One Minute DIY Mind Healing Rewire

…the observer creates the reality. …the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind is the creator and governor of the realm of matter. …The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.”  – R.C. Henry

This is a little technique to do on yourself, to reroute panicky and other distressing thought patterns and traumas that may have gotten stuck in your head. It can really come in handy. You can also lead a friend through it. (I figured out how to do this from reading a report on research done on test subjects in a science magazine years ago, can't remember where; it was a long time ago.*) 

It works really fast. You can do it anywhere anytime. It does not require belief. It is free and easy. You just go through the physical motions. It is just a powerful, simple, pattern rewrite technique that seems to work for a lot of people.

On your left, (or non dominant hand side, if you wish) 

picture: (in a dark frame) 

the fear, the nightmare scenario, the badness, whatever is bothering you...

Make the picture with elements representing your feelings.

On your right, picture (in a light frame):

The situation resolved, you feeling happy, and so on.

Now, hold your hands out comfortably in front of you, 

shoulder distance apart, and elbow high, 

in a way that you can look from one open hand to the other,

 without moving your head. 

Only your eyes should move.

Visualize the first picture in your left hand, and the second in your right. 

Now simply look from one picture to the other, at about the rhythm you might walk. 

For about forty seconds to a minute. 

That is all!

*(Some possible history:)

Nonviolent Farming

Is violence inherent in life on planet earth?The story of the enlightenment of the Buddha includes the moment when he sees all of the suffering around him, including the bugs getting crushed under the farmer's plow. Truly, even the act of taking your next breath, or your next step, probably kills some microbes.

But it is not pointless to try to avoid needless harm. Vandana Shiva is leading the Nonviolent Farming movement with an organization called 'Navdanya':

http://sustainableman.org/#Clients

"The first element of Navdanya's philosophy is to establish an agriculture at peace with nature - that leaves farmers in peace... and doesn't push them into self-directed violence that we have seen since (the so called green revolution) in the form of farmer suicides.

Second is the celebration of diversity. Biodiverse systems produce more nutrition per acre than the most intensive industrial systems and also have a higher land-equivalent ratio. That means you can grow much more on the same piece of land because you are creating symbiotic relationships between the plants.

Third is the importance of keeping in the commons that which belongs to the commons, like biodiversity and knowledge. The dominant market philosophy today is based on competition, but to my mind, the only things that sustain themselves in the long term are solidarity economies - economies based on mutual trust, on give and take.

Our work has grown out of this three-tiered philosophy. We are working to build non-violent, biodiverse agriculture  -namely, organic farming. We have trained nearly half a million farmers across the country either through large camps or through attendance at our schools, and have also set up freely accessible community seed banks...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aidanmorgan/7566486218

Through organic farming, agroforestry, and forest regeneration, we would not only turn our soil and our vegetation into a major carbon sink [which absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere in a stable form], we would directly address the poverty problem too. When you seriously address climate change, you do the very things that reduce poverty and hunger." (Their website)

“Good food cannot be reduced to single ingredients. It requires a web of relationships to support it.” 

― Dan Barber

Community or Control?

“The elders have sent me to tell you that now is like a rushing river, and this will be experienced in many different ways. There are those who would hold onto the shore… there is no shore. The shore is crumbling. Push off into the middle of the river. Keep your head above the water, look around to see who else is in the river with you, and celebrate.” Choquash - a Native American storyteller

Changes and tensions seem to be multiplying all over the world now.  People everywhere see media and glimpse the possibilities and strive for freedom and success in the world. The forces of repression and backlash have passed the stages of ignoring and ridiculing, as a full scale attack against freedom and goodwill rages in many places.

All this against a ticking time bomb of deadly pollution and all of the pressures of more and more billions of people consuming and building in a pressure cooker of a finite planet shrinking before our very eyes.

Even animals have been shown to have an innate sense of fairness. The huge inequality gap between the haves and have nots guarantees strife and struggle. The pressure of fear and uncertainty pushes us toward ever increasing control, but there is another way.

The choice before us now is endless control, that is, losing our newfound freedom in exchange for feeling more safe, or opening up to one another and attempting to empower people at the grassroots level, trusting that we will do the loving thing. Which kind of world would you rather live in?

(From the Flower Child's Garden Planet)

(Grassroots)

Blue Money for a Green Planet

“Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls.” ~ Rumi

Today I'm laundering money, painting it blue. The paint is an experiment. I'm trying watercolors and watered down acrylic paints to see if I can get the same effect as RIT dye, because that stuff is smelly and gross.

Blue money is a concept and a movement. It is an attempt to raise consciousness about the corrosive effect of our money system upon everything from our psychology to our environment. For a comprehensive explanation of the problem, down to its roots, and some ways to fix it, read Sacred Economics. (Read it here now:) I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is from the Blue Bills website: 

"All green bills are issued by the government ("by the people") and are immediately seized by banks that then loan that money back to us with interest (inexplicably they suddenly "own" it, forcing the borrower to pay for its use and collude in further exploitation down the line).

