MY WORK ... MY PASSION

• Certified Transpersonal Hypnotherapist ; Past experiences: Dream Analysis /10 Years Experience •Psychotherapist / Use of Gestalt, Jungian, Zen, Reality and Energy Therapies /10 Years Experience •EMDR • Men and Their Journey: the neuroscience of the male brain, and the implications in sexuality, education and relationship • Women: Their Transformation and Empowerment ATOD (Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs) / 21 years experience •Ordained Interfaith Minister & Official Celebrant • Social Justice Advocate • Child and Human Rights Advocate • Spiritual Guide and Intuitive • Certified Reiki Practitioner • Mediation / Conflict Resolution • “Intentional Love” Parenting Strategy Groups • Parenting Workshops • Coaching for parents of Indigo, Crystal, and Rainbow Children • International Training: Israel & England • Critical Incident Stress Debriefing • Post-911 and Post-Katrina volunteer

MSW - UNC Chapel Hill

BSW - UNC Greensboro


With immense love I wish Happy Birthday to my three grandchildren!

May 22: Brannock

May 30: Brinkley

June 12: Brogan

All three have birthdays in the same 22 days of the year ....what a busy time for the family!

"An Unending Love"

This blog and video is devoted and dedicated to my precious daughter Jennifer, my grand daughters Brogan and Brinkley, and my grand son Brannock. They are hearts of my heart. Our connection through many lives..... is utterly infinite.




The Definition of Genius

"THRIVE"

https://youtu.be/Lr-RoQ24lLg

"ONLY LOVE PREVAILS" ...."I've loved you for a thousand years; I'll love you for a thousand more....."


As we are in the winter of our lives, I dedicate this to Andrew, Dr. John J.C. Jr. and Gary W., MD, (who has gone on before us). My love and admiration is unfathomable for each of you..........and what you have brought into this world.....so profoundly to me.
The metaphors are rich and provocative; we're in them now. This world is indeed disappearing, and the richest eternal world awaits us!
The intensity, as was in each of the three of us, is in yellow!
In my heart forever.........

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of
Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire

Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world


I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by y
our side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This
disappearing world
This disappearing world
This disappearing world


TECHNOLOGY..........

In “Conversations with God”, by Neale Donald Walsch, there is a warning I think of. I refer to it as the Atlantis passage, and I've quoted it a few times before." As I have said, this isn't the first time your civilization has been at this brink,"

God tells Walsch. "I want to repeat this, because it is vital that you hear this. Once before on your planet, the technology you developed was far greater than your ability to use it responsibly. You are approaching the same point in human history again. It is vitally important that you understand this. Your present technology is threatening to outstrip your ability to use it wisely. Your society is on the verge of becoming a product of your technology rather than your technology being a product of your society. When a society becomes a product of its own technology, it destroys itself."

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)


Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)(Jennie Ivins/Flickr Creative Commons)


