Been listening to our buddy Wayne Dyer on the CD player during the long and frequent drive to Geneseo and back. He talked about an energy healing method I'd never heard of (and I'm pretty well versed in all things fringe and woo-woo), so I ducked into the bookstore in Geneseo to hunt up the reference:
http://www.amazon.com/Sanctuary-Path-Consciousness-Stephen-Lewis/dp/1561708453
Despite much help from a bookstore guy who looked like he'd spent too many hours in the hallucinogenic plants section, no book was forthcoming. Not wanting to have to cope once again with the inexorable slowness of the accursed Media Mail, I popped into a Barnes and Noble on the way home and paid full price *shudder* for a copy. John read it in one sitting and is all set to have an energy frequency adjustment or whatever the hell it's called.
Okay, maybe it's my Scots blood, but I have a little trouble with just sending a check (and a not insignificant one at that) and waiting for someone, somewhere to heal me using cosmic rays. So what if it is endorsed by not only Wayne but a slew of 1980's B list actresses? I'd be a lot more enthusiastic if I could go to Arizona or California or wherever-the-hell and meet this "Max" person, see his magnificent machine, talk to "Jennifer". I wanna believe, really I do - I'm clapping like crazy here - but I have the same problem, essentially, that I had with Redfield (Redfern? Redsomething...) and the Celestine books: retreaded philosophy being passed off as discovery in a penny-dreadful novel. Tossing in occasional Einstein and Plato quotes doesn't elevate the material so much as convince us that the author has a Bartlett's nearby and isn't sure that his audience would recognize other names. Calling it a "religion" sounds to me like a simple tax dodge. As I said, maybe I'm just a cynical Scot.
But I do believe in the ability of the mind to heal, and even if it can all be written off as coincidence (which I don't believe in, incidentally), placebo effect or some other more esoteric cause, bottom line is whether or not the patient is better in his own eyes. So if your back is so bad that you can't get out of bed for more than a few hours at a time, or your liver is compromised and western medicine can't offer you more than a 5% chance of remission after 18 months of torment, maybe you go for it. Maybe, for whatever reason, you feel better. That's all that matters.
So I'll keep clapping just as hard and as fast as I can.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Energies
Ah, the things we learn. Things that absolutely cannot possibly work, yet...do.
To wit: being able to discern the desirability of a given substance by pressing it into one's solar plexus while someone presses down on one's extended arm. If the arm is more easily pressed, the food, drink, drug or what-have-you is a poor choice for the individual; if the arm seems to grow stronger, then the individual will benefit from the substance.
I have not yet read the studies, so I withhold judgment until I've seen some of the experimental details, but David Hawkins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Hawkins
appears to have done quite a few interesting pieces of research. I've got his book, Power vs. Force, coming from the library
And I've done the testing myself, on family members, and had them do the same to me. Fascinating stuff. Of course, it cannot possibly work, yet it does. Go on, try it - you know you want to: Stand with your left arm out and have your partner put his/her left hand on your right shoulder and try to push your arm down using the index and middle fingers of his/her right hand. The strength with which you can resist this pressing supposedly is an indicator of your general energetic health. (http://www.innersource.net - we love Donna Eden. Thanks, Katrina.) Now you hold the substance in question in your right hand, pressing it firmly into your solar plexus. Arm stronger = good for you, arm weaker = bad for you. We've even done rough double blind testing, and still the results come back: aspartame is really bad for everyone, sugar is bad for my husband (mr. pre-diabetes) but not so bad for me, various vitamins are better or worse for different family members. Those are the ones that get me - different results for different folks.
Can't you just hear Horatio muttering something about this being wondrous strange?
My next odd-but-true is a well-documented phenomenon in persons suffering from multiple personality disorder (itself, in my book, an odd-but-true.) It seems that one personality can be diabetic -or allergic, whatever - and another personality can be not so afflicted. Same body, different energies.
