I arrived to Buenos Aires, Argentina on Saturday 3^rd December 2011. I came here to experience a new way of life, to learn and grow as a person, to begin a new phase in my life, to face another challenge…

To move around the capital of Buenos Aires for me alone is not as easy as I would like it to be, for I know so little, and the city itself to me seems like one big jungle. (more…)

I had an appointment for an assessment with a speech therapist last week.  While I participated in speech therapy initially after my brain injury for three months and it did help, I’ve not been a big fan of traditional, western medicine because I’ve not found it to be all that successful in my recovery from a serious brain injury.  Recently, I’ve started to blend it back into the mix because I have been legally required to do so.

After seeing a neurologist, a rehabilitation specialist and a speech therapist, I’m developing a new-found respect for these professionals.  Who knew?   While I’m finding they don’t have all the answers, they do have valuable information that can lead me to my own discoveries.

My rehabilitation  has resembled a jigsaw puzzle with pieces showing up in all different places.  It’s up to me to be open to the information from whatever source , research and assimilate it, determine the value of and potential benefit to me and act accordingly.

While the speech therapist didn’t advise regular therapy because he didn’t think that would help me, he did share practices that I can perform on my own and gave me valuable pieces of the puzzle for me to fit into place for myself.

Your brain’s health, overall health, and life are a similar  do it yourself project and puzzle.  In a webcast, Daniel J. Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA school of Medicine, co-director of the UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Research Center, executive director of the Mindsight Institute and author of several books, defines the mind as the process that regulates our body’s flow of energy and information describing the physical brain, the mind, and our relationship or interaction with our world as forming a triangle that comprises the unique individual that we are.  According to Siegal, the mind uses the brain to create itself.  Hmmm. Think about that one for a minute.

Your interactions in the world and relationships with people and things actually determine the firing of neurons in your brain hence shaping your synaptic connections.  In keeping with Hebb’s Law, neurons that fire together wire together. Herein is your amazing power to change your brain and life.   In a process known as neuroplasticity, your actions, behavior, and thoughts, even imagination, sculpt your brain and, in turn, reality because your brain controls all that you think and do.   Unlike x-ray vision, this super power, neuroplasticity, is unquestionably proven by science and possessed by all from birth until death. The challenge is to learn to put the magic to good use, finish the do it yourself project and not set it up on the shelf for some later date.

Siegel calls the most basic process of changing your brain mindfulness training which has been around for thousands of years in the form of yoga, tai chi, qi gong, meditation and the many other similar activities.  Being mindful is a way of focusing and integrating energy flow to actually strengthen the prefrontal area of the brain.  This, in turn, creates what he calls an approach state where a person is adaptable, open, and motivated.  Mindfulness also has been proven to strengthen the immune system, improve blood pressure, and increase empathy.

Even doing simple mindfulness techniques such as focusing on the breath for 10 minutes a day can make physical changes in your brain.  This practice creates awareness, and with repetition, over time, this state becomes a trait.  Research has shown such practices to reduce playground bullying in children and raise grades.  Because you can’t tell an 8-year-old to meditate, they teach children the technique by putting a stuffed animal on their belly and telling them “to rock” the animal by breathing deeply.

What does this have to do with my speech therapy?  We are our own ultimate do-it-yourself projects. All too often, we look to the doctors or other experts to give us the answers or a super pill or quick fix when we possess the ability to change ourselves, our health, and our world.  Each person just has to start using their super power, their ability to transform their brain and life, for the better.

I decided to read out loud everyday as my own speech therapy.  Starting last night, I made myself laugh out loud at some of my horribly mangled pronunciations, but I know that, over time, I’ll see improvement.  The important thing to me is that I am actually doing something which I find so empowering.  You, too, have the same power to change it, whatever your “it” may be.

Life depends on feminine as much as masculine powers. Femininity cannot exist without masculinity and vice versa. The balance and harmony of the universe cannot be denied or changed in any way. The grand truth is that we are all equal, no matter how hard it is for some to admit. (more…)

What fears, what thirsting for approval, what hunger for recognition hold me in the grooves of conditioning? I free myself of that and I am a unique expression of the Infinite. Can I feel the call to show myself freely? We are ready to acknowledge ourselves and to be self-evident… All pressure to renege on myself is now unbearable!

Just yesterday I was looking at all the New Age views about ‘something great’ about to come around the corner etc. and I was reflecting on how that continues to program everyone onto ‘hope’, ‘faith’ and the identity that is built around ‘becoming a multi-dimensional being’ etc. This focus on something yet to come and on some event yet to happen in order for my destiny to fulfill itself has the tendency to keep us from realizing just how amazing that <being> which is already here, which I already AM, actually is. That is where the exploration of this mystery begins, in my opinion.
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Some time ago, I took a workshop on the healing qualities of journaling, and it made a great impact on me.

I remembered that as a teenager, I had a secret journal where I would write my feelings and thoughts. Later in life, in moments of conflict, I used to write letters to a loved one, mainly to put my thoughts in order and/or to communicate them accurately. And now I use writing as an emotion-release tool. In fact, I had been using writing all along (without realizing its positive effect.)