 So all green money immediately becomes DEBT.

 

BlueBills, however represent GIFTS. BlueBills break this cycle of abuse because although the original money is earned, each BlueBill is ritually cleansed (dyed and marked and often given away to its first recipient rather than spent) as a way of launching a new energy with a debt of gratitude rather than usury (charging interest for the use of money).

Money is like blood; it is meant to keep moving. One of the beautiful things about BlueBills is that they point out the difference between the green money attitude of scarcity (hoarding, greed, grumpiness, selfishness) and BlueBills' one of abundance (sharing, cheer, love and generosity! ...So the sooner you use it the greater its worth... Pass it on!

In the face of such enormous global forces I didn’t think there was anything one person could do. But then one little old lady in my Helena neighborhood showed me how, with a very simple process: by dying her money blue. And that all by itself is one act that could transform our whole economy to protect people and nature from exploitation."

(Here is the website for the Blue Bills movement)

Like any gift, blue money is theft resistant. How can it be stolen if the intention is to give it away! Scarcity and greed are not basic human characteristics; they are the result of our cultural constructs and assumptions, which we can change. 

All that is required is a change of mind! This occurs naturally with new understanding. After that we smart monkeys are amazing ingenious adapters of the highest order.

It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about. - Dale Carnegie  

 

Colors of Winter

Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens. ~Henry David Thoreau, Nov. 8, 1858

Sometimes I miss the bright colors of summer and spring when it's cold and foggy. So, every day in the wintertime, I go out anyway. I find all sorts of colors in the winter light. This is what I did this week:

 First I noticed a cluster of primary colors in the natural area around a creek...

...began to play with them on my ipad..

I find there is something particularly pleasing about the color combinations in nature...

And pretty soon... This!

And this! Next winter, I plan to have a show of my winter color collection, printed up on to canvas. 

Some are in my art website:http://www.omnimountainskyrainbow.com/

Deep Thinking

"Make an empty space in any part of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it"- Dee Hock

I do not think boredom is required for clear thinking and creativity, as I heard today. But they might be on to something. Boredom is now a thing of the past, in this new era of connectedness. Stimulation is always available, and almost everyone now has a pocket magic box.

I have witnessed in my own life with electronic devices, compared to before electronic devices, the pace and depth of my attention, and so my thinking, has changed.

In fact some people have had to start putting limits on their cell phone time. They go to special camps, go on fasts and challenges to put the phone down for a while. (Getting bored stirs creativity?)

Going out in nature seems to help me get un bedazzled. Here, in nature's screen display, are infinitely more pixels. I wonder about the ratio between fast, like the instant gratification offered by my little glowing box, and deep, like a beautiful, fully formed, thought process. I wonder if one door into meditation is some sort of self hypnotic boredom that one rises out of as the dust settles.

I really love and appreciate what these devices, that are so new to me, can do. When I hold one in my hand, I feel as if I am holding a more wonderful and precious jewel than ever any human held before this time in history.

 And but also this makes me need more than ever to get out, walk around, and commune with real stuff.

What a Rush!

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung

"Let us fall in love again and scatter gold dust all over the world.

Let us become a new spring and feel the breeze drift in the heavens' scent.

Let us dress the earth in green, and like the sap of a young tree let the grace from within sustain us.

Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to Love.

The glance of Love is crystal clear and we are blessed by it's light."

- Rumi "Hidden Music"

 

In a way, I reach out in love to you when I write. I intend it as taking time for you. Seems like time used to be slower, how can that be? Time is a mystery to me. 

Why am I so impatient? Is this related to my orientation to time? I am so concerned with efficiency! What am I rushing around all over the place to save time up for, anyway? Hurry and get to the next thing, now is no good, later, it will be better. What is this great thing I plan to do 'later' that's so wonderful I am willing to give up being patient with whatever I'm doing now? I do not understand time.

"You Americans are so impatient" said Amachi to me. I think I hurt her feelings. I began to cry.

(Amachi)

Maybe when we don't take the time to really pay attention with each other, we are saying, 'you do not matter to me'. Underneath that, we are saying 'my needs are more important than yours' and under that is 'if I don't take what I want by force, my needs won't be met and I won't have enough'. 

Under that feeling another is lurking. It says 'I really don't deserve'. Because if I did, I would feel patient and magnanimous.

So, when I feel bad because of how I was treated by someone who feels they don't have time for me, I know they are the ones suffering more. I try to be understanding. Anyone could fall into that trap because that is how our culture has pressured us all.

But now that I am aware of my impulse to rush around for no good reason, leaving tire tracks all over everyone, I have a choice.

