Dear Subscribers,

Sorry if some of you felt I would not surface again. Sports seemed to draw attention away from health, not for me, but in general. Then, here, we have had snow and snow and more snow, all when I had hoped to be seeing my first flowers of 2018! There are buds on trees, but the ground is white. On top of this, we had a long power outage over the weekend when I expected to be writing!

So, nothing is normal and that is the new norm. Many people wrote me about topics in the news. I am going to limit my comments to matters of a general nature and ones that are related to health. Civilization takes a great risk when its members become desensitized by violence and negativity. We must protect our humanity by concentrating on the core of what is most human about us and that is our love and compassion, not our ambition or aggression. As you all know, I do not believe that realistic fixes can be achieved until we cultivate respect. Unless on a spiritual path that inculcates respect, it cannot be assumed that we will, in this toxic era, succeed in rising above the damage intended by endless bombardment of our psyches.

Usually, I enjoy the Olympics because we see young people who have dedicated themselves to perfection of their sports. This means they have had to forego some of the distractions of their peers, to put their bodies through extreme training that requires discipline and commitment, and to have abstained from behavior that would jeopardize their performance or even disqualify them from competition. That said, I do not believe in competition. I think we ought to cooperate, and our best is good enough. We should only be challenging our own limitations, not other people.

This year, I have seen the savagery of the press as the personal lives of the athletes were politicized. However, there is more to this than exploitation of privacy and trashing of reputations, there are fundamental flaws in the way the media manipulates attitudes by taking statements out of context or blowing up sensitive issues so as to create headlines.

So, while I was freezing and disconnected, I spent my time looking at the frosted buds on my trees and thinking about our modern passion for manipulating everything from consciousness to weather. Despite the discomfort, loss of power, absence of news, and without the distractions that are introduced by absolutely constant intrusion by external forces, there is actually a world that is quiet, calm, beautiful, and without tension. I tried to soak in as much as possible.

When interacting with the corporate world, the first disaster is probably the loss of connection to self. In the name of earning or surviving or serving the incorporated entity, we give up our time, the energy and effort it takes to work, and the satisfaction that comes from doing things one's own way and living one's bliss. By compartmentalizing and specializing, the bigger picture rarely comes into focus, and by setting financial rather than spiritual or ethical goals, civilization itself suffers. In fact, it can be argued that the goal of corporations is to profit by exploitation so the contributions to life are minimal.

In the quietude of the snow, I tried to focus on what should be priorities. The answer is that each individual needs to find his or her bliss, and this is impossible unless one knows oneself and can commit to unfolding the gifts that were given to us by our Creator. I find it impossible to believe in a random universe in which highly complex organization and potentials are capriciously scattered over billions of species, each with its own uniqueness. There must be a progenitor, a connection to the progenitor, and at least a fragment of the progenitor existing within each of us. Realistically, we cannot create out of nothingness so we are all Divine, every last cell and down to the last atom. Moreover, we are all children of the Creator and therefore also related.

The earlier in life that we find our true selves, the better it is. In my debut as an astrologer, I used to map out the entire life of newborns so that parents would know when to expose their children to new adventures, hobbies, and ideas. I also marked times to avoid crises, such as "during this sensitive phase, be careful to avoid family arguments" . . . and these types of charts took days to create, but I was able to see how useful they were.

Of course, I wished someone had given my parents a few clues when I was growing up, but as I look back, I see that authority is used to generate compliance which includes conformity. It must be comforting to fit in but there is neither honor nor bliss in being well adjusted to a dysfunctional world. In any event, I never aspired to be like either of my parents. I also did not want to be like my teachers or the minister of my church. So, who were my personal heroes and heroines and why?

Well, going back to around age five, my hero was probably Luke, the healer and author of much of the New Testament. Later, I added Dr. Albert Schweitzer to my then very short list. By age 15 or thereabouts, I discovered the Buddha and was deeply inspired by His quest to understand the causes of suffering. Out of His searching, wisdom arose, and this was revealed to those who would listen. At the core of the teaching is the importance of what we think because thought shapes our reality. It may or may not change the reality of others, but we are shaped by what we think and believe. Truth is, however, revealed to minds that are pure. Without Truth, there is illusion and most likely also delusion and suffering because what we think affects how we feel and much of what we do.

The mind is quite independent of the brain. The mind is subtle and thrives in stillness. The quest for knowledge is different from the quest for Truth. We often look outside for information but when we want to know what really matters, we have to look inside. In the serenity of a perfectly calm mind, there is peace and clarity. Also, an understanding of processes arises so we develop patience and tolerance. We do make mistakes in life, but we suffer more from our beliefs than our actions. A deed is done, but our memories may haunt us throughout the course of countless incarnations because we are powerless to change what we think until we go through the arduous process of purification and Truth seeking.

In the meantime, we are duty-bound to maintain health because good health supports purity and clarity. I try to formulate all my herbal remedies in such a way that healing can take place without interfering with the mind. This is very important in an era of highly dangerous chemicals and drugs that affect how the endocrine glands function as well as mood and cognition. It thus behooves us to exercise caution in what we ingest, both physically and mentally. I should add what we experience emotionally because until we are fully aligned with self, we are easily thrown off-balance by others.

The Buddha showed the Way and taught us to look within and to trust what we find inside.

There is nothing beyond this but to live. Our actions should stem from our core selves and should serve others to the extent possible. The symbol for this, for me, is a lantern because we live in a world of shadows and often of fear. We can reduce some fear simply by separating myth from facts so teaching is important and sharing the pearls of the journey is also a way to benefit others as well as to generate good karma. In today's world, where knowledge is equated with power, we have to be a little suspicious about everything we are told because the stories are being promulgated by those who seek power rather than Truth.

