Saturday 29 November 2014

entheogens and cultural deconditioning





This interview really warms up and a fascinating subject area is covered including the significance of particular serotonin receptor sites and a meaningful discussion of the entheogens with regard to human potential.  I have a sightly different understanding of the timeline and unfolding of the human story and less enthusiasm for religion but the discussion here is high;y relevant to the human predicament.  I sense that our initial initiation into entheagenic consciousness was through our connection with fruit trees and that later other species such as mushrooms helped partially reawaken this.  I can't remember whether it was on this audio or just around the same time that I heard the remark that alcohol is the ultimate anti-entheagen.  An interesting comment I feel; for me  alcohol in any quantity beyond the small amounts that occur naturally in the matrix of a plant ferment disturb the connection that is sustained by an entheagenic diet.

"There's some universal human values that are programmed into our species that emerge when people use these medicines again...medicines don't necessarily give you that rather they decondition things that have been overriding that message...what seems to emerge is  a world view similar to the ancient world"  Daniel Vitalis

"We have a rich repository of receptors for these substances and we even produce some of the substances seemingly for no other purpose than to elicit these experiences which says something very fundamental about ho we need to remember we are" Nora Gedgaudas

Note on entheagen from Frank Mc Eowen  The Spiral of Magic and Belonging: A Celtic Path of Soul and Kinship:  'Entheogen literally means "revealer of the God within" and I propose that entheagen "the Goddess within" could also be used.'  

Thursday 27 November 2014

Parnashavari



"A healer,to be effective must have the wisdom to recognise the ultimate substantiality of a disease if she or he is to envision its absence and accomplish its removal."

Miranda Shaw, Buddhist Goddesses of India

Wednesday 26 November 2014

intuitive people


http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/10-things-highly-intuitive-people-differently.html

10 Things Highly Intuitive People Do Differently

Intuition is challenging to define, despite the huge role it plays in our everyday lives. Steve Jobs called it, for instance, “more powerful than intellect.” But however we put it into words, we all, well, intuitively know just what it is.
Pretty much everyone has experienced a gut feeling — that unconscious reasoning that propels us to do something without telling us why or how. But the nature of intuition has long eluded us, and has inspired centuries’ worth of research and inquiry in the fields of philosophy and psychology.
“I define intuition as the subtle knowing without ever having any idea why you know it,” Sophy Burnham, bestselling author of The Art of Intuition, tells The Huffington Post. “It’s different from thinking, it’s different from logic or analysis … It’s a knowing without knowing.”
Our intuition is always there, whether we’re aware of it or not. As HuffPost President and Editor-in-Chief Arianna Huffington puts it in her upcoming book Thrive:
“Even when we’re not at a fork in the road, wondering what to do and trying to hear that inner voice, our intuition is always there, always reading the situation, always trying to steer us the right way. But can we hear it? Are we paying attention? Are we living a life that keeps the pathway to our intuition unblocked? Feeding and nurturing our intuition, and living a life in which we can make use of its wisdom, is one key way to thrive, at work and in life.”
Cognitive science is beginning to demystify the strong but sometimes inexplicable presence of unconscious reasoning in our lives and thought. Often dismissed as unscientific because of its connections to the psychic and paranormal, intuition isn’t just a bunch of hoo-ha about our “Spidey senses” — the U.S. military is even investigating the power of intuition, which has helped troops to make quick judgments during combat that ended up saving lives.
“There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence, combined with solid research efforts, that suggests intuition is a critical aspect of how we humans interact with our environment and how, ultimately, we make many of our decisions,” Ivy Estabrooke, a program manager at the Office of Naval Research, told the New York Times in 2012.
Here are 10 things that people in touch with their intuition do differently.
THEY LISTEN TO THAT INNER VOICE.

