Channeling

…The Power Being
put his hands on my shoulders
from behind
and poured all his blessings on me.
This is what it told me...

“Relax.

The thoughts of doubt, anxiety, worry, fear…
are just a stress from the day,
or the period of the month
or of the year.

Release them.

They are everything but not true.

The only truth is
the vision you intended
for yourself to happen.

The power of intention is greater
than the worrying thoughts in your head.

Release the stressful thoughts.

All of them.

Gently, lovingly.

Know that they are not true.
Drop them
and
keep the power of the enlightened vision
in the state of being.”

Your Inner Purpose

It's his third book I think. I heaven't read it whole still, but having read some bits and pieces here and there. It truly drives and inspires me to awaken. I can share some parts of one chapter of the book that I read last night. Here they are…



CHAPTER NINE ~ Your Inner Purpose

…

But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are - that is to say, your state of consciousness.

So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary.

…

Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet - because it is the purpose of humanity.

…

Your outer purpose can change over time. It varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose.

…

Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and awareness separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they undergo.

…


Awareness takes over from thinking. Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of awareness. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence. Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace. You cannot make it happen nor can you prepare yourself for it or accumulate credits toward it. There isn't a tidy sequence of logical steps that leads toward it, although the mind would love that.

…

There is nothing you can do about awakening.

…

Only the first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness without thought, happens by grace, without any doing on your part. If you find this book incomprehensible or meaningless, it has not yet happened to you. If something within you responds to it, however, if you somehow recognize the truth in it, it means the process of awakening has begun. Once it has done so, it cannot be reversed, although it can be delayed by the ego.

…

Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself.

Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you know it firsthand. It is no longer a concept in your mind. You can then make a conscious choice to be present rather than to indulge in useless thinking.

…

With the grace of awakening comes responsibility. You can either try to go on as if nothing has happened, or you can see its significance and recognize the arising of awareness as the most important thing that can happen to you.

> end of highlights<

Excerpts from A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle
www.amazon.com/dp/0452287588/ref=nosim/




Blessings,
Eon

Manage Your Money: Sufficiency and Spiritual Practice

by Dan Millman

Money is neither god nor devil,
but a form of energy.
Like love or fear,
it can serve you or bind you,
depending upon how you manage it.
By clarifying your goals
and using your gifts,
you can make good money,
doing what you enjoy,
while serving
the highest calling of your soul.
Using money wisely, and well,
you share your material
and spiritual wealth
with the world.

Road Map: The Flow of Money

In the context of personal growth, money is more than a means of exchange or ready cash. Although most of us have experienced periods of financial scarcity, our relationship to money reflects our relationship to energy and service and spirit, our ability to function in society, our openness to pleasure and abundance, our reality check. Money mirrors the quality of our interactions with other people, our ability to receive and to give. Money represents survival, security, safety, shelter, food, family, livelihood.

More complex, it turns out, than balancing your checkbook.

If spiritual life begins on the ground, money forms a foundation on which to build. Shivapuri Baba, an Indian Saint and yogi who walked around the world on a pilgrimage when he was nearly 120 years old, was once asked about the best way to begin a spiritual life. He advised, "first build a foundation—manage your money." (He had acquired a small bag of gems in his younger years, through hard work and simple living; he drew upon these gems as needed.)

Money in Everyday Life

Pam, a friend who read an early version of this manuscript, said, "I don't think that the chapter [in Everyday Enlightenment], Manage Your Money, is as important as the chapters about taming our mind or facing our fears—" Abruptly, she looked at her watch. "Oh, my gosh, look what time it is! The bank’s closing in ten minutes!" Wondering about why money was so important, Pam had to run to the bank.

On the way to the bank, Pam later told me that she realized how much of her time, thoughts, and attention revolved around money—paying the bills, balancing checkbooks, discussing costs of the room addition for their growing family. After the bank, she went food shopping, then stopped by the furniture store to check prices on a new bed for one of her children. All activities dealing with money. Like Pam, most of us have money concerns of one kind or another—striving to make more, or make do with less—learning to live simply, comfortably, spiritually.