A vintage Fisher Price “grandmother lady.” (Jennie Ivins/Flickr Creative Commons)
By Dr. Aline Zoldbrod
Guest contributor
Imagine you’re a stereotypical “old lady,” with a lined face and gray hair, walking down the street. Some young guy looks at you and thinks, “How ya doing, grandma, you old coot? Are you wearing your Depends?” Actually, no, you think, you’re wearing nice underwear because you’re going to meet your beloved to see a movie, then go home and have some really delicious sex, replete with leisurely foreplay and plenty of laughter. You pass a juicy 38-year-old walking down the street with her two little kids in tow, and think, “Poor dear. She won’t have really good sex again for a good 20 years.”
This is not tabloid fantasy: “Sexually Active Septuagenarian!” It is possible. Not for everyone — but for a substantial minority, perhaps a fifth of women or more. And I’ll tell you why, based on research and my experience as a sex and couples therapist — but first, what gives? Why are we suddenly talking about this squirmy topic?
It’s because author Iris Krasnow has a new book out, “Sex After…,” subtitled “Women Share How Intimacy Changes As Life Changes.” And it includes women in their 70s and beyond who are having a glorious time, sexually. Some have partners; others have just discovered the joys of solo sex; some are having their first orgasms ever, thank to vibrators and toys now available for anyone to order online.
People have an ‘ick’ reaction to thinking that their parents are being sexual, let alone their grandparents.
Krasnow writes about the 77-year-old who “was inspired to try fellatio for the first time after watching a how-to video on YouTube.” And she shares the story of another woman in her 70s, a recent widow, who met up with a male friend she had not seen for 54 years and who went to bed with him on the first date, staying in bed having sex with him for five hours.
I’m thinking that this book excerpt is going to blow a lot of people’s minds. Even the “Granny Porn” websites have women who are ages 40 to 50. Women in their 70s?? Most of what you’ll find if you look up “sex over fifty” online talks about frail vaginal tissue, lack of lubrication and flagging erections. Those accounts are accurate but psychologically conservative.
In contrast, the denizens of Krasnow’s research don’t talk about any of the physical barriers to erotic pleasures. This is a group of women who are sexual explorers, women who want to have as much sexual pleasure as they can. They are what psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow would probably call “sexually self-actualized.”
Krasnow’s findings, while based on a very small sample of older women, actually fit with academic research on the sex lives of older people. Surveys repeatedly find that there is a cohort of men and women, ranging in age from their 60s to their 80s and above, who are having active, enjoyable, single or partnered sex lives. They tend to be healthy and active people, and their attitude about what it is to have a sexual relationship and to be a sexual human being has flexed with age, so that standards are less perfectionistic and performance driven, and the physical changes of aging can be taken in stride.
There is a cultural stigma associated with talking about the sex lives of the elderly. People have an “ick” reaction to thinking that their parents are being sexual, let alone their grandparents. But times have changed. The same cultural movements that have given greater permission for sex outside of marriage, beliefs about what kinds of sexual and relational experimentation are acceptable, and trends such as gay rights have affected sexual attitudes in the older age cohorts.
Even the groups of people older than the baby boomers have been affected by the liberalization of society. So while the oldest baby boomers are about 68, the cohort a decade older has seemingly embraced a geriatric sexual revolution as well.
Doing The Math
Just a few statistics:
• The National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) interviewed a nationally representative group of 3,005 individuals between the ages of 57 and 85 in 2005-6. Almost 84 percent of men and 62 percent of women ages 57-64 engaged in sexual activity over the past year. It is true that as the next decade approached, and the one after that, sexual activity diminished. But it by no means went down to a point where people in their 70s and 80s had no sex.
• In 2009, AARP did a survey on sexual satisfaction in midlife and older adults. In answering the question, “How satisfied are you with your sex life?,” among men 60-69 years of age, 13 percent answered extremely satisfied, and 39 percent answered “somewhat satisfied.” Among men age 70+, 5 percent answered “extremely satisfied”, and 21 percent answered “somewhat satisfied.”
• But check out the statistics for women. Among those age 60-69, 18 percent answered extremely satisfied and 23 percent answered somewhat satisfied. But among women aged 70 and up, 17 percent still answered “extremely satisfied,” with another 10 percent saying “somewhat satisfied.”
A few perfectly understandable correlations exist. Health problems and sexual problems tend to go together. And relationship status and relationship quality are important for predicting psychological health and sexual satisfaction. The research is too complicated to summarize in a few sentences, but suffice it to say, Krasnow is not reporting on older women who are out on the teensy, tiny tip of the standard bell curve. We’re not talking about .05 percent of 70-year-old women enjoying sex. We might be talking about roughly a fifth of 70-year-old women.
Breaking Stereotypes
That doesn’t exactly fit the popular images of “over the hill” women as sexually uninterested and uninteresting.
Once past menopause, most straight women who would like to be noticed by men realize that we are invisible. One of my dear friends in her 60s, who has an amazing body from more than four decades of being an athlete, talks about walking down the street in her Southern home town wearing a classy blouse and a slim skirt and bright red lipstick. She reports that guys follow her with their eyes, but as they get closer and see the lines on her face, she sees the disappointment on theirs.
But it looks like if you’re lucky in your 70s and beyond, with more leisure and more time to socialize, someone your age or older (or younger) might still find you interesting, psychologically and sexually.
Dr. Aline Zoldbrod (Courtesy)
Dr. Aline Zoldbrod (Courtesy)
Maybe older hetero men are wising up about the joys of older hetero women. I learned a long, long time ago, as a sex therapist, that you cannot tell anything about how a given woman feels about sex — that is, whether she knows its joy — by looking at her. I work with many women who look sexy by societal standards — young, thin, fit, perky breasts, unlined faces — and who come to me because they do not like sex one bit.