“It’s very easy to dismiss intuition,” says Burnham. “But it’s a great gift that needs to be noticed.”
The No. 1 thing that distinguishes intuitive people is that they listen to, rather than ignore, theguidance of their intuitions and gut feelings.
“Everybody is connected to their intuition, but some people don’t pay attention to it as intuition,”Burnham say. “I have yet to meet a successful businessman that didn’t say, ‘I don’t know why I did that, it was just a hunch.’”
In order to make our best decisions, we need a balance of intuition — which serves to bridge the gap between instinct and reasoning — and rational thinking, according to Francis Cholle, author of The Intuitive Compass. But the cultural bias against following one’s instinct or intuition often leads to disregarding our hunches – to our own detriment.
“We don’t have to reject scientific logic in order to benefit from instinct,” says Cholle. “We can honor and call upon all of these tools, and we can seek balance. And by seeking this balance we will finally bring all of the resources of our brain into action.”
THEY TAKE TIME FOR SOLITUDE.

If you want to get in touch with your intuition, a little time alone may be the most effective way. Just as solitude can help give rise to creative thinking, it can also help us connect to our deepest inner wisdom.
Intuitive people are often introverted, according to Burnham. But whether you’re an introvert or not, taking time for solitude can help you engage in deeper thought and reconnect with yourself.
“You have to be able to have a little bit of solitude; a little bit of silence,” she says. “In the middle of craziness … you can’t recognize [intuition] above all of the noise of everyday life.”
THEY CREATE.

“Creativity does its best work when it functions intuitively,” writes researcher and author Carla Woolf.
In fact, creative people are highly intuitive, explains Burnham, and just as you can increase your creativity through practice, you can boost your intuition. In fact, practicing one may build up the other.
THEY PRACTICE MINDFULNESS.
Meditation and other mindfulness practices can be an excellent way to tap into your intuition. As the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute explains, “Mindfulness can help you filter out mental chatter, weigh your options objectively, tune into your intuition and ultimately make a decision that you can stand behind completely.”
Mindfulness can also connect you to your intuition by boosting self-knowledge. A 2013 study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science showed that mindfulness — defined as “paying attention to one’s current experience in a non-judgmental way” — may help us to better understand our own personalities. And as Arianna Huffington notes in Thrive, increased intuition, compassion, creativity and peace are all wonderful side effects of meditating.
THEY OBSERVE EVERYTHING.

“The first thing to do is notice — keep a little journal, and notice when odd things happen,” Burnham says. You’ll gain a keen sense for how often coincidences, surprising connections and on-the-dot intuitions occur in your daily life — in other words, you’ll start to tap into your intuition.
THEY LISTEN TO THEIR BODIES.
Intuitive people learn to tune into their bodies and heed their “gut feelings.”
If you’ve ever started feeling sick to your stomach when you knew something was wrong but couldn’t put your finger on what, you understand that intuitions can cause a physical sensation in the body. Our gut feelings are called gut feelings for a reason — research suggests that emotion and intuition are very much rooted in the “second brain” in the gut.
THEY CONNECT DEEPLY WITH OTHERS.

Mind reading may seem like the stuff of fantasy and pseudo-science, but it’s actually something we do everyday. It’s called empathic accuracy, a term in psychology that refers to the “seemingly magical ability to map someone’s mental terrain from their words, emotions and body language,” according to Psychology Today.
“When you see a spider crawling up someone’s leg, you feel a creepy sensation,”Marcia Reynolds writes in Psychology Today. “Similarly, when you observe someone reach out to a friend and they are pushed away, your brain registers the sensation of rejection. When you watch your team win or a couple embrace on television, you feel their emotions as if you are there. Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, disgust and lust can all be experienced by watching others.”
Tuning into your own emotions, and spending time both observing and listening to others face-to-face can help boost your powers of empathy, says Reynolds.
THEY PAY ATTENTION TO THEIR DREAMS.

Burnham recommends paying attention to your dreams as a way to get in touch with your mind’s unconscious thinking processes. Both dreams and intuition spring from the unconscious, so you can begin to tap into this part of your mind by paying attention to your dreams.
“At night, when you’re dreaming, you’re receiving information from the unconscious or intuitive part of your brain,” says Burnham. “If you’re attuned to your dreams, you can get a lot of information about how to live your life.”
THEY ENJOY PLENTY OF DOWN TIME.

