A mysterious and deadly virus is capturing global attention, sparking urgent travel warnings and widespread concern. Known for its unsettling nickname—the “Bleeding Eye” virus—this disease has not only shaken the health sector but also left travelers and governments on high alert. Its symptoms are as alarming as its name, and its impact has already been felt in multiple regions.

What is this incurable disease that has the world watching so closely? How did it emerge, and why is it spreading so rapidly?

What Is the Marburg Virus?

The Marburg virus, a member of the Filoviridae family, is a highly virulent pathogen responsible for Marburg virus disease (MVD), a severe hemorrhagic fever in humans. First identified in 1967 during simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia, the virus was traced back to African green monkeys imported from Uganda for research purposes. This initial outbreak resulted in several fatalities among laboratory workers, marking the virus’s alarming entry into the human population.

Marburg virus is closely related to the Ebola virus, sharing similar structural characteristics and disease manifestations. Both viruses are filamentous and contain single-stranded RNA genomes, leading to severe hemorrhagic fevers with high mortality rates. The natural reservoir for the Marburg virus is the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus), with human infections typically resulting from prolonged exposure to mines or caves inhabited by these bats.

Transmission to humans occurs through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals or animals. Human-to-human transmission is facilitated by direct contact with broken skin or mucous membranes, as well as contact with surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids, such as bedding and clothing.

The incubation period for MVD ranges from 2 to 21 days, after which symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, muscle pains, and profound weakness abruptly manifest. As the disease progresses, patients may experience severe hemorrhagic manifestations, including bleeding from the nose, gums, and eyes, leading to the virus’s colloquial name, the “bleeding eye” virus. The World Health Organization notes that the average case fatality rate for MVD is around 50%, with rates varying from 24% to 88% in past outbreaks, depending on virus strain and case management.

Currently, there are no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments for MVD. However, early supportive care with rehydration and symptomatic treatment significantly improves survival rates. Ongoing research aims to develop effective vaccines and therapeutics to combat this deadly virus.

Symptoms and Progression of Marburg Virus Disease

Marburg virus disease (MVD) is a severe and often fatal illness characterized by a rapid onset of symptoms that can escalate swiftly. Understanding the progression of these symptoms is crucial for early detection and improving survival rates.

1. Incubation Period: The incubation period for MVD ranges from 2 to 21 days, with symptoms typically appearing abruptly.
2. Initial Symptoms: The disease begins suddenly with high fever, severe headache, and malaise. Muscle aches and pains are common.
3. Gastrointestinal Phase: By the third day, patients may experience severe watery diarrhea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea, and vomiting. This phase can last for a week, and patients have been described as having “ghost-like” drawn features, deep-set eyes, expressionless faces, and extreme lethargy.
4. Hemorrhagic Manifestations: Between days 5 and 7, hemorrhagic symptoms may develop, including:
   • Bleeding from the nose, gums, and injection sites
   • Blood in vomit and feces
   • Spontaneous bleeding from the eyes, leading to the “bleeding eye” nickname
   • Notably, “because it’s hemorrhagic, it ‘damages blood vessels and causes bleeding’ — often from the eyes, nose, mouth, or vagina.”
5. Neurological Symptoms:
   • In later stages, patients may exhibit neurological symptoms such as confusion, irritability, and aggression.
6. Fatal Outcomes:
   • In fatal cases, death usually occurs between 8 and 9 days after symptom onset, often preceded by severe blood loss and shock.
7. Recovery Phase: Survivors may face a prolonged recovery, with symptoms like:

• Myalgia
• Hepatitis
• Weakness
• Ocular issues
• Psychosis

These symptoms can persist for weeks or months.

Transmission of Marburg Virus Disease

Marburg virus disease (MVD) is a highly virulent illness transmitted to humans through specific interactions with infected animals and individuals. Understanding these transmission pathways is crucial for implementing effective preventive measures.

Primary Transmission: Animal to Human

• Natural Reservoir: The primary hosts of the Marburg virus are fruit bats, specifically Rousettus aegyptiacus. These bats harbor the virus without exhibiting symptoms, facilitating its persistence in nature.
• Zoonotic Spillover: Human infections occur through direct exposure to infected bats or their excretions. Activities such as visiting or working in caves inhabited by bat colonies or handling bushmeat can lead to transmission.

Secondary Transmission: Human to Human

• Direct Contact: The virus spreads between humans via direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs, or other bodily fluids of infected individuals. This includes exposure through broken skin or mucous membranes.
• Contaminated Surfaces: Contact with surfaces and materials (e.g., bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids can also facilitate transmission.
• Healthcare Settings: Healthcare workers have been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed MVD, underscoring the importance of strict infection control measures.
• Burial Practices: Traditional burial ceremonies that involve direct contact with the body of the deceased can contribute to the transmission of Marburg virus.

Additional Considerations

• Sexual Transmission: Marburg virus transmission via infected semen has been documented up to seven weeks after clinical recovery, indicating that sexual transmission is possible during the convalescent phase.
• Nosocomial Transmission: Inadequate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in healthcare settings can lead to nosocomial transmission, emphasizing the need for proper PPE protocols.

Recent Outbreaks and Affected Regions

Marburg virus disease (MVD) has reemerged in various regions, prompting significant health concerns. Notably, in September 2024, Rwanda reported its first-ever outbreak of MVD, with 66 confirmed cases and 15 deaths as of November 8, 2024. The outbreak primarily affected healthcare workers, especially those in intensive care units, across seven districts, including Gasabo, Kicukiro, and Nyarugenge in Kigali Province.

Earlier, in March 2023, Tanzania experienced its inaugural MVD outbreak in the Kagera region, resulting in nine cases and six deaths. This outbreak was contained by June 2023.

These incidents underscore the virus’s potential to spread across borders, especially in regions with close human and animal interactions. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been actively involved in supporting affected countries to implement control measures and prevent further transmission.

Global Response and Travel Warnings

The recent outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in Rwanda has prompted a coordinated international response to prevent further spread. As of November 8, 2024, Rwanda reported 66 confirmed cases and 15 deaths, with healthcare workers being significantly affected.

World Health Organization (WHO) Actions

The WHO has been actively involved in supporting Rwanda’s efforts to control the outbreak. On November 9, 2024, the WHO announced the commencement of a 42-day countdown to declare the end of the outbreak, following the discharge of the last confirmed patient. The organization continues to assist in surveillance and infection prevention measures.

Travel Advisories

In response to the outbreak, various health agencies have issued travel advisories:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): The CDC updated its interim recommendations for public health management of travelers arriving in the United States from Rwanda, reflecting the current status of the outbreak.
• Travel Health Pro (UK): Travel Health Pro, associated with the UK Health Security Agency, advised travelers to exercise caution due to the spread of Marburg virus, Mpox, and Oropouche fever in multiple countries, including Rwanda.

Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Statement

The Africa CDC urged countries to avoid implementing travel bans or movement restrictions targeting African nations, emphasizing that such measures are inconsistent with international health guidelines and could hinder public health efforts.

Preventive Measures

Travelers to affected regions are advised to:

• Avoid Contact with Bats and Non-Human Primates: As these animals are natural reservoirs of the virus.
• Practice Good Hygiene: Regular handwashing with soap and water.
• Seek Medical Advice: Consult healthcare providers before traveling to outbreak areas.

These measures are crucial in preventing the spread of MVD and ensuring public health safety.

Preventive Measures Against Marburg Virus Disease

Marburg Virus Disease (MVD) is a severe and often fatal illness with no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments currently available. Therefore, implementing effective preventive measures is crucial to control its spread.

1. Avoid Contact with Potential Animal Hosts

• Fruit Bats: The Rousettus aegyptiacus fruit bat is identified as the natural reservoir for the Marburg virus. Avoiding contact with these bats, especially in caves or mines where they reside, can reduce the risk of transmission.
• Non-Human Primates: Refrain from handling or consuming bushmeat from non-human primates, as they can be carriers of the virus.

2. Implement Strict Infection Control Practices

• Healthcare Settings: Healthcare workers should adhere to stringent infection prevention and control measures, including the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks, gowns, and eye protection, to prevent contact with patients’ blood and body fluids.
• Isolation of Infected Individuals: Prompt isolation of suspected or confirmed MVD cases is essential to prevent nosocomial transmission.

3. Practice Good Hygiene

• Hand Hygiene: Regular handwashing with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand sanitizers can reduce the risk of transmission.
• Avoid Contact with Infected Individuals: Minimize direct contact with individuals showing symptoms of MVD and their belongings.

4. Safe Burial Practices

• Handling of Deceased Bodies: Traditional burial practices that involve direct contact with the deceased should be modified to prevent transmission. Engaging trained personnel to handle burials safely is recommended.

5. Community Engagement and Education

• Awareness Campaigns: Educating communities about MVD transmission and prevention strategies is vital for controlling outbreaks.
• Reporting Suspected Cases: Encouraging prompt reporting of suspected MVD cases to health authorities facilitates timely response and containment.

Staying Vigilant Against the Marburg Threat

The Marburg virus, with its devastating impact and high mortality rate, remains a pressing global health concern. From its alarming symptoms to its rapid transmission, understanding this disease is vital for prevention and containment. While recent outbreaks have highlighted the challenges in managing this deadly virus, they have also spurred coordinated international efforts to enhance surveillance, enforce preventive measures, and develop potential treatments.

Staying informed, practicing good hygiene, and adhering to travel advisories are essential for mitigating risks, especially for those in or traveling to affected regions. By prioritizing education and vigilance, we can collectively work toward minimizing the spread of the Marburg virus and safeguarding public health.

In a world where mental health awareness is on the rise, myths and misunderstandings still linger, shaping perceptions in ways that can be harmful and misleading. Many of us have likely encountered some common phrases like, “People with mental health issues just need to toughen up,” or “Therapy is only for those who can’t handle life.” But are these beliefs really rooted in fact, or are they products of outdated thinking and misconceptions?

Myth 1: Mental Health Problems Are Rare

Mental health challenges aren’t as rare as some might think—they affect a huge portion of the global population. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “1 in 4 people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives.” In the United States, more than one in five adults live with a mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). This prevalence shows how common mental health issues are and underscores the need to recognize and address them as a regular part of health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified mental health struggles. A study published in JAMA Network Open found that the number of adults experiencing depression in the U.S. tripled during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of increased mental health support, especially during times of global crisis.

Understanding how common mental health issues are is key to fighting stigma and helping people feel comfortable seeking support. Realizing that these challenges affect many can foster a more supportive and empathetic society.

Myth 2: People with Mental Health Issues Are Weak

The idea that mental health struggles reflect personal weakness is a harmful misconception. Mental health conditions are complex medical issues, influenced by a mix of genetic, biological, environmental, and psychological factors—none of which reflect on an individual’s character or strength.

The South Australian Health Department states, “A mental illness is not a character flaw. It is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, biological, social and environmental factors.” This underscores that mental health issues are not personal shortcomings but multifaceted health conditions.

NAMI also emphasizes that mental health conditions “have nothing to do with being lazy or weak, and many people need help to get better.” Seeking help is actually a proactive and courageous step, not a sign of weakness. It takes resilience and strength to confront these challenges, engage in treatment, and work toward recovery.

In reality, managing a mental health condition often requires significant courage. People facing these challenges show immense strength by seeking treatment and committing to recovery. As many say, “Fighting a mental health condition takes a great deal of strength”—a perspective that recognizes the resilience required to manage these struggles.

Myth 3: Therapy is Only for “Crazy” People

There’s this idea out there that therapy is only for people dealing with serious mental illness, but that’s a huge misconception. Therapy can actually help with all kinds of things—from handling everyday stress to working on personal growth and navigating life’s ups and downs.

Think of therapy as a safe, private place where you can talk openly with someone who’s trained to really listen and guide you. It’s different from venting to friends or family. Therapists have tools and techniques they’re trained to use that can genuinely make a difference.

And science backs this up. For example, research in the Journal of Counseling Psychology found that people who go to therapy report feeling better and handling life’s challenges more easily.

The truth is, therapy isn’t just for people in crisis. Lots of folks go to work on self-awareness, strengthen their relationships, or just set themselves up to live a fuller life. Let’s get rid of the idea that therapy is only for people with “serious” issues. It’s a helpful resource for anyone looking to feel better and grow.

Myth 4: Mental Health Conditions Are Permanent

A lot of people think that if you’re diagnosed with a mental health condition, you’re stuck with it forever. But that’s not always the case—plenty of people see real improvement, and some even recover fully.

Mental health isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. Recovery looks different for everyone, and things like getting help early, finding the right treatment, and making lifestyle changes can make a huge difference. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) even says, “recovery is a process, and it’s possible for people to recover and live full and productive lives.”

There’s research to back this up, too. One study in Psychiatric Services found that people dealing with serious mental health challenges saw big improvements in their lives when they had solid, community-based support.

Recovery might mean different things to different people. For some, it’s learning how to manage symptoms so they can live well. For others, it’s about reaching a point where symptoms are no longer an issue. Either way, mental health challenges don’t have to be a lifelong roadblock. Improvement is possible, and with the right help, people can and do live fulfilling lives.

Myth 5: People with Mental Health Disorders Are Violent

There’s this stereotype that people with mental health issues are violent, but it’s just not true. Most people dealing with mental health challenges aren’t violent at all—in fact, they’re often more likely to be victims of violence rather than the ones causing it.

Studies show that mental health issues alone don’t make someone violent. A big review done in 2015 found that only about 4% of violent acts in the U.S. could be linked to people with mental health disorders. So blaming mental illness for violent behavior doesn’t really add up and actually creates a lot of unfair stigma.

Plus, people with severe mental health conditions are actually at a higher risk of getting hurt themselves. Research has shown they’re more likely to be victims of violent crime compared to the general population.

It’s also worth remembering that things like drug or alcohol use, financial issues, and personal history are way bigger factors in violent behavior than mental health. Breaking down this myth is important to help reduce stigma and build a more accurate, compassionate understanding of mental health.

Myth 6: Mental Health Issues Are a Sign of Weakness

A lot of people still think that mental health struggles mean a person is weak or lacks willpower. But honestly, mental health has nothing to do with being “tough” or “weak.” Mental health conditions are just as real as physical ones, and they happen because of a whole mix of factors—genetics, environment, biology, you name it.

Imagine telling someone with a broken leg to just “toughen up” and walk it off. It sounds silly, right? Yet people say things like this about mental health all the time. Groups like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) are clear about it: mental health issues aren’t caused by a lack of character or inner strength.

Truth is, facing a mental health challenge actually takes a lot of strength. It’s not easy to ask for help, stick to treatment, and keep going, especially when things get tough. People dealing with mental health issues are often some of the strongest out there—they’re just dealing with a different kind of battle.

So let’s ditch the idea that mental health is about weakness. Getting through hard times, reaching out for help, and working on yourself takes serious courage.

Myth 7: Only People Without Friends Need Therapists

Some people think therapy is just for folks who don’t have close friends or family to lean on. But that’s not really true. Therapy is a totally different kind of support—it’s a place where you can talk openly with someone who’s trained to help you work through things without any judgment or personal ties.

Friends and family are great, sure, but they’re not exactly equipped to handle everything. Therapists, on the other hand, know how to help you get to the root of things in a way that even the best friend can’t. Plus, in therapy, you don’t have to hold back or worry about how it might affect someone else. It’s just you, figuring things out for yourself.

And here’s the thing: therapy isn’t just for people dealing with big crises. Plenty of people go just to work on self-improvement, sort through their thoughts, or get better at handling life’s ups and downs. Whether you’re looking to build confidence, manage stress, or just understand yourself a bit better, therapy can be a huge help.

So, therapy isn’t about lacking friends. It’s about taking the time to work on yourself in a way that friends or family just can’t provide.

Myth 8: Mental Health Problems Are Permanent

A lot of people think that if you’re dealing with a mental health issue, it’s something you’ll just have to live with forever. But that’s actually not true. Many people see major improvements over time, and some even reach a place where they feel completely better.