Poor people may be forced to think about money a lot of the time, related to food, shelter, subsistence, and survival. Rich people may also think about money a lot of the time, related to status, travel, freedom, influence, and options. But managing your money does not depend upon becoming wealthy or declaring vows of poverty. Rather, it is about creating stability and sufficiency—a balanced flow of monetary energy through your life. This kind of management liberates you from survival issues, so that money concerns no longer occupy your mind or monopolize your attention. When money flows in, you spend it in a matter-of-fact way where it needs to go, where it will do the most good. You pay bills gladly, knowing that your money helps to support other people who in turn provide services for you. If something breaks, you write a check and get it fixed without further concern. Free from cycles of scarcity, your attention can ascend to higher levels of awareness and experience.

Money is like sex;
you think a lot about it
when you don’t have it,
and think of other things
when you do.
—James Baldwin

Spiritual Stereotypes

You can probably conjure up images of pure and holy people quite easily—monks with begging bowls, Indian ascetics, priests and nuns from every tradition who have renounced money in order to live a more spiritual life free of worldly distractions. Images of Jesus expelling money changers from the temple and quotations about money being the root of all evil and rich men having a tough time entering heaven and the meek inheriting the earth are quite familiar. Such images and ideas help create stereotypes that equate poverty and spirituality in the minds of many.

I don’t like money
but it calms my nerves.
—Joe Louis

Managing your money begins by acknowledging any mixed feelings, guilt, or negativity you may have about money and about those who possess it in abundance. If you associate voluntary poverty with humility, goodness, and spirituality, then with what do you associate wealth? It is worth pondering, because what you believe about money will determine, in large part, your effectiveness in acquiring it.

What Money Cannot Buy

Money cannot buy security, because security is a psychological state. To some, it means having enough food to eat, clothing on your back, a shelter over your head, or someone who loves you. To others, security requires millions of dollars in tax-free accounts around the world.

Money can’t buy love and happiness either. In one telephone survey, 275 people in the San Francisco Bay area were asked if they believed that they would be significantly happier and more loving if they had a million dollars. Seventy-six percent of the respondents replied, "Yes. Absolutely." Then the research company contacted ten millionaires, and asked them, "Did making your first million dollars make you a happier or more loving person?" The response was unanimous: "No."

The best things in life—the sun in the morning and the moon at night—are free. And money doesn’t guarantee happiness. But financial abundance does offer a number of practical benefits. Sleep, for one thing—very few affluent people stay up late worrying about having too much money. Money also buys privacy, space, and silence.

Three things help me
get through life successfully:
an understanding husband,
an extremely good analyst,
and millions and millions of dollars.
—Mary Tyler Moore

Wealthy people do have problems, but they have less to do with survival. There may be some forlorn rich people and some delighted poor people, but on the whole, managing your money certainly gives you a leg up.

Simple Principles for Sufficiency

In Walden Henry David Thoreau described how by living frugally, growing his own food, building a hut with scrap lumber he’d found on some land near Walden Pond, he would only have to work for six weeks a year to earn enough to live a quiet, contemplative life. There is much to admire about his experiment (which lasted a season or two), but such a life is not for everyone. You may not want to follow Thoreau to Walden Pond, but here are some simple principles that you can follow:

Live Below Your Means

Many of us believe our main money problem is how to make more of it, but how we spend it is in fact more important. Because as our income increases, so do desires and expenses. It’s all a matter of scale. Many wealthy people end up in debt.

No matter how much money you make,
if you spend more than you earn
you shall be eternally poor.
—Noah Webster

Money is so easy to spend that an alarming number of us have put away little or nothing toward our later years. Applying fiscal discipline is a central part of managing your money. Most affluent people become and stay that way due not to extraordinary incomes, but to an unassuming lifestyle and the self-discipline to spend less than they earn, while investing the rest.

Pay Yourself First

Make it an ironclad rule to pay yourself by putting away ten cents of every dollar you ever earn until you are seventy years old, and teach your children to do the same. Before you pay the bills, before you pay the IRS, before you give to charity, put that money away as if it never existed and learn to live on the rest, no matter what. Put that ten percent aside in a safe nest-egg account or very conservative investment and let compound interest work for you all day and all night over the years. Never mind the fancy investment strategies, schemes, and experts. If you do have money to experiment with, that’s icing on the cake. In a true emergency, give yourself a few days to decide if you really need to draw out any of the principal to spend. Never draw out more than half of the principal. At the age of sixty-five or seventy, it is yours to do with as you wish.