The fact and the matter is, when we write, we put our thoughts in “raw” format, writing is a direct way to express ourselves, just as other forms of art can be, such as: painting, dancing, playing music, etc. Writing can be revealing of our deepest truths and feelings. (more…)

Wolter A. Keers was a Dutch teacher and writer who lectured extensively on Yoga and Advaita in Europe in the 1970s and 80s. He met Ramana a couple of months before Ramana’s passing in 1950. This is an excerpt of his account:

“Roda Maclver, a Bombay devotee who had been living near Bhagavan for several years took me to the Ashram and pointed out Bhagavan to me. The mere sight of him made me tremble all over because I had come face to face with the divine. This recognition affected me so much that my body shook involuntarily. As I gazed at Bhagavan, I felt I saw God himself sitting there.

In that early morning meeting I saw a blazing light that had taken a human form. It was more radiant than anything I had ever seen before. When I was very young, I had believed that God was some magnificent being, having a human form that radiated light and goodness. I had long since abandoned this childhood belief, believing it to be a fairy story that was told only to credulous children. Yet now this childhood belief turned out to be true, because here before me was a human form that seemed to be made of light itself. God became manifest before my eyes, announcing his presence to me by radiating a blazing, penetrating light, a light that went right through me like x-rays.”
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Non-thinking is a concept that comes up in a lot of spiritual sects, and is a core of meditation. But a lot of people find this concept difficult to grasp. And that, I feel, is due to a common misconception. People tend to consider non-thinking and not thinking to be the same thing. But as we are all well aware, not thinking at all is impossible. This leads newbie meditation practitioners to hours of frustration sitting on the floor thinking “Why can’t I stop thinking?!”. (more…)

“Banish uncertainty.
Affirm strength.
Hold resolve.
Expect death.

Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don’t follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: Create your own. (more…)

All of the wonderful spiritual teachings about living in the present moment finally come down to one thing: how do I live? As so often when I am delving more deeply into a certain aspect of Reality – sure enough – I find myself in a situation that gives me a real-time experience of that aspect. The last couple of weeks I have been noticing the repercussions of leaving the present moment in some very vivid ways. I posted my reflections on “Purpose” and how I notice that, in a certain sense, following a purpose tends to pull me out of the present moment. On the other hand, the mantra that came up for me while writing the post “ZEN: How to Recalibrate Myself Back to Zero” has spontaneously arisen in my mind several time over the past week and has proven to be quite effective. The mantra is “I am my own purpose”. This brings me into a frequency of being enough just as I am and that no action or purpose or indeed anything at all is needed to fulfill or complete me.
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Every so often I find myself taking a personal retreat in order to, as I call it, calibrate myself back to zero,  which is for me the quintessence of Zen. Just recently I have realized that this “zero” refers to “zero purpose”. When I go to the Arizona Beach Lodge not far from where I live, I leave behind all the things and people in my home environment that call me to do “this” and “that”. I am always rather amazed at how soon I am able to enter into a space in which I have let go of all purpose and am able to just ‘be’.
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I’ve written a lot of the teachings of people but I felt it time to write a little about other types of animals that have something important to teach us. Ever since I was a child I’ve always admired Sloths, I even chose to write about them in primary school, compiling an entire folder on them full of research. I feel there is something we can learn from the way they live their lives. (more…)

I’ve been a vegetarian for a few years now, and one of the most frequent questions I get asked is: “How d’you do it?” or words to that effect. People see it as a huge hurdle or extreme challenge of wills, even I saw it this way before I became one. The truth is, it’s relatively easy to make the transition from omnivore to herbivore. Plus vegetarianism has many health benefits you can research yourself, I’m not here to talk about why you should choose vegetarianism, that’s for you to decide on your own, I’m simply going to give you a few tips on how to make the transition easier. (more…)

Aerogel is the story of an 80-year-old invention with incredible potential, it’s still looking good after all these years. In the late 1920’s an American chemist Samuel Kistler working with colleague Charles Learned developed a new substance called aerogel. (more…)

This week I picked a subject that will probably touch most of us…
Let’s face it, relationships are complicated, so what can we do to about it?

In this post, I refer mainly to relationships as men and women lovers. Although there are many more relationships in our lives, and different kinds of them, today I would like to talk about this kind in particular.

A few years ago I read John Gray’s famous book:Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
and I recommend it to anybody who is in a relationship or wants to be. Reading this book truly opened my eyes to a lot of truths about men, that I had never imagined, let alone understood! There are different opinions on this book, but I personally found it very helpful and accurate. (more…)

Waterfall Meditation, feel it’s flow

Waterfall Meditation for our Energy Body, An of Body Experience

This Waterfall Meditation becomes a natural timing and feeling associated with being. The effect of this timing has an effect on human health. Reflected in having a sense of flowing from moment to moment with the world at large.  This Waterfall Meditation is a good one to help set up an Out of Body Experience. The Waterfall Meditation has been studied and found to be a wonderful way to start the flow of other world experiences. This dreaming Journey will take you out and bring you back again. Nothing to lose but the Physical Body itself. Really, who needs that anyway? There’s more where that came from, or you can take it with you. (more…)

As a follow on from my previous post this week about Loneliness I decided I would write one about the importance and necessity of Solitude. This is a concept I hold very close to my heart and have a lot of admiration for anyone who recognises the beauty of solitude. From this state is born a greater understanding of the self and the world in which we live, through introspection and observation. (more…)