Thus, if something does not seem to be true, perhaps it is not true. We can take a thought as simple as this and ask what would happen if all education, all scientific research, all observations, and all intuition were filtered through the reflective mirrors of self. Do I know this or did I hear it and believe it? Why do I hold the thoughts I have? How would I be different if my thoughts were to change? Would I actually be different if my thoughts changed?

For instance, is there karma? If we use simple examples, textbook type examples, then we toss a pebble into water and this causes a disturbance and reaction to our action. Water will seek calmness so it resists by an equal and opposite response to the perturbations we create. What if we simply have a thought? Are thoughts actions? Do they create reactions? My answer would be that they are affecting frequencies that will react so, yes, thoughts are real and potentially powerful for good or for ill. The late Dr. Emoto showed that our thoughts can cause putrefaction, but they can also purify entire lakes and perhaps even oceans.

So, this being the case, do we want to live in a disturbed energy field or in a calm one in which we can work with our thoughts until they manifest harmoniously.

I think these concepts form the foundation for functioning in the world we regard as real. If those who write the news that floods the airwaves were to refuse to report anything that could not be validated as truthful, tensions would probably be cut in half, perhaps reduced to almost nothing. We might then worry about our health or how to spend our time but not about the private views of athletes or the endless violence that is truly undermining global life.

If there were no news, would violence become invisible and perhaps more rampant? If there were little or no reporting of what is or is not going on in Afghanistan or Syria, would there be more atrocities or fewer? Most likely, the agenda of those at the top would not change unless dissidence were to rise to the level that recruitment becomes impossible. However, is this not also a part of equilibrium? When people's passions are not inflamed by biased reporting, would turmoil cease? Unless demented, there would be no reason whatsoever to harm someone living thousands of miles away.

I am sorry to say that I believe we are all, at this time, damaged. When I left academia, my parents objected strenuously. I told them that I was risking harm to my right brain and that I was not prepared to give up what I valued in order to conform to either their expectations or those of the university. Education is an arduous process of exerting the left brain to conform to the tyranny of conventional thinking. The truth is that the left brain can only conform since inspiration, not to mention, revelation, are right brain activities.

Part of the reason for mentioning this is not just that I am being more reflective than usual but the questions people have been asking over the last weeks show me that the vast majority of correspondents rely on left brain corroboration for their views. If I allow my facetious side some expression, then I would say that the left brain can create a lot of footnotes and perhaps a lengthy bibliography, but it cannot actually bring to our attention what others have not already tried to raise to the level of credibility.

Where health and healing are concerned, the level of consensus required to establish credibility is enormous, meaning that the wisdom of gifted healers is obfuscated by a system that relies on endless references to single variables. Life is however complex and all events cannot be attributed to one dose or exposure to something or other. There is however another reason for putting these thoughts on your radar and that is that many are suffering from a black out of the right brain that leads to a loss of knowledge of self as well as destiny. This often attended by a lack of confidence in self. With our reliance on technology, this issue has reached a critical point. We can see that overconfidence in technology has brought forth artificial intelligence, and not just artificial intelligence but methods for relaying information that expose a staggering number of people to whatever is being promulgated as reality. The pity is that almost everything we hear and see is contrived in a way to affect what we believe and even why we believe it.

We should not dignify either the curriculum of the educational system nor mass media with the label of knowledge. In actuality, these systems do not even manage information. They manage consensus, and they are so successful that it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold a meaningful discussion on any topic. All that is allowed is the illusion of controversy, discussion, and choice, but the flutter on the top conceals the hidden agenda which, of course, precludes any real participation in decisions that matter. Many writing to me lately have disagreed with me on some topics. This is normal, but the basis for discussion ought to be core values, not something one heard on television or perhaps saw on youtube.com.

The only people truly qualified to comment on climate change, geoengineering, vaccine safety, and so on and so forth are those whose information is verifiable. Otherwise, the basis of the opinions is whatever one chooses to believe based on consensus management, controlled opposition, trolls, and whistleblowers with dubious credentials. Oh, of course, there are those with genuine information, but their numbers — and voices — are small compared to the consensus base where control is managed.

There are only a few ways to escape the perils of this era. One is to meditate and go deeply within where the source of our being is still in tact. Another might involve the use of entheogenic plants, but in both situations, it may be necessary to get off the grid because frequencies are being used that disrupt biological processes so even if consciousness were independently capable of pure understanding, the awareness has to be filtered through our brains, some of which are not actually wired correctly thanks to aluminum, mercury, and various drugs that disrupt neurotransmitters. I wish I could say that the journey to wholeness is easy. The truth is however that it involves decisive measures to protect the integrity of our beings as well as the surrender of misconceptions, many of which are intentionally circulated so as to tangle up our minds and thought processes with trivia.

If I sound too serious, it is because I often deal with serious issues. I have nothing against relaxation, sports, recreation, entertainment, hobbies, or diversions. My concern is the loss of self that sometimes occurs in the barrage of impressions coming from outside. If we do not know and trust ourselves, can we truly know how to live? New processes take practice and fatigue often sets in quickly so the first steps need to be short and simple. Can we set aside 5-10 minutes per day just to observe one feature in Nature? Can we watch birds building nests or squirrels searching for treats or buds blooming on trees. Perhaps our auditory senses are more sensitive than our visual? Can we listen to truly fine music, music in which the sounds are pure and authentic? Or perhaps we want to listen to some poetry or even a video. Can we avoid the robotic voices and choose those where the speaker has a voice that is soothing, calming, and resonate? Just try to avoid all stridency for a few minutes and each day, try to find a wider variety of ways to relax, to center, and to connect with the true self.

Many blessings,

Ingrid

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2018

Design by Damien Francoeur