Earmark Your Money

Whether your income is derived from a salary with taxes withheld, or whether you are self-employed, one of the most practical steps you can take in managing your money is to create a budget, clearly earmarking your money for distinct categories. Once you’ve created the budget, then stick with it. While this is not a radical idea, few of us put it into practice, given the level of credit card debt in this country. Unless you already have tax withholding at your work, divide any income as follows: For every $1,000 you make—

• Immediately put away $100 (10%) in your savings.
• If you are self-employed, put aside whatever percentage of your gross income that goes to state and federal taxes.
• If you are committed to donating a share of your income to charities, earmark that fund next; don’t wait until the end of the year to see if there’s anything left. If you decide to donate five percent of your gross income to charities, that would be $50 out of each thousand.
• Put $50 into a rainy-day fund.
• Put $50 into an account for Christmas, Hanukkah, or other holidays.
• Put $50 into a vacation account.

That’s a total of $450, leaving $550 (out of every $1,000 you make) for household expenses: the mortgage or rent, food, utilities, medical care, etc. The exact percentages may vary from household to household, depending upon the makeup and age range of its members, but the principle is the same —earmark and budget your money. Exerting this financial discipline will eliminate a great deal of pre-tax as well as post-retirement stress. You gain self-reliance and self-respect by taking responsibility for managing your money in this way.

The Two Essentials of Business Success

In order to succeed in nearly any business enterprise, whether you work for a large corporation or are self-employed, you must operate on these two principles:

• First, be good at what you do. That means ongoing study, practice, innovation, and refinement. Treat your work as a form of skill training. Never believe that you are as good as you can get. Each day, each year, strive to master your work. No matter what you do, if you become one of the best in your field, you will do well (if you also pay attention to the following principle).

• Second, be good at promoting what you do. There is no telling how many exceptional, gifted people exist in every field who are not successful because they were unwilling to promote themselves. I know extraordinary musicians whose songs will never be heard by more than a few people, while the top forty charts include many forgettable but well-promoted clichés. It’s a sad irony that those most dedicated to their art or craft, who most love what they do, understandably want to spend their time getting better at what they do but fail to grasp the need to promote themselves.

Ask yourself: Am I good at what I do? Do I provide a valuable service? If the answer is no, then stay out of sight and work at improving what you do. But if your answer is yes, then blow your horn! You can’t help anyone if they don’t know you exist. Whether or not you have any innate interest in promotion and marketing—whether or not you enjoy it—it has to become at least half of your job, your energy, and your attention at the beginning stages of a new venture. Promoting your business helps you to help others and provide a valuable service in the world as only you can do it.

The service you render others
is the rent you pay for your room on earth.
—Wilfred Grenfell

The Soul of Money

It is easy to get lost in the practical details of managing money and forget the higher purpose of this gateway: to provide a foundation for spiritual practice and to free your attention from the task of survival. Lynne Twist, co-founder of The Hunger Project, put it this way to Michael Toms on New Dimensions Radio:

Money is an inanimate object [but] we can assign to it a spiritual meaning and voice and power if we choose to, and give it some soul. Money doesn’t have any soul, but we do, and we’re the people through whom money flows and with which money speaks . . . And when our spirit is unleashed, what’s unleashed is the prosperity of the soul, of the heart. . . and in that truth, the whole world belongs to you.

When I became committed to teaching whatever I learned, more information poured in. In the same way, as you contact the joy of sharing your abundant spirit, more spiritual wealth pours down from the heavens, bathing you in its light. Managing your money is provides another arena of practicing everyday enlightenment.

From that point of awareness, we turn now to the source of all beliefs—to the mind. It serves as a prison for some, but for you can also hold the key to freedom.



© Copyright 1998 by Dan Millman. From the book "EVERYDAY ENLIGHTENMENT: The Twelve Gateways to Personal Growth" (Warner Books, 1998). www.amazon.com/dp/0446674974/ref=nosim/

Become Ambidextrous, Use Both Sides Of Your Brain!

AMBIDEXTERITY EXERCISE
.....by Melvin D. Saunders

......Ambidexterity is the ability to use both your hands with equal ease or facility, but if you're armless, it could be your feet! In fact, it is quite advantageous in certain sports and martial arts to be able to use both your feet with equal facility. The Greeks encouraged and tried to promote ambidexterity because it was simply logical in sports and battle to be adept with both hands instead of one. By combining the Phoenician style of writing right to left with their own left to right system, the Greeks created a reading and writing system called boustrophedon, where the lines ran alternately right-to-left and left-to-right. With alternating sweeps of the eyes back and forth, reading was more swift and efficient.

