Gift to the Soul: The Space of Presence ~ Tara Brach, PhD/Psychology Today

"Some months ago a friend described getting caught in this state busy-ness while trying to get her daughter to school. She was busy getting things ready while her daughter was trying to show her something. Every time her daughter would call her over she would say, “Just hang on a moment. I’ll be there in a second.” After several rounds of this, the little four-year old came out of her room tired of waiting. She said to her mother, hands on hips:

“Why are you always so busy? What’s your name? Is it President O’mama or something?”

Along with the speediness we have the sense that there is not enough time. It’s interesting to observe how often we are living with that perception. It is usually accompanied by a squeeze of anxiety......."

CLICK TO CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE

Congressional Republicans Reveal Secret Love for Obamacare

"As healthcare.gov slowly lurches into functionality, the battle lines around the health-care law are returning to their pre-October state. Giddy conservative hopes for the law’s immediate disintegration, or its quick repeal, have ebbed, and in their place opponents have returned to hoping that the law will fail because not many people will want to buy health insurance. Ross Douthatwarns, or perhaps fantasizes, that the immediate collapse may have been averted, but the long, slow collapse may yet beckon on the horizon...."   CLICK TO CONTINUE READING: Congressional Republicans Reveal Secret Love for Obamacare

Understanding the Psychic Experiences of Childhood Part 1~ Rhine Research Center/Athena Drewes, PhD.

A presentation by Athena Drewes PhD, child psychologist/parapsychologist, and RRC Advisory Board member, at the Rhine Center, Durham, NC

CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO AND PRESENTATION

14 Signs You're Emotionally Intelligent ~ Huffington Post

What makes some people more successful in work and life than others? IQ and work ethic are important, but they don't tell the whole story. Our emotionalintelligence -- the way we manage emotions, both our own and those of others -- can play a critical role in determining our happiness and success.

Plato said that all learning has some emotional basis, and he may be right. The way we interact with and regulate our emotions has repercussions in nearly every aspect of our lives. To put it in colloquial terms, emotional intelligence (EQ) is like "street smarts," as opposed to "book smarts," and it's what accounts for a great deal of one's ability to navigate life effectively.

"What having emotional intelligence looks like is that.....

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING!

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Politics | Rolling Stone

Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything...........

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2mnTLz8tG 
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever | Politics | Rolling Stone

The Death of South African Leader Nelson Mandela: World Leaders React ~ Alternet

"A great light has done out...."

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT TRIBUTE FROM THE WORLD!

Americans Want Congress Members To Pee In Cups To Prove...

CLICK HERE!! Americans Want Congress Members To Pee In Cups To Prove They

14 Stores That Refuse To Ruin Your Thanksgiving/Huffington Post

Let's try to sponsor this kind of effort from these stores!!!!!!

CLICK TO READ ABOUT: 14 Stores That Refuse To Ruin Your Thanksgiving

"LOVE is the key to spiritual awareness" ~ John Smallman

As Thanksgiving approaches please give thanks for all that is good in your lives. There are truly none among you who do not have something to be thankful for, so go within, to that quiet safe place where you can, if you choose, access your spiritual guides and mentors and ask them to bring to your attention an event or an aspect of your life for which you are eternally grateful.  Then say “Thank you” for it. Just saying thank you is uplifting for you even if you are not feeling very thankful, because it opens you to receive the Love that surrounds you, awaiting your acceptance of Its constantly proffered embrace.

Love is the key to spiritual awareness because all that is spiritual, all that exists, rests in Love.  Love is gentle, kind, compassionate, accepting, forgiving, and yet It is the most powerful energy, the most powerful Will because It is infinite, and there is nothing apart from It.  It cannot be destroyed, defeated, weakened or avoided because all is contained within It.  It does not impose or demand, but within the illusion you can pretend that It does not exist, and by doing so you shut out joy and happiness from your lives, replacing them with fear and anxiety which you either deny, attempt to conceal, or cower away from like helpless victims of some hideous monster.  However, Love is endlessly patient, It will wait until you choose, as you eventually will, to accept It, whereupon boundless joy will be eternally yours.  That, surely, is reason enough to give thanks?

Because Love is the Source from which all that exists flows, because It is That from which all is created, it makes absolutely no sense whatever to deny It, avoid It, or hide from It.  To do so is to be like an infant that on putting its hands in front of its face believes that what it can no longer see is no longer there. Humanity has collectively chosen to remove its hands from in front of its face and once more see its Mother looking at it adoringly. You have played at hiding yourselves from Her for far too long, but She has never lost sight of you, She never will, and your awakening is divinely assured.

