Writing for Personal Transformation

Posted on May 16, 2012 by NCReview

There is no right or wrong way to write for personal transformation. In fact, you don’t have to do anything in order for transformation to occur; it is a natural process that occurs over time, with or without your participation. However, if you want to engage and accelerate awareness of your unconscious, where the event of transformation occurs, personal writing is a tried and true tool. All that is required is your commitment to take up the practice.

Guideline basics for writing for personal transformation:

1.         Personal writing is just that—personal. Give yourself uninterrupted time and space for this, even if you have to seclude yourself in the bathroom to get it. Take a few minutes to close your eyes and be still before beginning.

2.         Give yourself a time limit, say, 20 minutes each day. More or less is fine, but by creating a time structure you have both a goal and a limit that allows you to feel complete in your daily practice.

3.         You can write on anything, including a napkin, but writing by hand is best because it engages the body with the process, and a journal of some sort is ideal.

4.         If you need a prompt to get started writing, there are any number of ways you can catalyze the process. Asking questions stimulates self-reflection, so this is a good place to start. If you don’t have a burning question in mind, one of the most profound questions to ask yourself is: “What do I want?” Keep reaching deeper within and asking again, with each response.

5.         How you write is also your choice; I recommend that you work with stream-of-thought writing as much as possible. No need to censor your words or fret about punctuation or style. Just let it flow.

Transformational Prompts

1.         Everyone has a story. Write down the moments of your life that stand out for you.  Notice if you mark you journey by dates, location, relationships, achievements,  drama…or?

2.         Choose a spiritual quote that is meaningful to you and write about how you  apply that precept in the world—or not.

3.         Imagine that you have been invited to place three objects that symbolize what is important to you about your life into a time capsule. What would they be and why would you choose them?

4.         Lie comfortably on the floor and be still. Stay there until you can hear your heart beating. After you can count sixty beats, sit up. Write about the connecting to your heart.

5.         If you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be? Allow yourself to imagine the world as that animal and then ask it what it wants to tell you.

 

 

 

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Heart Sharing Practice

Posted on May 15, 2012 by NCReview

Heart Sharing Practice:

1.  Designate a speaker.

2.  If you’re the listener, invite your partner to speak with these words: “Show me your heart.”

3.  Keep breathing. Stay open, receptive, attentive. Your partner’s words are only air molecules vibrating.

4.  For the speaker: Speak the truth of your experience.

5.  If the listener reacts defensively to what you’re sharing, try imagining him or her as someone else.

6.  Be willing to name the unspoken that may create distance between you and your listener. Speak of your feelings only.

7.  Keep breathing and when a natural pause occurs for the speaker, acknowledge one another with your eyes only.

8.  Now, switch places and go through these steps again.

This exercise from Robert Gass and Judith Ansara is just a small taste of what you’ll experience in the The Art of Sacred Loving course, which starts THIS THURSDAY, May 17. Sponsored by The Shift Network.

In this 12-week course with top relationship experts (Gay and Katie Hendricks, Matthew and Terces Englehart, plus Robert and Judith), you’ll learn proven communication strategies and enduring love skills you need to have a passionate, alive and joyful relationship with your partner.

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The Mind Muscle: Your Heart

Posted on May 15, 2012 by NCReview

Intuitively the entire species has given the heart a special significance for centuries. It is a symbol of love and compassion throughout the world. To the mystic sages, the heart is the seat of the soul. Neurocardiologists are making great inroads into understanding the heart-brain connection, and now know that the heart is a sensory organ and a sophisticated system for receiving and processing information. The heart also has its own nervous system, and a direct path to the brain using biological communication systems, which transmits emotional and intuitive signals.

Perhaps even more significant is that the heart generates a powerful electromagnetic field, which compared to the brain is sixty times greater in amplitude, and which permeates every cell in the body. According to the Heartmath Institute, this field communicates “with the electromagnetic field of other people, of the Earth, the plants, animals, stars—and with every cell in our physical, mental, and emotional bodies…this is heart intelligence.”

Scientific studies now suggest that conscious awareness arises from the brain and body acting together. A person’s emotional state affects their heart’s electromagnetic pulses, and the brain’s rhythms naturally synchronize, distributing the emotional field throughout the body. When we are feeling anger or other negative emotions, our heart’s rhythms become erratic, disorganized, and incoherent. When we are feeling love or other positive emotions, the rhythms are smooth, ordered, and coherent. These signals are broadcast not only to the brain and throughout the body, but also beyond our body and out into the world in a magnetic field that extends at least fifteen feet in all directions.

We begin to appreciate then, that our intuitive reverence for the heart (for love and appreciation) is not simply a matter of misplaced sentimentality: the heart is literally the first responder to our physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and social existence.

P.S. The “secret” to living a happy or contented life is coherence: When our heart field is in coherence with our thought field, we live in harmony with life.