......Michelangelo (1475-1564) was a multi-faceted genius like Leonardo da Vinci. He often painted with both hands. When one got tired, he switched to the other. British artist, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer (1802-1873) could draw with both hands simultaneously -- a horse's head with one hand and a stag's head with the other. He taught drawing and etching to Queen Victoria who was a lefty that became ambidextrous.

......Fleming, Einstein and Tesla were all ambidextrous. Benjamin Franklin was also ambidextrous and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with his left hand. U.S. 20th president, James Garfield was a well educated backwoodsman born in a log cabin. Although he could write with either hand with equal ease, he could also write Greek with his left hand and Latin with his right hand simultaneously! Harry Kahne demonstrated his mental dexterity in 1922 by performing several mental operations simultaneously. While one hand was writing mirror language, the other hand intermingled upside down and backward letters.

......Rats given diverse and enriched environments have more connective dendritic spines to their neurons and overall heavier brains than rats exposed to dull, unchallenging environments. Left-handed and ambidextrous people have 11% larger corpus callosa (the bundle of nerve fibers joining the right and left sides of the brain) than right handed people. An autopsy of Einstein's brain revealed a larger profusion of superficial capillaries interlacing the cerebral cortex than the average brain, as well as an additional amount of glial cells. Obviously the more we use and exercise our brain, the more it physically grows. The following exercises are designed to task the little used areas of the brain to allow such growth.

......To be able to use both hands equally well, practice is the key. During the day, use your left hand more (if you're right-handed) by consciously switching when you're about ready to do something -- pouring a glass of milk, bouncing a ball, flipping and picking up coins, hammering a nail, cutting and buttering bread, stirring your coffee, swirling water in a glass, twisting off bottle caps, etc. Wherever you would use your one hand, use the other instead -- putting a key in the door, combing your hair, brushing your teeth, shaving, grasping objects, etc. When putting on your clothes, put your other hand or foot into the garment first. Thread your belt around your waist in the opposite direction. Put your watch on your other hand. Use your other hand in sports -- hitting a baseball or a tennis ball, throwing a football, shooting a basketball, etc. Practice stirring 2 cups of tea simultaneously, swirling 2 half filled glasses of water clockwise and counterclockwise, and bouncing two balls at the same time. Get used to the kinesthetic feeling of using the muscles of both your hands and arms together. Catch 2 balls thrown to you at the same time. Throw 2 paper wads at the same time into the same paper basket -- one underhand and the other overhand. Throw 2 darts simultaneously at a dart board with both hands. Write with both hands at the same time. Draw a butterfly, a vase or a geometric figure using both hands simultaneously, but keep practicing these exercises.

......Many musical instruments are played ambidextrously, and many athletes are adept at using both of their hands. Since swimming is an ambidextrous activity, teaching dyslectic children to swim often helps them to read and write normally because it balances the brain hemispheres. Become ambidextrous and along with an added physiological brain growth, a more balanced integration of your 2 hemispheres will be achieved. Studies have shown that ambidextrous people are more emotionally independent, more determined, more adaptable to new situations and more apt to handle problems without giving up.

How Abraham Would Generate A Perfect Day

In 1985, Jerry and Esther Hicks began dialogs with Abraham, a name chosen by a group of nonphysical teachers, who deliver an inspirational message of joy and well-being.

GUEST: So, Abraham, if you were in our physical shoes, what would you do when you woke up in the morning, and what processes would you use on a daily basis?

ABRAHAM: It's a big question. Isn't it? Because it would depend upon the circumstances. Different circumstances would require different responses, but we'll give you a run down here because what you are really asking for is “How could I ever begin to apply the never-ending spewing of processes that you've been giving us over the years?”

We're going to start the night before. We would put ourselves in our bed and we would lie there in the bed and try to achieve the feeling of appreciation. We would appreciate our bed. We would appreciate our day. We would compliment ourselves on the day's achievement no matter how big or few they are. We would do our best to bask in our bed.

The End of Your Perfect Day

Before drifting off to sleep, we would set forth a thought, which is what we call prepaving, of pleasant anticipation of tomorrow. We would say something like, “Tomorrow will be a wonderful day.” And then we would try to find the feeling place of one of the most wonderful days we'd ever had. We'd try to find the feeling place of waking up and being glad to be alive and feeling happy about our physical life experience. We wouldn't spend a lot of time on it because you don't want to stimulate yourself into a lot of thought right before you're trying to go to sleep. We would just try to generate the feeling of subtle, good feeling, peaceful, loving appreciation.