It often seems to you that you have been waiting interminably to experience the infinite joy of being eternally in the Presence of your loving Source, and that is because you continue to cling to the unreal, the illusion and all the deceits and tricks that it offers to you claiming them to be real.  Bodies are part of the illusion, without them you could not properly experience it, and they are subject to illness, pain, suffering, aging, and decay.  Mostly you identify with them instead of seeing them as just temporary vehicles that enable you to experience what is not real, and their shortcomings terrify you because their life span is so short and they are so vulnerable in such a vast and complex universe.

It is indeed a great paradox for you to have to attempt to understand, but if you will accept life as it occurs, if you will accept that you are in fact eternal spiritual beings having a temporary physical experience, then your terror of death will dissipate, because you will perceive quite clearly that there is no death.  There is a transition through which humans have been passing for eons, leaving their broken and damaged vehicles behind and awakening back into the spiritual realms where they have their eternal existence.

However, at this point in your evolution you have chosen to withdraw yourselves en-mass from the illusion while retaining your physical bodies, and in so doing you will move from a world of suffering, distrust, and betrayal into an environment of peace, beauty, and abundance for all.  You have been making your way towards this moment through many crises, disappointments, and catastrophes as you have struggled with the concept of releasing your fears and returning to and sharing the loving embrace that God offers you in every moment.

Embodied, you have surrounded yourselves with shields to protect yourselves from the intense energy of the divine Love that would cause them to disintegrate if they came into direct contact with It.  Within your illusory world you have to protect yourselves by wearing protective clothing if you intend to be in the vicinity of something that is projecting radiation such as the inside of a nuclear power plant, or in a hospital where x-ray equipment is in use.  In like manner, to maintain the integrity of your physical bodies you also have to protect them from the full power of divine Love.

Eventually you will come to understand that bodies are an impediment to union with the Source, your loving Father/Mother.  On Earth you are very aware of your separation from one another, and grateful for it, except occasionally when you are so in love with another that you want to truly be “two in one flesh.”  When you ascend Love will envelop you as you have never before experienced It, and gently and gradually you will start to release yourselves from the protective shields that your bodies provide as your trust in God grows and you allow yourselves to become disembodied and return once more to your natural state of Oneness with your Source.  And that is yet another reason for you to give thanks.

Birth Control Coverage: "It’s the Misogyny, Stupid" | The Nation / Jessica Valenti

"Judy Waxman, vice president of health and reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center, says these scenarios are real possibilities. “What if an employer believes women should be subservient and doesn’t believe in providing the same wage and hours for them as male employees?” She relayed one case where a private school denied health insurance to married women, because school management believed husbands are the “head of the household” and should provide for their wives.

The truth is that this is not about religious freedom............"    CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE!

10 Surprising Things That Benefit Our Brains That You Can Do Every Day ~ Belle Beth Cooper/Huffpost Science

"One of the things that surprises me time and time again is how we think our brains work and how they actually work.

On many occasions I find myself convinced that there is a certain way to do things, only to find out that actually that's the complete wrong way to think about it. For example, I always found it fairly understandable that we can multitask. Well, according to the latest research studies, it's literally impossible for our brains to handle two tasks at the same time.

Recently I came across more of these fascinating experiments and ideas that helped me adjust my workflow toward how our brains actually work......"

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Is there an afterlife? The science of biocentrism can prove there is, claims Professor Robert Lanza

The answer, Professor Robert Lanza says, lies in quantum physics – specifically the theory of biocentrism. The scientist, from Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, says the evidence lies in the idea that the concept of death is a mere figment of our consciousness………

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Sympathy for the Stay-At-Home Mom ~ New Republic / Judith Shulevitz

Sympathy for the Stay-At-Home Mom

November/December 2013

http://www.utne.com/community/stay-at-home-mom-zm0z13ndzlin.aspx

By Judith Shulevitz, from The New Republic

To reject a high-flying career, as this man did and so many women have done, is not to reject aspiration; it is to refuse to succumb to a kind of madness.


