40% of World's Population of School Age Kids Can't Read, Report Says - Huffington Post

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — At least 250 million of the world's 650 million primary school age children are unable to read, write or do basic mathematics, according to a report Wednesday commissioned by the U.N. education agency.   CLICK HERE TO READ

5 Biggest Problems with Revenge—and Its 3 Best Remedies

This post will lay out the reasons that—both ethically and pragmatically—your viewpoint on revenge should be decidedly negative. CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING...

Who Holds Our Debt?

Q: Who are the holders of U.S. debt?

A: The biggest are the Social Security trust funds (16 percent), the Federal Reserve banks (12 percent), China (8 percent), Japan (7 percent) and mutual funds including money-market funds (6 percent).........     CLICK HERE TO READ FACTS

"4 Secrets for Setting Rock-Solid Boundaries" - World of Psychology

Margarita Tartakovsky, M.S. is an Associate Editor at Psych Central and blogs regularly about eating and self-image issues on her own blog, Weightless.    CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING ABOUT SETTING HEALTHY BOUNDARIES

KUDOS TO "THE LIVING ROOM"! "For Psychiatric Crises, Alternatives to ERs Have Their Advantages" - Psych Central News

“The experiences of (emergency departments) for persons in emotional distress were characterized by feelings of insecurity, loneliness, intimidation, fear, and discomfort,” the study noted. “Participants described feeling unsupported by (emergency department) staff.”    CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THIS WONDERFUL RESOURCE!

Mind Control - WantToKnow.info

This mind control summary is based on astonishing excerpts from three landmark books:Bluebird by Colin Ross, MD; Mind Controllers by Armen Victorian; and A Nation Betrayedby Carol Rutz. The authors provide hundreds of footnotes to support their thorough research. Their revealing information is derived largely from 18,000 pages of declassified CIA mind control documents. To order these key documents from the U.S. government,click here. Join in powerfully building a better world for all by spreading the word.  CLICK HERE TO READ FACTS

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. / New York Times - reposted by WantToKnow.info

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows
2014-01-07, New York Times
Posted: 2014-01-13 16:19:46
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-fbi-abandon-shadows...

On a night nearly 43 years ago, while Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier bludgeoned each other over 15 rounds in a televised title bout viewed by millions around the world, burglars took a lock pick and a crowbar and broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation office in a suburb of Philadelphia, making off with nearly every document inside. They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters ... would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups. Perhaps the most damning document from the cache [was] a 1970 memorandum that ... urged agents to step up their interviews of antiwar activists and members of dissident student groups. “It will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an F.B.I. agent behind every mailbox.” Another document, signed by Hoover himself, revealed widespread F.B.I. surveillance of black student groups on college campuses. But the document that would have the biggest impact on reining in the F.B.I.’s domestic spying activities [included] a mysterious word: Cointelpro ... shorthand for Counterintelligence Program.Since 1956, the F.B.I. had carried out an expansive campaign to spy on civil rights leaders, political organizers and suspected Communists, and had tried to sow distrust among protest groups. Among the grim litany of revelations was a blackmail letter F.B.I. agents had sent anonymously to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., threatening to expose his extramarital affairs if he did not commit suicide. The intent of Cointelpro was to destroy lives and ruin reputations.

Note: To learn about the brave citizen burglars who have now revealed themselves and watch the engaging video covering this story, click on the link given above. For more on the realities of intelligence agency activities, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.

» Prepare for Parenting by Healing Your Childhood Wounds - Attachment Matters

"Before parents can even fathom relying on their gut feelings in how to approach their parent-child relationships in a healthy, sensitive way, it is my firm belief that they must first address and heal from any childhood emotional wounds they may be carrying around, often without their realization until they bring a new child into the world, and even sometimes not even then."  CLICK HERE TO READ FURTHER

» Raising Assertive Kids - Psych Central

"....just like adults, kids can have a tough time being assertive. One of the reasons assertiveness is difficult is because kids want to get what they want without the potential for pain, Schab said. “If we think that standing up for ourselves and asking for something directly might result in a ‘no’ for an answer and our egos can’t take that, we do what we think will get us what we want,” she said.....  CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

The Agony of Instagram

....."Instagram, rather, is about unadulterated voyeurism. It is almost entirely a photo site, with a built-in ability (through the site’s retro-style filters) to idealize every moment, encouraging users to create art-directed magazine layouts of their lives, as if everyone is suddenly Diana Vreeland".......CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE!