We might say, “And if I dream and there is anything important, I want to remember it.” When we awaken in the morning, the first thing we would do is acknowledge we're glad to be alive and awake and physical, and then we would ask, “Did I dream?” because if you wait too long you won't remember. Often you won't have a dream that you remember, but if you do recall something, then lie there and try to recapture the feeling of it, because the feeling is what gives you your information. In other words, the emotions that you felt in your dream are the contrast that lets you know what you don't want and what you do want, just like your feelings that you live in your real life-experience help you to know when you're including something not wanted or when you're including something wanted.

Next we would lie in our bed for about two or three minutes basking and appreciating. Now, again, can you feel that what we're saying about generating a feeling? You see, when you slumber, your thoughts withdraw from the physical. So your Energy, your physical body energies, have been aligned. So when you first awaken, you're like a new born baby. You're lined up. You're tuned in, tapped in and turned on. Have you ever awakened and felt immediately heavy as you come back into consciousness? It doesn't happen all the time, but occasionally it happens, and what that is is the feeling of coming from the high pure vibration of Nonphysical into the denser heavier Energy of the physical. And it usually only happens to you if you've got some problem you're struggling with, but once you get your Energy lined up, you won't have that heavy feeling. Esther remembers, in the early days of speaking for Abraham, often when she would awaken in the morning, it was a sensation of her body weighing a thousand pounds as she came from high fast vibration into a denser vibration of a bit of struggle or worry.

Beginning Your Perfect Day

Once you have awakened and you're lying there sort of basking for three or four or five minutes, whatever you have time for, really five minutes is optimum, then we would begin making some statements of what we anticipate for this day. Now, if you have already been doing your daily process, you probably already have some things lined up for this day. But if you haven't, the sooner you do it in your day the better. So we would encourage you to get up, make yourself comfortable, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, get something to drink, maybe even eat a little bit of breakfast…

Place Mat Process

The Place Mat Process is the most effective one that we've seen for getting the day started, and that is where you, on the left side of a page, make your list of things you plan to do today. Be true to yourself about it, don't put 5,000 things on today's list. Don't put more on today's list than you can do, or it defeats you. It makes you feel overwhelmed to begin with. Go through your lists of things. And then on the right side of the page make a list of things that you want, but for whatever reason you're not ready to act on, and just let them come freely from you. Don't carry the list from day to day to day to day. Don't make work of it. Just, every morning, ask yourself “What are some things that I want that I'm not ready to act on? Things that I would like the Universal staff to get going on”, and just list those, because making a decision about what you want with an attitude that “it's not for me to do, but I do want it done” is a very good alignment of Energy. Often if you say, “I want to do this” and you know you don't have time, then your Energy is split even when you write it on the list. But if you say, “I want to do this, and while I don't have time, I'm not putting it on my list. I'm just telling the Universe, work on it if you will, please?” Then there's a freedom about it. There's no resistance in the vibration. You're actually doing what Creation is. You're defining what you want and you're staying vibrationally out of the way of it. That's it. Then we would move through our day.

Now, if something happens, like somebody calls us on the telephone and we have a little run-in with someone where we feel negative emotion, then the process we would offer is “Hum, I feel negative emotion. That means I've got my pencil in the fan, which means, I am including in my vibration something that I'd really like to exclude. But there's no such thing as exclusion. So I'm shouting ‘No' at it, including it anyway, lowering my own vibration, disallowing my Core Energy, and mucking up my vibration. I don't want to do that anymore. So since I know what I don't want, what is it that I do want?” And then we would make the statement of what we do want.

Focus Wheel Process

Now, if you really want to take the time to clear this Energy up right now, do a Focus Wheel. In other words, you have this newfound knowing of what you now want. It's stronger and clearer than it's recently been. In other words, it just happened. It's hot off the press. It's right there big and loud. You know that you want to feel such and such. So sit with your Focus Wheel, which is a piece of paper with a little circle in the middle, and just start making statements. Writing them. Writing is your strongest point of focus. Your mind doesn't wander as much when you write. Your Energy doesn't get split as much when you write. You keep your vibration purer when you write. So then, begin writing your statements clockwise around the middle circle.