Photo By Gordon Surratt

My first mommy date—you know, those painstakingly-dressed-for occasions you hope will turn the mother of your child’s new best friend into your best friend, too—also gave me my first taste of the shame that makes the mommy wars so bitter. Tali’s husband worked on Wall Street, she was a stay-at-home mom with the children, and the playroom in their restored Victorian on a lake in Westchester was photo-spread perfect. There was an expansive, carpeted space for our toddlers to run wild in, an air-hockey table, a big-screen computer, Legos, kindergarten-grade wooden blocks, and a play house, all of it neat on a Wednesday afternoon despite there being no housekeeper in sight.
And what did this particular messy working mother feel? Pure envy: real-estate and clean-house envy, attentive-mother envy, and, when I saw her lovely kosher kitchen, Jewish envy too. Despite sending my kids to a Jewish school, I’d never quite managed the exhausting logistics of kashrut.
Getting over all this, I discovered that Tali was the child of Holocaust survivors, themselves the only living members of their families, and that, despite a wide circle of friends and an active synagogue life, she had the air of a person profoundly alone in the world. I figured that this had more to do with her history than her present situation, and that family life was her consolation. But she told me that she’d left her job in investment banking when she’d had her second child only because when she’d had her first, she’d gone part-time, which had meant working 40 hours a week instead of 60. In other words, five days a week, she had left her house in New Rochelle at 7 a.m. and returned from the city at 7 p.m. For any mother, let alone one who had obviously missed out on the warmth of a large family growing up, this would be hard to take.
The women I met through Tali were also mostly former high achievers with professional degrees—smart, appealing, non-helicoptering, non-Desperate Housewives-like, full-time, suburban mothers. They were the kind of women profiled by Lisa Belkin in her famous (or infamous) 2003 “Opt-Out Revolution” article in the New York Times Magazine; by Judith Warner in her 2005 book Perfect Madness; and by Lisa Miller’s “The Retro Wife” in New York magazine—to give just a few notable examples. These tales of handsomely educated and perfectly sane members of my sex who abandon great careers for children have become so common they constitute a genre of their own. Some of these pieces (or books) explain women’s flight from the professions as the waning of feminist ideals from one generation to the next; others blame the rise of over-mothering, attachment parenting, and other trends of that ilk; some cite all of the above. Miller’s piece introduces “neo-traditionalism,” which she defines as a rejection of feminist definitions of success. In many such essays, Betty Friedan appears as a touchstone, used to show how little has changed since she wrote The Feminine Mystique, or implicitly chided for failing to see how intractable work-life balance would prove to be. Each writer accurately characterizes their subjects’ lives and is right about the trend they represent and is by no means wrong about the pleasures and comforts of the stay-at-home mom life. And all of them, in my opinion, miss a key point.

To understand why female lawyers, doctors, bankers, academics, high-tech executives and other, often expensively pedigreed, professionals quit work to stay home, you need not search their souls for ambivalence or nostalgia. In fact, searching their souls guarantees that you won’t get the story, because it’s not to be found in individual decisions and personal stories, which are always complicated and hard to parse, but in the structural realities of the American workplace. And by this I don’t just mean the family-unfriendly policies of the kind Marissa Mayer is accused of advancing—though refusing to let workers telecommute doesn’t help, and let’s not even talk about how few American companies have on-site child care or adequate parental leave. I mean that among the professional and managerial classes, success at work requires more hours in the office, more hours on the computer at home, more trips out of town, and a much less predictable schedule than it did in Betty Friedan’s day. The life of a Joan or a Peggy at an advertising agency looks almost easy by comparison.
When Friedan was writing The Feminine Mystique, the 40-hour office job was still a norm, even for executives—a norm well on its way to changing, but a norm nonetheless. Today, whether you’re male or female, if you’re taking home an upper-middle-class salary you’re expected to work an average of 50 hours, and probably more, a lot of it after you’ve gone home. As of 1997, the average workweek for a man with graduate education was 50 hours, and for a women 47—that three-hour difference can be accounted for, of course, by all the women who went on mommy tracks. Among American dual-career couples, in the 1990s, 15.2 percent of those with at least college degrees worked a joint 100 hours a week or more, whereas only 9.6 percent of couples without diplomas did that. Try to imagine what that 100-hour workweek looked like to a child: that’s five 10-hour days, plus commutes, for both parents. And those are just averages—for people at the top of their fields, the numbers were a great deal bigger.
That the workweek is ballooning for America’s educated, salaried classes, even as it’s shrinking for less educated, hourly workers, or turning into part-time work, has been called the “time divide”—the increasing inequality of time spent working, which tracks with the rise of economic inequality. As of 2002, for example, Americans in the top fourth of earners toiled an average of 15 hours more than earners in the bottom fourth. I called the sociologist Jerry Jacobs, who along with another sociologist, Kathleen Gerson, coined the phrase in their 2005 book The Time Divide, to ask what the time divide looks like after the recession, now that so many workers, including white-collar ones, are unemployed. The workforce is more unequal than ever, he told me. “People who get a job feel that they have to be willing to work whatever they’re asked to work,” he said. And those lucky enough to work are working with greater intensity. “The American economy is producing more than it did before the recession,” he continued, “and it’s doing it with 8, 10, 12 million fewer workers. Employment isn’t where it was pre-recession, but the productivity, the total volume of stuff being produced, is higher. The only way that can happen is if people are working longer and harder.”
Confirming the sense that those at the top of the heap are feeling the pinch of our increasingly competitive world are studies reporting that they’re more stressed out than they used to be. They juggle more tasks more quickly and with more interruptions, do more work after hours at home to get it all done, and take more out-of-town trips. In 1977, according to a survey by the go-to organization for work-family balance, the Work and Families Institute, 65 percent of men said they had to work very hard at their job, and 52 percent said they had to work very fast. By 2008, those figures were 88 percent (very hard) and 73 percent (very fast). In another study, the institute reported that half as many high-paid managers and professionals (24 percent) as low-paid employees in other occupations (48 percent) say they’re able to wall off their non-work hours from contact from coworkers, supervisors, or clients. As for business travel, among employees whose earnings put them in the bottom quarter of the American pay scale, only 9 percent said they had to do it, whereas among those in the top quarter, 38 percent said they had to travel.
If such sacrifices of time are now routine for office workers, what does it take to move up through the ranks? Jacobs, who teaches at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, told me the story of a recent graduate who had been determined to be among the top 10 performers among several hundred peers at a Wall Street firm. He worked non-stop for two years, getting four to five hours of sleep a night. By the end of that period, he was named the very top performer in his group—at which point he decided he’d had enough, and left finance.
To reject a high-flying career, as this man did and so many women have done, is not to reject aspiration; it is to refuse to succumb to a kind of madness. Professional accomplishment shouldn’t and doesn’t have to look like this. The main reason white-collar workers can be driven to work 80-hour-or-so weeks is that very few of them have government protections. Most of them are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act, which mandates the 40-hour-week and overtime pay. American managers aren’t allowed to join unions. Other countries have laws that protect against overwork even for professionals, such as standard or maximum number of hours anyone can work in a week.
And then there’s the way we talk about the problem, which makes it hard to see that the culture of overwork hurts everyone, not just those who can’t hack it. “One of the things that feminism had at its core was that it saw these as societal issues that needed to be addressed at a large scale, not at the individual level,” Ken Matos, a researcher at the Work and Families Institute said. “The narrative changed. It became the story of the unique individual who overcomes barriers in spite of all odds. That wasn’t the story that was supposed to be told.”