Recovery isn’t the same for everyone. For some, it means finding ways to manage symptoms well enough to enjoy life, while others might actually see their symptoms go away altogether. Things like the right treatment, a strong support system, and some lifestyle tweaks can make a world of difference.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) even says, “recovery is a process, and it’s possible for people to recover and live full and productive lives.” And research backs this up—lots of studies show that with the right help, people dealing with mental health issues often experience big changes for the better.

So, no, mental health challenges aren’t necessarily forever. With the right help and time, many people find themselves in a much better place.

Myth 9: Addiction Is a Lack of Willpower

There’s a common idea that addiction is just a lack of willpower or self-control, but it’s way more complicated than that. Addiction isn’t about being “weak”—it’s a real medical condition that affects the brain.

When someone becomes addicted, their brain chemistry actually changes, especially in areas that deal with motivation and rewards. This is why willpower alone usually isn’t enough to break the cycle. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) explains it well: addiction is “a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking, continued use despite harmful consequences, and long-lasting changes in the brain.”

Basically, addiction rewires the brain, making it incredibly hard to quit without help. Studies back this up too, showing that people struggling with addiction benefit most from a combination of treatments—things like counseling, support groups, and sometimes medication.

So let’s throw out the idea that addiction is about a lack of willpower. It’s a complex medical issue, and people deserve understanding and proper help, not judgment.

Myth 10: People with Schizophrenia Have Multiple Personalities

A lot of people mix up schizophrenia with having “multiple personalities,” but they’re actually two completely different things. Schizophrenia is a mental health condition that affects how someone thinks, feels, and perceives reality, sometimes causing things like hallucinations or delusions.

The confusion likely comes from the word “schizophrenia” itself, which loosely means “split mind.” But it doesn’t mean a split personality—more like a disconnect in how emotions and thoughts align with reality. The World Health Organization (WHO) clarifies that schizophrenia is really about distortions in thinking and perception, not multiple identities.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which used to be called multiple personality disorder, is actually the condition where someone has two or more distinct identities or personality states. It’s totally separate from schizophrenia and has its own symptoms and treatments.

Understanding the difference is important, because mixing up these conditions just adds to the misunderstanding and stigma around mental health. Schizophrenia isn’t about “split personalities”—it’s a serious but manageable mental health condition that deserves empathy and accurate information.

Dispelling the Myths, Embracing the Truth

Despite the progress made in understanding mental health, misconceptions continue to fuel stigma and create unnecessary barriers for those seeking support. Recognizing the myths that surround mental health is an essential first step in fostering a more compassionate and educated society. By exploring and debunking these misconceptions, we encourage a shift in perspective, moving away from judgment and toward understanding.

Understanding that mental health challenges are common, multifaceted, and treatable—and that seeking help is a strength—helps build a supportive environment where individuals feel safe reaching out. This transformation starts with each of us, as we challenge the myths we encounter and promote a more accurate view of mental health.

With every myth dispelled, we make room for greater acceptance, empathy, and action. By embracing the truth, we help dismantle the stigma surrounding mental health, paving the way for a world where well-being is prioritized and everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

Matter is what makes up the Universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for those who think about it – especially for the physicists.

Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and I have described an updated way to think about matter. We propose that matter is not made of particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is made of fragments of energy.

From Five to One

The ancient Greeks conceived of five building blocks of matter – from bottom to top: earth, water, air, fire and aether. Aether was the matter that filled the heavens and explained the rotation of the stars, as observed from the Earth vantage point.

These were the first most basic elements from which one could build up a world. Their conceptions of the physical elements did not change dramatically for nearly 2,000 years.

Then, about 300 years ago, Sir Isaac Newton introduced the idea that all matter exists at points called particles. One hundred fifty years after that, James Clerk Maxwell introduced the electromagnetic wave – the underlying and often invisible form of magnetism, electricity and light.

The particle served as the building block for mechanics and the wave for electromagnetism – and the public settled on the particle and the wave as the two building blocks of matter. Together, the particles and waves became the building blocks of all kinds of matter.

This was a vast improvement over the ancient Greeks’ five elements but was still flawed. In a famous series of experiments, known as the double-slit experiments, light sometimes acts like a particle and at other times acts like a wave. And while the theories and math of waves and particles allow scientists to make incredibly accurate predictions about the Universe, the rules break down at the largest and tiniest scales.

Einstein proposed a remedy in his theory of general relativity. Using the mathematical tools available to him at the time, Einstein was able to better explain certain physical phenomena and also resolve a longstanding paradox relating to inertia and gravity.

But instead of improving on particles or waves, he eliminated them as he proposed the warping of space and time.

Using newer mathematical tools, my colleague and I have demonstrated a new theory that may accurately describe the Universe. Instead of basing the theory on the warping of space and time, we considered that there could be a building block that is more fundamental than the particle and the wave.

Scientists understand that particles and waves are existential opposites: A particle is a source of matter that exists at a single point, and waves exist everywhere except at the points that create them.

My colleague and I thought it made logical sense for there to be an underlying connection between them.

Flow and Fragments of Energy

Our theory begins with a new fundamental idea – that energy always “flows” through regions of space and time.

Think of energy as made up of lines that fill up a region of space and time, flowing into and out of that region, never beginning, never ending and never crossing one another.

Working from the idea of a universe of flowing energy lines, we looked for a single building block for the flowing energy. If we could find and define such a thing, we hoped we could use it to accurately make predictions about the Universe at the largest and tiniest scales.

There were many building blocks to choose from mathematically, but we sought one that had the features of both the particle and wave – concentrated like the particle but also spread out over space and time like the wave.

The answer was a building block that looks like a concentration of energy – kind of like a star – having energy that is highest at the center, and that gets smaller farther away from the center.

Much to our surprise, we discovered that there were only a limited number of ways to describe a concentration of energy that flows. Of those, we found just one that works in accordance with our mathematical definition of flow.

We named it a fragment of energy. For the math and physics aficionados, it is defined as A = -⍺/r where ⍺ is intensity and r is the distance function.

Using the fragment of energy as a building block of matter, we then constructed the math necessary to solve physics problems. The final step was to test it out.

Back to Einstein, Adding Universality

More than 100 ago, Einstein had turned to two legendary problems in physics to validate general relativity: the ever-so-slight yearly shift – or precession – in Mercury’s orbit, and the tiny bending of light as it passes the Sun.

These problems were at the two extremes of the size spectrum. Neither wave nor particle theories of matter could solve them, but general relativity did.

The theory of general relativity warped space and time in such way as to cause the trajectory of Mercury to shift and light to bend in precisely the amounts seen in astronomical observations.

If our new theory was to have a chance at replacing the particle and the wave with the presumably more fundamental fragment, we would have to be able to solve these problems with our theory, too.

For the precession-of-Mercury problem, we modeled the Sun as an enormous stationary fragment of energy and Mercury as a smaller but still enormous slow-moving fragment of energy. For the bending-of-light problem, the Sun was modeled the same way, but the photon was modeled as a minuscule fragment of energy moving at the speed of light.

In both problems, we calculated the trajectories of the moving fragments and got the same answers as those predicted by the theory of general relativity. We were stunned.

Our initial work demonstrated how a new building block is capable of accurately modeling bodies from the enormous to the minuscule. Where particles and waves break down, the fragment of energy building block held strong.

The fragment could be a single potentially universal building block from which to model reality mathematically – and update the way people think about the building blocks of the Universe.

Republished from TheConversation.com under Creative Commons

(TMU Op-ed) — The Matrix is big money these days. Not the movie so much (although a 4th installment is planned), but rather the Simulation Argument—the idea that we’re living in an advanced computer program or video game.

And the resulting rabbit hole has inspired countless viral articles that accrue major page views all across the web, with the subject itself being debated on prestigious stages by some of the world’s most renowned thinkers and physicists.

Tech magnate and entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines in recent years when he openly stated he believed we live in a simulation. He was quoted saying he thinks there’s “a one in billion chance we’re living in base reality.” In other words, he thinks it’s astronomically more unlikely that we’re not living in a simulation. He said the game No Man’s Sky further convinced him of this reality. To him, the question is “What’s outside the simulation?”

In a 2017 interview, Musk expanded on his views with a tweet to the Twitter account belonging to the show Rick and Morty:

“The singularity for this level of the simulation is coming soon. I wonder what the levels above us look like.”

The singularity for this level of the simulation is coming soon. I wonder what the levels above us look like.

Good chance they are less interesting and deeper levels are better. So far, even our primitive sims are often more entertaining than reality itself.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 5, 2017

Where did such technomanic confidence in a real-life Matrix come from? The original Simulation Argument was penned by Nick Bostrum in 2003, though he started speculating on the end result of a Technological Singularity in 2001. He projected, that with our current rate of technological advancement, it is likely that advanced simulations will be increasingly common in the future, and thus it is likely we are actually in one of those simulations.

When the Simulation Argument first came out I was in college, around the time I already felt like I was living in some kind of dystopian movie in which war criminals could be re-elected to a second term as president and an unstoppable corporatocracy could suck the life and data out of a complacent populace.

Now, 15 years later, it seems we’re at enough inflection point, although this time it’s not just about one issue: with climate change looming, economic collapse imminent, and mindless nationalism seeping back into the global order, it’s as if we’ve hit a cultural singularity of destruction and apocalypse fetishism.

It makes total sense that such a hypothesis would become so popular in this environment. How could this reality be real? It almost makes more sense that this is a simulation. It’s soothing to think this is all some sick experiment by a sadistic posthuman AI or an extraterrestrial youth on higher-dimensional amphetamines and hallucinogens.

But it was hard to predict that such an outlandish concept could become so mainstream that actual scientists were subscribing to it—and actually running experiments to prove it.

However, in recent years, that’s exactly what has happened. A team of German physicists used a field called lattice quantum chromodynamics to create a mini-simulation of a sliver of the universe to see if it has the same kind of arbitrary constraints, such as high energy particles seen in the Greisen–Zatsepin–Kuzmin or GZK cut off.

Theoretical physicist S. James Gate claims to have found a surprising and highly unusual code in his research into string theory. He says that, embedded deep within the most fundamental equations that outline our cosmos, he found self-dual linear error-correcting block code. Essentially, he says there are error correcting 1s and 0s bound up inside the superstrings that constitute the core of our reality. Though Gate was a skeptic on the simulation idea, this discovery shook him.

A new book by Rizwan Virk expands upon Bostrum’s original idea and then takes it to the next level, as he wonders about the nature of our existence within the simulation.

“Probably the most important question related to this is whether we are NPCs (non-player characters) or PCs (player characters) in the video game,” Virk said in an interview with Vox.

“If we are PCs, then that means we are just playing a character inside the video game of life, which I call the Great Simulation.”

Virk argues that the mysterious findings in quantum mechanics—namely that the universe seems to be largely quantum potential and not fixed reality until a human observes it—are consistent with video game rendering logic. “The cardinal rule,” he says, “is the universe renders only that which needs to be observed.”

The cultural influence is significant, too. As we careen toward a frighteningly uncertain future, the temptation to engage in newer, proto-technologist forms of escapism grows stronger. The downstream effects of the Simulation Argument are becoming more clearly defined as a traditional religious psuedo-science, with YouTube videos of people claiming you can hack reality and reprogram your mind to live in the universe of your choosing.

One hacker, George Hotz, is so convinced we’re living in a simulation that he’s created a church for it, his goal being to figure out how to hack the simulation and escape into a new reality.

“It’s easy to imagine things that are so much smarter than you and they could build a cage you wouldn’t even recognize,” George stated, adding that the solution is to “jailbreak the simulation,” and either meet our makers or destroy them.

It’s hard to say whether such ideas are productive or dangerous. It’s unlikely Bostrom—who claims he had not seen The Matrix before writing his seminal paper on the hypothesis—could have ever imagined his idea would become so firmly embedded in the zeitgeist. He also likely could not have imagined the all-encompassing, dystopian nature of the surveillance grid we would live in nearly twenty years later.

People increasingly feel like they’re losing control of not only their own realities, but the collective, consensus reality we live in. It’s enticing to believe there’s a larger mystery governing the laws of this insanity. It’s enticing to view consciousness as some kind of reality-hacking, non-biological buzzsaw slicing through the quantum ether.

But at the end of the day, perhaps our minds are just the unlikely interfaces between chaos and energy. Given the unlikeliness of existing at all, maybe that should be enough.

By Jake Anderson | Creative Commons | TheMindUnleashed.com

“Highly evolved people have their own conscience as pure law.” ~Lao Tzu

If we heed these wise words by Lao Tzu, then it stands to reason that we focus more on developing highly evolved people capable of honoring universal laws, rather than waste our energy bludgeoning people with invalid laws that violate the golden rule, the nonaggression principle, and the universal laws that dictate health.

But what constitutes a highly evolved person? What might a highly evolved person’s character look like? How do we define such a broad concept? In Five Counterintuitive Traits of Highly Evolved Humans, I broke down the emotional disposition of highly evolved people. In this article we’ll break down the political disposition of highly evolved people.

Choose a courage-based lifestyle over a fear-based lifestyle:

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with the taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.” ~John Salter

Does your government have a taste for blood and a thirst for power? A highly evolved person, with their own conscience as pure law, would choose smart rebuking over fearful obsequiousness.

Don’t allow such a government to have its way. Question its authority. Practice strategic civil disobedience. Count coup on overreaching power constructs. Challenge outdated, immoral, and unjust laws. Be the personification of checks and balances. Dare to be a courageous David facing down the Goliath of the state.

We don’t need more people who blindly obey in deadly fear. That’s already the vast majority of people. We need more people who are highly evolved enough to smartly rebuke any and all governments that use violence to “solve” problems.

Choosing a courage-based lifestyle over a fear-based lifestyle is choosing to no longer be a victim. It’s choosing, instead, to become a hero. It’s choosing courage over fear, self-sacrifice over comfort and security, adventure over banality, fierceness over obsequiousness, and ruthless skepticism over blind faith.

Understand that the vast majority of people are still willing to live fear-based lifestyles. Sympathize with them for having not woken up yet, but do not pity them. It’s not their fault they were brainwashed, conditioned and indoctrinated into living fear-based lifestyles, but it is their responsibility to educate themselves and to break themselves of their conditioning.

You can lead people to knowledge, but you can’t make them think. You can, however, remain ruthless with your courage-based lifestyle. Become a beacon of courageous hope. Especially for those who are still living fear-based lifestyles. Call it tough love. As Derrick Jensen said, “Love does not imply pacifism.”

Choose heart-centeredness over political divisiveness:

“We want to abolish the state and create a world free of oppression and suffering, but we must not lose sight of ourselves in the pursuit of this goal. Remain heart-centered no matter how violent the state becomes or how divisive the political climate. Every revolutionary through history who chose violence became a monster and a shadow of what they pursued. Remember, we are after an evolution of hearts and minds.” ~Derrick Broze & John Vibes

Bipartisan politics is old hat. It’s high time you toss that hat in the fire. Highly evolved people have already done so. They have gone Meta with politics. They’ve gone beyond the outdated, codependent divisiveness of bipartisanism and graduated into an updated, interdependent metamorality.

Metamorality, coined by Joshua Greene, is based on a common ground that all humans can agree upon while proposing a utilitarian deep pragmatism that empathically broadens the mind and compassionately opens the heart to the plight of us all as interdependent beings on an interconnected planet. Highly evolved humans use this strategy, along with the Astronaut Overview Effect, to go big-picture.

Going big-picture helps us change our minds. Or, at least be more flexible and open in our thinking. It puts things into proper perspective. It helps us feel more empathic and less psychopathic toward each other. We’re better able to see the world as one, without borders.

We’re better able to narrow our highfalutin politics down to a single concept we can all agree on: freedom. We’re better able to see through all the red herring cognitive biases of the climate debate and realize that our problem is a single problem we can all agree on: pollution. We’re better able to cut straight through the divisiveness of religion and narrow it down to a single concept that we can all agree on: love. Especially love for our children, and creating a healthy environment for them to grow up in. And suddenly there are not so many differences between us.