After Viagra came out and was such a success for men, Pfizer was doing research to see if it could be marketed to women who were having arousal difficulties. Through The Lahey Center for Sexual Function in Peabody, I was involved in that research. My job was to interview women who were having arousal difficulties and were unhappy about it. They were to be given Viagra to see if it could help. So I had the privilege of interviewing women in their 50s and 60s who loved sex and who were upset by a diminishment in their feelings of arousal.
These were mostly just ordinary-looking 50- and 60-year-old women, the kind of women who actually walk around in the world, shopping at supermarkets and going to the post office. Not “older women” like Susan Sarandon (age 67) or Jane Fonda (age 76).
They did not look sexy to the outside world. But there they they were in my office, giving very specific responses to my research questions, talking with such sadness and passion about the loss of the sexual sensations they had loved. About their sexuality, which was such a treasured part of themselves. They talked about loss of lubrication, about the loss of the pleasant buzzing and warm sensations that were the hallmark of becoming aroused for them. They told me that when they talked to their gynecologists, they were just told that this was a part of aging and it could not be helped. But they loved sex, and what they had lost in terms of their physical functioning was devastating to them.
These women have incorporated most of the suggestions that sex therapists give to people about how to make their sex lives better.
The external, male, heterosexual world’s assessment of who is “sexy” is based on whether that particular man would like to have intercourse with that particular woman. I suspect that this can be true in the medical system, at times; male physicians doing an exam may not explore whether a woman whom they personally do not find sexually attractive needs help functioning better sexually. So older women whose questions about sexual functioning get short shrift might consider changing physicians.
Krasnow’s Older Sexpots
Some of us will find Krasnow’s stories inspirational. Some will find them preposterous and annoying. As a sex therapist, these stories tickle me, but they don’t surprise me. When I read Krasnow’s accounts, they made perfect sense. These women have incorporated most of the suggestions that sex therapists give to people about how to make their sex lives better.
If you cruise around online, most of what’s written on “sex over fifty” is a very male model, focusing on penis-in-vagina sex and then going on to talk about how the penises in question aren’t as firm as they used to be, and the vaginas are getting a tad dry. (One of my older friends described attempts at intercourse as “trying to shoot pool with a noodle.”)
There are several reasons why sex is working for Krasnow’s older women. When the women described are having partnered sex within committed relationships with their equally older partners, they are describing sex that is the model for the kind of sex women enjoy. There is a large component of interpersonal connection and romance between the partners. The women feel valued emotionally and sexually and feel comfortable in their own bodies and with their own sexuality. They give themselves permission to be fully sexual. You may have read the old Erica Jong book, “Fear of Flying,” and may recall how the protagonist used to prepare for sex by bathing and anointing herself with various oils. One of Krasnow’s women talks about scheduling sex with her partner, putting on a wonderful nightgown in which she feels sexy, and throwing in as many toys as she can to keep things hot.
The lack of time pressure is paramount. None of these women is talking about the difficulty of fitting sex in between scheduled times of taking care of of other people — for example, one, two or three grandchildren. Sex is pretty high on the top of their list of things they want to do.
The stress in life has vanished. Neither partner in the relationship is consumed with the pressures of earning a living, dealing with relatives, or taking care of their own, aging parents.
They have broken through the societal rules that prohibit focus on pleasure and play and taking time for oneself. There is always enough time.
These women talk about feeling such joy in touch, and in connection. They have lots of leisure and are having a lot of what I call “belly” time, face to face interactions where the partners focus on each other. The couples are taking their time, spending hours in bed kissing and hugging and enjoying whole-body touch, rather than practicing what I call “homing pigeon foreplay,” where the pre-intercourse touching is not long in duration and focused mainly on the primary erotic zones.
The kind of sexual touching described in these committed couples seems to be less pressured; instead it is tender: intimate, loving, warmhearted, sympathetic, touched, kind, soft. There is ecstasy in getting long periods of this kind of touch. Both bodies are relaxed, melting into each other. Each good sexual interlude creates the desire to have another one.
Hormonal Reality
Just to end by coming back down to earth a bit: The book excerpt does not discuss an important physiological element. This is a group of older women who were committed to keeping their bodies primed for sex. For those older women whose sexuality included intercourse, I assume they had very supportive and engaged gynecologic physicians who helped them keep their vaginal tissues young through hormones. These are locally applied — not systemic — hormones, but they can carry risks and remain somewhat controversial. USA Today offers a helpful look at the range of therapeutic options for post-menopausal sexual problems here.
Mainly, if you’re an older woman reading this now, and you are having pain with intercourse that you would like to address medically, you might want to speak with your gynecologist about it. If you want a second opinion, I’d recommend physicians who are members of the North American Menopause Society or the International Society For the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.
The women Iris Krasnow describes are not the majority, but they are not myths either. You may — if you choose, and if physical and emotional reality allow it — be one of them.
Aline Zoldbrod, Ph.D., is a Boston-based sex therapist and the author of “SexSmart: How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What to Do About It.” You can find her at SexSmart.com  Some 70-Something Women Having ‘Best Sex Ever’? Really? (Yes.)