How to help a young child learn generosity - The Washington Post

......"But of course he doesn’t really understand yet. “There’s a big disconnect between the people ‘over there’ and my piggy bank,” said Vicki Hoefle, a parenting educator and author of “Duct Tape Parenting.”.........CLICK HERE TO READ!

25 Ways to Teach Kids Compassion

During his talks, the Dalai Lama emphasizes how important it is for children to experience compassion from their caregivers from birth.True compassion means being highly attuned to your child's needs and accepting them for the unique persons they are. It is not the same as sympathy, empathy, or altruism although each plays a part. The compassionate person feels the suffering of another and makes positive steps to alleviate that suffering.,,,,,,,,,CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Dysfunctional Religion Versus a Spirituality That Builds Intimacy and Community - Huff Post

CLICK HERE TO READ: Dysfunctional Religion Versus a Spirituality That Builds Intimacy and Community

'Spiritual but Not Religious': A Rising, Misunderstood Voting Bloc

STEVEN BARRIE-ANTHONY is a research associate at the Social Science Research Council and a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A former Los Angeles Times staff writer, he also writes at Reverberations and The Immanent Frame      .CLICK HERE TO READ

How Can We Help Our Children Become “Grittier”? - Psychology Today - Kenneth Barish, PhD

Kenneth Barish is the author of Pride and Joy: A Guide to Understanding Your Child's Emotions and Solving Family Problems. Pride and Joy is winner of the 2013 International Book Award.

 CLICK HERE TO READ: How Can We Help Our Children Become “Grittier”?

HAPPY NEW YEAR? or........

I want to express my gratitude for the outpouring of comments about some of the subjects posted.  I watch the emails and general trends often to hear the information most needed by you, my readers. Your emails have been wonderfully informative, and I deeply appreciate your links.  

It interests me deeply when I "construct the umbrella" which you all provide me. While I "go with the flow", I have listed categories for posts.  As to my post title, I wonder if the phrase, "Happy New Year" has evolved so rapidly that we scarcely keep up with it.

Of course! Who doesn't wish to be happy?  Yet..... learning (which, for me, encompasses experience, compassion, perhaps a real rasher of disappointment and/or sadness in that process) usually takes us through a "dark night of the soul"  (What, again?!?!).  The only way is straight through the middle, I am told...and believe.  Like many of you, that "middle" is chock full of kicking and screaming.  That is, until we settle down and soak up all those stages of grief.  That is, until we can find some perverse humor embedded in the process.  That is, until we mature into a place where we accept ... yes, accept ... that a particular experience is simply in our lives.  

It is then that we return to "Houston" ... safe for take-off. True, we may be wizened, more clearly self-defined, purified, disinfected, and with almost a "post-modern", conscious mindset. 

That process is rich and "the path less taken".  It feels perilous and terrifying at first.  That feeling is not the outcome;  it is merely confronting our own resistance.

So, I no longer wish for myself a "happy" New Year.  I wish for myself one whose (as usual!) bounty is discovered as courage, "staying power", a sort of Viagra for the soul and spirit!  This world is on a multi-faceted trajectory, the likes of which we haven't seen before.  I wish for you the same... the little blue pill of soul and heart courage. Many will not "make it".  They will balk from doing "the work" because it simply seems easier to maintain the status quo.  I challenge each of you not to balk.....in a broad definition, that "status quo" is the kiss of death.
Madelaine

EXCELLENT! "The Covert Narcissist: A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" - YouTube Video

Parent Alienation Syndrome OR Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Family alienation, in general, is on the rise.  Fathers alienating children (even grown) fro their mothers; also grand parent alienation. This video "works" for all the variations.

"Here i raise the question if Parent Alienation Syndrome is a separate disorder or if it is a behavior of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We know that the prevalence of narcissistic issues is high in PAS parents. We also know that up to the divorce this behavior is not prevalent in alienating parents. It is as if the divorce trigger a certain behavior in a personality already disturbed. A normal personality would never expose a child to this kind of brainwashing. 

It is a fact that the features defined for narcissistic personality disorder contains the features described for PAS, but not vice versa. Moreover, it is clear that nobody suddenly get a personality disorder, as PAS is, just because a divorce happens. This behavior appears more as a result of pre-existing personality and manifests itself in this particular way when the particular condition of divorce occurs."