We'll do a Focus Wheel relative to the offering of our friend about her sister's phone call about the sauerkraut. She would write something like “I want to get along well with this wonderful sister. I like it best when we are adoring each other, and there are so many things about her that are easy to adore, and life is so good. I am glad that we live close enough that we can share intimately in each other's lives, and we're going to have a wonderful time at this party today, and it's going to feel so good to be there and realize that our relationship is bigger than this stupid little incident. And so, we will rise above it and feel wonderful.” And in the middle circle she would write, “Aren't I glad that I have this person in my life.” With just a little bit of effort, you've totally brought yourself not only back into alignment but into stronger, clearer, better alignment than you would have been if the incident hadn't happened to begin with.

For the most part, that's the way we would live our lives. We would be aware that the way we feel is an indicator of what we are vibrating.

I Love Feeling Good

Now, somewhere in there, and you can do it or not do it, but we would offer it maybe a hundred times a day: ”I love feeling good. I love feeling good. Nothing is more important than that I feel good. I want to be true to myself. The better I feel, the more connected I am.” In other words, we would make lots of those kinds of statements reminding ourselves that feeling good is really all that really matters. People sometimes worry about that. They say, “Abraham, you're screwy because you're teaching people to feel good, and what about the monster that feels good when he monsters something?” And we say, “No one ever feels good when they are not in vibrational harmony with their Core. You don't need to worry.

If you can teach people how to connect with that feeling of Well-being or that feeling of love or that feeling of appreciation and they are working to harmonize their thoughts, words and actions with that feeling, your troubles would cease on this planet. No one would ever push against anyone ever again about anything. Good.

(The article is taken from www.abraham-journal.com)


Abraham-Hicks: www.abraham-hicks.com/

Ask and It Is Given: www.amazon.com/dp/1401904599/ref=nosim/

The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent: www.amazon.com/dp/1401906958/ref=nosim/

Kubera Mudra

Mudra for manifesting your desires

I started experimenting with mudras a while ago. A mudra is a particular hand position producing specific energetic results. There are many mudras available, but the mudra with the quickest results is the Kubera mudra. Kubera is a god of wealth, so this mudra is used for fulfillment of desires and goals.

You form this mudra by joining your thumb, index finger, and middle finger together, and placing the other two fingers in the middle of your palm. Do this with both hands. There should be no strain in the palm while doing it.

It doesn’t matter how long you do it, but with how much intensity. You just hold your intention/wish/desire/goal as if it already happened, and make the Kubera mudra to reinforce the intent.

If you want to experience how powerful this mudra is, next time when you are looking for a free parking space hold the intention in your consciousness, and form the Kubera mudra. I started using this mudra before two weeks, and do it every day while looking for a free parking space, and it works every time. It’s amazing! And I live in a city where finding a free parking space is a science fiction movie.

So try it, and see for your self. You can also do it, if you are looking for a particular book in a bookshop, a specific t-shirt, some helpful information, and many other things.

If you find yourself excited with the power of this mudra, you can find more information about this and many other mudras in "Mudras: Yoga in Your Hands" by Gertrud Hirschi: www.amazon.com/dp/1578631394/ref=nosim/ . The author is really an expert on mudras. Two other excellent resources for mudras are Healing Mudras: www.amazon.com/dp/0345437586/ref=nosim/ and Power Mudras: www.amazon.com/dp/0345445627/ref=nosim/ . by Sabrina Mesko.

Have fun with the Kubera mudra!



Eon

PROMISE YOURSELF

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all timed and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear; and too happy to permit the presence of trouble. To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but in great deeds. To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

Albert Hofmann Turned 100

Nearly 100, LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child'
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: January 7, 2006

BURG, Switzerland

"LSD spoke to me. He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don’t give me to the pharmacologist.'"
- ALBERT HOFMANN

ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.
Mr. Hofmann will turn 100 on Wednesday [11.January.2006], a milestone to be marked by a symposium in nearby Basel on the chemical compound that he discovered and that famously unlocked the Blakean doors of perception, altering consciousnesses around the world. As the years accumulate behind him, Mr. Hofmann's conversation turns ever more insistently around one theme: man's oneness with nature and the dangers of an increasing inattention to that fact.

"It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature," he said, listing to the right in a green armchair that looked out over frost-dusted fields and snow-laced trees. A glass pitcher held a bouquet of roses on the coffee table before him. "In the big cities, there are people who have never seen living nature, all things are products of humans," he said. "The bigger the town, the less they see and understand nature." And, yes, he said, LSD, which he calls his "problem child," could help reconnect people to the universe.