Garden Planet

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature. --Zeno 335BC

We are here in this time to garden planet earth. We have such a rich, beautiful planet here that we all share. We know now that small scale organic, labor intensive, and permaculture techniques of food growing are practical for the whole world.

So if we are willing to pay a lot more people more to grow our food, or if we are willing to do some of the gardening ourselves, we would go a long way toward a non polluting, truly sustainable world. And the people reporting the highest levels of happiness at work are...Gardeners! And the most popular hobby in the US is...gardening!

How can we make it easy for people everywhere, every day, to do a little gardening?

(Self watering planter set ups:)

Almost everywhere people are found, there are surely tiny niches for a little pot here, a raised bed there, a backyard plot? (creative places for growing things:)

What a delightful way to save the environment that is our our common inheritance. Just go play outside in the dirt? Or have a little herb pot in the window? What fun!

Anyone can have dirt. Gardeners have soil. --Unknown

(From The Flower Child's Garden Planet)

Wonder Box Cooking!

"I like rice. Rice is great if you are hungry and want 2000 of something." – Mitch Hedberg

Cooking rice and stuff with half the energy! 

Also called 'hay box' or heat retention cooking...

This is how we make rice and other grains at our house, using only half as much as energy. This can be applied all over the world, saving millions and millions of whatever it takes to cook them now. It is super easy, cost free, and takes only a little more time to cook. 

The method consists of cooking normally for the first half of the usual time. Then the cook pot, with lid still on, is wrapped up in some insulating material, and simply set aside to finish cooking in its residual heat. 

You can use two or three thick towels for wrapping, or a blanket, or even zip it up into a puffy parka. You can even construct a well insulated box, if you like. You can cook this up to an hour in advance, and the grain will still be warm and perfect when the meal commences. And your rice will not have any risk of burning from being on too long. (More on "heat retention cooking":)

Here is a recipe for mixed grains we enjoy here at The Mothership:

                                        

Nice Rice

Spices, salt, oil, rice, water – have everything at the ready before you start

This recipe works with all kinds of rice, millet, quinoa, teff, maybe even polenta.

I use whole spices and grind them right before adding them to the hot oil. If this is inconvenient, you may use ground spices. If using ground spices, you will need to be more careful not to burn them, as they will have less moisture.

4 cups water

2 cups brown rice (or a mix of brown and forbidden rice, or a mix of millet, red quinoa, white quinoa and teff, or any other grain mix featuring grains of similar cooking times.

Add to the rice:

a teaspoon of ground turmeric

a teaspoon of salt, and

two teaspoons of onion granules

Put the following into a coffee grinder and grind for 10 seconds

2 teaspoons whole cumin

2 teaspoons whole coriander

2 teaspoons whole brown mustard seed

½ teaspoon whole  black pepper

¼ teaspoon crushed chili flakes

Add this mixture to two tablespoons of hot olive oil and fry the spices for 10 seconds. If the olive oil is already hot you can take the saucepan off the stove to fry the spices.

Add the rice and spice mixture and stir vigorously. When all grains are coated add the water and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer grains for half the recommended time, then wrap the covered pan in two or three big towels for 20-30 minutes while you prepare the rest of your meal. Your grains will be hot, unburned, well-cooked and tasty when you are ready to eat.

Recommended times for various grains:(cook on stove, half the time, then wrap)

rice with bran (like forbidden rice and brown rices) 45 minutes

all quinoas (quinoas like 2 ½ or 3 times water) 25 minutes

polished rices (jasmine, white, basmati, etc.) 22 minutes

teff – just cook teff with other grains, it’ll be fine

In China a typical greeting, instead of “How are you?” is “Have you had your rice today?” A greeting to which one is expected to always reply, “Yes”.

Your Crayons

"These guys are out for your crayons"

The most impactful book I ever read was Harold and the Purple Crayon*. In the book, the kid has this magic purple crayon. Whatever he draws turns real!!! This story is always with me because I found one of those crayons and I have been using it ever since.

In fact, you too, have a magic purple crayon. Let's say that you do, but you did not know. Then maybe you would go around perhaps feeling victimized by all the powers affecting you over which you have no control. But all along you had the crayon.

Maybe you once had the crayon, but lost it because someone convinced you it was worthless. Do you remember being a little kid and playing pretend? You had it then.

In fact you still do. We all have a full set of magic crayons, as well as a magical universe in which we can make, do, and be anything we choose. Of course, the medium has more dimensions than a sheet of paper. Time is involved.

So why then, have we created so many of the problems in the world today? Why must we scribble such dark lines all over the place?

So if we want to make something else, we can. So far, we have some good ideas in development, and some sketches. Have you figured out where your purple crayon is yet?

(*if you would like to have Harold and the Purple Crayon read to you:)

"Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons."

-Al Hirschfeld