When my children were toddlers, I worked at home, which is to say, I didn’t do much work at all on a book I turned in four years late. So I spent a lot of quality time with mothers who weren’t trying to do anything other than mother, women who walked their children up and down my block or hung out in the parents’ room at my kids’ preschool. I admired them for having stood up to our society’s denigration of the important and unpostponable work of care; I liked them, their kids, their homes, their sense of community, and their comparative serenity; and I was scared to death of turning into one of them, of becoming a stay-at-home mom. Luckily, I’m a writer, rather than, say, a surgeon or a corporate lawyer, so all I had to do to pull myself up out of the ranks of what we’re no longer allowed to call housewives was sit down and actually write. When I meet young female undergraduates and graduate students today, which I do when I speak at universities, I don’t find them neo-traditionalist or lacking in aspiration. They don’t seem to want to stay home with their kids. They have every intention of using their formidable educations to achieve professional success, just as I did when I was in college. And like me back then, they don’t really grasp what that will require.
In our interview, Jacobs told me about a recent class in which he and his students discussed a study done of graduates of the University of Chicago’s business school. After 10 years, the study’s researchers found, the female graduates were making half of what their male classmates were making; the 90th percentile for women was where the median was for men. “Of course,” added Jacobs, “they’re all making a ton of money. It’s not like you could feel terrible for these women. But in terms of the disparity, it was pretty dramatic.” As the discussion continued, the young women in the class started putting their heads in their hands or on their desks. They hadn’t heard any of this before. But they’ll be hearing a lot more of it in the years to come.
Judith Shulevitz is the science editor and chief science writer of The New Republic, as well as a regular contributor to The New York Times. Her latest book is The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time (Random House, 2010). Reprinted from The New Republic (March 21, 2013), a monthly magazine that tackles politics, culture, and big ideas from an unbiased and thought provoking perspective.

The Best-Kept Secret To Highly Successful Couples ~ Huffington Post / Adam Grant

"According to Adam Grant, Wharton's most popular and youngest tenured faculty member and the author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, people fall into one of three distinct categories: givers, matchers and takers. While Grant's book is written for a business audience, its theories provide extraordinary insight into romantic relationships. The category you fall into may well determine the success and happiness of your relationship.

For example, has a romantic relationship ever made you feel like you were not good enough? Have you ever been taken advantage of by a romantic partner? Have you ever felt like you gave everything to someone and ended up completely worn out? Then you may just fall into the "giver" style of romantic partner….."    CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

"Legalize Marijuana"! | The Nation

Despite growing support for legalization and the lack of any clear scientific evidence of marijuana’s health hazards, police departments in the United States make an average of almost 700,000 arrests for marijuana per year………READ THIS ARTICLE BASED ON LOGIC!

"How Teaching Kids Gratitude in School Makes Kids Happier" ~ Huffington Post / Emily Campbell

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, published by the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. For more, please visitgreatergood.berkeley.edu.