The Inner Pain of Adult Children of Alcoholics

     Since there are over 600,00 deaths each year from alcohol, it naturally follows that many children are born into an a family with at least one alcoholic parent.  Many people discover that they have several characteristics in common as a result of being brought up in an alcoholic household.

     They came to feel isolated, and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures. To protect themselves, they become people pleasers, even though they may lose their own identities in the process. At the same time  they mistake any personal criticism as a threat. Often, they lose the ability to feel empathy for others, and rarely "walk in the moccasins" of the Other.  

      They either became alcoholics themselves, married them, or both. Failing that, they  found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, a person in high need of control, or other similar wounds to fulfill their insatiable need for abandonment. 

     "Need"?  Yes, because in that way, when others tire of the drama and detach from them, it feels both terrible and wonderful at the same time.  The "wonderful" part results from the recapitulation of their childhood with the alcoholic caretaker.  That, of course, is a primary reason for why people choose their partners:  to replicate that same chaos, pain and fear, in order to 'do over' that period of time., hoping that it will turn out differently.  Of course, without recovery, therapy, etc., they just replicate the pain of their youth all over again.

     ACOA's live life from the standpoint of victims. Having an over developed, or under-developed sense of responsibility, they preferred to be concerned with others rather than themselves. They get guilt feelings when they trust themselves, giving in to others. They become reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative.  

     Often, beginning life as independent, proud children, they eventually become dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally. For women especially, they view a relationship with a theme of passivity rather than feeling, and acting upon, their true personal power.  Their lives are fraught with complex opposites:  the "show" of a confident, independent person, while they are being quite dependent. 

     While yearning for a true loving relationship with a person who honors their unique individuality, they tend to pass that up for another person who is angry, non-empathic, demanding, and who does not truly value them as a human being. They content themselves with charming lip service from partners, as long as they can avoid any sort of symbolic judgment...as long as the scale of abandonment plus non-abandonment remains finely balanced.  To balance that scale,  they do things which will create abandonment, replicating the roots of their life. Until therapy has progressed, they keep choosing insecure primary and secondary relationships because they remind the ACOA of  their childhood relationship with the alcoholic parent(s). This is an emotionally exhausting process for the ACOA, and even more so if they have children.

     These symptoms of the family disease of alcoholism made them 'co-victims', those who take on the characteristics of the disease without necessarily ever taking a drink. ACOA's learn to keep our feelings down as children and keep them buried as adults. As a result of this conditioning, we often confused love with pity, tending to love those we could rescue. And..... they confuse love with control.

     Even more self-defeating, ACOA's became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upset to workable solutions.

This is a description, not an indictment.

Some of the hallmarks of the ACOA are:

1. Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior is.

2. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end.

3. Adult children of alcoholics lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

4. Adult children of alcoholics judge themselves without rational mercy. As a result, they judge others in that same rigid manner, completely overriding mercy, and understanding.

5  Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty having fun. Even when they claim to be "having fun", they generally display a false self, in that they cannot simply "let go" into an easygoing joyfulness. Those around them sense this without any problem, and the "air" is laden with anxiety.

6. Adult children of alcoholics take themselves very seriously, and lose a free flowing adaptability and acquiescence.  Acquiescence for the ACOA is threatening to their core.  They see it as a measure of weakness, rather than a serene acceptance of their foibles.

7. Adult children of alcoholics have difficulty with intimate relationships, and often recreate the abandonment see-saw with ones who love them.  Push-pull dynamics, ones that say, "Go away----come here", as well as passive aggression are most common.

8. Adult children of alcoholics overreact to changes over which they have no control.

9. Adult children of alcoholics constantly seek approval and affirmation.

10. Adult children of alcoholics usually feel that they are different from other people.

11. Adult children of alcoholics are super responsible or super irresponsible.

12. Adult children of alcoholics are extremely loyal, and even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.

13. Adult children of alcoholics are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

Will Twitter Sell Its Soul Like Facebook Did? (Update 1) ~ Rocco Pendola / The Street

"First, I am on record as the first person known to man to suggest "TWIT" as the ticker symbol for Twitter as a publicly-traded entity. It's timestamped in a November 7, 2012 article where I suggested Facebook (FB_) and Twitter should consider a merger or, at the very least, an advertising partnership............."  CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Have You Sold Your Soul? ~ Mary Goulet

Let’s cover a few things regarding this because when we sell our Soul for something or someone we will have to eventually reap the consequences. Always. Period.       CLICK HERE TO READ FURTHER