Next week sometime, assuming it Does Not Snow Any More - we got another 18" of the sloppy wet white stuff - I'll be getting back to work. Before I do, though, I'm going to a therapist (hold your applause, please) to be regressed through my past lives. This is another thing that cannot possibly work, yet appears to, and from my standpoint, whether or not something is "true" or understandable from a certain perspective is not nearly as important as whether or not its practice helps the individual.
Strange doin's on Jackass Hill.
Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
To wit: being able to discern the desirability of a given substance by pressing it into one's solar plexus while someone presses down on one's extended arm. If the arm is more easily pressed, the food, drink, drug or what-have-you is a poor choice for the individual; if the arm seems to grow stronger, then the individual will benefit from the substance.
I have not yet read the studies, so I withhold judgment until I've seen some of the experimental details, but David Hawkins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Hawkins
appears to have done quite a few interesting pieces of research. I've got his book, Power vs. Force, coming from the library
And I've done the testing myself, on family members, and had them do the same to me. Fascinating stuff. Of course, it cannot possibly work, yet it does. Go on, try it - you know you want to: Stand with your left arm out and have your partner put his/her left hand on your right shoulder and try to push your arm down using the index and middle fingers of his/her right hand. The strength with which you can resist this pressing supposedly is an indicator of your general energetic health. (http://www.innersource.net - we love Donna Eden. Thanks, Katrina.) Now you hold the substance in question in your right hand, pressing it firmly into your solar plexus. Arm stronger = good for you, arm weaker = bad for you. We've even done rough double blind testing, and still the results come back: aspartame is really bad for everyone, sugar is bad for my husband (mr. pre-diabetes) but not so bad for me, various vitamins are better or worse for different family members. Those are the ones that get me - different results for different folks.
Can't you just hear Horatio muttering something about this being wondrous strange?
My next odd-but-true is a well-documented phenomenon in persons suffering from multiple personality disorder (itself, in my book, an odd-but-true.) It seems that one personality can be diabetic -or allergic, whatever - and another personality can be not so afflicted. Same body, different energies.
Next week sometime, assuming it Does Not Snow Any More - we got another 18" of the sloppy wet white stuff - I'll be getting back to work. Before I do, though, I'm going to a therapist (hold your applause, please) to be regressed through my past lives. This is another thing that cannot possibly work, yet appears to, and from my standpoint, whether or not something is "true" or understandable from a certain perspective is not nearly as important as whether or not its practice helps the individual.
Strange doin's on Jackass Hill.
Horatio: O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet: And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Waiora and the weather
Today Wintry Mix Hi 42°F | Tonight Rain/Snow Likely Lo 32°F | Friday Rain/Snow Likely Hi 39°F | Friday Night  Chance Snow Lo 28°F | Saturday Chance Rain/Snow Hi 43°F | Saturday Night Rain/Snow Likely Lo 29°F | Sunday Rain/Snow Likely Hi 40°F | Sunday Night Snow/Rain Likely Lo 29°F | Monday Snow/Rain |
It just Really. Never. Ends.
Okay, so it seems that life as A Professional Gardener is sort of on hold. That's okay. I go back and forth in my estimation of my occupation. On good days, I'm doing what I love, beautifying the world for others, living in nature and helping all green growing things along, organically even. On bad days, I'm spending my dwindling days tugging the errand blade of grass from an area no one sees anyway, or shoveliing rocks. Usually, it's somewhere in between: I am doing what I love, which just happens to be tugging out errant blades and digging in the dirt.
There are other things that I want to pursue, however. I do want to write another book, dammit. I do want to draw more than I've been, and work on my colors. I've pretty much given up watercolors, incidentally - to work in watercolor, you have to be decisive, and I'm not, or at least not sufficiently, so I'm back to oil. If only for the smell. Linseed oil smells like....happiness.
We all know I want to fix up my house. We also know not to hold our collective breath; if we didn't, we asphixiated long ago.