Choosing heart-centeredness over political divisiveness puts a compassionate spin on our conscience. Indeed, it puts the “conscience” in having our own conscience as pure law. For pure law is universal law, based upon the healthy interconnectedness of all things.

Choose self-improvement over self-preservation and create a better world:

“You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.” ~Eliezer Yudkowsky

When it comes down to it, becoming a highly evolved human is about spitting out the unhealthy blue pill of comfort, safety, and security based on outdated laws, and having the courage to swallow the healthy red pill of curiosity, questioning, and skepticism that questions bad laws in order to create healthy laws that align with universal laws.

It’s about becoming the personification of checks and balances. It’s about putting in the hard and difficult work of becoming a highly evolved person who has the wherewithal to “use their own conscience as pure law.” And to teach others how to do the same.

The answer is not creating more bad laws to shove down people’s throats. The answer is creating people smart enough to question the authority that seeks to shove bad laws down people’s throats. Indeed. The answer is teaching people how to become bigger than the law, how to gain the capacity to have their own conscience as pure law, and how to become a more valuable human. As Niels Bohr said, “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”

If, as Plato famously said, “Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws,” then it stands to reason that we should focus more on teaching people how to act responsibly and less on creating laws. Especially since humans are so terrible at making good laws. And especially-especially since humans are even more terrible about abusing their power regarding those ill-conceived laws.

As Edward Abbey wisely suggested, “Since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” The few seeking to rule others do so through the enforcement of bad laws.

So, it is incumbent upon anyone with their own conscience as pure law to ruthlessly interrogate such bad laws and then mercilessly check and balance any authority seeking to enforce such bad laws. We do ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren a disservice when we decide not to.

There is no greater cause than becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in. Will you defend outdated unethical laws and merely turn a blind eye to those who unjustly enforce them? Or will you defend the people’s right to ruthlessly challenge unethical laws and those who unjustly enforce them? The choice is yours. As William James said, “We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.”

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

If you would be alive –if you would choose to live an examined life, a fulfilled life, a self-actualized life, a life well-lived– then don’t fearfully choose the safe road, what Jung called “The Road of Death.” Choose instead the courage to face the trials and tribulations of an adventurous road, a road full of danger and risk.

On the bridge from Man to Overman, there is no place for half-assed lifestyles and herd instincts. There’s no place for fear-based perspectives and cowardly excuses. There’s no place for play-it-safers and goodie-two-shoes clinging to comfort and light. The bridge is too narrow for narrow-mindedness. It’s too shadowy for those who have not reconciled their own shadows. It’s too full of dark nights for anyone who hasn’t experienced a Dark Night of the Soul. It’s too painfully real for those who have not overcome the Matrix and embraced the Desert of the Real.

The bridge is only for courageous self-actualizers and heroic self-overcomers. If your intent is not self-actualization and self-overcoming, then simply get out of the way. Don’t block those with a full heart just because your heart is empty. Better yet: fill your heart with courage. Join the ranks of healthy progressive evolution. “I teach you the Overman,” writes Nietzsche. “Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

Taking the leap of courage:

“Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.” ~Niels Bohr

Can you feel the constriction of your comfort zone? Like a heavy life-jacket weighing you down? Like a too-safe straight-jacket keeping you out of harms way?

Can you feel the warm glow of contentedness quietly stagnating you? Causing you to feel like you’ve made it somehow? Can you feel the secure pressure of the status quo keeping you in line? Causing you to blindly accept, to myopically believe that you’ve somehow got it all figured out?

Taking a leap of courage is daring yourself to escape these feelings. It’s encouraging yourself to step outside your comfort zone. It’s having the audacity to think rather than believe, to take things into consideration rather than rely on conviction. It’s inspiring yourself to be heroic despite fear.

Look, I get it. Inside the comfort zone everything is safe and warm, solved and unriddled. But there’s also no adventure there. There’s no risk. There’s no challenge. There is everything in there to help you heal, it’s a great place to lick your wounds, but there’s nothing there to help you grow.

Healthy growth, the kind of growth that builds resilience and robustness, can only be achieved outside the comfort zone. There’s got to be risk. Like Nietzsche said, “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.”

Inside the comfort zone there’s placation, pacification and pity. There’s everything that keeps us appeased and satisfied. There’s God with his shiny promises and glossy platitudes keeping us pampered and coddled and giving us that warm fuzzy feeling. But there’s no growth. There’s no questions. There’s no humor. There’s no furthering of evolution.

Outside of the comfort zone God is dead. Or, at least, God is a garden. A vast and vital garden filled with the compost of every man-made God to ever have existed, rotting like deified fertilizer for the future fertilization of ever-improved and ever-updated Gods.

Alas, the bridge from Man to Overman can only be built outside our comfort zones. Building the bridge is building adventure. It’s building something to grow into. It’s rebuilding God. It’s building a path into godhood and creative evolution. Indeed, we stand upon the corpse of God in order to self-actualize our place as Gods in the making.

Building the bridge out of the bones of God (and Giants):

“We are all Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be reborn.” ~Meister Eckhart

The bridge is a symbol for revivification, a creative renaissance, a spiritual rebirth, an existential resurgence. The bridge is a path, but it’s also a crossroads –a snarling juxtaposition. It’s built out of the outdated bones of God toward the updated end of creative evolution. It’s fixed into place with existential glue. It’s sturdier than any bridge ever created, but it’s surrounded by an angry abyss, and it’s never completed.

We are all architects of this bridge to some extent. Some of us are aware of it, but most of us are not. Most of us are cluttered and stuck in stopgap ideologies. We’re clustered and bottlenecked before the crossroads. Unable to self-actualize. Unable to self-overcome. Unable to see how everything is connected to everything else. Like pre-enlightened Rumis, we’re incapable of seeing that the door to our prison is wide open. And always has been.

Building the bridge from Man to Overman is proactively engaging and leveraging open-mindedness through self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s inflicting awareness. It’s launching existential flares. It’s highlighting creative evolution through courageous interdependence.

The bones of God are sturdy and steadfast. Solid ground upon which to keep moving, ever-forward, ever-overcoming, ever-evolving. It takes the Newtonian notion of “standing on the shoulders of giants” to the next level. It’s Meta-perceptual. We stand on the bones of God in order to see further than God did. In order to perpetually propel human imagination and ingenuity. In order to grow and keep growing, despite creature comforts, herd instincts, and psychosocial hang-ups.

Building the bridge begins with each of us taking personal responsibility for our contribution to human evolution. Indeed. We all carry the bones of God. Self-overcoming is taking the reins of our life into our own hands, and proactively going about improving upon who we were yesterday. It’s a personalized Fibonacci sequence (self-improvement) striving toward Phi (enlightenment), where our own development is predicated upon an individualized progressive evolution that will ultimately contribute to the evolution of the species.

If you meet Nietzsche on the bridge, kill him:

“If you meet The Buddha on the road, kill him.” ~Linji

As Zen master Shunryu Suzuki wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “Kill the Buddha if the Buddha exists somewhere else. Kill the Buddha, because you should resume your own Buddha nature.” Similarly, we should kill our notion of self-mastery in order to continue improving our mastery. Think of it as a kind of recycled mastery, where we recycle the mastery of yesterday into the remastered mastery of today.

This applies to the concept of deification itself. So as not to get stuck in a particular state of growth, it is vital that we “kill” the notion that we have “arrived.” That our evolution is somehow “complete.” That there is nothing further to grow into, nothing to question, nothing to overcome. For there will always be something to grow into, to question, and to overcome. There will always be a vast infinity toward which our limited finitude must strive. Indeed. The bridge from Man to Overman is built ever-finitely into the infinite future.

Killing Buddha (God) on the road and killing Nietzsche (Godhood) on the bridge is vital to keep creative evolution in perspective, so as not to get hung-up on any particular notion of Truth. The bridge from Man to Overman is filled with the outdated bones of dead Gods and the burnt-out husks of outdated truths. As James Russel Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.”

Those who are proactively and courageously building the bridge understand that Truth is a fickle beast. Almost as fickle a beast as human fallibility. It’s for both reasons that those who are building the bridge consistently recycle their own mastery.

At the end of the day, the bridge from Man to Overman is a process of self-actualization and self-overcoming. It’s the collective personification of creative evolution. We build the bridge to provide a flexible and malleable path toward godhood. We keep building, destroying and rebuilding so that past growth adds to, without subtracting from, the healthy and progressive evolution of the species. We stand and face the Abyss, honoring each other… “Overmaste: the (r)evolutionary potential in me honors the (r)evolutionary potential in you.”

Image: Source

(TMU) – Life abounds with stress-making, havoc-provoking mayhem. Did you misplace your keys when you were already late for work this morning? Was traffic worse today than after a 5-car accident on a Los Angeles turnpike? Is your boss expecting the impossible from you, while you stare into your kid’s eyes and choke back tears explaining you’re going to have to miss their game – again?

In these moments, you need a fast, effective method to chill the heck out. This simple exercise can calm you down and eliminate stress in three minutes or less.

A Stealth Breathing Technique Used by Navy Seals and First Responders

The best thing about this breathing technique is that no one will even know you’re doing it.

It is used by first responders, Navy Seals, and people who are regularly under massive amounts of stress because it has a direct, palpable, and positive effect on the way their nervous systems function.

If you were to pick someone up in an ambulance from one of those LA traffic pile-ups, you don’t have time to freak out. Maybe they won’t live. You have seconds sometimes, to make smart choices that could possibly keep them breathing long enough to get them to a hospital.

Every fiber of your being has evolved over time to signal danger. This is part of your body’s fight-or-flight response.

Counter-Acting the Fight or Flight Response   

When faced with danger or any perceived threat, you instinctively default to two choices: run or fight.

A cascade of chemical reactions occurs the minute a stressful situation presents itself. This is how the body mobilizes its resources to deal with a threat. It doesn’t matter if it is a lion about to pounce on you – as our ancestors had to deal with – or that one last email that finally breaks you. Your natural response to stress will be the same – until you learn how to interrupt it.

The sympathetic nervous systems will trigger the adrenal glands to release catecholamines, which include adrenaline and noradrenaline. This causes your heart to pound, your blood pressure to rise, you’re your breathing rate to speed up.

Your pupils may dilate, and your skin may flush. In extreme stress, your muscles tense up – literally preparing you to run away from the dangerous trigger.

Modern-day triggers are so varied and pervasive, we are almost never in a state of calm.

After a stressful event, it can take up to 45 minutes for your body to return to homeostasis.

That’s why a simple breathing exercise can literally save your life, and retrain you to face stressful situations like a seasoned, meditating monk instead of a raging lunatic.

Cynthia Stonnington, chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, says she introduces people to breathwork because “many people find benefit, no one reports side effects, and it’s something that engages the patient in their recovery with actively doing something.”

Breathwork is in fact, so useful, that one study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2017 found that patients with major depression who practiced deep breathing methods for three months had significantly reduced symptoms as compared to those who did not.

Another study found that our breathing is so closely linked to our emotional state, that changing it can practically negate anxiety completely.

How it Works

Sometimes called box-breathing, you can really use any form of deep, present and conscious breathing to change your physiological response to stress.

Most of us breathe in an unconscious, stress-promoting way. Here’s what happens when you breathe deeply, and correctly for just a few minutes:

• An exhale that is longer than your inhale (deep breathing) causes the vagus nerve which runs from the neck down through your diaphragm to relay a message to your brain to turn up your parasympathetic nervous system and turn down your sympathetic nervous system – the part of your nervous system responsible for rest, relaxation, peace, and digestion.
• This counter-acts the adrenal-dump and flight or fight response.
• Your brain is freed to make smart choices based on relaxed concentration, a state known as Alpha that is seen on EEG scans as neural oscillations in the frequency range of 5–12.5 Hz arising from synchronous and coherent (in phase or constructive) brain activity.
• Alpha waves caused by a deep-breathing pattern create a positive feedback loop that restores harmony between your mind and body.
• This brainwave state is also indicative of those “aha” or “eureka” moments of a compelling new idea, or insane creativity. They allow you to literally create something out of nothing. And when do you need to do that most often? When you are faced with a challenging or stressful situation!

How to Do It

You can start with a box breath and expand into larger inhale-exhale ratios.

A box breath is a simple inhale to the count of four, using your diaphragm. You then exhale for a slow count of four.

Be sure you expand your lungs completely, and fill them as much as you can. If your shoulders are shrugging into your ears, you are likely doing a “stress-breath” which only keeps you in the fight-or-flight stage. This is a shallow breath that we normally do when we are agitated or depressed.

Your stomach should expand, not just your lungs. This is because your diaphragm is moving down into your belly to allow your lungs to expand more fully.

Once you can do this, you will change the ratio. You will start with a 4:8 inhale to exhale ratio, and then move to 8:16, 10:20, 22:44, or even 30:80 etc.

If you want some real inspiration for deep breathing, check out this video of the famous yogi, B.K.S. Iyengar, conducting one of the longest exhales ever.

You don’t have to be this advanced to get all the benefits of deep breathing, though. Simply have enough awareness to take control of your breath the next time a stressful situation arises, and you’ll be feeling less anxious, and calmer.

It’s that simple. You can breathe yourself into peace, in three minutes or less.

Déjà vu, the phenomenon of feeling like you’ve already experienced something before – a smell, a room, someone’s presence, even though you don’t have a conscious memory, is something that reminds us that the world of consciousness is a little more flexible than we often assume. Déjà Rêvé is even stranger. This weird anomaly of consciousness happens when you recall dreaming something at the exact same time that you see it in “real” life. Are these psychic phenomenon indicators that time, space, and consciousness are more like a stretched rubber band, rather than the linear staircase of events and neurological firings that we are taught to believe?

Déjà Rêvé translated from the French means “already dreamed.” It’s a form of precognition that many people have experienced – just like déjà vu. Or, is it just another trick of the mind?

Freud, Jung and the Subconscious, Unconscious & Superconscious Mind

Before we dive a little deeper into déjà rêvé and déjà vu, among many psychic phenomenon, it is helpful to understand some of the prevailing models of the mind.

Psychologist, Sigmund Freud, for instance, imagined in the 1900s that our minds contained information divided into three groups:

• The unconscious mind: 30 – 40%
• The subconscious mind: 50 – 60%
• The conscious mind: 10%

Image: journal psyche.org

Closely related to Freud’s concept of mind is Carl Jung’s, since he was taught by Freud, and later diverged from some of Freud’s theories to develop his own. Jung estimated that our mind is divided further into another category he called the Superconscious Mind. This has also been called the “Collective Unconscious,” “Divine Mind,” “One Mind,” “The Source,” or even “God.” It essentially represents Infinite Wisdom, or the organizing force which creates all of the Universe – which we so often forget that we are not just a part of, but that we ARE.

Jung did extensive research on dreams, memories, and reflections, including precognitive or psychic experiences, including déjà vu and déjà rêvé.

Distinguishing Between a Precognitive Dream and Déjà Rêvé

Let’s look closer now at the distinctions between these psychic (or simply consciousness) phenomenon. Déjà rêvé is when you have the sense that you have dreamed something before, when it is happening in real life, even though you don’t recall a specific instance of being somewhere, doing something, or talking to a specific person.

This is slightly different than a precognitive dream. In a precognitive dream, you simply dream of something that indicates an instance of interaction or experience in the future, and then you later experience that very same “cognitive” act in real life – so the dream told you what would happen before it did.

Examples of this abound in human history. As Ian Wilson explains in a paper on Déjà rêvé,

“President Abraham Lincoln, weeks before his assassination, dreamt of his death. Author Mark Twain had a dream involving the death of his brother Henry weeks before Henry would die in a riverboat accident, with remarkable and uncanny detail in regard to the funeral that followed. British painter David Mandell dreamt three times of planes crashing into the twin towers. In 1996 he painted a picture of such a dream and had it time-stamped in a photograph using his bank’s clock. . .”