Christmas Message / The Arcturian Group

DECEMBER 22, 2013 We come to wish you all a very Merry experience in the season of Hanukkah, Christmas, or whatever you are choose to celebrate in this season. It carries an energy of joy and it matters not that some may choose to name it something other than Christmas. It is a season that promotes celebration, love, and the experiences of Oneness--the underlying energy of Christmas. Christmas to Christians, means the birth of Jesus but many who call themselves Christians fail to look beneath the rites, rituals, and celebrations of a birth 2000 years ago, getting caught up in much of it without any deeper understanding of the core truths of the event. Rituals in and of themselves have only the importance or power they are given, for they are simply representations of deeper truths. Begin to ponder the deeper meanings of this season for the outer, material sense of anything is always an interpretation of its spiritual reality. Enjoy the festivities and try to let go of any concerns you may hold. Stand and observe with a lightness of heart letting yourselves join whatever activities resonate with you. Along with the difficult lessons, you are meant to experience joy and learn to be happy, and now is a perfect time and good excuse for those of you who have difficulty doing this. For too long spiritual living has been equated dull stoicism and suffering, even to the point of believing that self inflicted pain will make one more "holy". This is pure nonsense dear ones, know that these erroneous concepts were seeded into world consciousness by those who stood to benefit from mankind's' belief in such things. Joy carries the energy of the Divine. You are here to learn yes, and a large part of that learning is to integrate the energy of joy and love thus allowing you to then express it, for you cannot flow outwardly that which you believe you do not have. The holiday season is bringing confusion for some of you. You are feeling the need to question many of your traditional beliefs and this is good, for it means you are no longer just taking for granted that life can be lived only in a particular way, and that anything other than that one way is incorrect. The world is a diverse and wonderful one filled with many traditions and different ways of expression for you to experience. Those who forever stick only to what they know believing that it is the only way, will never enjoy the world's infinite diversity. Anything in your life that no longer resonates with you, have the courage to release. This does not mean you push it deeper inside, simply walk away, or ignore any human footsteps needing to be taken for these are frequently karmic situations needing to be once and for all, resolved. Letting go is NOT an excuse to simply avoid something unpleasant that may be presenting itself to you. Spiritually, letting go means is that you go deeper within and take a long look at the particular issue as to why it no longer resonates with you. Honestly examine your belief system, asking yourself; "What am I believing about this person, place, event, experience etc." and then ask yourself; "Is this true or is this a concept I am still holding that is in and of the third dimensional belief system?". You will quickly begin to see the issue from a new perspective and this gives you the power to then let it go and at the same time, send unconditional love and light to all involved. Ask for guidance, your Guides are just waiting for you to ask. Write everything bothering you down and take time to really examine your belief system. It can be very painful to release something you have grown accustomed to even when that something is dense and heavy and you know you would be better off without it. This goes for relationships, traditions, habits, or anything that feels old and finished. Open yourselves to the true meaning of Christmas dear ones, open yourselves to the celebration, gratitude, happiness, and joy of letting the Christ (Light) be born within each of your hearts not relegating it to one event that happened long ago. Let Christmas take place in every moment of every day within you. The birth of the Christ takes place in a humble (the stable) heart, one that has released and moved beyond ego and self importance (duality and separation). This is the true message of Christmas. Look deeper. We celebrate with you, dear ones. We celebrate with you the remembrance of the message of Oneness as was given to the world through the event of 2000 years ago. This was and is Jesus's eternal gift to you--acknowledge and accept this gift through your own ever deepening understanding of his messages and then begin to live them without judgement, criticism, or self-righteousness. Christmas is not just for those calling themselves Christians, for it is a celebration of universal Oneness, to be interpreted on ever deepening levels. Many so called atheists and agnostics practice the truths of Oneness perfectly and often more completely than many calling themselves "Christians". Try to not place labels on anything or anyone, but simply focus on your own journey to live the message of Christmas. This is true Christianity and the message of Jesus. Merry Christmas We are the Arcturian Group 12/22/13

Institute for Responsible Technology - GMO Dangers

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) doesn’t think so. The Academy reported that “Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food,” including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, faulty insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. The AAEM asked physicians to advise patients to avoid GM foods...CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING!..

