Secret to Happiness: Power of “I Can”

Watch this amazing video of 17-year-old Sam. Sam has progeria, a disease which causes premature rapid aging. But he shares with us, why and how he leads a happy life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36m1o-tM05g&feature=player_embedded His advice: allow negative feelings to flow through us when they do come up, and then re-focus the thoughts on what we can do; surround ourselves with those we want to be around and who support us and love us for who we are on the inside; and never miss a party!

Power of Love: Man and Lions in the African Wild

Wow…the power of unconditional fearless love! See this 15 minute video clip of a man (some call the lion whisperer) hugging and playing in the wild with African lions. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MNCzSfv4hX8 His mission is to teach others about the value of lions and wild animals…..how each is important to the surrounding ecosystem. He tells us that each has a unique personality. And that their habitats are dwindling. They need our help to not become extinct.

The Unending Pursuit of Happiness

womanofficecomputer

Why does happiness feel like such hard work? Why is it that as soon as we’ve achieved something that we thought would or should make us happy, we find that we’re still longing to feel happy?

Today as I found myself feeling sad, I felt inspired to add my voice to the dialogue on happiness.

The short answer to such questions is that happiness is a state we have the opportunity to create each and every moment. All moods are a reflection of the thought of the moment. Think a sad thought, and we’ll feel sad. Think an even more depressing thought, and we’ll feel depressed. Think a happy thought, and we’ll feel happy. For that moment.

When our moods are prolonged, it is a sign that we have a habit of thinking a certain way. For instance, when we struggle with depression or anxiety, it is a mirror back to us that we typically view the world with an eye on the past or future (respectively), and with an eye for what is lost or missing to us, or an eye toward how we may be harmed in some way.

I am sad right now because I’m thinking of how many of my family members have passed recently or are gravely ill. I plan on allowing myself to feel this sadness for a few moments, because it’s real, and it’s how I’m feeling about this situation.

But soon, I will switch to other thoughts, like about how the geese sound as they fly in formation over the nearby lake, how grateful I am that my family will be together for the holidays, and how soulful it feels to know I have a book coming out soon.

Happiness is not about an unending pursuit for greater success. It is about noticing the present moment, being authentic to who you are, and choosing to focus on what brings you joy.

The Melancholy of Discontent

cavecrumbling

Clinging to my bosom
lies a melancholy of discontent,
unsettled terrain
within this cavern body,
a malaise of disconnection.

Rumbling, grumbling, stirring, yearning.
There, upon scant introspection, a reticence interrupts,
and causes pause of closer contemplation.
Overtakes it, a gripping fear
that ripped apart,
my maternal existence as I’ve known.

Yet, too, a certainty dawns
within this dark and foggy cave,
that prolonged avoidance and desperate ignorance
can only guarantee my breaking.

So it is, I seek
a realization,
the source of this undoing,
this crumbling of my ground.
And there I find,
instead of death,
a birth
of rising fertile soil.

Firm and sure, this new terrain,
renewed life within my bosom springs,
a connection never felt before.

My heart, the door,
a void, no more.

Varan, Valerie. “The Melancholy of Discontent.” ValerieVaran.com. DependentMedia.com. 2014.

How Can You Believe in Wi-Fi, and Not Believe in its Source?

wifigreen

wifigreenYou can believe in Wi-Fi, that there are energy or radio waves flowing everywhere, that your thoughts can be translated into data, which in turn can be transmitted into these and many other energy signals, which can be sent and received by antennae, read using your phone or computer or television.

And yet, how is it that you cannot believe in Spirit? That very energy which is everywhere, as radio waves of information, but so much more than that, so many more frequencies than that?

Spirit is the very source of all energy signals. Spirit is the sum total of all energy signals.

Every hair on your body, every cell, every neuron, is designed as an antenna. You are a living antenna, an energy receiver and transmitter, for Spirit.

What are you transmitting right now? What would you like to be transmitting right now? As you become conscious of your transmissions, your energy signals, you become aware that you are participating in the totality of spiritual data flowing through the air waves, and through all matter, all that you can see and hear. Spirit flows through you, whether you are conscious of It or not. You can dim Its signal, muddy up its antennae hardware. Or, you can amplify Its signal, and join in conscious movement, radiating, with It, with Spirit.

Spirit is you, at its lowest and slowest frequencies. You are Spirit, in your highest and fastest frequencies.

Heaven is a great bandwidth of energy. Link up. Link in.

The Struggle to Figure Out Who We Are

So identified with who we are not, most of us will get dizzy trying to understand this post. Yet I encourage you to pierce through the dense shell of words and letters to the essential yolk of meaning within this writing, for it is there you will remember who you are.  