Senior Sex: 5 Health Reasons to Keep Having It | Senior Planet

At 60, 70, even 85 years of age, seniors can enjoy an active sex life. The benefits far outweigh any possible negative effects. As long as you’re using protection, you can safely engage in sexual activity. With a partner or self-pleasuring, having sex can improve the quality of your life.
So, what’s stopping you? ...... CLICK HERE TO READ GOOD STUFF!!

Friday, February 28, 2014

Federal Budget Deficit Falls to Smallest Level Since 2008 - New York Times

“Thanks to the tenacity of the American people and the determination of the private sector we are moving in the right direction,” Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said in the report. “The United States has recovered faster than any other advanced economy, and our deficit today is less than half of what it was when President Obama first took office. ~ Jacob Lew, Treasury Secretary

CLICK HERE TO READ!



http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/business/economy/federal-deficit-falls-to-smallest-level-since-2008.html?_r=0

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Watch (Official Trailer) of "THRIVE: What On Earth Will It Take?"

WATCH FULL MOVIE ON YOU TUBE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AFFcZ-s



"Fatherhood Adventures" - Michael Gurian - One of the leading Authorities on "Being Male"

What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works

This is the essential primer for wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of our men, in my view.


CLICK HERE TO READ!! "What Could He Be Thinking?: How a Man's Mind Really Works"

Michael Gurian says boys need societal nurturing, too! - USATODAY.com

While this article is a few years old, the statistics regarding the education of our boys, soon to be men, have dropped even more significantly.  Thus, this article is even more relevant.  It is my privilege to know moms who understand that, and still remain a "protector" of their male child.  That protection often requires sacrifice (even more, yes) from these moms..............

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT OUR MALE CHILDREN!

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-04-08-gurian-boys_N.htm

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

"If You Want Kids to Fail, Stop Making Failure So Horrible" - The Week

I post this with a caveat to parents.  We have all observed the punitive, narcissistic parent who publicly excoriates 
their child(ten) at a game, meet, or other competition.  It is utterly humiliating and scarring to the child.
This type of parental behavior is NOT being encouraged here.  This is a deeper, more reflective look at the reason 
why all children need not win a ribbon in the same event (for example).

http://theweek.com/article/index/256927/if-you-want-kids-to-fail-stop-making-failure-so-horrible
 
Matt Bruenig
 
Matt Bruenig writes about poverty, inequality, and economic justice at Demos, Salon, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and The Week. He is a Texas native and graduate of the University of Oklahoma.

U.S.
If you want kids to fail, stop making failure so horrible
Children can't be expected to take risks when the societal consequences are so crushing
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 26, 2014, AT 10:06 AM

Much as we like to pretend otherwise, failure is likely.   Photo: (Thinkstock)