GMOs and Genetically Modified Foods Risks and Dangers of GMOs

"Genetically Engineered Foods (GMOs) May Pose National Health Risk

By Jeffrey M. Smith

In a study in the early 1990's rats were fed genetically modified (GM) tomatoes. Well actually, the rats refused to eat them. They were force-fed. Several of the rats developed stomach lesions and seven out of forty died within two weeks.[1] Scientists at the FDA who reviewed the study agreed that it did not provide a "demonstration of reasonable certainty of no harm." In fact, agency scientists warned that GM foods in general might create unpredicted allergies, toxins, antibiotic resistant diseases, and nutritional problems.

CLICK HERE TO READ IN-DEPTH INFORMATION!!

SAY "NO" TO CHOBANI!! GMO Insider. com - Inform yourself about GMO's

What are GMOs?

---

GMOs, or “genetically modified organisms,” are plants, animals and bacteria that are engineered for various purposes ranging from agricultural production to scientific research.  GMOs are created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This experimental technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.

What crops are commonly genetically modified?

---

More and more foods and products are being genetically engineered or contain genetically engineered ingredients. Here are eight of the most common to look out for. If a product contains these ingredients and is not labeled non-GMO Verified or Organic Certified, there’s a good chance  it contains GMOs:

1. Alfalfa
2. Canola
3. Corn
4. Cotton
5. Papaya
6. Soy
7. Sugar Beets
8. Zucchini and Yellow Summer Squash

ALSO high-risk: animal products (milk, meat, eggs, honey, etc.) because much animal feed is made from genetically modified soy, corn, and cottonseed. Read more »

What product ingredients commonly contain genetically engineered crops?

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Amino Acids, Aspartame, Ascorbic Acid, Sodium Ascorbate, Vitamin C, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Ethanol, Flavorings (“natural” and “artificial”), High-Fructose Corn Syrup, Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, Lactic Acid, Maltodextrins, Molasses, Monosodium Glutamate, Sucrose, Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP), Xanthan Gum, Vitamins, Yeast Products. Read more »

Why should we be concerned about GMOs?

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Human Health Risks: More and more studies point to the idea that there’s grave cause for concern about the health effects of consuming GMOs and the chemicals they are sprayed with, including food allergies, irritable bowels, organ damage, cancer

Environmental Risks: Seventy-two percent of US GMO crops are engineered to tolerate a certain type of herbicide. But the weeds that these herbicides used to kill are coming back bigger and stronger, creating herbicide-resistant “superweeds” that require greater quantities of more toxic pesticides to eradicate.

The Risk To Farmers In Developing Countries: Every thirty minutes, a farmer commits suicide in India due to meet rising debts, a phenomenon that has been steadily rising since the 1970s. While the causes behind the farmers’ crushing debt and resultant suicides are complex—ranging from unfair government floor prices for cotton to international trade agreements skewed in favor of other countries—GM seeds do appear to play a role.

The Risk to Organic Farmers: Even when a farmer isn’t growing GM crops, contamination can easily occur—through seed mixing or pollen drift from neighboring GM fields. While this contamination is troubling for those of us who wish to avoid GMOs, it can be an economic disaster for organic and family farmers. Read more »

How can we avoid GMOs?

---

There are several choices you can make when buying groceries and eating out to try and avoid GMOS.

1. Look for the Non-GMO Project label.
2. Buy organic certified produce and packaged foods.
3. Avoid high-risk ingredients.
4. Be wary of non-GMO claims that lack certification.
5. Avoid processed foods.
6. Watch out for restaurants.
7. Buy and plant your own organic seeds.

http://gmoinside.org/faqs/

Chobani Uses Milk from Cows Fed GMOs. How Natural is That? - GMO Inside.com

Cows living on industrial farms are fed almost entirely GMO crops like corn, soy, alfalfa, cotton seed, and/or sugar beets. In fact, 98% of GM soy and 49% of GM corn goes to feeding livestock and poultry...........CLICK HERE TO READ AND INFORM

AT LAST...stepping up? - Glaxo Says It Will Stop Paying Doctors to Promote Drugs ~ New York Times / Katie Thomas

The British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay doctors to promote its products and will stop tying compensation of sales representatives to the number of prescriptions doctors write, its chief executive said Monday, effectively ending two common industry practices that critics have long assailed as troublesome conflicts of interest.     CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

Autism: What's Sex Got to Do with It? ~ Psychology Today

Are you empathetic? Or are you a systemizer? That's the fundamental difference between women and men, according to a prickly theory from psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. To him, autism is a case of the extreme male brain..............
Autism: What's Sex Got to Do with It?

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!