konane's Blog

This came in email, searches out to be true.  http://clusty.com/search?tb=firefox-1.2.13&locale=en-US&query=Herman%20Rosenblat

"The Girl With the Apple

An amazing and true story by Herman Rosenblat

"August, 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women, and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. "Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen." I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.

"Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.

My mother was motioned to the right-with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. "No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.

My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. "Don't call me Herman anymore," I said to my brothers. "Call me 94983." I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number.

Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel.

Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see.

I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone -a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German, "Do you have something to eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."

I didn't believe she would come back. It was much too dangerous. But I returned anyway, the same time the next day. And there she was. The same girl. She moved tentatively from behind the tree, and once again threw something over the fence. This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone. I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers. When I looked up the girl was gone.

I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat-a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her-just a kind farm girl-except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.

Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. "Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were at Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. At 8:00 A.M., there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp!

The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually, I made my way to England, where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.

One day, my friend Sid-whom I knew from England-called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date."

A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.

The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.

We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject. "Where were you," she asked softly, "during the war?"

"The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you never forget.

She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers."

I imagined how she must have suffered too-fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world. "There was a camp next to the farm," Roma continued. "I saw a boy there, and I would throw him apples every day."

What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like?" I asked.

"He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months."

My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it.this couldn't be.. "Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?"

Roma looked at me in amazement. "Yes."

"That was me!" I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel. "I'm not letting you go," I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.

"You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word: After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go. "

http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/girl-apple-jew.html
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"Survivor adds bar mitzvah to amazing life story

by frank eltman
the associated press

At 76, Herman Rosenblat has finally become a man.

The Holocaust survivor and his wife - who met as children in a concentration camp - were honored at his bar mitzvah last month at the Beth Shalom Chabad synagogue in Mineola, N.Y. ..................."

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/28695/edition_id/544/format/html/displaystory.html

"Break Through the Illusion of Limitation

By Guy Finley in Awareness on June 28th, 2008 / One Comment

Source Dream Manifesto

"Here's a strange paradox of the upward path that runs through Real Life: the more conscious we become of what limits us, the more limitless becomes our reality! So, take as long as you need to understand the following special lesson; it sheds much needed light on a certain dark state that stands between us, and the higher freedom for which we long.

The sole purpose of discouraged feelings is to keep your thoughts on what you can't do. And with your attention fixed in this fashion - on what seems impossible - there's no room for discovering what is possible - for what you can do.

In other words, the only thing discouraged states do is to keep you busy doing nothing except feeling sorry for yourself...which is the perfect guarantee that your situation will remain hopelessly the same. Enough is enough! You don't have to put up with one more discouraging moment, let alone a life limited by its darkness. There's another choice you can make besides falling into those familiar feelings of being a "failure." The next few insights will empower you to start thinking about old discouragements in a new way.

Whenever we suffer over what we aren't able to do, create, or work through, where is our attention in these moments? It's riveted on our own thought-produced reality that's telling us we're stuck! Maybe you can recognize some of these heavy-hearted inner voices that come with being victimized by such dark thoughts. In one way or another, they say . . .

"I'll never get out of this mess."
"It's too late!"
"I'm too set in my ways to change."
"This is hopeless."

Now on the surface of things, these all-too-familiar whispers of defeat - that speak to us with our own voice - seem genuinely concerned about our unwanted condition. But a deeper look tells a much different story. These troubled thoughts are part of an unseen "conspiracy of limitation" taking place in our own consciousness! Follow the next four ideas to their stunning conclusion. They prove that self-illumination and self-liberation are one and the same power.

The more these gloomy voices talk to us, the more discouraged we feel.
The more discouraged we feel, the more certain we are there's no other choice but to feel that way.
The more convinced we are that we have no choice, the less choice we have.
The act of identifying with this dark inner dialogue actually produces the dead-end we fear!
And so it goes: now we're convinced of our own captivity! There's no way past the limitations we perceive as being real. The key idea here lies in the word "perceive" because it rhymes with deceive. That's just what this perception is: a secret deception. Here's the liberating proof.