Posted: 11/22/2013 8:44 am EST  |  Updated: 11/22/2013 9:19 am EST

By Emily Campbell

As Thanksgiving approaches, kids may start hearing and thinking more about gratitude at school. Maybe they'll make handprint turkeys and write something they're thankful for on each feather, or do something similar. Sure, it's a nice exercise, but does being grateful really make a difference for kids?

Previous research clearly shows that it does. Practicing gratitude increases students' positive emotions and optimism, decreases their negative emotions and physical symptoms, and makes them feel more connected and satisfied with school and with life in general.

But most of these studies have been done with upper-middle-class students in middle or high school. The results raised the question: Would these findings hold true for other types of students, particularly younger kids or kids in high-risk situations?

Two new studies find that gratitude is associated with real positive effects in the lives of these kinds of kids -- enough to suggest that it should be a focus for students all-year round.

Making Young Kids More Grateful
Jeffrey Froh is a pioneering researcher of gratitude in youth. He and colleagues tested a new kind of gratitude curriculum for elementary school children (ages 8 to 11), the youngest studied thus far. First, children learned about the three types of appraisals that make us feel grateful:

• That someone has intentionally done something to benefit us
• That providing this benefit was costly to them
• That the benefit is valuable to us

After one week of daily half-hour lessons, these students showed significant increases in grateful thinking and grateful mood -- meaning that the lessons worked. Also, when all the children were given the chance to write thank-you notes to the PTA after a presentation, the students wrote 80 percent more notes than kids who didn't receive the lessons, showing that their enhanced gratitude translated into more grateful behavior.

In the second part of the study, researchers delivered the curriculum over five weeks, with one lesson per week. The students' outcomes were tested right after the program ended and then several more times, up to five months later.

Compared to kids who didn't get the lessons in gratitude, these children showed steady increases in grateful thinking, gratitude, and positive emotions over time. In fact, the differences between the two groups were greatest five months after the program ended, indicating that the gratitude lessons had lasting effects.

Overall, this study suggests that even young students can learn to look at the world through more grateful eyes -- and that they may become not only more appreciative but also happier as a result.

Working with at-risk youth
In another recent study, Mindy Ma and colleagues looked at gratitude in a very different kind of population than those used in previous youth gratitude studies: African-American adolescents (ages 12 -14) in low-income, low-performing urban schools.

They wanted to know if, in this kind of high-risk environment, gratitude would help protect them from stresses they faced at home and school. The researchers surveyed almost 400 students from three different middle schools to see if they felt grateful emotion in response to things others do that benefit them (which researchers call "moral-affect" gratitude) or if they tended to focus on and appreciate the positives in our lives and the world (called "life-orientation" gratitude for short).

The researchers found that those who were more likely to feel grateful to others also scored higher on academic interest, grades, and extracurricular involvement; those who appreciated the positives in general scored lower on risky behaviors like drug use and sexual attitudes and activity. One factor, positive family relationships, was associated with both types of gratitude. In other words, at least for this group of students, moral-affect gratitude seemed to enhance the positive conditions of their lives, while life-orientation gratitude seemed to buffer against some common high-risk pitfalls.

Of course, this study couldn't determine whether gratitude actually caused the good outcomes (or vice versa). But it did provide promising evidence that gratitude can play a critical role in protecting at-risk adolescents' from the difficulties of their lives, possibly by broadening their mindsets and building their personal resources and coping skills.

Future studies should include experiments with programs -- such as Froh's new curriculum, perhaps -- to test the effects of teaching gratitude in at-risk populations as well. Which might give us all something more to celebrate on Thanksgiving!

7 (Realistic) Ways to Reduce Stress ~ Huffington Post / John Tsilimparis

John Tsilimparis

Writer, Psychotherapist, Featured on A&E's 'OBSESSED'

7 (Realistic) Ways To Minimize Stress

Deep Breathing vs. Shallow Breathing 
Breathing deeply can help to reduce your stress and provide oxygen to your brain to help you focus. Most people do not know how to "deep breath" and so they end up breathing shallow breaths which can cause hyperventilation.

Place your hand on your stomach and push your tummy out. Then breathe deeply by watching your tummy and your chest rise. As you do it, think of some aspect of the breathing, like your lungs expanding with air or the air itself, passing through your nostrils. Hold it for three seconds then exhale through your mouth. If you do five rounds of the deep breathing three times per day you will greatly reduce your stress level.

Many people take the benefits of deep breathing for granted. It is an integral part of stress reduction that cannot be ignored. And most importantly, it gives the "racing mind" something to focus on other than the stresses of the day. Breathing deeply is the ultimate distraction.