Some studies indicate that déjà rêvé is not a psychic experience, but a trick of the mind. In a recently released paper titled Déjà vu: An Illusion of Prediction, cognitive psychologists from Colorado State University explain that déjà vu is simply a memory phenomenon — one that can be recreated in a lab. The abstract explains,

“Despite recent scientific advances, a remaining puzzle is the purported association between déjà vu and feelings of premonition. Building on research showing that déjà vu can be driven by an unrecalled memory of a past experience that relates to the current situation, we sought evidence of memory-based predictive ability during déjà vu states. Déjà vu did not lead to above-chance ability to predict the next turn in a navigational path resembling a previously experienced but unrecalled path (although such resemblance increased reports of déjà vu). However, déjà vu states were accompanied by increased feelings of knowing the direction of the next turn. The results suggest that feelings of premonition during déjà vu occur and can be illusory. Metacognitive bias brought on by the state itself may explain the peculiar association between déjà vu and the feeling of premonition.”

However, other studies have a different take on experiences like déjà vu and déjà rêvé.

Dr. David Ryback also conducted a survey in his publication “Dreams That Came True” with an 8.8% frequency with regards to precognitive dreams. Ryback has also suggested that we can alter reality by having lucid precognitive dreams. He even puts forth that physical reality is a dream-training simulator.

Even philosopher Aristotle skeptically debated precognitive dreams in his paper written in 350 BCE called, “On Prophesying by Dreams.”

What is startlingly strange with déjà rêvé though is that they seem to have a direct and relative relationship with physical reality. If this is true, we need to start asking bigger questions – like what are the origins of “reality”?

Reality Can Be Altered with DreamTime

When we couple this emerging information with the latest advances in quantum physics, we can start to understand how all psychic experiences are quite probably just an expansion of our abilities to alter reality, and to experience it in multiple time-frames. If time isn’t real, and “reality” can be altered with our dreamtime, then who is to say that we haven’t all experienced everything before, and therefore have dreams of being somewhere before or having the very same conversation with a friend?

Ancient tribes from Australia to North and South America, and all across the globe are familiar with “Dream Time.” They knew that the world is not the “thing,” and therefore we can change it with our consciousness.

An acknowledgement of something beyond Cosmic time, and the acceptance of Infinite Consciousness change everything. Scientists can say that déjà vu and déjà rêvé are tricks of the mind, but it is possible that they are the results of expanding consciousness – and a direct link to Jung’s Superconscious Mind.

Image: stefano carniccio/Shutterstock.

Thich Naht Hanh, the Zen Buddhist master, has some interesting advice about what it means to truly let go. Many people mistake detachment or non-clinging to be a form of aloofness, or emotional disconnect from others, but as Hanh explains, truly letting go often means loving someone more than you have ever loved them before.

The Buddha taught that detachment, one of the disciplines on the Noble Path, also called ariyasaavaka, is not a physical act of withdrawal or even a form of austerity. Though the Buddha teaches of a “non-action which is an integral part of the Right Way,” if it is taken out of context it can give the impression that we should develop a lack of concern for others, and that we should live without truly feeling or expressing our emotions – cutting ourselves off from life.

These type of misinterpretations are sadly common, since there are not always direct translations from the Paali language into English.

This form of “detachment” is an erroneous understanding of the Buddha’s message. Master Hanh states that to truly let go we must learn to love more completely. Non-attachment only happens when our love for another extends beyond our own personal expectations of gain, or our anticipation of a specific, desired outcome.

Hanh describes four forms of complete detachment, which surprisingly, aren’t about holing yourself up in a cave and ignoring everyone who has broken your heart, or ignoring your lust or desire for a romantic interest. This is not detachment. Letting go, means diving in. For example:

Maitri (Not the Love You Know)

Hanh describes the importance of Maitri, not love as we normally understand in a Westernized use of the word. He states,

“The first aspect of true love is maitri (metta, in Pali), the intention and capacity to offer joy and happiness. To develop that capacity, we have to practice looking and listening deeply so that we know what to do and what not to do to make others happy. If you offer your beloved something she does not need, that is not maitri. You have to see her real situation or what you offer might bring her unhappiness.”

In other words, your detachment may come in accepting that certain things you would normally do to make another person feel loved and appreciated may not be what the person you are actively loving now, needs. Instead of forcing that behavior on another person, with an egoic intent to “please” them, you simply detach from that need in yourself, and truly observe what makes another person feel comfortable, safe, and happy.

Hanh further explains,

“We have to use language more carefully. “Love” is a beautiful word; we have to restore its meaning. The word “maitri” has roots in the word mitra which means friend. In Buddhism, the primary meaning of love is friendship.”

Karuna (Compassion)

The next form of true detachment is compassion. When we let go, we don’t stop offering a compassionate touch, word, or deed to help someone who is in pain. We also don’t expect to take their hurt or pain away. Compassion contains deep concern, though. It is not aloofness It is not isolation from others.

The Buddha smiles because he understands why pain and suffering exist, and because he also knows how to transform it. You become more deeply involved in life when you become detached form the outcome, but this does not mean you don’t participate fully – even in others’ pain.

Gratitude and Joy

In truly letting go you practice gratitude. Mudita, or joy arises when we are overcome with gratitude for all that we have, such that we no longer cling to some other longed-for result. The Buddha’s definition of joy is more like “Unselfish joy.” It means that we don’t only find happiness when something good happens to us, but when others find happiness.

If you’ve ever had to say goodbye to a love or friend so that they could continue on their life’s path – one that may not have continued to intertwine with your own – you may have felt pain when they found someone new to love, or made a new friend that seemed to take your place. This is not true detachment. Joy arises when you find happiness even when others find joy – and it has little or nothing to do with you.

Upeksha (Equanimity)

Master Hanh describes the final quality of true love which sheds inordinate light on the true process of letting go.

He states,

“The fourth element of true love is upeksha, which means equanimity, non-attachment, nondiscrimination, even-mindedness, or letting go. Upa means “over,” and iksha means “to look.” You climb the mountain to be able to look over the whole situation, not bound by one side or the other. If your love has attachment, discrimination, prejudice, or clinging in it, it is not true love.

People who do not understand Buddhism sometimes think upeksha means indifference, but true equanimity is neither cold nor indifferent. If you have more than one child, they are all your children. Upeksha does not mean that you don’t love. You love in a way that all your children receive your love, without discrimination.”

Hanh explains that without this quality our love tends to become possessive – a stomping ground of the ego. We try to put our beloved in our pocket and carry them with us, when they are more like the wind, or a butterfly, or a stream, needing to move and flow, or risk dying. This is not love, this is destruction.

For love to be true love, it must have elements of compassion, joy, and equanimity – and this is truly letting go.

The Art of Letting Go is Artless

The real secret is that letting go is not an art, it is an allowing, a being. A non-attached relationship is healthy, strong and filled with effortless love, kindness and compassion. It is completely selfless because your sense of ‘self’ is no longer asserted in every situation. If you want to truly let go, you’ve got to love more, not less. This is the most common misunderstanding about this priceless teaching of the Buddha.

Featured Image: Photo © Unified Buddhist Church.

“I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?” ~Sherlock Holmes

This should go without saying, but it needs to be said: don’t take anything for granted. Not even science. Science changes every day. Research changes all the time. Don’t make the same mistake that theists make. Don’t believe in the research. Research it. Think about it. Tear it apart. Re-imagine it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover something that puts the research in this article out to pasture.

Take all things with a grain of salt, and some things with the entire salt shaker. “Entertain a thought without accepting it.” ~Aristotle

1.) Song that reduces anxiety by 65 percent:

This is great news for music lovers, and even greater news for the billions of us who are over-stressed by the daily grind of the nine-to-five meat-mill.

Marconi Union, in collaboration with sound therapists at Mindlab International, created a song called Weightless. It was actually designed to reduce anxiety by carefully mixing harmonies, rhythms, and basslines in unique ways.

The song worked better than they thought it would. It induced a greater state of relaxation than any other music tested to date, according to Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson. It significantly lowers the stress hormone cortisol, while reducing anxiety by 65 percent and lowering psychological resting states by 35 percent. The ultimate brain hack. They even made a ten-hour version! Check it out here.

2.) Low levels of alcohol are good for the brain:

Like we needed another reason to drink, right? Well, it turns out that a couple glasses of wine a day will not only clear the mind but clean the brain as well. A new study out of the University of Rochester Medical Center shows that low levels of alcohol consumption tamp down inflammation and help the brain to clear away toxins, including those associated with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

“Low levels” are the key words. Moderation is the thing with alcohol. As Maiken Nedergaard, lead author of the study, said, “Prolonged intake of excessive amounts of ethanol is known to have adverse effects on the central nervous system. However, in this study we have shown for the first time that low doses of alcohol are potentially beneficial to brain health, namely it improves the brain’s ability to remove waste.”

Bonus: This drug is shown to reverse brain deficits caused by excessive use of alcohol.

3.) Call to The Wild (or at least the outskirts):

When we’re able to get closer to nature, we do our brains a huge favor. According to a new study conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, city dwellers living close to a forest are more likely to show indications of a physiologically healthy amygdala (which plays an important role in stress processing and reactions to danger) structure and are therefore better able to cope with stress than other city dwellers. Why is this?

Heavy from aggrandized civilization, we go into nature seeking medicine. We discover it by simply being present and embracing solitude. In the wild, Truth and Mystery grow together, robustly entangled, speaking a language older than words. When the clanking machinery, blaring car alarms, and whining sirens fade away, our brains get lathered in this mysterious language and Nature’s medicine washes over us.

The closer we can get to this, whether it’s just a forest on the outskirts of town or a green park in the city, the better our brain’s health will be. Our culture is suffering from severe nature deprivation, and the only cure is more nature.

4.) Curcumin Improves Memory and Mood:

Great news for curry lovers. It turns out that curcumin –the substance that gives curry its bright color– is great for the brain. According to a new study out of UCLA, curcumin improved memory and mood in people with mild, age-related memory loss.

Previous lab studies have already revealed the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of curcumin, which is found in turmeric. This study tested curcumin’s direct effect on memory and mood, which revealed that the group who took the supplement had significantly improved memory function (improving 28 percent on memory tests), while the group who took the placebo did not.

As Dr. Gary Small, the study’s first author, said, “Exactly how curcumin exerts its effects is not certain, but it may be due to its ability to reduce brain inflammation, which has been linked to both Alzheimer’s disease and major depression.”

5.) Self-defeating humor promotes psychological well-being:

Are you self-deprecating most of the time, sarcastic some of the time, but laugh at yourself all the time? Great news. Your dark sense of humor is good for your brain.

Research on humor is still in its infancy, but according to a new study completed by the University of Grenada Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre, those who frequently use self-defeating humor exhibit greater levels of psychological and social well-being. Which apparently flies in the face of previous research suggesting that self-defeating humor is exclusively associated with negative psychological effects.

So, let your happy-go-lucky disposition and tough-love sense of humor be your saving grace. It’s all water off a duck’s back. Shrug your shoulders and have a good laugh at yourself. It’s time to reprogram our programming. It’s time to turn the tables on the cosmic joke by laughing at the fact that we will always be the butt end of it. And that’s okay.

6.) Magnetic brain stimulation alters negative emotion perception:

The brain is a very sensitive organ. And you don’t need to have depression to know that. But this new study on depression out of Elsevier reports that processing of negative emotion can be strengthened or weakened by tuning the excitability of the right frontal part of the brain using magnetic stimulation.

The use of inhibitory stimulation currently used to treat depression has been shown to have antidepressant effects. Whereas, excitatory stimulation (Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)) better reduced a person’s response to fearful images and altered negative perception.

As study editor Cameron Carter, M.D. said, “This study confirms that modulating the frontal region of the brain, in the right hemisphere, directly effects the regulation of processing of emotional information in the brain in a ‘top-down’ manner.”

7.) Mindfulness meditation:

You don’t have to be a Yogi to reap the health benefits of mindfulness meditation. It turns out that your brain is being molded in profoundly beneficial ways by daily meditation practices.

Mindfulness meditation has been around for literally thousands of years, and there’s a reason for that: it works. It’s the granddaddy of brain health. Through science we’re starting to get a better understanding of why it is so beneficial. Everyday more research is drawing a clearer link between meditation and human health.

Here’s a list of five interesting health benefits of mindfulness meditation…

1.) Stress and pain relief.

2.) Increased gray matter and neuroplasticity.

3.) Increased focus.

4.) Increased empathy.

5.) Better sleep.

People as diverse as David Lynch and the Dalai Lama have praised the benefits of mindfulness meditation, asserting that it can increase attention, combat stress, and boost overall health. As the great Jiddu Krishnamurti asserted, “Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.”

Image: sdecoret/Shutterstock.

For far too long, but particularly in the modern, Western world we have thought of the heart as simply a pumping mechanism responsible for bringing blood to our organs.

The heart’s physical importance not to be underestimated, it supports life, sending the blood of life to the tree-like limbs of our vascular system – but this is an overly simplistic view of what the heart is capable of.

Gregg Braden’s latest research elaborates on the ancient technique of using the heart as an intelligent organ.

The heart’s intelligence has been ignored for far too long. What we’ve learned about the heart’s wisdom, however, in the past several years through the Heart Math Institute and through the research of psychologists, neurobiologists, and res-surfaced wisdom teachings from our ancient past – should inspire everyone to look at the heart in a completely new way.

For those who are not used to using their innate intelligence – that is their intuition — tuning into the heart for answers to the most profound and difficult questions they could possibly drum up might seem ridiculous. Why ask the heart whether to stay in a relationship that is challenging, or even if you should go through with a medical procedure?

It might seem ignorant or even haphazard to ask the heart questions like these, but it has wisdom that the intellect cannot match. Here’s why:

The heart does not send information through an egoic filter.

The heart knows your past, your present, and your future. Its intelligence does not care about your egoic constructs. The heart simply speaks from a completely neutral place.

You can think of it like a close friend who has your best interest at heart, and who does not care about making themselves look good in your eyes.

Hridaya

There is an ancient term that does not have a direct English translation that describes this intelligence of the heart. Hridaya, is the energy which is contained within the heart chakra. This is not just the physical heart, but the spiritual heart. It contains the intelligence of God, or the transcendental mind.

The word comes from the Sanskrit language, and the closest meaning to English would be something like this:

Hrid = center

Ayam = this

Thus, the spiritual heart always brings you to your center. It will not veer away from your highest self, always taking in a 360-degree (and beyond) view of any situation you could possibly face.

The yogi Bhagavan wrote once to explain this spiritual heart in more detail:

“Just as there is a cosmic center from which the whole universe arises and has its being and functions with the power or the directing energy emanating therefrom, so also is there a center within the frame of the physical body wherein we have our being. This center in the human body is in no way different from the cosmic center. It is this center in us that is called the Hridaya, the seat of Pure Consciousness, realized as Existence, Knowledge and Bliss. This is really what we call the seat of God in us.”

Conversely the mind-brain thinks of our past experiences, our past erroneous beliefs assigned to those experiences, and takes all sorts of twists and turns through a conceptual landscape that we’ve created to give us a “right” answer to life’s deep questions.

A Zen Buddhist can also describe what happens when we think with the head (brain) instead of the heart.

We place a fog – a type of perceptual overlay on top of a situation and then add an emotional investment. We call this “real,” but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yet, we think we have to obtain a siddhi (great accomplishment or miracle) in order to obtain supernormal wisdom or intelligence. So, we go on trusting the false perceptions of the mind-brain.

The Neuro-Biology of the Heart

Moreover, if we were to look at the simple neuro-biology of the heart – there are many more fibers leading from the heart to the brain than from the brain to the heart. This means – as Gregg Braden recently pointed out in a Gaia talk – that there is much more communication being sent to the brain then being received from it.

As the HeartMath Institute explains, the heart also begins beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has even been formed, a process scientists call autorhythmic.

We humans also form an emotional brain long before a rational one, and the heart has its own independent complex nervous system known as “the brain in the heart.”

The heart can also create a level of coherence in the body just through its rhythm, which regulates all its systems, and corrects even diseased cells.

And finally, the electromagnetic field of the heart is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the brain, and permeates every cell in the body. The magnetic component is approximately 5000 times stronger than the brain’s magnetic field and can be detected several feet away from the body with sensitive magnetometers.