It is important that people take risks. Innovation depends on it.
That's the generic sentiment that sloshes around the cult of entrepreneurship and small business, a cult that has managed to seep into so much of our mainstream economic discourse. According to this sentiment, we need people out there doing novel things that will mostly fail but occasionally lead to significant breakthroughs that generate new goods, services, and processes that improve our lives.
In this vein, Megan McArdle has been pushing the importance of failure, and bemoaning cultural shifts away from taking failure-prone risks. In her estimation, children are being drilled into total conformity from a young age, steered by overly concerned parents toward high-success paths that leave little room for creative deviations from the norm. In the long run, McArdle suggests, this is bad for society because it will reduce innovation and the social benefits that flow from it.
But while McArdle somewhat glibly celebrates failure, the reality of deep failure in America is stark. Unlike elsewhere in the developed world, being at or near the bottom of American society entails extraordinary misery. Poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, instability, and a general lack of a livable social floor means that the consequences of truly failing in the U.S. are rather horrific.
Curiously, the problem of failure's harshness gets scarce attention from supposedly risk-loving conservatives. Instead, we are usually treated to lectures about how important it is that we deliver massive rewards to the handful of people who take the failure-prone risk and manage to make it through successfully. Such rewards must be on offer, we are told, to incentivize people to bear such extreme risks.
This policy advice ignores a huge part of the puzzle. To incentivize people to try out a failure-prone innovative path, you can either increase the rewards to doing so or decrease the risks associated with doing so. You can increase the jackpot that winners get, or decrease the misery losers suffer. To the extent that people and parents are reasonably averse to risking the possibility of winding up on the bottom of our society, the solution to the problem of conformist drilling lies in reducing inequality, poverty, and economic insecurity so that the economic bottom is a much more comfortable place to be.
Despite the attractive logic of this pro-innovation argument for egalitarianism, we are often told the exact opposite is true. The most sophisticated version of this argument admits that the relatively egalitarian social democracies of Europe do have respectable levels of economic growth, but insists that it is because they are piggybacking off of the innovation of less egalitarian countries like the U.S. That is, cutthroat capitalism in the U.S. is where the real innovation is, while cuddly capitalism in Scandanavian countries just rides on America's coattails.
As clever as this all sounds, respected indices of competitiveness and innovation do not support it. For instance, as Lane Kenworthy points out, the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index ranked Sweden and Finland the two most innovative nations from 2012-2013. Innovation is an extremely difficult thing to perfectly measure, but these studies suggest that innovation is indeed compatible with the kind of egalitarian social systems popular in the Nordic countries.
If fear of failure is causing parents and children to cut out socially necessary doses of innovation-generating risk, then we should act to make that fear less potent. Cajoling parents to sacrifice their kids into the maw of poverty for the greater good won't do. Instead, we should construct high economic floors, low inequality, and iron-clad economic security.

Monday, February 24, 2014

6 Psychological Insights about Solitude | Single at Heart ~ Psych Central

".....People who are single-at-heart love the time they have to themselves. In fact, when thinking about spending time alone, just about all of them react with something like, “Ah, sweet solitude,” and almost none of them react with, “Oh, no, I might be lonely!”......

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

Sunday, February 23, 2014

"Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone?" (with excellent graphic)| The Nation

On paper, the influence-peddling business is drying up. But lobbying money is flooding Washington, DC like never before. What’s going on?.....
CLICK TO SEE EXCELLENT GRAPHIC: Where Have All the Lobbyists Gone? | The Nation

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

"Did Cavemen Have it Right? A Dietitian Examines the Paleo Diet"| Fooducate

The Paleo approach to eating offers much to be desired from a health standpoint. Indeed, it would be a very good thing if a few of the fundamentals were to rub off on the American public.   CLICK HERE TO READ THE GOOD, BAD AND UGLY FACTS

Friday, February 14, 2014

The Truth About "Macho" Men - Alternet





"Latinos and other men from traditionally “sexist cultures” don't have a monopoly on machismo, so why is it that they're so often scapegoated for backwards attitudes when it comes to gender? How can entire continents and counties be compromised of completely chauvinistic men? And where does this “macho” the media insists on perpetuating come from?".....CLICK TO CONTINUE READING: The Truth About "Macho" Men

"Rand Paul's Deluded Fantasy that Marriage Magically Fixes Poverty" - Alternet

"Conservatives are obsessed with the notion that marriage is solution - here's why that is simplistic and ridiculous..."  CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

The Sun Magazine | Learning To Sleep

..."Only eyewitnesses believed me after a while, because everyone who has brought a newborn home has experienced nights in which the baby wakes constantly in need of soothing or feeding. But Henry didn’t wake up, because he didn’t go to sleep. Neither Jon nor I could believe that a human could live with so little rest. It couldn’t be good for him; could it?"...  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: "How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer: Why the Paleo Diet Is Half-Baked" [Interactive & Infographic]

The human body is not simply a collection of adaptations to life in the Paleolithic—its legacy is far greater. Each of us is a dynamic assemblage of inherited traits that have been tweaked, transformed, lost and regained since the beginning of life itself. Such changes have not ceased in the past 10,000 years.
Ultimately—regardless of one's intentions—the Paleo diet is founded more on privilege than on logic. Hunter–gatherers in the Paleolithic hunted and gathered because they had to. Paleo dieters attempt to eat like hunter–gatherers because they want to.  CLICK HERE TO READ THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE!

Why Do Grandmothers Exist? It's an Evolutionary Mystery - A "Paleo" View of Grandmothers...but much healthier! - New Republic

In a happy coincidence, the grandmother hypothesis comes along just as Americans enter what might be called the Age of Old Age. America's biggest generation, the baby-boomers, began retiring in 2011. This gerontocracy is expected to drain our wealth. By 2060, more than 20 percent of all Americans will be 65 or older, up from 13 percent in 2010. More than 92 million oldsters will roam the land, if roaming is within their power. People who fret about the federal budget point out that, by 2011, Social Security and Medicare were already eating up a third of it. Looming in the near future is the prospect that both programs' trust funds will vanish as the number of workers paying into the system goes down.
But are senior citizens really "greedy geezers" (a term made popular by this magazine in 1988) about to bankrupt us? The grandmother hypothesis suggests not......CLICK HERE TO READ!