One other thing I want to pursue. Waiora makes health products, and I've been using them for some time and been impressed with both the products and the company. http://my.waiora.com/home.php?255701 Yeah, it's a network marketing thing, although I didn't get into it for that - it sort of evolved after experience with the products and wanting to tell others about them. I'm not a bandwagon kind of gal, but someone I know personally has gone from working five days a week at an opthalmologist to working one day a week plus doing the Waiora thing, and that sounds good to me. It's not in my long range plan for my life, but I need to make more money and I'm trying really hard to learn to be open to anything instead of only what I think is appropriate or part of The Plan. So I'm willing to give it a shot, and to do that I have to sink a little time into it. And from the weather above, it looks like time is just what I've got along about now.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Pareidolia
Remember that woman who had a cheese sandwich with the face of the Virgin Mary on it? Seeing the face of anyone, mortal or immortal, in a thing such as a cloud, a sandwich or a water tower is called pareidolia - betcha didn't know there was a name for that sort of thing. (I'm sure there's a name for someone who pays $28K on ebay for said sandwich, too....such buyers being born every minute.)
There are names, words for just about anything - the trick is looking something up when you don't know what it call it. The only daily arrival I allow in my email box is about words, and if you aren't familiar with it, you're missing out on something cool and worthwhile: http:wordsmith.org
I'm getting ready to paint my bedroom, and while it'll be nice to have something clean and pretty and from this century (I currently sleep in a room with 1940's cowboy-and-Indian wallpaper), I'll miss my own form of pareidolia - making faces, characters and shapes out of the ripped off areas of wallpaper, plaster patches, and the old water stains on the ceiling. I have, among others, a big fish, a camel who's thinking a thought (when he acquired two more thought balloons it was time to repair the roof) and Mike Doonesbury in profile. Yes, I'll miss these guys.
I once grew an eggplant that looked like Richard Nixon. If I can find the pictures of it, I'll post one. Meanwhile, I'll sand plaster and work on refining my vision of the farm, watching the snowfall...here on Jackass Hill.
There are names, words for just about anything - the trick is looking something up when you don't know what it call it. The only daily arrival I allow in my email box is about words, and if you aren't familiar with it, you're missing out on something cool and worthwhile: http:wordsmith.org
I'm getting ready to paint my bedroom, and while it'll be nice to have something clean and pretty and from this century (I currently sleep in a room with 1940's cowboy-and-Indian wallpaper), I'll miss my own form of pareidolia - making faces, characters and shapes out of the ripped off areas of wallpaper, plaster patches, and the old water stains on the ceiling. I have, among others, a big fish, a camel who's thinking a thought (when he acquired two more thought balloons it was time to repair the roof) and Mike Doonesbury in profile. Yes, I'll miss these guys.
I once grew an eggplant that looked like Richard Nixon. If I can find the pictures of it, I'll post one. Meanwhile, I'll sand plaster and work on refining my vision of the farm, watching the snowfall...here on Jackass Hill.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Jackass legend
| This Afternoon  Heavy Snow Hi 27°F | Tonight Snow Likely Lo 18°F | Friday Snow Likely Hi 31°F | Friday Night  Chance Snow Lo 18°F | Saturday Chance Snow Hi 33°F | Saturday Night Chance Snow Lo 20°F | Sunday Chance Snow Hi 37°F | Sunday Night Chance Snow Lo 23°F | Monday Chance Snow Hi 37°F |
I guess we won't be having Easter egg hunts outdoors this year. This is ridiculous even for this part of the country. And up here on Jackass Hill, it'll likely be a few degrees colder yet.
No one knows for sure how Jackass Hill got its name, but it appears just that way on the maps from around 1850, so it's not a recent development. I believe it was a past town historian who offered the following local legend:
It seems there was a farmer at the top of the Hill who raised mules for a living. A traveling preacher came up the hill one evening in his horse-drawn buggy, and the mules made such a ruckus that the horse spooked, overturning the buggy and updumping the preacher and all his belongings. The preacher, beyond angry as he gathered himself and his gear from the dirt road, shouted, "If Our Lord rode into town on one of those creatures, it's no wonder they crucified Him!"
Happy Easter.
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