How to Think with the Heart’s Wisdom

Here’s what Braden suggests to help us learn to tap into the heart’s massive wisdom: 

1. Focus on the heart (and heart chakra). This sends a signal to the heart that you seek its intelligence.
2. Slow your breathing. This sends another signal to your body that you seek higher intelligence, and not that of the normally stressed, and freaked out ego. Deep breathing calms the nervous system and quiets the brain.
3. Conjure a sense of gratitude, compassion, or love. These are the feelings which trigger an activation of the heart’s energy.
4. Ask your heart a question. The question should be brief and to the point.
5. Everyone will experience the heart’s intelligence a bit differently. You may feel butterflies in your gut, a warm sensation growing around your body, or tingling in your fingertips. You may not feel any bodily sensations, but have a clear, short answer that comes through your mind. Know that it likely won’t need a long-drawn out story to “justify” its wisdom. The heart speaks directly and clearly. If it isn’t try this process again to let your body know that you seek the intelligence of the heart and not the ego.
6. Practice makes perfect. The more often you do this, the easier it will be to tap into the seat of pure consciousness – the Hridaya.

Please republish this article freely with credit to The Mind Unleashed, Johanna Bassols, and with all links intact.

By: Johanna Bassols

Johanna Bassols is the creator of the Soul Reprogramming Method and founder of the Healers of the Light Academy.

“Love could be labeled poison and we’d drink it anyway.” ~Atticus

Love is a tricky subject. It’s multifaceted, both subjectively and objectively. It’s both lost and found within the complex folds of our unique mind-body-spirit dynamic. It’s both a spiraling in and a spiral out. We all know the “feeling” of love, but we can’t seem to describe it to each other. But boy do we try: in poetry, in song, in dance, in bed. Even in art.

Unfortunately, the predominant love paradigm in our culture is egocentric, ownership-based love. We live in a world where relationships are mostly based upon materialism, ownership and immediate gratification. It’s almost like we’re conditioned to consume to the point that we “consume” each other. Even the words we use toward each other imply ownership.

It’s sad. But no condition is insurmountable. We can recondition ourselves to form healthy relationships based upon respect, honesty, and trust. We can update the love paradigm into one of soul-centric, relationship-based love. But first we need to recognize each other as opposite sides of the same being. Our yin-yang dynamic is more dynamic than we tend to allow it to be.

The thing is, our language is dreadfully inadequate to do the concept of love any justice. There are over seven-billion people on the planet and we each have a different psycho-physiological reaction to any given stimuli, however minute that difference. And with abstract stimuli such as Love, Consciousness, and God, that difference is magnified.

The fact is: we each have our own definition for the concept of love (ego), but that definition is written in a language older than words (soul). So how do we understand this language? Simply put: mindfulness. More complexly put: we must become aware of what our mind-body-spirit is telling us, and then be honest about that information regarding our relationships. And poetically put: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” ~Mary Oliver

The ability to love (vulnerability):

“Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it’s understanding the necessity of both; it’s engaging. It’s being all in.” ~Brene Brown

Our ability to love another person is predetermined by our ability to love ourselves. Similar to the airplane-crash-landing analogy, “Always put the mask on yourself before assisting someone who may be less capable,” we must put the Mask of Love on ourselves before loving someone who may or may not be capable of authentic love.

The irony is that we must first learn self-love to understand that egocentric love isn’t the healthiest way to love. We must first love our ego in order to transform it into an ego that isn’t just in love with itself. An ego that isn’t loved tends to become self-serving and egocentric (codependent or merely independent), but an ego that is loved tends to become self-actualized and soul-centric (interdependent).

An ego that has learned interdependence through self-love is more likely to love authentically. It is more likely to be vulnerable with another ego. And vulnerability is the key to loving greatly. It’s the secret of deep authenticity. A crucial aspect of self-actualized love, as opposed to egocentric love, is to allow ourselves to be vulnerable so that we may be astonished by love, taken aback by it, in awe of it. As the great Rumi once said, “Close your eyes. Fall in love. Stay there.”

The ability to let others love (freedom):

“The only way of loving a person is to love them without hope.” ~Walter Benjamin

Have you ever caught yourself saying this, regarding love and relationships? “I just don’t want to get hurt.” Or heard someone else say it? We hear people say this, and we nod in empathy, followed by an understanding pat on the back, or a sympathetic hug.

But, wait a minute! Who ever said getting hurt wasn’t a part of love? Are not pain and love two sides of the same coin? If we love something deeply enough, does it not hurt when we lose it? The thing is, the ability to love another person takes an enormous act of courage. And if we are genuinely allowing ourselves to love another person, then we must open ourselves up to the possibility of being hurt. This is what it means to be vulnerable. If we’re not “all in,” then what’s the point of trying?

Pain should not be avoided at the expense of love. Love should be embraced at the risk of pain. Indeed.

If we’ve already learned to love ourselves, which we should have taken care of before attempting to love another person anyway, then insecurities be damned! It’s time to go for it. It’s time to move all in. Rejection happens. But if we don’t at least give it a shot, and that means getting vulnerable and laying our insecurities out on the table like a bad hand of poker, then we’ll never know if it could have been something magical or not.

A relationship is actually two uniquely different people who have gone from being independent dancers to becoming an interdependent dance. This is the beauty of romantic, soul-centric love. It becomes a dance. But, and here’s the rub, the dance can only be enjoyable if both parties are free to dance… or not.

This is where it gets difficult: allowing our partner to love the way they need to love. This sounds simple enough, but it is deceivingly simple. Because we might not like the way they love. It requires good communication skills, brutal honesty, and an exemplary trust in the other dancer.

One of the biggest assumptions we make about love is imagining that the other person loves the same way that we do. In other words, we assume that what the other person means by love means the same thing that we mean by it. But this simply cannot be true if we are genuinely allowing the other person to be an individual with their own unique tastes and opinions.

Letting our lover love the way they need to love is just as much a part of the dance as our unique way of loving is. But we must be honest, first with ourselves and then with our partners. Sometimes this honesty will hurt, but pain is necessary for growth. And if a relationship is what we’re trying to grow, then pain is par for the course.

If the way another person loves doesn’t jive with the way that you love, then the dance either needs to end or it needs to take on a new form. If this sounds counter-intuitive, that’s because it is. As the great Victor Hugo cryptically stated, “Love is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”

The ability to let love go (compersion):

“Everything we love is well-arranged dust.” ~Atticus

The ability to let love go is our ability to let go of our ego’s attachment to it.

Falling in love is both very easy and very difficult. It is easy when we are coming from a place of non-attachment and interdependence; when we’re allowing all things to mysteriously and majestically flow. But it is difficult when we are coming from a place of attachment and codependence, and we’re rigidly trying to control everything. It’s the difference between being Love, and vainly trying to pigeonhole love into the box of our expectation.

As Stephen Levine profoundly stated, “True love has no object. Many speak of their unconditional love for another. Unconditional love is the experience of being. You cannot unconditionally love someone. You can only be unconditional love. It is not a dualistic emotion. It is a sense of oneness with all that is. The experience of love arises when we surrender our separateness into the universal. It is a feeling of unity. You don’t love another, you are another.”

When we let love go, we’re not letting go of Love itself –not at all. We are letting go of the ego aspect of love. We’re letting go of the attachment, the need to cling. It’s not like we let go of love and then forget about it. No, it’s more like we are saying goodbye. Like proud parents who are sad that their child has left home, but are happy for their growth and open to the possibility of their return.

Love itself is never abandoned, nor is it forgotten. Only the needy, codependent, ego side of love that’s filled with unhealthy expectations and cultural predispositions about the way love should be is abandoned. Authentic love lasts forever, despite us, and even in spite of our egos. The more we let love go, the more we realize that we never owned it in the first place. It was never a thing that could be owned. It could only ever have been free, or it was never really love at all.

So, let’s learn to be Love in the face of expectation. Let’s be Love despite the love that thinks it needs validation. Let’s be Love even when others cannot. That is the heart of both compersion and forgiveness… Love, let others love, and then let go of your ego’s attachment to love. Do this, again and again, in a kind of loving life-death-rebirth process, and the ability of soul-centric, self-actualized love will not elude you.

Image: chombosan/Shutterstock.

“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” ~Charles Du Bos

What do you want to become? What do you want to achieve? Whatever it is, it will require sacrifice. The first sacrifice is time. You will have to decide between two contrasting options: One day, or day one. Will today be “day one,” or will you put it off until “one day” in the future?

Settling on “one day” leaves your life up to others and to fate. Deciding on “day one” gives you a little leverage, a little say so in the process. With “one day,” the day seizes you, and you’re powerless and left at the mercy of circumstance. With “day one,” you seize the day, and you’re empowered to make the best of circumstance. As Epictetus said, “Circumstances don’t make the man; they only reveal him to himself.” Don’t settle for “one day.” Cultivate the mettle for “day one” instead.

Whatever it is: writing a novel, starting a band, traveling the world, getting a PhD. Make today “day one” of that process. There will be challenges. There will be setbacks. There will be obstacles that seem almost impossible to pass. Don’t wait until you’re “ready.” Because what if you’re never ready? Fear not. Embrace the fear and begin. Use fear as a diving board and dive into your passion.

If you worry too much about what could go wrong, you’ll slip back into a “one day” mentality. If you wait until you’re ready, “one day” will consume your life. And that’s no place to be when you’re on the path toward something great. Don’t make excuses. Excuses are just you getting in the way of what you want to achieve. Get out of your own way and seize the day.

Of course, “day one” is itself a series of moments. So, seizing the moment must come first. Carpe punctum (seize the moment) leads to carpe diem (seize the day) leads to carpe vita (seize the life). Let’s break it down.

Carpe punctum (seize the moment):

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: Not going all the way, and not starting.” ~The Buddha

Here’s the thing: you have from this moment until the day you die (which could be tomorrow or eighty years from now) to live the life you want to live. But it all starts with this moment. Right now. What are you going to do? The same thing you’ve been doing, or will you try something new? Will you just keep pushing the broom of procrastination into the abyss of “one day” or will you seize the moment, toss the broom into the abyss, make today “day one” and get busy cultivating your passion?

Your goals, your dreams, your aspirations, they all begin right now. They may or may not come to fruition sometime in the future, but their seeds must be planted now. They may not grow the way you want them to grow, but you’ll never know if you don’t plant them now. They might mutate or grow awry or become a hybrid with a seed someone else planted, but you’ll never know if you don’t get busy planting.

Seizing the moment is all about embracing your inner gardener. Your seeds represent what you wish to become, or what you wish to achieve. The soil is fate, which you do not have control over. But that’s okay, because there are things that you do have control over. Like how much you water your seeds. But right now, even that is irrelevant.

Don’t worry about if the seed will take root or not. Don’t worry about if it may possibly get dug up by unforeseen circumstance. Don’t worry about if there will or will not be enough rain to help it grow. That’s neither here or nor there. Right now, it’s all about planting the seed. The action of planting the seed trumps what becomes of the seed.

Human flourishing, Eudaimonia, doesn’t just happen. It takes work. It takes perseverance. It takes blood, sweat, and tears. But it doesn’t have to be a daunting prospect. Just take small bites. Take it inch by inch. Or millimeter by millimeter, if need be. Either way it begins right now, in this moment. This is the first second, in a series of seconds, that has the potential to lead to your own human flourishing.

Carpe diem (seize the day):

“Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow.” ~Horace

Life is a series of moments. So even when you’re seizing the day, you’re still seizing the moment. The only thing that changes is that you are collecting each moment into a series of moments that are all about the cultivation of your own personal flourishing.

Where seizing the moment was a declaration against time itself, seizing the day is a declaration against that which seeks to suck up your time. It can be as simple as taking a day off from work to cultivate your garden and water your seeds, or getting away from the things of man and seeking out meditation and solitude in Nature. Or it can be as extreme as giving your boss the finger and quitting your J.O.B. to become a starving artist, or selling all your worldly possessions and striking out on a life-changing trip around the world.

Whatever it is, it’s collecting all those moments in your day and then aiming them at a particular target. It’s harnessing their collective power and then focusing that power into a leap of courage. It’s using those precious moments to turn the sound down on your life so that you can finally hear the call to adventure. It’s channeling the power of those moments and focusing them on taking a strategic risk or crossing a dangerous threshold. It’s concentrating all the moments that comprise a day and fixing them on taking the next daring step, striving for the next rung on the precarious ladder toward Eudaimonia.

Seizing the day is the proactive task of watering the precious seeds of each fleeting moment. Because sometimes you cannot wait for the rain to come. Sometimes you’ve got to risk looking foolish in your Rain Dance. Indeed. Sometimes seizing the day is literally bringing water to the wasteland.

Carpe vita (seize the life):

“Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.” ~Henry Miller

Seizing the life is embracing the journey. It’s allowing the journey to be the thing. There are still the precious fleeting moments to be mindful of, and there are still days in which you’ll have to collect those moments and transform them into courageous acts, but seizing the life is having a bird’s eye view of it all. It’s a big picture perspective that trumps the small picture perspective that trips so many people up.

Seizing the life is injecting meaning into your life. It’s collecting all the moments and all the days, and seeing them as an interconnected whole –the fractal construct of your life. It’s embracing your unique-as-your-own-fingerprint life task (or Immortality Project, as Ernest Becker calls it).

With a bird’s eye view and high humor in your heart, your big picture perspective oversees the tiny goings-on of the small mind and laughs at its need for attachment and inability to seize the moment. At this point, you’ve mastered the art of sacred humor. Your disposition is flexible yet robust. You’re able to forgive yourself, realizing, as Lily Tomlin did: “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

Your third eye is a cosmic owl, the symbolic overseer of your human flourishing, perched upon the high limb of the universe, putting your entire life into perspective. You see how it’s all connected like a giant web (or Indra’s Net), stretched like gossamer across all the moments and all the days that you’ve seized. The “one day” of yesterday is dust in the wind, ashes leftover from the fire of having seized all the moments and all the days of your life and declaring to the gods, “Today is day one of the life I genuinely want to live.” As Voltaire profoundly stated, “God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”

Image: everst/Shutterstock.

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. Science advances one funeral at a time.” ~Max Planck

1.) White Holes and the Theory of Eternal Black Holes:

“Not only does God throw dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.” ~Stephen Hawking

Black holes are the most powerful things in the universe. Their mass is so dense that gravity becomes almost infinitely powerful. Not even light can escape black holes.

White holes are the deeply theoretical hidden mirror twins of black holes. Stranger than black holes, white holes are literally the opposite of a black hole. Their mass is constantly being ejected. Light can only escape a white hole.

An eternal black hole is the simplest black hole possible according to the mathematics of Karl Schwarzschild. He came up with what is known as the Schwarzchild Metric, which describes a black hole without spin, charge, or change, and which doesn’t grow or shrink but has always existed.

Basically, the eternal black hole’s singularity exists both in the infinite future and in the infinite past. Wow! And, here’s the fascinating rub, the eternal singularity of the past matches the mathematical description of a white hole. It obeys the laws of general relativity, and the mathematics of relativity is time-reversal-symmetric. So, a white hole could be a big bang. The big bang could very well be a white hole which was the result of a super massive black hole in another space-time that reached an infinite singularity, took a dip in entropy, and then erupted into our space-time as a white hole big bang. Wrap your frontal lobe around that.

2.) Fermat’s Last Theorem:

“Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by fighting back.” ~Piet Hein

Fermat’s last theorem was the most notorious problem in the history of mathematics. Pierre De Fermat was one of the all-time great mathematical geniuses. Posthumously, mathematicians discovered many of his proofs in the margins of books. Over time, all but one of them was solved: Fermat’s Last Theorem. It was almost universally considered inaccessible to proof by contemporary mathematicians, seen as virtually impossible to prove using current knowledge.

For three centuries, mathematicians had been trying to find a proof for Fermat’s last theorem. Its fame became world renown. But where other mathematicians failed, Andrew Wiles succeeded. Wiles’ proof is a whopping 129 pages long and contains the usage of many techniques from modern algebraic geometry, number theory, Iwasawa theory, and the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture. All of which were largely unavailable in Fermat’s time.