Muscle Relaxation 
The process of slowly tensing and then relaxing muscle groups of your choosing is very important also. It accomplishes two goals, it naturally relaxes your muscles since you are probably very tense from stress and it distracts the "racing mind" by helping it focus on something different.

Stretch or tense muscle group for five to 10 seconds, and then release the pressure. You can do this for the same muscle groups multiple times. It's up to you which ones you choose. For example, start with your feet and ankles and work your way up. Stretch and tense your wrists, arms and shoulders. Then neck and face.

For the morning or evening stretch, lay flat on your back and cross your right leg over your body and pivot your hips to follow it so that your knee touches the floor. Do the same with the other leg. You can also pull your knees up to your chest, etc.

Ground Yourself
Sitting and "white-knuckling" through your stress hoping it will go away will only make it worse. The trick is to "ground" yourself in a tangible activity that will bring you back to reality. It will remind you that you are okay! Distract your mind by doing a concrete task around the house like cleaning, washing, organizing a closet, etc. You may read, or do a crossword puzzle or call a friend. Or, try running your fingers along the teeth of your keys, squeezing a stress ball, or holding any object in your hand that you can focus on, etc. Do not sit home alone and do not watch TV.

Thought Replacement 
Thought replacement techniques have been around for years and they actually work if you know how to use them. When you experience a negative thought that is causing you stress, say "stop" to yourself. Write it down and then cultivate an alternative thought. Write the alternative thought down even if you don't believe it will help. Alternative thoughts are simple, more rational thoughts that give you peace. They help you see the larger picture.

For example, if you think you will get fired from your job because you were recently late for a very important meeting, stop that thought immediately and replace it with a more rational thought: "I am only human and can't always predict traffic. My self-worth is not dependent on being a perfect employee."

Guided Imagery 
Close your eyes and try to think of a safe place that represents peace and calm. It could be your home, a beach, a forest, or being in the presence of a loved one or your favorite pet. Then imagine going there and embracing the experience with open arms. What are the sounds, smells and the particular sights you see? Get specific and keep deepening the details of the imagery until you feel your stress level come down. Try this two times per day.

Accept your Anxiety 
Cultivating radical acceptance of your symptoms of stress is the first step towards reducing its power over you. Accept that that you are scared, and scrutinize the negative thoughts you are having. Is it danger or discomfort? Most of the time, our stress is the "anticipatory" kind which is when we panic about things in the future that have not happened yet or about things that will never happen.

Don't assume that just because you are stressed, there must be danger lurking somewhere. Stress skews our thoughts and tricks us into thinking that way.

Exercise 
We all know that exercise releases endorphins which are responsible for increasing your minds ability to elevate mood and feel good. Exercise does not only mean heavy cardio activities or going to the gym for three hours every day. It simply means being as active as possible like taking a 15- to 30-minute walk once or twice a day. It can also mean "light" cardio like bike riding, a short hike, playing tennis or golf. It also means taking a yoga or Pilates class. The more you are active the better you will feel. If you are a couch potato, your chances of elevating your mood and reducing stress are slim to none.

Right-wing “family expert”: "Treating husbands and wives as equals is unchristian" - SALON / KATIE MCDONOUGH

Russell Moore called egalitarian marriages "false gospel" that defy the Bible …  CLICK HERE TO READ:

The Singular Waste of America's Healthcare System in 1 Remarkable Chart ~ The Atlantic

The U.S. spends far, far more per person than any other rich country on healthcare. We don't get more for it.   CLICK HERE TO READ!

The U.S. Health Care System Is Terrible, In 1 Enraging Chart - Huffington Post

"Hello, did you know the American health-care system is terrible? It is. Don't let John Boehner tell you otherwise.

If you're unconvinced, here is a chart that demonstrates its terribleness. It shows, using OECD data, how much money different countries spend on health care per person, charted against life expectancy in each of those countries. As you can see, there is a pretty close relationship between health-care spending and life expectancy. Except for one very, very terrible country. Can you spot it?"…    CLICK HERE TO READ DETAILS OF THIS UNCONSCIONABLE FACT!

An Introvert’s Guide to Reality / Psychology Today / Arnie Kozak, Ph.D.

Extroverts have a socially-embedded sense of self. “Me” arises out of a wide array of social connections, activities, and stimulation. While most introverts have rich and meaningful relationships, their sense of self is not as socially embedded as the extroverts. Introverts have an introspective-narrative-embedded sense of self.

The flower and face experiment lends some support to this notion. In 2011, a study was published by I. Fishman et al. in the journal, Cognitive Neuroscience.   CLICK HERE TO READ MORE…

"A Theory About Why the Powerful Don't Care For the Powerless" / Psychology Today / Eric Horowitz

CLIK HERE TO READ: A Theory About Why the Powerful Don't Care For the Powerless

"George Zimmerman’s Icarus complex" - The Washington Post / Jonathan Capeheart

Zimmerman is a dangerous man. Let's stop using taxpayer dollars, and put him in jail. He is a typical narcissist … malignant at the very least.   In addition, the dysfunctional Florida legal and law enforcement systems play directly into his drama.   CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE!