Few things stifle intuition as easily as constant busyness, multitasking, connectivity to digital devices and stress and burnout. According to Huffington, we always have an intuitive sense about the people in our lives — on a deep level, we know the good ones from the “flatterers and dissemblers” — but we’re not always awake enough to our intuition to acknowledge the difference to ourselves. The problem is that we’re simply too busy.
“We always get warnings from our heart and our intuition when they appear,” she writes in Thrive. “But we are often too busy to notice.”
THEY MINDFULLY LET GO OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS.
Strong emotions — particularly negative ones — can cloud our intuition. Many of us know that we feel out of sorts or “not ourselves” when we’re upset, and it may be because we’re disconnected from our intuition.
“When you are very depressed, you may find your intuition fails,” says Burnham. “When you’re angry or in a heightened emotional state … your intuition [can] fail you completely.”
The evidence isn’t just anecdotal: A 2013 study published in the journal Psychological Science showed that being in a positive mood boosted the ability to make intuitive judgments in a word game.
That’s not to say that intuitive people never get upset — but your intuition will fare better if you’re able to mindfully accept and let go of negative emotions for the most part, rather than suppressing or dwelling on them.

Credits: **This article was originally featured on: HuffingtonPost

opening fermented beverages


Tutorial on how to  open naturally carbonated lacto fermented beverages such as jun, kombucha or even water kefir without t them exploding and going all over your kitchen/living room but more importantly  without wasting any.

Tuesday 25 November 2014

the exceptional life


"Who or what exactly in this Genius?  It is not a "higher self" that floats above the ego.  Nor is it the spectre of a disembodied, immortal soul.  It is more like a supernatural force that presses into the personal ego from the Deep.  As a presence in the background, it haunts the dimension of Lookback Time, the remote past;yet it makes itself known as a voice calling from the future..."
John Lamb Lash, Quest for the Zodiac

Friday 21 November 2014

psychedelics are part of the diet with dennis mckenna


http://www.danielvitalis.com/rewild-yourself-podcast/dennis-mckenna-on-hunting-magic-mushrooms-and-dmt-in-south-america

Dennis McKenna points out that our natural diet is psychoactive.  We bred the alkaloids out of plant foods because they taste bitter.
All true psychedelics are serotonin 2A agonists.  They act like the native neurotransmitters but have  a different effect.   They change our relationship to nature.  The idea of separation from nature and the devaluation of nature is really the legacy of 2000 years of Judeo-Christian influence on our culture where the message is 'don't value existence in this world your reward is in the next world.'

Tuesday 18 November 2014

the beauty and magic of wales


There and back in a day!  We took a much needed day trip, crossing the river Avon into Wales and driving up to Hay Bluff through the stunningly beautiful and magical Llanthony Valley, stopping  afterwards for a cup of coffee in a delightful cafe in Hay on Wye.  The weather was incredible for the time of year and the protracted warmth this autumn has prolonged the autumnal hues while the leaves have remained on the trees.  The bracken glowed bronze in the low but strong sunlight.









Monday 17 November 2014

weekend fermentation workshops

Bristol fermentation talk
chocolate kefir cheesecake at our Meare fermented foods class

I explain the wonders of kefir at our Meare class

Thank you Dunstan for your lovely comments "For me it wasn't 'just information'. There was some serious transmission of energy and frequencies in the room. I could feel my consciousness expanding with the words that were shared."
Click here for details of our classes in Meare, Somerset.

Saturday 15 November 2014

sophianic vision story and separation of the sexes


This beautiful rendition of the Sophianic vision story describes the gender rift, the way the male and female sexes were parted.


The Sophia Myth linked to from this page is a two part audio well worth listening to.  It describes the real war for the human experiment.  There are very interesting insights into the Japanese, who are a different strain of the anthropos and are crucial to the experiment for their warrior ethics.
Gaucin
There are three vectors of discovery: the paranormal powers of your own body and mind, the delusional nature of the archons and Gaia herself, with whom we have the opportunity to establish two way communication.

Andalucia

Sunday 2 November 2014

standing stones

A beautiful day at Merrivale on Dartmoor.    At Merrivale there are extensive remains of a Bronze age settlement.





The weather has been so mild the gorse is blooming twice this year.