Published in 1995, it is widely regarded as the proof of the century. Here’s an article explaining exactly why it is so impressive. It has taken years to be fully embraced. But since then, Andrew Wiles earned a knighthood and the 2016 Abel Prize for his efforts.

3.) The Many-Worlds theory (multiverse):

“Applying the uncertainty principle to the universe naturally leads to a multiverse” ~Michio Kaku

Hugh Everett came up with the idea in the 1950’s to allow cosmology to treat a wavefunction for the universe. The many-worlds interpretation resolves the mystery of the conscious observer by the sensible-seeming ploy of including consciousness as part of the physical universe described by quantum mechanics.

Governing the precepts of the many-worlds interpretation, it stands to reason that each and every electron, photon, and proton are in an infinite superposition across the multiverse of reality. The wavefunction of each infinite element collapses only when something (a conscious observer for example) attempts to measure it. In fact, if you want to take the interpretation literally, the photon itself is not even a photon until it is observed. Before observation, the photon is merely an infinite smeared-out wavefunction entangled with everything else.

The many worlds interpretation is sometimes claimed to beat all others by Occam’s razor, on the grounds that it requires no physical assumptions. Accepting it requires only the courage necessary to accept that the same rules that apply to small isolated systems, like bunches of atoms, also apply to larger isolated systems without limit, therefore including the largest possible one –our universe taken as a whole.

4.) Dunning-Kruger effect:

“I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.” ~Socrates, Plato’s Apology

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a type of illusory superiority that arises when our unconscious insecurities develop delusions of grandeur to overcompensate and alleviate the conflicting feeling of discomfort going on inside us. Put simply: stupid people are less likely to know how stupid they really are and more likely to think they are smarter than they really are.

The opposite of this is the imposter syndrome, where smart people tend to underestimate their abilities compared to others. So, let’s get this straight. If you’re dumb, you think you’re smart; and if you’re smart, you think you’re dumb. Great!

When it comes down to it, most of us are either confident idiots or incompetent smarty-pants. It’s just that some of us are better at recognizing it than others. This short video by John Cleese sums it up hilariously.

The interesting thing is this: You are more likely to be right by admitting that you are more likely wrong than by declaring that you are more likely right. As The Bard himself surmised, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

5.) Epistemological Solipsism (simulated universe):

“I think therefore I am(?)” ~René Descartes

Also known as the brain in a jar thought experiment, epistemological solipsism is solipsism taken to the nth degree. Basic solipsism asserts that nothing exists but one’s own consciousness. But, existentially speaking, there’s no reason why solipsism can’t be taken further, where one cannot even be certain of one’s own consciousness. Despite Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Because even our thoughts could be predetermined aspects of reality that cause us to imagine that they are our own.

It could very well be a something controlling a something else controlling a brain controlling another brain, controlling our brain, ad absurdum and ad nauseum. And then there is the idea that everything could be a simulation. Like the brain in a jar meets computation and virtual reality. Even Elon Musk thinks we could be living in a simulation.

Certainty can be a tricky thing. Especially when we are questioning things with a wide epistemological brush using solipsistic paint on an existential canvas. The best we can do is doubt. Certainty seemingly gets us nowhere but stuck in either a cognitive bias, a logical fallacy, or both.

Of course, nothing is resolved by solipsism or the brain in a jar thought experiment. It cannot be proved either way. As such, epistemological solipsists consider this an “unresolvable” question. Making it one of the most powerful as well as the most irrelevant (albeit entertaining) of philosophical issues.

6.) Perspectivism:

“Why should we be forced to assume that there is an essential difference between ‘true’ and ‘false’ in the first place? Isn’t enough to assume that there are degrees of apparency,… lighter and darker shadows and hues of appearance.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Touched upon as far back as Plato’s rendition of Protagoras, perspectivism is a philosophical view coined and expounded upon by Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that no purely objective science can exist because no idea or thought can exist outside the influences of an individual perception. There will always be the influence of culture and context which will always lead to biased perception. And since our perceptions are flawed and we cannot experience the world ‘as it is’, but always selectively, in a way that reflects our values, “truth” will always be limited by our flawed perspectives.

The beauty of perspectivism is that although no way of perceiving the world can be taken as definitively true, some ways of perceiving the world are more valid than others. The validity of the perception is determined by the interpretation of universal laws, and “truth” is determined by integrating different vantage points together regarding the interpretation of those laws; similar to Consilience, the unity of knowledge. As such, the laws are constantly reassessed according to the circumstances and accumulation of individual perspectives through time.

7.) Fallibilism:

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” ~Aristotle

Fallibilism is Latin for “liable to err.” It is the understanding that we can never know anything for sure and is implied within the sciences. The basic claim is that all human knowledge could, in the end, due to our fallibility as a species and our inherent hypocrisy, be completely and utterly mistaken. In the most commonly used sense of the term, fallibilism implies an openness to new evidence that may refute a previously held opinion or belief while recognizing that any claim, scientific or otherwise, validated today may need to be revised or even withdrawn in light of new evidence, new disputes, and new encounters in the future. It embraces human fallibility and is therefore a benchmark toward understanding the human condition in relation to an ever-changing reality.

People tend to think that we have only two options regarding our approach to knowledge: certainty and uncertainty. But neither one gets us anywhere and leads to cognitive complacency. Certainty without uncertainty leads to cognitive stagnation. Uncertainty without certainty leads to cognitive trepidation. Between the two, there is a third option: cognitive integrity, which is founded upon implementing the philosophical tool of fallibilism. It’s just a matter of embracing and owning up to our fallibility as a species. Plus, it can prevent us from falling for #4 on this list. As St. Augustine famously said, “I err, therefore I am.”

8.) Saṃsāra’s Punarmrityu (re-death):

“The first truth, suffering, is characteristic of existence in the realm of rebirth, called samsara (literally “wandering”). ~Donald Lope

Samsara is the wandering karmic suffering that takes place between the parenthetic unchanging absolute –Atman (the self) and Brahman (the absolute)– on either end of the phenomenal world. It has been developed into a foundational theory of the nature of existence and the transmigration of the soul, shared by all Indian religions. Shirley Firth explains it in Dying, Death, and Bereavement as, “a cycle of aimless drifting, wandering or mundane existence.”

Punarmrityu, or re-death, is the birth and death process in a new existence. It follows the transmigration of the soul (Atman) through its reincarnations. Basically, Punarmrityu is both the death of the afterlife-life which reemerges into a rebirth into the next life, as well as the death of the life lived after the rebirth back into the afterlife, in which the cycle continues: Birth/life/death; afterlife/re-death; rebirth/next-life/re-death; afterlife/re-death, so on and so forth.

The entire process is known as the doctrine of Samsara (reincarnation), which is attributed to the sage Uddalaka Aruni, and is also based on the doctrine of karma (“actions”), according to which the soul achieves a happy or unhappy rebirth (and re-death) according to its works in the previous life/afterlife.

9.) The Fermi Paradox:

“Perhaps we’ve never been visited by aliens because they have looked upon Earth and decided there’s no sign of intelligent life.” ~Neil deGrasse Tyson

Where are all the aliens? Are they hiding behind dark energy? Are they simply too far away and the expansion of the universe keeps the growing distance too far for any intelligent life to reach any other intelligent life? Are we simply too different? Are we like ants to the advanced aliens who will just crush us when we get too big for our britches? Or is our human-centric bias blinding us to such an extent that we can’t see the answers because we don’t even understand the questions? Could the answer really be 42?

There is no way to know for sure. Perhaps we are simply too young of a species to even fathom the true nature of the universe and what it contains to even begin to beg the question of where all the aliens are. After all, we haven’t even reached a type-I civilization yet. Which leads us to the last brain-flipping theory on our list…

10.) The Kardashev Scale:

Nikolai S. Kardashev was a radio astronomer and among the pioneers of SETI. He is famous for categorizing future civilizations based on their ability to harness energy. Here are the main three (there are also types IV-VII proposed, but we’ll leave it with these three).

Type I civilization: This type can harness all the sunlight that falls on its planet. It can harness energy from its planet’s core. And it can conceivably control the weather, volcanoes and even earthquakes. We would need to boost our current energy production over 100,000 times to reach this status. Carl Sagan said that the Earth is more accurately described as a Type .7 civilization.

Type II civilization: This type can harness energy directly from its planet’s star by successfully constructing a “Dyson sphere,” which captures the suns energy and stores it for planetary use. This type can also utilize its solar system’s gas giants for hydrogen and other gases, as well as mine nearby asteroids.

Type III civilization: This type has gone galactic. It can harness the energy of an entire galaxy, siphoning billions of star systems. This type could conceivably even harness dark energy and dark matter however it saw fit to use it. With billions of Dyson spheres spread throughout the galaxy there will probably also be billions more advanced robots traversing star systems. At this point the mind boggles imagining what humans will be like. Will they even be human as we know it? We’ll never know.

As Donald Rumsfeld, of all people, said, unwittingly stumbling into deep philosophy, “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns –the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

Image: Pixabay

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Sister Kate of the Sisters of the Valley. The bad-ass activist, who was formerly known as Sister Occupy (and still is to some), founded the organization which grows CBD-rich strains of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Located near Merced, California, the 1-acre property exists as an oasis and education center for a handful of women who call themselves nuns but aren’t associated with any religion.

Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Sister Kate (Christine Meeusen) to pick her brain about the women’s work. As our conversation evolved, she dropped copious amounts of wisdom on the subjects of marijuana, the divine feminine, and how the mainstream media continues to re-hash a lie about cannabis being a “Holy Trinity.”

Watch the interview below:

A recap:

The Sisters of the Valley farm was founded in 2014, shortly after Sister Kate became known as “Sister Occupy.” During our interview, she relayed that she donned a nun’s habit in response to authorities declaring pizza (due to the tomato sauce) a vegetable. According to her, the development was further evidence of America being a conquered and oppressed nation.

She said,

“I learned from my travels in Europe that you learn to tell the difference between a conquered nation and the conquerers. Go to where the people are conquered, and you see a shabby version of the conquerers.”

After leaving Europe following a messy divorce, “America looked to me like a conquered people,” she said. “We dress like a conquered people, we act like a conquered people. Also, the sign of a conquered people is that you fight against your leadership instead of with it.”

“I was very disgusted,” she added.

When Sister Kate joined the Occupy movement, she felt as if she had finally found her “people.” Those she marched with encouraged her to follow through with her plan of donning a nun’s habit, so she did. “Within one visit, the Occupy movement had dubbed me ‘Sister Occupy’,” said Sister Kate. Before long, supporters began asking how they could join the movement she had inspired. Her response was, “No, you don’t understand! I’m an activist, anarchist, single nun!” 

But eventually, she realized something did need to be organized. “That led to about a three-year discussion before Sisters of the Valley was formed,” she said.

Before Sister Kate declared herself a nun, she spent most of her time delivering CBD oil to the sick and “raising, cooking and cleaning” for a family with six kids. Because of this, she already felt like a nun. As a result, she didn’t find the lifestyle transition too difficult.

Credit: Northwest Cannacast

Sisterhood and the Divine Feminine

In the interview, Sister Kate goes on to explain that though the women implement pagan practices into their ceremonies, they don’t align with any one religion. Rather, most of their inspiration is drawn from the Beguine nuns, who were the precursors to the Catholic nuns.

She explained that the Beguine nuns were self-empowered, spiritually empowered, natural healers, and scholarly women. Because of this, they were considered “dangerous” and many of them were burnt at the stake. The Sisters of the Valley look to the Beguine nuns as their role models, because they hope to empower new generations of women don’t degrade or cheapen themselves to get ahead.

Sister Kate added that now is a very important time for women in history. This is because change is not only desired by both men and women, it is needed. And finally, females have an opportunity to do better than their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc… This isn’t to say men aren’t needed — in fact, the contrary is true. For sustainable, positive change to result as is intentioned, men and women need to work together.

Credit: NBC News

The REAL Holy Trinity

When the Sisters of the Valley began sharing their vision with the world, journalists were eager to interview the change-makers. However, one reporter made a mistake and wrote that the Sisters of the Valley consider the cannabis plant to be the real Holy Trinity.

As Sister Kate incredulously explains in the interview, one thing cannot be a trinity.

“I think it’s hilarious, because a newspaper reporter said the cannabis plant is our holy trinity. How can one thing be a trinity? No one in the media called him on it,” she said.

However, because the media wouldn’t stop “whispering,” she ended up inventing three traits that make the cannabis plant a trinity. Said Sister Kate,

“Because so many people have said that the cannabis plant is our holy trinity, I actually, in the last couple of days, came up with a cannabis plant holy trinity analogy. That is, that the plant is compassionate, it is cooperative, and it is intelligent.”

So there you have it.

Credit: News.Trust.org

Why Women Should Plant Cannabis To Eliminate Crime

In addition to sharing several compelling anecdotes from people who have improved their conditions with CBD oil and CBD-containing lotions and tinctures, Sister Kate relayed how women can rid the world of criminals by planting CBD-rich strains — which are legal in all 50 states. She said,

“Order from Attitude Seed Bank, out of the UK, strains of seeds that are meant to be under 1 percent THC and over 10 percent CBD. And every women should take the seeds and grow them inside and outside in their yard, and grow them everywhere… Because, one time a thief would steal that weed and try to sell it, and the thieves would be killed because they’re going to sell it like it’s going to get someone high. They’re going to sell it for $1,000/lb, and they’re going to get killed and bingo — we’ve just wiped out all the thieves, and we’re free to go forward.”

“So, my point is women need to grow this everywhere. And then dare the law to shut them down. Because all the laws were made for psychoactive cannabis, not for hemp,” she concluded.

Credit: Refinery29

Please watch the full interview above, as Sister Kate talks about many more topics, including why people should use CBD oil, why the nuns’ crops are legal in all 50 states and can be distributed to other countries, the organization’s plan(s) to cultivate marijuana in Canada, and much, much more.

It was an amazing experience connecting with this activist. Sister Kate is proof that one person can make a positive difference in the world. Hopefully, her efforts inspire you. Learn more by visiting the Sisters of the Valley website and Facebook page.

What are your thoughts? Please comment below and share this news!

“All good books have one thing in common –they are truer than if they had really happened.” ~Ernest Hemingway

“I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.” ~Orson Scott Card

1.) The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho:

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey: stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” ~Paulo Coelho

Coelho’s short fiction (only 163 pages), The Alchemist, is an inspirational masterpiece. Santiago, a Spanish shepherd boy keeps experiencing repeated dreams about a lost treasure in Egypt. He goes on a lifechanging journey, referred to as accomplishing his Personal Legend, after receiving sage advice and some magic stones from an old king. His journey takes him across the Mediterranean and through the Sahara Desert, where he experiences tribal wars, falling in love, and the secrets of alchemy.

A running theme in the novel is: “When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor.” But no amount of description can fully encapsulate the magic of this story. Written with soul, it must be read to really understand the deep feeling of destiny inherent within it. It runs the gambit on spiritual lessons: everything from courage to the language of the heart, from perseverance to the interconnectedness of all things. An awe-inspiring novel that helps us escape reality by teaching us how reality works.

2.) God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment by Scott Adams:

“The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.” ~Scott Adams

From the creator of “Dilbert,” comes this unique and thought-provoking novel that takes the reader on a journey into God’s debris, which is basically the primordial matter of the universe (quarks and leptons and such) leftover since the Big Bang. The novel is based upon the precept of pandeism, which is the theological doctrine that combines pantheism and deism.

Explained through a Socratic dialogue between a delivery man and an old man named Avatar who “knows everything,” an idea emerges explaining how God annihilated himself into an infinite number of pieces (the big bang), as a challenge to himself and his omnipotent powers, and that the basic function of the universe, which is governed by the laws of probability, is simply God trying to reassemble Himself.

This book redefines the entire concept of God, merging spirituality with science. Empowering the deep thinker hiding inside all of us, Adams uses Occham’s Razor throughout the book to slice and dice the superfluous away from our perception of reality, calling into question our basic assumptions regarding Truth.