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Huge Spike in Cancers, Fertility Problems Linked to Chemicals in Household Items

Posted on May 14, 2012 by NCReview

“Chemicals which disrupt the hormone system – also known as ‘endocrine disrupting chemicals’ (EDCs) – may be a contributing factor behind the significant increases in cancers, diabetes and obesity, falling fertility, and an increased number of neurological development problems in both humans and animals, according to a review of recent scientific literature commissioned by the European Environment Agency (EEA).

Chemicals which can potentially disrupt the endocrine system can be found in food, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, household products and cosmetics. In recent decades, there has been a significant growth in many human diseases and disorders including breast and prostate cancer, male infertility and diabetes. Many scientists think that this growth is connected to the rising levels of exposure to mixtures of some chemicals in widespread use.

‘Scientific research gathered over the last few decades shows us that endocrine disruption is a real problem, with serious effects on wildlife, and possibly people’, EEA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade said. ‘It would be prudent to take a precautionary approach to many of these chemicals until their effects are more fully understood.’”

CommonDreams.org

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7 Medical Procedures You Don’t Need

Posted on May 11, 2012 by NCReview

“In what is the largest, most organized campaign of its kind, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation has asked doctors in nine medical specialties–from allergists to cardiologists–to each identify five tests or treatments they say are regularly prescribed but often overused or unnecessary.

‘We’re changing the culture in medicine,’ says Christine K. Cassel, M.D., president of ABIM, about its new Choosing Wisely campaign, which represents some 375,000 doctors, and also includes Consumer Reports. Cassel acknowledges that the treatments being singled out as overused can be valuable, even lifesaving, for the right people with the right symptoms–or with risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol or family health problems. The goal of this campaign, she says, is to get doctors and patients talking about which treatments are really needed and which aren’t.

What’s behind all this unnecessary medicine? Doctors have grown accustomed to ordering tests and treatments, often to protect themselves from malpractice suits. Patients have come to expect, even demand, drugs and tests for ordinary aches and pains.

Excerpts: An estimated 30,000 Medicare patients die each year from unnecessary care.

Up to one third of health care costs is estimated to be wasted on unnecessary treatments.

The current health care system ‘rewards excessive testing.’

Patients have to resist the idea that you’re better off [having the procedure/prescription] ‘just in case.’

7 Most Popular, most overused tests and treatments for people over the age of 50:

1)  EKGs and Stress Tests for Healthy People Without Symptoms

2)  Bone Scans for Osteoporosis for women under 65 and men under 70 with no risk factors

3)  Antibiotics for mild to moderate sinus infections

4)  NSAID Painkillers for people with  high blood pressure, hear failure and any chronic kidney disease

5)  CT Scans and other imaging for uncomplicated headaches

6)  Dubious diagnostic tests for suspected allergies

7)  X-ray, CT scan, MRI for low back pain”

Taken from May 2012 AARP Magazine

By Elizabeth Agnvall

 

 

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To Manifest or Not to Manifest–That is the Question

Posted on May 10, 2012 by NCReview

“I feel supremely confident about my manifesting abilities. I’ve certainly spent plenty of time studying and applying techniques for sending my energy out into the world with the specific purpose of drawing certain things into my life. A friend recently commented on my manifesting successes, with the caveat, “be careful where you point that thing.”

And we should be careful. Because it’s kind of absurd to assume that what we think we want—from our teeny, tiny human perspectives—is what we actually need, or even what would serve us or delight us most. The only thing any of us should ever really be concerned with manifesting is whatever is in our highest good as well as the highest good of all concerned. And most of us mortals walking around the planet have absolutely no clue what that would actually be.

So I’m manifesting from a new position now—a position of total surrender. I don’t make mind-movies or vision boards anymore. Yes, they’d bring me the things I put on them. But the things I’m craving now—the things I’m longing for—aren’t tangible enough to paste on a board. They’re bigger, broader than that—more tinged with delicious unknowing. What visual image can capture the experience of breathless awe?  Or truly conscious, connected love? Or the thrill of contribution and being deeply received? Sure, I could find pictures to represent those things, but no pictorial image comes close to stirring the feelings in me that I can generate by simply meditating on those intangible goodies.

Many manifestation experts will instruct you to be as specific as possible. I’m proposing you do the opposite. Make a list of the things you believe you want. Then, one by one, go down the list and see if you can tune into the feeling you believe that item or circumstance will give you. Understand that it’s the feeling you’re really after. Understand that the Universe is way smarter than you, and it might have a kick-butt idea for getting you that feeling—an idea you couldn’t even begin to dream of.

Lean back into the loving arms of the infinitely wise Universe and trust it to deliver. Lose yourself in imagining the feelings you want to feel, and let go of any specific circumstances or requirements you’ve attached to them. Generate those feelings for yourself as often as you can throughout your day and make them the cornerstone of your meditation practice. This is the essence of surrender and the Universe will find it irresistible. You will be dazzled by its compliance.”