Fact Check: Social Security Does Not Increase the Deficit | Alternet

"The latest volley is a shameful and distorted editorial in the Washington Postwhich attempts to downplay the retirement crisis faced by Americans and to stoke generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy. The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs….."

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ARTICLE!

10 Tips for Great Sex (That You Won't Find in Cosmo Magazine) | Alternet

CLICK HERE TO READ THIS ARTICLE!!: 10 Tips for Great Sex (That You Won't Find in Cosmo Magazine) | Alternet

10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week - ALTERNET

CLICK TO READ THIS ARTICLE! 10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

McDonald's Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full - Alternet

CLICK TO READ!! McDonald's Advice To Underpaid Employees: Break Food Into Pieces To Keep You Full

Pentagon Forged Financial Documents Amid Failure to Manage Budget (The Day Before 9/11 – Investigation

"sage:  I am remembering Donald Rumfeld’s statement on September 10, 2001 about $2.3 trillion having gone “missing” from Pentagon coffers and the resulting “crash” into the Pentagon the next day in exactly the spot where the financial documents were being processed."    CLICK TO CONTINUE READING

"Common Professions of A Narcissist" by Sam Vaknin

This is an insightful comment from an individual on the site of the Vaknin videos:

'This man is interesting because he is himself a self-described narcissist….somehow i respect him for being aware of himself …i suspect most narcissists would never admit to such a truth even if their life depended on it....i like this narcissist ...i say all his sins are forgiven in exchange for blowing the cover of countless creeps.'

Sam Vaknin has written in-depth, at length, about narcissism.  As the remark says above, this is homage to his own awareness of this condition and its malignancy. If any psychologist, psychotherapist learns about this character and personality disorder, Vaknin is likely the most followed for his acuity, and sheer excellence in his works.

This particular video is well worth listening to, and extremely interesting.

"What Is Gaslighting"? by Sam Vaknin, author and expert about narcissism / malignant narcissism

Daily Kos: Research Study Explains How U.S. Media Brainwashes The Public

BY\

by Ray Pensador


"The corruption in this country has reached such alarming levels, and the consequences when it comes to the direct harm that corruption inflicts on the population (and the world) so atrocious, that for many years now I have been wondering if the only way a population can remain so passive is if it is subjected to massive brainwashing.
Given the increasingly blunt manner in which the ruling elites continue to engage in blatant acts of corruption and oppression, born our of government and corporatist collusion, if the population were not under the control of the mind-numbing corporate media conglomerate propaganda, right now we would have the equivalent of Occupy Wall Street, ten times the size of what it was at its height…."  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING:

So You Love An Angry Person - article by Dr. Lynne Namka

"People from all over the world write to me, mostly women but sometimes it is a man, asking about what they can do to help their family member, loved one or partner "control" his or her anger. Or how they can help "diffuse" their partner's anger. They say that their partner is "such a good guy" and his only flaw is his "anger problem." Or they feel sorry for their out-of-control child or abusive parent."  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

TRUTHSEEKING: No, Obama Didn't Lie to You About Your Health Care Plans | Alternet

CLICK HERE TO READ FACTS:

To the wave coming after me….from grand children to seniors!

"Gang Rape in India, Routine and Visible" - from "Want to Know" / New York Tomes

Gang Rape in India, Routine and Invisible
2013-10-27, New York Times
Posted: 2013-11-05 08:53:34
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/world/asia/gang-rape-in-india-routine-and-i...

http://www.wanttoknow.info/subscribe

The trial in [a] Mumbai gang-rape case has opened ... without the crush of reporters who documented every twist in a similar case in New Delhi in which a woman died after being gang-raped on a private bus. The Mumbai case provides an unusual glimpse into a group of bored young men who had committed the same crime often enough to develop a routine. The police say the men had committed at least five rapes in the same spot. Their casual confidence reinforces the notion that rape has been a largely invisible crime here, where convictions are infrequent and victims silently go away. Not until their arrest, at a moment when sexual violence has grabbed headlines and risen to the top of the state’s agenda, did the seriousness of the crime sink in. “It was exactly like watching a kid in school who has been caught doing something,” said [the victim's coworker], who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the identity of the victim, who cannot be identified according to Indian law. “It’s like a bunch of kids who found a dog and tied a bunch of firecrackers to its tail, just to see what would happen. Only in this case it was far more egregious. It was malevolent, what happened.” None of the men worked regularly. There were jobs chicken-plucking at a neighborhood stand — a hot, stinking eight-hour shift that paid 250 rupees, or $4. The men told their families they wanted something better, something indoors, but that thing never seemed to come. They passed time playing cards and drinking.