Most of us struggle to feel an enduring sense of identity. We fail to know who we are. It is like we are naked, bare of self. Feeling naked, we grab for the nearest clothing we can put on. Knowing not the timeless and unchanging part of ourselves, we clothe ourselves with borrowed bits and pieces. We “put on” a sense of identity, rather than wear our own. We take on a piece of mom, a part of dad, a little from our friends, a bit of our heros, and a whole lot of what we see worn by society. A patchwork quilted suit of self, stitched together from what we perceive around us, is what emerges from our taking. In our daily lives, we identify ourselves with whatever we believe is most fashionable. Bling. Boats and cars. Gadgets. Big houses. Prestigious titles. Even our thoughts are matched to the popular beliefs of the day. But in doing so, in attaching our sense of “I” to tangible objects or personal thoughts, we feel ourselves to be impermanent, disposable. Without apparent purpose or meaning. And, we set ourselves up for chronic grief and loss.

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Junk DNA Really Junk?

Junk DNA really junk? Not on your life. But that is what some researchers from the University of Buffalo in New York have concluded according to the article linked below. They say that genes make up only 2% of our DNA, meaning that only two percent of our DNA codes for proteins. The other 98% they now believe is junk DNA because it is not required by a healthy organism, at least not by a healthy bladderwort. There are alternative explanations. Consider that we have much evolving left to do. And the researchers who have argued that the remaining 98% plays some hidden role are closer to the truth. Especially since ENCODE reportedly found that 80% of our human genome did have some biological activity. For instance, the ability to determine genetic expression, the ability to turn it off or on, doesn’t seem like a “junk” function to me, and likely not to epigeneticists either. The function of this mysterious portion of DNA may be hidden only from our five physical senses, yet revealed at other energy frequencies. Its purpose may be found as we continue to unfold our human potential and evolutionary destiny. What do you think? http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/12/18213982-junk-dna-mystery-solved-its-not-needed

Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life

This may be the most important book of the decade!
Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life [Hardcover]

Allen Frances

From “the most powerful psychiatrist in America” (New York Times) and “the man who wrote the book on mental illness” (Wired), a deeply fascinating and urgently important critique of the widespread medicalization of normality
Anyone living a full, rich life experiences ups and downs, stresses, disappointments, sorrows, and setbacks. These challenges are a normal part of being human, and they should not be treated as psychiatric disease. However, today millions of people who are really no more than “worried well” are being diagnosed as having a mental disorder and are receiving unnecessary treatment. In Saving Normal, Allen Frances, one of the world’s most influential psychiatrists, warns that mislabeling everyday problems as mental illness has shocking implications for individuals and society: stigmatizing a healthy person as mentally ill leads to unnecessary, harmful medications, the narrowing of horizons, misallocation of medical resources, and draining of the budgets of families and the nation. We also shift responsibility for our mental well-being away from our own naturally resilient and self-healing brains, which have kept us sane for hundreds of thousands of years, and into the hands of “Big Pharma,” who are reaping multi-billion-dollar profits. Frances cautions that the new edition of the “bible of psychiatry,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), will turn our current diagnostic inflation into hyperinflation by converting millions of “normal” people into “mental patients.” Alarmingly, in DSM-5, normal grief will become “Major Depressive Disorder”; the forgetting seen in old age is “Mild Neurocognitive Disorder”; temper tantrums are “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder”; worrying about a medical illness is “Somatic Symptom Disorder”; gluttony is “Binge Eating Disorder”; and most of us will qualify for adult “Attention Deficit Disorder.” What’s more, all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the “worried well” are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment. Masterfully charting the history of psychiatric fads throughout history, Frances argues that whenever we arbitrarily label another aspect of the human condition a “disease,” we further chip away at our human adaptability and diversity, dulling the full palette of what is normal and losing something fundamental of ourselves in the process. Saving Normal is a call to all of us to reclaim the full measure of our humanity. Click below for the link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Normal-Out—Control-Medicalization/dp/0062229257/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367594177&sr=1-7&keywords=dsm+5

Neurons grown by scientists controlling our US power grid?

According to D News, Clemson University scientists have taken neurons from a human brain, and have trained the neural network to run the US power grid. What do you think? Check it out: http://video.us.msn.com/watch/video/is-the-human-brain-the-power-plant-of-the-future/plf7euw?from=en-us_msnhpvidmod&cpkey=f1cc9390-b00a-4cb3-bf3b-0a7edf2b67a2%257c%257c%257c%257c