Lisa McCourt, Author of Juicy Joy

About the Author: Unconditional love expert Lisa McCourt is a dynamic speaker, seminar leader and author whose 34 books have sold more than 5.5 million copies worldwide. Her new book, Juicy Joy – 7 Simple Steps to Your Glorious, Gutsy Self, teaches people to embrace “radical authenticity” to fully experience unbridled joy in life.

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Beloved Children’s Author Maurice Sendak Dies

Posted on May 8, 2012 by NCReview
Renowned children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) has died at the age of 83.  The Associated Press reports the creator of Where The Wild Things Are, In The Night Kitchen and Outside Over There passed away this morning due to complications from a stroke.

Sendak was born to Polish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, in 1928. He was a reclusive youth who was so frequently sick with measles, pneumonia, yellow fever, that his grandmother made him dress all in white so that death would think him already an angel and pass him by. He remembered being profoundly affected by the abduction and death of the Lindbergh baby when he was not yet four years old, believing that if the blond-haired, blue-eyed baby of a wealthy gentile hero could die, there was no hope for a sickly Jewish boy like himself.

Sendak sought out adventure in the pages of dime novels and comic books, and on the big screen at the Roxy, and he wrote and drew his own comics inspired by newspaper strips and Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse. The spark for Sendak’s love of stories also came from his father, who would invent fantastical tales rich with memories of the Old World – evocations that survived into Sendak’s own work.

Yet the Old World also brought him a knowledge of horror and evil that affected him profoundly. Sendak was still a child when stories of the Holocaust reached America. His mother would admonish his bad behavior by reminding him that his cousins had died in concentration camps and he was lucky to be alive. The reality of evil in the world, and the struggle to preserve innocence in the face of it, were prevailing themes in his work – and it was the honest and uncompromising way that he explored these themes that made him celebrated, controversial, and great.

May 8th 2012 By: Andrew Wheeler
Read More>
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ETs Have Always Been Among Us

Posted on May 8, 2012 by NCReview

Listen to our live interview with Paul Von Ward on Contact Talk Radio, Tuesday May 8th at 9am PDT. Paul is the author of We’ve Never Been Alone: A History of Extraterrestrial Intervention, and he will address some of the most provocative and fascinating questions in the universe. An interdisciplinary cosmologist and scholar, Paul has always focused on the bigger picture including exobiology (exo=ET), exopolitics, and exopsychology in a conscious multiverse.

With graduate degrees from Harvard and Florida State University, Paul has served as a psychologist, Protestant minister, U.S. naval officer and American diplomat. His research interests include reincarnation, the influence of advanced beings on human development, and the scope and nature of human and nonhuman consciousness. His conclusions have important implications for the effect of religious worldviews in societal conflicts and the reform of social institutions.

Paul is the founder of an international nonprofit for cross-cultural understanding and peace. His websites are: www.vonward.com and www.reincarnationexperiment.org.

This will be a live show and listeners are invited to call in and ask Paul questions.The number to call is 1.877.230.3062.

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e-books and Authors: The Good News

Posted on May 7, 2012 by NCReview

The Christmas holidays brought a spike in e-book sales, as many loved ones received tablets and e-readers in their stocking. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that print sales fell. However, according to the Association of American Publishers in their annual report last August, overall revenues, and number of books sold in all formats, were considerably higher in the three years since 2008.  E-book sales are what kept those numbers from flatlining.

But wait, there’s more good news about the trend toward e-book reading. According to the online Pew Research Center, PewInternet, e-book readers are also avid print book readers: 88% of e-book readers also read print books. E-book readers also read more books overall for a number of different reasons: work, pleasure, research, etc. The average reader of e-books reports to have read 24 books during the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by non-e-book consumers. And, they are more likely than others to actually purchase their own book, rather than borrow it, usually beginning their purchase search online. Those in this group are also voracious readers of long-form content, such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone. According to Pew’s forecast,  e-books will be 75 percent of total books sold by 2025.

I know it’s hard for the publishing community to accept these growing e-book sales statistics, but overall this is good news, given the healthy buying habits of the e-book reader. And as NY Times columnist Timothy Egan says, “If Amazon wasn’t inventing the future, somebody else would.”

Citing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Egan goes on to say, ” The Amazon Kindle e-book list is full of self-published authors represented by small presses. Many of those writers would never get their shot, defying publishing’s gatekeepers in New York, without the new format.
For all you writers, would-be writers, and closet writers, that’s the really good news.

 

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New Consciousness Titles Top NY Times Bestseller Lists

Posted on May 6, 2012 by NCReview

I was browsing the NYTimes online yesterday and discovered to my delighted surprise that five titles that one might call “new consciousness” are in the top ten of this week’s “print non-fiction” list: Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen; Drift, by Rachel Maddow; Heaven is for Real, by Todd Burpo; Imagine, by Jonah Lerher; and Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg.

From a hard look at war, to a little boy’s near death experience, to the power of thought and behavior, to candid reflections on life itself, these books are but a small sampling of how authors and other forward thinkers are positively shaping the way we understand and perceive the world. If this keeps up, we’ll have to change our name to “The New, New Consciousness Review!”

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