There are no dead-ends in real life.

Of course you must prove this bright fact to yourself, and here's a good place to start: in any given moment there's always something higher to do with your life than sit there and suffer over what you think you can't have, do, or be. Why wallow this way when a small amount of interior work will forever change how you see reality? For instance, see that the "size" of your discouragement is directly proportionate to how strongly you insist life conform to your demands. Verifying this self-imposed limitation empowers you, immediately, to let it go and start over.

Here's another example: maybe you've felt discouraged because you wanted to learn something new - a higher skill or a difficult lesson - but felt sure that certain limitations of yours placed this possibility beyond your abilities. Now you can do something much higher than just resign yourself to feeling discouraged.

Instead of falling into those familiar feelings of futility over yourself, deliberately drop those discourage-filled thoughts telling you the limit of your present view is the limit of your possibilities. Who you have been matters only to those dark states that want you to remain that way so that they can continue to rule the day. Refusing to dwell in the world of discouraged thoughts and feelings is the same as opening the door to a new world without limits. Just start working with who you are now!

In other words, do what's in your power and refuse to be discouraged about anything else. Keep repeating this new action one step at a time until you've walked away from the whole false idea that there's no further you can go!

Here are three special key lessons to help you strengthen and then actualize your wish to live in a world without limits:

1. Any conversation you permit yourself to have with discouraging thoughts guarantees you'll wind up with a good reason for feeling discouraged.

2. When you know that what you're looking for is what you already are - and not what you may become - you stand on the threshold of the limitless life.

3. The universe itself is actually set up for you to succeed with realizing the limitless life, which means you are made for whatever happens to you! "

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/break-illusion-limitation.html
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Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote

" My Financial Success Doesn't Require Hard Work. . .

If you believe that you must work hard in order to deserve the money that comes to you, then money cannot come to you unless you do work hard. Financial success, or any other kind of success, does not require hard work. It does require alignment of thought. You simply cannot offer negative thought about things that you desire and then make up for it with action or hard work. When you learn to direct your own thoughts, you will discover the true leverage of Energy alignment. "

" I Have Control Over the Thoughts I Think. . .

Since you have control over what thoughts you offer, what could be more just than the powerful Law of Attraction responding equally to everyone who offers a vibration? Once you gain control over the thoughts you think, your sense of injustice will subside and will be replaced with the exuberance for life and the zest to create that you were born with. Let everything in the Universe be an example to you of the way the Laws of the Universe work. "

" My Attention to It Invites the Essence of It

Anything you are giving your attention to is an invitation to the essence of it. Saying, I want money, but it will not come, is the same as saying, "Come to me, absence of money, which I do not want."

When you are thinking of money in the way that will make it come to you, you always feel good. When you are thinking of money in the way that keeps it from coming to you, you always feel bad. That is how you know the difference. "

" I Can Have Money and Freedom, Too. . .

A feeling of being overwhelmed is your indicator that you are denying yourself access to all manner of cooperation that could assist you if you were not disallowing them.

As you begin to feel freer regarding the expenditure of time and money, doors will open, people will come to assist you, refreshing and productive ideas will occur to you, and circumstances and events will unfold. As you change the way you feel, you access the Energy that creates worlds. It is there for your ready access at all times. "

This is a repost of a previous blog entry. 

For short attention speed scanners listening to 10 seconds of the first video believing they know the punch line ....... think again. 

These videos contain lots of ugly information about world money forces which have been in control our government and elected officials belonging to both parties.  For those who believe it's business, industry, oil in control, it's world banking money controlling them as it has been controlling the world for the past 250 or so years. 

No wonder Washington doesn't make sense anymore.

Listen and learn a bunch.

Lindsey Williams - The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 1 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbakN7SLdbk&feature=related

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 2 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGjbDjnNzw&feature=related

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 3 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39ic04vhNo&feature=related

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 4 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCyCYz_aHY&feature=related

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 5 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYmSGwAumk

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 6 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbwMOvV6ctg

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 7 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5HGHsy3H_0

The Energy Non-Crisis - Part 8 of 8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC61X78-OI0

Some more feel good stuff from a thankfully   rainy   Atlanta, GA.  Hope you enjoy! 