Institute of Noetic Sciences

Research at IONS

From its inception, the Institute of Noetic Sciences has blazed new trails in exploring big questions: Who are we? What is consciousness, and how does it impact the physical world? What are our human potentials, and how can we achieve those potentials? What leads to personal and societal healing and transformation?
Because limitations in our human consciousness underlie many of the problems we face as a global community, research at IONS focuses on exploring the fundamental nature of consciousness, investigating how it interacts with the physical world, and studying how consciousness can dramatically transform in beneficial ways.
Our research focuses on three primary program areas.

Consciousness & Healing

What role does consciousness play
in health and healing?

Worldview Transformation

How does consciousness transform?
How can we support individual and
collective transformation?

Extended Human Capacities

The Science of Interconnectedness —
How does consciousness interact
with the physical world?



CLICK HERE TO READ!

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Noetic Now Journal | Institute of Noetic Sciences

CLICK HERE TO READ: Noetic Now Journal | Institute of Noetic Sciences


What I tell about “me” I tell about you
The walls between us long ago burned down
This voice seizing me is your voice
Burning to speak to us of us.

—Rumi
Mystics have a reputation for being mysterious. In the most basic sense, a mystic is one who seeks union, or unity. But don’t most of us have such a yearning? Whether what we seek is union with ourselves, with others, with creation, with the Creator, or with Reality, maybe we are all mystics at heart. The mystic traditions came into being to help people remember their true origin and destiny. Remembering where we came from and where we are going would certainly change us and transform our relationships into ones of authenticity, respect, and compassion.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Death threats against a 5-year-old: Our terrifying troll culture - SALON

"....and that apparently is what life, now, is. If you put yourself out there in public even the slightest way, this is what you’ll get. You can be Miss America and they’ll call you a “terrorist” for having dark skin. You can be a football star and they’ll call you a “monkey.”  You can be a critic with cancer and they’ll say they “can’t wait for you to die.”You can be an ordinary high school student who’s just come out, and you’ll get a letter that “You don’t deserve to live in this world.” And of course, if you’re a woman and if you’ve ever expressed an opinion anywhere in public, you can be pretty sure someone’s going to let you know you ought to be assaulted and mutilated. In my own past, I’ve had readers volunteer to come to my house to rape me with a knife, and express the wish that my own children smother me to death. Just this morning, because I’ve written about Woody Allen, I got an email from a reader sharing his hope that my two daughters be sexually abused..."  CLICK HERE TO READ HORRIFYING FACTS

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Interactive: How Twitter responded during every moment of the SOTU speech

The folks over at Twitter have culled their massive data set of user reactions to the State of the Union and put together this nifty visualization of last night's speech. On top, you'll see a timeline of the speech with the volume of tweets at any particular moment reflected by the width of the color bar. The big spike in the middle is for Twitter users' apparent enthusiasm for the President's Mad Men reference.  CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

"Are You a Mental Redneck?" - Take a test here and find out....

Karl Albrecht, Ph.D.

Karl Albrecht, Ph.D.
Dr. Karl Albrecht is an executive management consultant, futurist, lecturer, and author of more than 20 books on professional achievement, organizational performance, and business strategy. He is listed by Executive Excellence Magazine as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in the area of leadership. He is a recognized expert on cognitive styles and the development of advanced thinking skills. His books Social Intelligence: The New Science of Success,Practical Intelligence: The Art and Science of Common Sense, and his Mindex Thinking Style Profile are used in business and education. The Mensa society presented him with its lifetime achievement award, for significant contributions by a member to the understanding of intelligence. Originally a physicist, and having served as a military intelligence officer and business executive, he now consults, lectures, and writes about whatever he thinks would be fun. CLICK HERE TO READ

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

Sunday, January 26, 2014

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...

Friday, January 17, 2014

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

Thursday, January 16, 2014

"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!

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

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.


Tuesday, January 14, 2014

» 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

Saturday, January 4, 2014

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

Thursday, January 2, 2014

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.

"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"

"there were no words, but images flooded every cell in her being ...4 and a half decades!"