3.) Life of Pi by Yann Martel:

“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.” ~Yann Martel

Life of Pi is a harrowing tale told from the perspective of Pi Patel, a teenage Indian boy, who finds himself stranded on a large lifeboat after a shipwreck at sea. The morning after the freighter sinks, he finds himself as the only human survivor but he is in the company of a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, an injured zebra, a mean hyena, and a matronly orangutan named Orange Juice.

After a few days only Pi and Richard Parker are alive. As days turn into weeks and weeks drag into months, Pi and the tiger must learn to trust each other against all odds if they are going to survive the dangers of being stranded at sea. They have a series of stressful encounters but eventually settle into an unorthodox and complicated relationship.

Life of Pi raises complex philosophical and religious questions that cause us to question life and the things we take for granted. It’s an emotionally driven story of tested faith, unlikely friendship, and perseverance. It’s a book about survival, but it’s foremost a novel about the determination of the human heart in the face of astronomical odds. The twist at the end of the book gives a different account of what happened at sea, forcing the reader to decide which story was better even if one was more likely to have occurred.

4.) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card:

“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.” ~Orson Scott Card

Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is a young precocious military strategist who is chosen from a shortlist of other genius children to lead humanity in a war against a powerful and unpredictable alien foe seeking to destroy all human life. Through adrenaline pumping military training at a place called Battle School, young Ender and his cohorts are tested to the nth degree. He is forced to grow up fast. But with the help of his even smarter, and shorter, sidekick and right-hand man, Bean, he becomes a military mind the likes of which have never been seen in the history of the human race.

The movie, after the same name, does not do this phenomenal novel justice. Ender’s Game is a science fiction novel that changed the way science fiction novels were written. It follows an engaging, unpredictable, action-packed plot that is well balanced between Ender’s adventures at Battle School, his older brother Peter’s plot toward political power, and the mysterious work of his sister Valentine as a covert writer writing under the pseudonym Demosthenes. Like Ender, Peter and Valentine are prodigies.

Ender’s Game is an affecting novel full of surprises and deep strategy. Think Harry Potter meets Starship Troopers. An engaging page turner from the jump. It will not disappoint.

5.) Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell:

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ~George Orwell

Can you say, “classic!” So much of this deeply affecting political thriller has been absorbed by our culture. Perhaps no other book, other than maybe Lao Tzu’s Art of War, has been used more to explain the dark political animal of the human condition. Many people even reference it as a prophecy of today’s governmental overreach and tendency to use newspeak and doublethink in its relentless propagandizing. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength,” The warnings of George Orwell seem more relevant now than they ever were.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel set in a world of endless war in which Big Brother (can you say National Security Agency?) is omnipresent and always listening in on its downtrodden and brainwashed citizens. An agency called The Ministry of Truth oversees the rewriting of history as it sees it, literally changing the truth to fit its political agenda despite history and science (cough –Trump!– cough). The novel’s doomed protagonist Winston Smith and his lover Julia must rebel in subtle and covert ways in order to seek truth and freedom despite the Party and its blind followers.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has become shorthand for tyranny, for the overreaching surveillance state, and for the power of the media to manipulate public opinion. It strikes at the heart of the human condition and its tendency to become corrupt by unchecked power.

6.) Ishmael by Daniel Quinn:

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are the lords of the world, they will act as the lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.” ~Daniel Quinn

Awarded the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship Award, Ishmael is a novel that uses a kind of Socratic dialectic to deconstruct the notion that human beings are the pinnacle of creation on planet earth.

Ishmael is a Gorilla who is able to communicate telepathically. He takes on a nameless human student and proceeds to teach his philosophy using the Socratic method of dialogue.

He teaches his student about “Taker” societies and “Leaver” societies, and how Takers are always breaking the immutable laws of nature. Ishmael explains, “The premise of the Takers’ story is ‘The world belongs to man.’ …The premise of the Leavers’ story is ‘Man belongs to the world.’”

Ishmael argues that civilized societies (takers) are failing the world, and that human supremacy is nothing more than a cultural myth, asserting that Takers are enacting that myth with dangerous consequences, such as endangered or extinct species, global warming, and modern mental health illnesses. This novel is truly an adventure of the mind and spirit that forces us to think outside of the box of our anthropocentric tendency to perceive an otherwise indifferent and interdependent cosmos.

7.) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse:

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” ~Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha is a tour de force of spiritual discovery. Considered Herman Hesse’s magnum opus, it takes the reader on a spiritual journey like no other. The novel is structured on Buddha’s four noble truths (Part One) and the eight-fold noble path (Part Two) which form the twelve chapters in the novel.

Siddhartha’s journey shows that the best way to approach the understanding of reality and attain enlightenment is through a totality of consciousness that doesn’t focus on separate events in life but looks more holistically upon life as an interconnected whole. He learns that wisdom cannot be taught, but must come from one’s own experience and inner struggle.

In the end of the book, Siddhartha doesn’t discover true wisdom through any single teacher, but through the understanding of all his experiences combined, put into perspective by “listening” to a river that roars in a funny way (a language older than words) and to a wise, old, smiling ferryman.

It’s a masterwork of spiritual self-discovery that presents a strikingly unique view of man in relationship with cosmos, and the arduous process of discovering meaning in an otherwise meaningless universe.

(Featured image: Shuttershock)

There are moments, days and sometimes even months where we must face our darkest hour. Sometimes this is represented by things happening in the world around us that create deep sadness, despair, and anger within us. Yet other times this can come about through our own inner world when we are going through some challenging emotions around our own personal experience. Often both the inner and the outer can intertwine and we do not always know what is our own sadness, anger and rage, and what is that of others or that of the world around us.

The first step to take is to focus on our breath while breathing in and out of our heart center. We can do this for some time, and then begin to deepen the breath by bringing it into the stomach while gently and lovingly guiding the breath as deep as it may go into the pelvis region. Then pause, and begin the inhale moving up through the body. See where the inhale stops, and then begin the whole process again. We can do this for some time until we feel at ease.

By focusing on our breath, we can tune into our very being and essence. This can be a form of meditation as well as a very healthy step to include in with other daily rituals of self-love, self-care and meditation.

Now let us tune into our heart. What is our heart trying to say? This may take some time as we are only now beginning to truly understand how important it is to listen to our heart. What is our heart trying to tell us about any given situation or emotion? The more this becomes a daily practice, the more the true safety of our very existence begins to become clear, and the more we begin to realize and make manifest our true hearts desire. On the outside, the more we practice this, the more we can become a part of co-creating a heart-based world.

“As we learn to tap into our heart’s intelligence, it increases our vitality, our resilience, and especially our health and happiness.”

-Dr. Rollin McCraty

Often the first instinct is to run away from these emotions and situations.  Now, if there is an environment or person who is unable to value and treat us as the beautiful souls we are, walking away and giving them space to heal what is going on within them can be a true act of love towards that person and our self. When we recognize that the behavior is not ours and is unwanted and harmful, we can walk away and bless them. Wish them well, wish them healing, and know that they have probably had a painful past that they need to heal. Forgive them, and move forward.

Forgiving does not mean this person or situation needs to ever be a part of our life again, yet it does allow us to create healing space for them while freeing us of the need to carry their emotions any longer.

Sometimes it can seem more difficult to let go and let the Universe handle the harm and destruction that takes place in the world around us. When there is injustice and great harm on the Earth, it is then most especially time for us to up our level of kindness, love, compassion, respect, humility, integrity and demonstrate what true healing is by being the light in times of darkness.

There is a very magical and powerful transformation from dark to light that takes place when individuals refuse to give up and give away their power, and instead up their game of self-love, self-care and kindness and compassion towards others.

“We have within us, a power that is greater than anything we shall ever contact in the outer, a power that can overcome every obstacle in our life and set us safe, satisfied and at peace, healed and prosperous, in a new light, and in a new life.”

Ernest Holmes

When we trust in our heart, follow our guidance, and discern what is right for our beautiful soul, we help the world to do so as well. There are situations and lessons that may arise, yet the more we learn to go within, and navigate them through our focused breath and heart space, the more we learn to let go and let the Universe, the more we learn to stand in our lighted power and walk into any darkness knowing by our very presence we will transform it.

Always remember, each one of us has a very beautiful and unique song to sing to the world. The more we shine our light like the stars we truly are, and the louder we sing our beautiful songs with our very own fragrance, the more the world responds with love. Let’s celebrate each other, let’s honor each other, and let us always remember that there is only one you and there is only one me. What are we waiting for, and when will we begin to light the world with our love? The time for me, and the time for you is now.

Let’s take three deep breaths together, tune in and turn up the love. Let’s follow the inner guidance of our heart so we can all arrive. We are growing, we are expanding, we are raising our consciousness and creating a new reality and thus a new world unlike any other. Yesterday already was, and tomorrow has yet to be, will you join us in filling today with hope, goodness, truth, love and beauty? We always have a choice. What will you choose?

Cover Image Credit: no more lookism discovered on Conscious Lifestyle Magazine

Ulonda Faye has a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies, and studied Peace and Conflict Research during her Masters program in International Relations. She survived a Near Death Experience during an accident that led her into Mind-Body-Spirit studies. She is a certified Wellness Practitioner, Rejuv Miracles Practitioner, and holistic esthetician as well as an ordained spiritual minister. Her services are available in person or through Skype and are offered in English and German. For more information, please visit fayenaturales.com

Understanding an astrology sign, or an axis (opposite signs), is insightful to the nature of human beings and the archetypal systems of life.

While archetypes about consciousness, human interaction, and the nature of reality are visible through the lens of astrology, in my opinion astrology is very literal. Those who embody the energy of a particular sign literally are made of that energy, and literally clash with another particular energy, or be fulfilled by another energy. It’s insightful to understanding consciousness to understand astrology, but it is also very literal.

This article will explore one “cross” in astrology: 4 signs that square and oppose each other.

As we explored in this past article, squares are possibly the most difficult astrology aspect. As we wrote here, opposite signs are actually very similar sometimes.

When you put 4 squares together and 2 oppositions, you get a “grand cross”: 4 planets squaring and opposing.

In astrology, there are also 3 modalities for a sign: Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. It works with the way of the seasons, like winter or summer: the season starts with the Sun entering a Cardinal sign. The middle of the season is the Sun in a Fixed sign, and the end of it occupies a Mutable sign. Chronologically moving through the zodiac (the belt the Sun travels on, or the ecliptic), signs are Cardinal, then Fixed, then Mutable, and it repeats 4 times.

So this creates “crosses” of signs that are of the same modality: there is the Cardinal Cross, the Fixed Cross, and the Mutable Cross.

This article is a reflection on the Fixed Cross. It is composed of the Leo/Aquarius axis squaring the Taurus/Scorpio axis, as depicted here:

I was thinking about the Fixed Cross and realized it can be described as the axis of life/death squaring the axis of life-force, ideas and energy. It leads one to wonder about the relationship between reality and the end of reality, life and death, comfort and deprivation, and the ideaflow and life-force that fuels the human experience. Somehow these forces square and clash while having some unifying quality, as the other 2 squaring axises in astrology have.

These are some of the qualities of Taurus/Scorpio and Leo/Aquarius.

Leo

Leo energy (with Sun, Moon, or any planet in Leo) is dominant, sunny, warm and full of gravity. The Sun is Leo’s “planet.” Leo has social sense, a feel for the skills and crafts of life, a feel for the arts and creation in a wholesome, normal kind of way.

The Leo/Aquarius axis is about creation. It’s about ideas, skills, crafts, music and the arts, everything involving creation.

As the Sun’s rays illuminate every planet in the Solar System and activate everything, Leo has the same type of ability to create, initiate activities, use leadership, and generally set things in motion.

Aquarius

Aquarius is the opposite flavor of “creation” energy from Leo. Leo is warm and sunny with its propensity toward wholesome, kind of universally understood forms of art. For instance, country music if you were raised in the Southern US, or warm, wholesome folk music of your particular region.

So Aquarius is artistic and intelligent in the opposite flavor: the strange, sciency, complex, cold and detached but highly advanced direction of thinking. It’s without social sense and very strange, but very deep into whatever idea it follows.

Aquarius energy appreciates creation like Leo, but it takes it to another level, far from regular arts and crafts and into a strange place.

Aquarius is both the revolutionary and the technocracy which may enslave it. Its the lifeblood of thought, the spark of electricity in the mind itself, and a major factor in driving society. As the Sun and Leo illuminate everything and serve as a central driving force for things, Aquarius/Uranus is like an electrical signal that powers consciousness when it comes to ideas.

Taurus

Taurus could be considered the sign of Earth. It was worshiped as something like a God of fertility about 4,000 years ago, when the annual Equinoxes occurred in Taurus from about 4400 to 2200 BC.

Taurus is about home, stability, food, and the core necessities in life being fulfilled. It’s like the foundation for a solid life: food, water, shelter. It is very fixed and set in its ways, because that’s how a foundation of necessities in life should be.

Scorpio

Scorpio is very starkly opposite to Taurus. Scorpio energy often invites scarcity, struggle, deprivation, and the end of stability. However, in an individual with Scorpio energy, this can be resolved early in life and this energy is transmuted into something emotionally rich and useful if the person finds peace within themselves.

Scorpio is the energy of death, the energy of deprivation, of facing hard truths, and the end of lies and falsehoods due to Scorpio making a lie rise to the surface and be exposed.

Scorpio and Aquarius clash hard as squaring signs, but in ways they are very similiar in their convictions. The two signs are sometimes thought to represent the North and South Nodes: Aquarius being the North Node and Scorpio the South Node The nodes are spots where eclipses occur, with the 2 points taking 18 years to go around the zodiac, thought to be the origin of age 18 as a marker of adulthood.

Scorpio’s purpose is not an easy one. While Scorpio people might feel cursed, they simply seem to be tasked with digesting hard truths, feeling things to the deepest and darkest levels, and showing people what they are hesitant to look at.

So understanding how these energies really seem to be, from hard first-hand observation, we are left with a few archetypes to consider.

The Leo/Aquarius axis seems to be about creation, ideas, skills, music, the arts, and the things human beings create in life.

The Taurus/Scorpio axis seems to be about the polar opposites of life and death: stability, groundedness, and a foundation vs the deep depths of emotion and truth, no stability, and no foundation.

Does this mean that creativity, ideas, and the arts inherently go against the grain of stability, of necessities being taken care of in life?

Could this explain the “starving artist,” the introverted quality of thinkers and revolutionaries, or the nature of life and reality seeming to clash with the flow of creativity that runs through people? The very nature of life and this reality might go against the grain of the Sun, of creation and idea-flow. In this existence, the laws of Earth and nature might restrict our flow of consciousness.

Perhaps this is an explanation for why the truth, knowledge, scientific advancement, personal ambition, the arts, and all of these things seem to go against the grain of survival, stability, facing the realities of life and death, ect. Perhaps there is an inherent tendency for truth and information to be persecuted and suppressed in this existence. Maybe one would go as far as to suggest this reality is coded, some kind of virtual reality simulation type thing where these are the rules: our souls are solidified in our bodies at birth, a snapshot of the solar system’s energy at that moment, and the solar system is a soul-incarnating-machine.

Exploring these representations of consciousness is a mental exercise that inspires further exploration of the self, the meaning of life and this existence, and all kinds of other things.

This is also relevant because this year and next, the eclipses are occurring in Aquarius and Leo. The Moon’s North and South Nodes where eclipses occur, critically important points about everyone’s collective lessons and directions, are in Aquarius and Leo. The collective lessons and direction are in conflict with Taurus and Scorpio right now, so we might find ourselves in a moment where ideas, inspiration, the crafts and arts of life, and all those Leo/Aquarius things are in conflict with the nature of tangible reality, life and death situations. There may be comfort and stability vs instability and deprivation type scenarios.

I think astrology can inspire creativity and a deeper understanding of things, by enabling the mind to think about things in this way.

(Image credit: NASA, NASA)

Next month, there will be two eclipses: a full moon eclipse on August 7th in Leo and Aquarius, and a New Moon eclipse on August 21st in Leo. The August 21st eclipse will be a total solar eclipse visible in the US.

This article is an astrological interpretation of what these eclipses mean.