Note: For more on sex crimes, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

EXCELLENT! Daily Kos: "Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Children?"

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), in their continuing effort to protect people from reality, has slapped an R-rating on Lee Hirsch’s new documentary 'Bully,' which followed the lives of middle-school & high-school students.     CLICK HERE TO READ THIS COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE

Joel Osteen’s gay problem: The religious right is history if he can’t solve it

Joel Osteen’s gay problem: The religious right is history if he can’t solve it

The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers | Alternet

The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers | Alternet

You Will Be Shocked at How Ignorant Americans Really Are | Alternet

CLICK TO READ: "You Will Be Shocked at How Ignorant Americans Really Are" | Alternet

Scientists finally admit H1N1 vaccine causes increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome

"A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) admits that the vaccine widely administered for H1N1, also known as "swine flu," is linked to causing neurological damage in the form of Guillain-Barre syndrome. The findings confirm several earlier studies in both the U.S. and U.K. that also linked the H1N1 vaccine to severe neurological damage......"  (CLICK HERE TO READ....)

"The Sankofa Bird ... and the Meaning of the Symbol"

The Meaning of the Symbol of the Sankofa Bird

The concept of SANKOFA is derived from King Adinkera of the Akan people of West Afrika.  Literally translated it means "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot".

"Sankofa" teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward. Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated.

 Visually and symbolically "Sankofa" is expressed as a mythic bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg (symbolizing the future) in its mouth. This is emphasizing on the fact that even though the bird is advancing, it periodically makes it a point to examine/ return to it's past, since this is the only way for one to have a better future. It affirms the belief that there must be movement and new learning as time passes, but as this forward march proceeds the knowledge of the past must never be forgotten

Some also interpret Sankofa to mean, no matter how far away one travels they must always return home.  If not physically, then figuratively.  However Sankofa is interpreted, the basic and important meaning still lies; one's past is an important aspect of one's future. So in order to make the best of one's future ... to lead a life with ongoing health and growth ...unequivocally one must visit one's past .  

Meet 3 Master Manipulators of America’s Oligarchy | Alternet

Financiers Stanley Druckenmiller, Pete Peterson and John Arnold form a trifecta of treachery.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

October 24, 2013  |  

Ideas are costly, especially bogus ones. And a growing class of billionaires is more than willing to pay.

Whether they’re ginning up deficit hysteria to cut Social Security or blaming teachers and firefighters for state budget crises, these 1 percenters pose as defenders of your interests while arranging things so that they can plunder America and 
leave hard-working people with scraps.....CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

Here’s how GOP Obamacare hypocrisy backfires - Michael Lind / Salon

GOP base doesn't understand right wants to turn Medicare, Social Security and more into a very similar program......

CLICK TO READ ARTICLE

Consumer Alert: 300+ Health Problems Linked To Statin Drugs

"A growing body of clinical research now indicates that the cholesterol-lowering class of drugs known as statins, are associated with over 300 adverse health effects -- research boldly flying in the face of national health policy, medical insurance premium guidelines, statin drug manufacturer advertising claims, and the general sentiment of the public, with approximately 1 in every 4 adult Americans over 45 currently using these drugs to "prevent heart disease."

The Cholesterol Myth

For well over 40 years, statin drugs have successfully concretized a century old myth about the primary cause of heart disease: namely, that cholesterol "causes" plaque build up in the arteries, ultimately leading to obstruction of blood flow, and subsequent morbidity and mortality.................."

CLICK TO READ THIS IMPORTANT ARTICLE

Textism: Is Spelling Over? | Alternet

".....case, the grammar that Mrs. Bustard drilled into my head served me well on standardized tests, in college and in my career, so it’s easy for me to go wobbly on rules now.  But what about today’s texting toddlers who grow up thinking that lol is a word?  Are we raising a generation of illiterates whose fuzzy spelling is the precursor of fuzzy thinking? .........
CLICK TO READ

"Get Your GOP Hands Off My Medicare!" | Alternet

CLICK TO READ THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE!!

Backfire! GOP Hostage-Taking Boosts Obamacare's Popularity | Alternet

"Polls find Americans want more healthcare options".......“The opposition to the insurance companies is so palpable in the groups,” Greenberg said. “The biggest changes in this law is that insurance companies actually have to act like insurance companies and provide health coverage when you need it.”

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Doctors' Secret for How to Die Right | Alternet

Why do physicians make different end-of-life choices than the rest of us?
CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

"The religious right is a fraud: Nothing Christian about Michele Bachmann’s values" ~ Salon

"The American right obsesses over abortion and birth control, not helping people. It's different around the globe."

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING