos with the swearing were significantly more in favor of lowering tuition fees after seeing the video than the students who didn’t hear the swear word.

In my experience, many young people are intensely ritual animals without realizing it. And when they are introduced to habit-forming practices of Christian faith, invited into ways of following Jesus that are ancient and tested, their faith is given a second life. They receive the disciplines not as burdensome duties but as gifts that channel their devotion and shape their faith. Instead of relying on their own internal piety and willpower (which is a wrong-headed way to think about discipleship anyway), young people experience historic practices of prayer and devotion as gifts of grace in themselves, a way that the Spirit meets them where they are. To receive the Psalms as the prayer book of the church is to have found a buried treasure right in the middle of the Bible.5 Regimens of devotion like the Divine Office or The Divine Hours provide grooves for their faith to gear into, a tangible, historic way to align their desires with the grain of the universe.6 The emphasis is no longer on their performance or expression; instead, such practices cultivate a posture of grateful reception of the Spirit’s action.

As the saying goes, "It's not who you know, but who knows you." How does that relate to getting a job? Lets look at 2 cases where "who knows you" resulted in landing the best job. Keep in mind: The great thing is that you can start right where you are right now! Case 1 In my first teaching job in Mexico in the early 1980's, we were half way through the semester, when the director called me into his office to tell me he had taken a job in Silicon Valley, California. What he said next floored me. "I'd like you to apply for my job." How could I apply to be the director of an English school when it was my first teaching job, all the teachers had more teaching experience than I did, and many of them had doctorate degrees. I only had a bachelors degree. "Don't worry," he said. "People like you, and I think you have what it takes to be a good director." The director knew me, or at least got to know me from teachers' meetings, seeing me teach, and noticing how I interacted with people. Case 2 Fast forward 3 years. After Mexico, I moved to Reno, Nevada, to work on my Master's degree in Teaching English as a Second Language. I applied for a teaching job at the community college, and half-way into the semester, a teacher had to leave and I got the job. I impressed the director enough that she asked me to be the Testing and Placement Coordinator the next year. At the end of that year, I wrote a final report about the testing and placement program. It so impressed the college administration that when a sister university was looking for a graduate student to head up a new language assessment program for new foreign graduate teaching assistants and International faculty, I got recommended. What Does This Mean? From these two examples, you can see that when people see what you can do, you have a greater chance of being seen and being known. When people see what you are capable of doing, there is less risk in hiring you. Why? Because they've seen you be successful before. Chances are you'll be successful with them, too. But, if people don't know you and haven't seen what you can do, there is much greater risk in hiring you. In fact, you may not even be on their radar screen. Get On Their Radar Screens To get on the radar screens for the best jobs, do the best job you can where you work right now. Don't wait for the job announcement to appear in the newspaper. Don't wait for something else to happen. Right now, invest all of you and your unique talents into what you're doing. Impress people with what you can do! Do that, and see the jobs you'll get!

Selective kindness isn’t high-mindedness. The Higher Mind exhibits these traits all the time. He’s high-minded universally, as a general principle, and applies it to everyone equally. Selective kindness is a Primitive Mind trick that appears to be high-mindedness, if you’re not paying close enough attention. Remember, at first glance, ants seemed like nice people too. That’s why the litmus test of anyone’s true colors—the revealer of which mind is running the show in their head—is how they treat people outside their tribe. Both the Higher Mind and Primitive Mind tend to treat fellow tribesmen with kindness, so that tells you nothing—it’s when dealing with Them that the two minds diverge.

When I speak of affirmations these days, I try to say as clearly as possible that they appear to have a beneficial value. The reality is that if affirmations somehow steered the universe like magic, science probably would have discovered that force by now. I don’t foresee the day when affirmations get scientific backing, at least not in the sense of testing for the existence of magic or psychic powers. I think we can all agree that affirmations are a phenomenon of the mind and belong in the domain of psychology and perception. Viewed in that light, one can imagine that doing affirmations might have a predictable impact on the brain, perhaps in terms of focus or motivation or any number of chemical reactions. Those reactions would, one assumes, be either beneficial or harmful to the pursuit of success. So in one sense, affirmations are no more special than any form of positive thinking, prayers, visualization, chanting, or the like. That said, I can tell you that in my case affirmations appear to have more power than one might expect from positive thinking.

Dear Teachers, I hope your school year is going pretty well. I hope your classes are not causing you too much trouble and your families are doing well. You might be wondering why you are tagged to this post and what this is all about. It’s Teachers’ Day, the day for being thankful to our teachers. Some of you I had over a decade ago, some of you might not even remember who the heck I am. But if you’re reading this, this is my way of officially thanking you. For what? Let me explain. To the ones who made me love learning as a whole – If you are an elementary school teacher, this goes out to you. You are the reason I am where I am today. If it weren’t for your hard work and dedication to teaching me and every other student what you know, my future would not be as bright as it is now. I chose to go to college because somewhere along the line, you taught me that education is important and I have to strive to help others by educating myself. This is not always easy, but you helped me understand that willingness to learn is one of the most important aspects of a person. For that, I am forever grateful for you and everything you have done for me and so many others. To the ones who helped me find my passions– Writing, training, and helping people are what I love. No matter what I have been through in my life, everything goes back to the fact that in the future, I want to help people and I want to change the world. Writing and creating training programs are what make that happen. It made me realize that in the future, I don’t just want a shiny car, big bungalow, and other material items. I want something that sticks with people for all time – and what better way to do that than to become a writer and write for those who can't write for themselves? Shout out to those teachers who helped me find my passion, and maybe even made an effort to help me pursue it as well. To the ones who taught me more than the textbooks – you honestly saved me. You taught me that learning isn’t always about getting 100s on every test and being the perfect student. You helped me realize that a part of learning means making mistakes. You taught me that brushing yourself off, getting back up, and trying again is essential to get anywhere in this world. I grew up being the smart kid who never had to study and when the going got tough, I didn’t always know how to respond. You helped me with my problem solving skills and fixing things that needed fixing. This isn’t necessarily always talking about school, but life in general. You taught me that my value was not depicted by my score on a test, but rather who I was as a person. It is hard to put into words, but some of you honestly are the reason I am here today – succeeding in my first semester of college, off to university before I know it. Thank you so much. To the ones who didn’t know I could talk – I’m sorry I didn’t speak up more in your class. Many of you knew I had a lot to say, but knew I did not know how to say it or how to get the thoughts out. I promise you, even though you could not hear it, I am thankful for you - thankful that you did not force me out of my comfort zone. I know that may not sound like much, but when you have as much of a fear of speaking out as I do, that is such a big deal. Thank you for working with me and realizing that someone does not need to speak in order to have knowledge in their mind. Thank you for not basing my intelligence on my ability to present that information. It means a lot more than you will ever realize. To the ones who don’t know why you made this list – Congratulations. Somewhere along the way, you impacted me in a way I felt was worth acknowledging you for. Maybe you said something in class that resonated with me and changed my outlook on a situation, or life in general. Maybe you just asked me if I was okay after class one day. If you’re sitting there scratching your head, wondering how you changed my life, please just know you did.

When he puts it like this, it sounds surprisingly sensible. Danes have a collective sense of responsibility – of belonging, even. They pay into the system because they believe it to be worthwhile. The insanely high taxation also has some happy side effects. It means that Denmark has the lowest income inequality among all the OECD countries, so the difference in take-home wages between, for instance, Lego’s CEO and its lowliest cleaner, isn’t as vast as it might be elsewhere. Studies show that people who live in neighbourhoods where most people earn about the same amount are happier, according to research from San Francisco State University and the University of California Berkeley. In Denmark, even people working in wildly different fields will probably have a similar amount left in the bank each month after tax. I’m interested in the idea that income equality makes for better neighbours and want to put it to the test. But since I live in what is essentially a retirement village, where no one apart from Friendly Neighbour works, there isn’t much of an opportunity in Sticksville. So I ask Helena C about hers. She tells me that the street she lives in is populated by shop assistants, supermarket workers, accountants, lawyers, marketers and a landscape gardener. ‘Everyone has a nice home and a good quality of life,’ she says, ‘it doesn’t matter so much what you do for work here.’ Regardless of their various careers and the earning potential that this might afford them in other countries with lower taxes, professionals and non-professionals live harmoniously side by side in Denmark. This also makes social mobility easier, according to studies from The Equality Trust on the impact of income equality. So you’re more likely to be able to get on in life, get educated and get a good job, regardless of who your parents are and what they do in Denmark than anywhere else. It turns out that it’s easier to live ‘The American Dream’ here than it’s ever likely to be in the US.

Months beforehand I started focusing my Manhattanite efficiency on getting registered in Italy, Andrea leading me by the hand through the wilderness of Old World red tape. The first step was “getting my documents together,” an Italian ritual repeated before every encounter with officialdom. Sticking to a list kindly provided by the Italian Consulate, I collected my birth certificate, passport, high school diploma, college diploma, college transcript, medical school diploma, medical school transcript, certificates of internship and residency, National Board Examination certificates, American Board of Internal Medicine test results, and specialization diploma. Then I got them transfigured into Italian by the one person in New York authorized by the Italian Consulate to crown his translation with an imprimatur. We judiciously gave him a set of our own translations as crib notes, tailored by my husband to match the Rome medical school curriculum. I wrote a cover letter from Andrea’s dictation. It had to be in my own hand, on a folded sheet of double-sized pale yellow ruled Italian paper embossed with a State seal, and had to be addressed “To the Magnificent Rector of the University of Rome.” You have to live in Italy a while to appreciate the theatrical elegance of making every fiddler a Maestro and every teacher a Professoressa; even the most corrupt member of the Italian parliament is by definition Honorable, and every client of a parking lot is by default, for lack of any higher title, a Doctor (“Back up, Dotto’, turn the wheel hard to the left, Dotto’”). There came the proud day in June when I got to deposit the stack of documents in front of a smiling consular official in red nail polish and Armani. After expressing puzzlement that an American doctor would want to move to her country (“You medical people have it so good here”), she Xeroxed my certificates, transcripts, and diplomas, made squiggles on the back to certify the Xeroxes were “authentic copies,” gave me back the originals, and assured me that she’d get things processed zip zip in Italy so that by the time I left for Rome three months later I’d have my Italian license and be ready to get a job. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. When we were about to fly in September and I still hadn’t heard from her, I went to check. Found the Xeroxes piled up on Signora X’s desk right where I’d left them, and the Signora gone for a month’s vacation. Slightly put out, I snatched up the stack to hand-carry over (re-inventing a common expatriate method for avoiding challenges to the efficiency of the Italian mails), prepared to do battle with the system on its own territory.

New York Times article from March 8, 1953, titled “Looking Back Two Billion Years.” “Obviously,” Edmond said, “this experiment raised some eyebrows. The implications could have been earth-shattering, especially for the religious world. If life magically appeared inside this test tube, we would know conclusively that the laws of chemistry alone are indeed enough to create life. We would no longer require a supernatural being to reach down from heaven and bestow upon us the spark of Creation. We would understand that life simply happens…as an inevitable by-product of the laws of nature. More importantly, we would have to conclude that because life spontaneously appeared here on earth, it almost certainly did the same thing elsewhere in the cosmos, meaning: man is not unique; man is not at the center of God’s universe; and man is not alone in the universe.” Edmond exhaled. “However, as many of you may know, the Miller-Urey experiment failed. It produced a few amino acids, but nothing even closely resembling life. The chemists tried repeatedly, using different combinations of ingredients, different heat patterns, but nothing worked. It seemed that life—as the faithful had long believed—required divine intervention. Miller and Urey eventually abandoned their experiments. The religious community breathed a sigh of relief, and the scientific community went back to the drawing board.” He paused, an amused glimmer in his eyes. “That is, until 2007…when there was an unexpected development.” Edmond now told the tale of how the forgotten Miller-Urey testing vials had been rediscovered in a closet at the University of California in San Diego after Miller’s death. Miller’s students had reanalyzed the samples using far more sensitive contemporary techniques—including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry—and the results had been startling. Apparently, the original Miller-Urey experiment had produced many more amino acids and complex compounds than Miller had been able to measure at the time. The new analysis of the vials even identified several important nucleobases—the building blocks of RNA, and perhaps eventually…DNA. “It was an astounding science story,” Edmond concluded, “relegitimizing the notion that perhaps life does simply happen…without divine intervention. It seemed the Miller-Urey experiment had indeed been working, but just needed more time to gestate. Let’s remember one key point: life evolved over billions of years, and these test tubes had been sitting in a closet for just over fifty. If the timeline of this experiment were measured in miles, it was as if our perspective were limited to only the very first inch…” He let that thought hang in the air. “Needless to say,” Edmond went on, “there was a sudden resurgence in interest surrounding the idea of creating life in a lab.” I remember that, Langdon thought. The Harvard biology faculty had thrown

Don’t be motivated by pride or power. If you are, one day you will be brought low. Don’t think you are loving just because you are kind to people—it might be a secret way of getting something for yourself. The real test of kindness is if you give to people who can’t repay you in any way—even by telling others about how good you are. Jesus is saying that when we seek out the least enjoyable person at the office party, the person who has so little to give, God notices. God will repay us at the resurrection of the righteous for showing kindness to outcasts. In other words, the universe is connected in ways that we can’t see. The hidden behavior of love—and genuine love is usually hidden—is ultimately recognized by God. Love counts to God.

The following is a transcript of that part of the interview: He says that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true". He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level". He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so".[95]

Einstein’s theory says nothing less than that all photons are, in their frame of reference, outside space and time. They don’t experience the passing of time and they don’t experience the traversing of any distances. The universe, for photons, is a mystical dimensionless point. Even if there were an infinite number of photons, they would all inhabit this inconceivable singularity beyond the reach of time and space. Can you begin to see? The realm of light, as described by Einstein’s supremely well tested equations, is astonishingly similar to what we have described as the r = 0 dimensionless domain: the realm of the mental. Immediately, the profoundest of questions arises. Are light and thought the same thing? Are photons, when considered from the correct perspective, mental rather than physical? When the sun shines on us, are we being bathed in the “thoughts” of the sun as well as its light? If photons do not experience space and time, and they do not have any mass, how else would you characterise them except as some sort of mind-like entities?

the sweet and wild rebellion in you… the poetry in those eyes… those dreamer’s eyes learning to see in the dark. and all that beautiful madness tangled in your hair. toes dangling over the edge, testing a new universe. it’s ok to take small steps and deep breaths, love… but also, let yourself start to take up your space. and don’t you dare say you’re sorry when you do. and you’ll be rejected for these wings, these fires, this sweet and wild rebellion in you. but these are such. beautiful. things. so keep choosing you… because nothing will matter if you reject you. if it needs you small, don’t let it hold you anymore. don’t let anything that needs you ordinary tame you ever again.

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