Rounding a century, Mr. Hofmann is physically reduced but mentally clear. He is prone to digressions, ambling with pleasure through memories of his boyhood, but his bright eyes flash with the recollection of a mystical experience he had on a forest path more than 90 years ago in the hills above Baden, Switzerland. The experience left him longing for a similar glimpse of what he calls "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality."

"I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature," he said, laying a slightly gnarled finger alongside his nose, his longish white hair swept back from his temples and the crown of his head. He said any natural scientist who was not a mystic was not a real natural scientist. "Outside is pure energy and colorless substance," he said. "All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings."

He became particularly fascinated by the mechanisms through which plants turn sunlight into the building blocks for our own bodies. "Everything comes from the sun via the plant kingdom," he said.

MR. HOFMANN studied chemistry and took a job with the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz Laboratories, because it had started a program to identify and synthesize the active compounds of medically important plants. He soon began work on the poisonous ergot fungus that grows in grains of rye. Midwives had used it for centuries to precipitate childbirths, but chemists had never succeeded in isolating the chemical that produced the pharmacological effect. Finally, chemists in the United States identified the active component as lysergic acid, and Mr. Hofmann began combining other molecules with the unstable chemical in search of pharmacologically useful compounds.

His work on ergot produced several important drugs, including a compound still in use to prevent hemorrhaging after childbirth. But it was the 25th compound that he synthesized, lysergic acid diethylamide, that was to have the greatest impact. When he first created it in 1938, the drug yielded no significant pharmacological results. But when his work on ergot was completed, he decided to go back to LSD-25, hoping that improved tests could detect the stimulating effect on the body's circulatory system that he had expected from it. It was as he was synthesizing the drug on a Friday afternoon in April 1943 that he first experienced the altered state of consciousness for which it became famous. "Immediately, I recognized it as the same experience I had had as a child," he said. "I didn't know what caused it, but I knew that it was important."

When he returned to his lab the next Monday, he tried to identify the source of his experience, believing first that it had come from the fumes of a chloroform-like solvent he had been using. Inhaling the fumes produced no effect, though, and he realized he must have somehow ingested a trace of LSD. "LSD spoke to me," Mr. Hofmann said with an amused, animated smile. "He came to me and said, 'You must find me.' He told me, 'Don't give me to the pharmacologist, he won't find anything.' "HE experimented with the drug, taking a dose so small that even the most active toxin known at that time would have had little or no effect. The result with LSD, however, was a powerful experience, during which he rode his bicycle home, accompanied by an assistant. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as "bicycle day."

Mr. Hofmann participated in tests in a Sandoz laboratory, but found the experience frightening and realized that the drug should be used only under carefully controlled circumstances. In 1951, he wrote to the German novelist Ernst Junger, who had experimented with mescaline, and proposed that they take LSD together. They each took 0.05 milligrams of pure LSD at Mr. Hofmann's home accompanied by roses, music by Mozart and burning Japanese incense. "That was the first planned psychedelic test," Mr. Hofmann said.

He took the drug dozens of times after that, he said, and once experienced what he called a "horror trip" when he was tired and Mr. Junger gave him amphetamines first. But his hallucinogenic days are long behind him.

"I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore," Mr. Hofmann said. "Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley," who asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of his fatal throat cancer.

But Mr. Hofmann calls LSD "medicine for the soul" and is frustrated by the worldwide prohibition that has pushed it underground. "It was used very successfully for 10 years in psychoanalysis," he said, adding that the drug was hijacked by the youth movement of the 1960's and then demonized by the establishment that the movement opposed. He said LSD could be dangerous and called its distribution by Timothy Leary and others "a crime."

"It should be a controlled substance with the same status as morphine," he said.

Mr. Hofmann lives with his wife in the house they built 38 years ago. He raised four children and watched one son struggle with alcoholism before dying at 53. He has eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. As far as he knows, no one in his family besides his wife has tried LSD.

Mr. Hofmann rose, slightly stooped and now barely reaching five feet, and walked through his house with his arm-support cane. When asked if the drug had deepened his understanding of death, he appeared mildly startled and said no. "I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that's all," he said.

Quote of the Day

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Quote of the Day

"We cannot focus upon the weaknesses of one another and evoke strengths. You cannot focus upon the things that you think they are doing wrong, and evoke things that will make you feel better. You've got to beat the drum that makes you feel good when you beat it. And when you do, you'll be a strong signal of influence that will help them to reconnect with who they are."

Abraham