To begin with, anyone reading this can research the following planetary placements and figure out for themselves what people say they mean: you can research “Sun in Leo, Mars in Leo, Moon in Aquarius, Venus in Cancer, Sun conjunct Mars, Sun sextile Jupiter, Sun quincunx Neptune, ect.” and find a basic foundation of info for what these things mean. Interpreting the eclipse is putting all these pieces together: and truly feeling for oneself what is accurate and inaccurate.

As I mentioned in my last astrology article about August as a whole, I think this month is finally the turning point after a long, hard year and a half or so of depressed, difficult energy for everyone.

Studying astrology for the past several years, I’ve been slowly learning about what an eclipse really means. Astrologers theorize that an eclipse kind of solidifies an energy in the air for an extended period of time: that wherever an eclipse occurs, however it aspects the other planets and stars, that energy of the eclipse’s peak is solidified in the air on Earth for some unknown period of time afterward.

I have tested this theory (as with testing the accuracy of other components of astrology), and it seems to be like this: the more exact an eclipse is, and the more exact the planetary aspects made to the Sun and Moon during the eclipse (for example, Sun and Moon square Saturn during the March 2016 eclipse, or Sun and Moon trine Uranus during the 2017 eclipse), the longer the eclipse’s energy is solidified in the air on Earth.

And by solidified in the air, I literally mean the feeling at the peak of the eclipse continues, on and on, in the atmosphere, in people’s energy and feelings, for several months after the eclipse.

I wasn’t sure that the energy of the eclipse would stay stuck in the air that long after an eclipse, before 2016.

Then, after the Total Eclipse of March 8, 2016, and the eclipse in September 2016 that locked into ultra malefic aspects, I realized the effect of an eclipse absolutely can solidify in the air for an extended period of time.

This was the eclipse of March 2016. It squared Saturn: a Saturn square is one of the most harsh, depression causing, inspiration crushing aspects in all of astrology. It also locked into the once every 10 year Jupiter square Saturn, an absolutely brutal aspect.

Guess where the next solar eclipse occurred, in September 2016? Also square Saturn: locked into the extremely brutal, once every 18 year aspect Saturn square Neptune. This eclipse was so powerfully malefic, I truly believe it made the several months following it brutal for people.

Not only that, but if an eclipse occurs on a certain spot in your personal astrology chart, such as an eclipse on your Mars, it can bring out that aspect of you for a few months: for example, if an eclipse happened on your Mars, you might feel your fire and energy rise to the surface in you for a few months. If an eclipse happened on a generation’s Neptune placement, their spirituality might all rise up at once for a few months, and they may all feel a wave of energy at once.

I will get the ultimate test of what an eclipse does in a week and a half: at that time, an eclipse will occur exactly on my Sun and Moon in Aquarius and Leo: but the peak of the eclipse is so precisely aligned with my Sun, that it is only 0.08 degrees off: the eclipse is at 15.25 degrees Aquarius and my Sun is 15.33 degrees.

So what might happen to me? I might get a blast of my own core energy, the thinking, learning energy of Aquarius, and I might feel my own core identity become dominant in my personality for a few months.

As for everyone else, this is my interpretation of what the eclipse will do. The best way to look at it is in pieces, aspects, and then the full picture of the eclipse is all of these aspects combined.

The eclipse actually makes an astrological configuration called a “Yod,” or a “Golden Finger of God.” That’s where two planets are opposing, and one of the opposing planets makes quincunx aspects to two other planets, forming a shape like the green dotted lines in the chart above.

A quincunx is a neutral, slightly positive aspect that simply fuses together two energies and mixes them. In this case, the equation is Sun and Mars in Leo mixing with Neptune in Pisces and Pluto in Capricorn. It translates to a warm, energized, human Leo energy that is filled with heart, spirituality, concern for humanity, and deep watery Piscean things. The Leo- Pisces quincunx is a particularly nice one, because when you fuse warm Leo energy with selfless, heart filled Pisces energy, you essentially get a warm (Leo) heart (Pisces).

When you add Pluto in Capricorn to the mix, it serves to add an intensity to it (as does Mars), and a serious Capricornian feel. So this configuration suggests a warm, fiery, masculine and determined (Sun conjunct Mars in Leo), solidification (Eclipse) of the desire to feel heart, feel empathy for people, and have concern for the future (Pisces), which may shed previously held ideas and change people with a serious tone of energy (Pluto in Capricorn).

Now here’s another huge sign that this eclipse is a positive, and not negative omen: it makes positive aspects (sextiles and trines) to the “positive planet,” Jupiter. If that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.

So with Sun/Mars sextile Jupiter in Libra and the Moon trine Jupiter during the eclipse, a massive, positive, just generally good feeling energy will guide people through the experience and give people a foundation to pursue what the purpose of the eclipse seems to be, which is found in Leo-Pisces.

I think this eclipse is an omen of increased empathy, increased concern for other people, increased interest in the nature of life and spirituality, ect.

Leo has a unique obsession with understanding the nature of life and this existence, and so do Aquarius and Pisces. However, Leo is focused on the self when it comes to this pursuit of truth, whereas it’s opposite Aquarius is focused on humanity as a whole and not the self.

Pisces is very selfless like Aquarius, so the Leo/Aquarius/Pisces mix is a perfect one, that adds warmth and common sense to the humanitarian, nature-of-this-reality-pursuing energy of Aquarius and Pisces. Aquarius and Pisces lack the warmth and common sense that Leo has, so when you mix it all together, you get a really strong equation for growing empathy and growing a desire to learn about the nature of this life and reality.

Mercury conjunct Orcus for the entire 2 week span between the eclipses is a hugely unlikely event: Mercury only stays in one position like this at the beginning and end of it’s tri-annual retrogrades. The fact that Mercury would be conjunct Orcus suggests more importance in Pisces, learning the nature of this reality, spirituality, empathy, and an extremely strong willpower toward that goal. This is why:

Astrologers don’t know much about the dwarf planet Orcus, but knowing it’s astronomical qualities can help determine what it might mean.

Orcus’ Perihelion is in Pisces, which astrologer Nick Anthony Fiorenza believes associates its energy with Pisces. Sidereally, this is called Aquarius, which is how he refers to the constellation. According to his interpretation of Orcus:

“The location of Orcus’s Perihelion reveals the area in our lives that Orcus is most influential. Due to Orcus’ 20.574° orbital inclination, Orcus’ perihelion lies north of the ecliptic in the constellation Pegasus; entering the ecliptic at 15° 04′ sidereal Aquarius, the mid-point of this sidereal sign—marking the Angel Point of the Zodiak. This is one of the purest areas of resonance in the ecliptic; a fortuitous and beneficent area of the zodiak. Humanitarianism, altruism, and an evolved humanitarian-based society beyond conflicts based upon cultural, gender or religious differences are the hallmark of this zodiakal band. The word ‘social’ is derived from the Old French or the Latin ‘socialis’, meaning ‘allied’, or from ‘socius’ meaning ‘friend’— good words to describe the essence of sidereal Aquarius. Here all are recognized as allied friends, as one human family.”

Another thing that suggests the eclipses are about heart and empathy, is the fact that Venus is in Cancer, the sign of emotions and family, for the duration of the eclipses.

This is the second eclipse: August 21.

Now here is my interpretation of the second eclipse on August 21: a New Moon eclipse at the end of Leo. It’s a Solar Eclipse that will actually block the Sun in the United States, an astronomical phenomena that many have been looking forward to.

First of all, this eclipse occurs at a “hotspot” of Leo energy: a particularly strong flavor of Leo, because the end of Leo is where the bright blue star Regulus resides.

Regulus has been revered for millennia, a star that can actually be touched by the planets because it’s the closest bright star to the ecliptic plane, the belt of all planets. Sometimes, the Moon actually “occults” the star Regulus, fully aligning with it.

Regulus has a revolutionary, bold, fiery quality to it. It’s a warrior star, an energy that is very headstrong and potentially righteous.

Another energy that is extremely headstrong and (potentially) righteous is Uranus, especially in fiery Aries: and the most exact aspect this eclipse makes is a strong, positive trine to Uranus in Aries.

As the first eclipse was in Leo and Aquarius, the second one is trine Aquarius’ planet, Uranus: thinker, revolutionary, unique energy of Uranus and Aquarius are the dominant theme in these eclipses. Fiery thinker energy.

Now, it must also be noted that people in the world who are lost or confused will feel the headstrong, electric, inspired energy as well: so people will all feel energized at once, and those who are misguided will feel the energy for perhaps a misguided purpose, while others may feel the inspiration for a better purpose. It’s everyone on Earth feeling the energy at once in their unique ways.

This is an extremely clear sign of revolutionary, warrior energy: this eclipse will solidify an inspiration in people, a revolutionary conviction, a headstrong energy, an electric, thinking, learning energy in people that is lit on fire. Surely certain powers in the world will try to utilize the energy to create chaos and frustration as well.

Similar to 2014, when the eclipses in Libra and Aries occurred in conjunction to Uranus, a very inspired, electric, thinking fiery energy will be stuck in the air for an unknown period of time after the August 21st eclipse.

So to sum it up again, this is what I think the eclipses will do:

The first eclipse will, in a fiery and strong way, open people up to their feelings more, and promote empathy, emotion, thinking about the nature of reality and existence.

The second eclipse will instill fire and electricity in people: a bold willpower, rejuvenated inspiration and energy, a warrior-thinker energy that will inspire everyone from good people, to bad people, to clear minded people, to confused people.

What you learn when studying astrology for years is this: the way the planets move, the locations of eclipses, these things occur in extremely fateful, precise, unlikely and synchronistic aspects.

It’s not likely that the March 2016 total eclipse would exactly lock into the most important outerplanetary aspect occurring at that time, Jupiter square Saturn. It’s not likely that the eclipse of September 2016 exactly lock into the same aspect, and lock into the next most important (malefic) aspect of 2016, Saturn square Neptune.

So knowing that, it isn’t every eclipse that locks into the most important, once every 20 year aspects in the sky, so that gives us a feel for how important the eclipse is. If an eclipse doesn’t really do interesting things, doesn’t happen in some synchronistic or unusual way, that’s a sign that it isn’t as significant as other eclipses.

But even if an eclipse isn’t unusual, it still seems to solidify some kind of energy in the air for months at a time: I believe an eclipse truly sets the tone for the next period of time, until the next eclipse.

To learn more about astrology or book a reading like this, follow Tryptamine Astrology here.

(Images credit: brookmarobservatory, IB Times, Space Telescope) Featured image: Photograph by Colleen Pinski, National Geographic Your Shot

What intelligence quotient? Is there really a finely honed merit based tool for identifying the best and the brightest society has to offer? Like, off the top of your head: what is a neuron? How many neurons does the human brain have and what if we didn’t have any?

Human brains on average have 86 billion neurons. If we didn’t have any we’d be a sponge which have zero… Interestingly we were taught different until someone questioned it? In 2005 Dr Suzana Herculano-Houzel discovered that although 100 billion was used in all the science text books and journals they were all wrong. None of her colleagues knew where that figure came from so she set upon discovering the true figure. After liquefying human brains she then counted the neurons using a formula.

It’s the same with intelligence – with so many different definitions what we actually have are educated opinions. Intelligence is a formally recognized, organized and categorized structure of human perception. “Catching on, making sense of things or figuring things out” are three characteristics most experts agree on. “Reasoning, learning from mistakes and abstract thinking” are some others. Then there’s the ability to make sense of it all and translate that. The time it takes between individuals is of course taken into account.

Age and its association with either intelligence or wisdom are misleading and constrained understandings of both. After all Einstein was a 25 year old patent clerk when his “Theory of General Relativity” created shockwaves around the world. He was quoted as saying: “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” He also said: “A person who has not made his great contribution to science before the age of 30 will never do so” however the heyday of the twenty something physics genius is gone… Today’s average age for Nobel Prize winners in physics is 50 and over 65 for writers.

As with all good mainstream science we can dissect it, wrap it in a multitude of statistics, facts, figures and BS – then stick it into our textbooks. Now really much of the knowledge we retain is on a need to know basis not overcomplexity. Do most of us need to know what a synapse, a neuron or quantum tunneling is? Tesla said: “Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” Tesla was hands on – believing much of theoretical physics lacked observed reality. It’s the reason why we can read dozens of different theories on its nature with none being real.

Speaking of real, the WAIS-IV, is the current test by which we measure IQ but it has many critics who say the tests are easy to manipulate. Much of this is done in the US as a means to a predetermined outcome. If I asked you why electrons don’t fly out of their orbits of the nucleus of an atom what would your answer be? This issue alone is too complex for the scope of this article because it indicts the entire educational system. How all tests are structured determines the outcome. Determines steering allocations of educational resources including federal discretionary funds. Besides there are plenty of books on the subject.

So then that aside, how smart are you in actual mind power? As of this writing the top three richest people in the world are each worth upward of 70 billion US. If we based intelligence on income most of the rest of the world would be mental microbes. If artistic talent were our measure, we would come to the realization that some of history’s finest artists died paupers.

Most top scientists will never win a Nobel Prize and live otherwise ordinary lives outside of being extraordinarily smart. The same can be said of many religious scholars like St Augustine whose writing is thought provoking and meticulous. In fact some of the most brain draining reads I’ve ever experienced involved philosophy which uses language to transcend mortal thought.

Above: ENIAC was 8.5 by 3 by 80 feet and weighed 27 tons.

Now here’s something I was thinking about: Arguably the first computer unveiled on February 14, 1946 was the ENIAC aka “The Big Brain.” The IBM-701 went public in 1953 and could do 16 thousand OPS (Operations Per Second). Today Intel’s fastest desktop CPU can do over 300 billion OPS. Today’s fastest supercomputer is the Sunway TaihuLight which has a speed of 93 petaFLOPS or 93 quadrillion OPS. So we’ve gone from 16 thousand to 93 quadrillion OPS in around 60 years. We might then conclude that these increases will continue exponentially and computers will shortly surpass the entire human collective in processing power.

While web searching even my most obscure concepts I came to an epiphany. We – the human race have unknowingly taken the next step in our evolution. Where in the past we could work on problems or ideas collectively, we couldn’t do it in real-time. Now we can almost instantly access and filter trillions of ideas and bits of data contributed by hundreds of millions of minds working virtually as one.

What also struck me is how rapidly “AI” (artificial intelligence) is advancing. Autonomous AI internet search bots will soon understand the content they gather using “AC” (Artificial Consciousness). Entire libraries will be read in seconds on quantum scales. These synthetic entities will be our greatest thinkers, inventors, designers, physicists, philosophers, physicians… They’ll access databases containing all the knowledge from the history of human existence. Only, as it may take humans years to go from concept to result, for AI we may be talking minutes.

Somewhere around here a metaphoric event horizon occurs as was predicted by Dr. John Lilly in his 1978 book “The Scientist” talking about “Solid State Intelligence.” Our machines will become self-reliant eventually controlling human thought through timeline manipulation. They’ll guarantee their own creation, evolution and man’s dependency on them. This for me was incredible – we came to the same exact conclusion years apart.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom suggests that if one were living in a virtual world it would be indistinguishable from a “REAL” one. Elon Musk like many others agree and fears we may already be living in a simulation meaning the change event already occurred. Contrary to popular belief this idea of reality being an illusion predates antiquity. It did not start with Bostrom nor with the Lillys of the world – everyone’s in on this game. Science or theology as in the Christian “Omphalos” hypothesis which presents that God created the world ten thousand years ago. The universe was already complete with stars, planets, Adam and Eve. Much like a well written simulated world program.

So now here we are in a simulation? However we exist, it’s real enough to us. Speaking of what’s real, we’ve touched upon wealth, talent, religion, philosophy, science… but the question was: “How smart are you?” The truth is that it doesn’t really matter because the quotient is an illusion. It measures what a committee decides intelligence is at any given point in time. This usually involves political and cultural interpretations. It doesn’t mean you’ll suddenly be good at math or will now create a great symphony. It means that like millions of others you’ll pass or like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg all University dropouts you can still go on to change the world…

Written by the author Robert Torres. http://RTR-Publishing.com https://about.me/towers3