"Invite the Light That Shatters Self-Limitation

By Guy Finley July 12th, 2008
Source Dream Manifesto

"We are not created to spend our lives in fearful preparation over what may come - but rather to use whatever comes our way, each moment, to help us perfect our understanding that God is good.

In those moments when we meet a challenge that stands in our way, we are not meeting some immovable, transient object. In reality, we are meeting nothing more than our own present understanding of that event. Wherever we are - whatever we encounter - we meet there our own understanding.

This is such an important insight for us to ponder: the dimension - the breadth and depth of any event transpiring before us - is a reflection of the level of self that perceives it. In other words, life cannot be any deeper, wiser, shallow, or selfish than permitted by what we are capable of understanding about it.

There is such beauty and freedom in this realization about the nature of our reality: we look at life through the mirror of our consciousness and what we see there - whether all bound up or boundless - is determined by our present level of self-understanding. In other words, whenever our present nature meets some barrier, a limit of any kind, all it's really run up against is itself. The self that sees limitation . . . is the limitation it sees; this is why it can't see past that point! It is the "end" it sees; they are one thing.

On the other hand, true spiritual success is one and the same as our realization that, in real life, nothing ends without the birth of something else taking place in that same moment.

Our True Self is the creative Ground of a ceaseless genesis; our great task in life - through our awareness of the whole of it - is to be a kind of midwife to this eternal miracle of birth. And what is continually being born in us and into this world of ours - whether for its bitterness or brightness - depends on how we meet these changes that drive creation forward. Let's see how these grand ideas reveal themselves in our daily affairs.

As life pours itself out in the stream of passing time, and we run into challenges seemingly greater than our ability to answer, each of these encounters "asks" this question of us:

"Are you willing to change (who you have been) in order to realize a higher possibility of yourself?"

And though moments like these trouble us because of their uncertainty, here's why we should be very grateful for their continuing appearance in our lives: this unwanted experience of realizing our limitations is the only way life can ask us if we wish to go beyond them. So this unknown moment of not understanding (what is to be) is actually the beautiful seed of a new order of our being, providing we're willing to see it as such.

Unfortunately, most of us automatically resist the unknown. Whenever we can't understand the nature of some unwanted situation, we fall, by default, into the hands of a nature whose answer to this ache is always the same: get negative and then try to protect ourselves from anything that can't be otherwise controlled. The rest takes place in us on automatic pilot: in the wink of an eye, we begin to see the "way out" of our situation: blame him, fix that, fight or flee. But here's what we don't see: in that moment, our guiding light is a dark reaction dedicated, in one way or another, to avoiding what that moment came to give us. This false nature takes what was a celestially planned event - for the purpose of our further spiritual perfection - and turns it into a dead end.

We have all heard about people receiving messages, instructions from God. What you probably don't realize is that "communications of a celestial kind" are raining down on us every waking moment. In fact, each impression we receive - wanted or not - is just that: the Divine Life speaking to us, asking, "Would you like entrance into a larger world, one without fear and hatred? Do you wish to be more patient, loving, and kind? Are you interested in developing a relationship with a living Light that never goes out, and whose peace passes all understanding?" But before we can hope to affirm our answer, we must first see how these questions are being put before us.

Life repeatedly brings us moments that introduce us to some unseen limitation in our present level of self. For example, when conditions get too stressful, we can keep neither our patience nor our temper under control. Too often, though we know better, cruel words spring from our mouth as our way of answering cutting remarks from someone else. Perhaps we see how the fear of being betrayed (again) colors all our relationships, limiting our ability to give ourselves freely to those we would love.

The point should be clear: Time and time again, interior trials such as these return to help us see one thing: we can't get past them as long as we remain who and what we have been - because who and what we have been is what we are meeting in these same moments! Another way of stating this same insight is startling: Resisting what life shows us - not wanting those moments wherein we're invited to see the truth about our present level of Self - ensures they will return again! This is the interior meaning of reincarnation: the recreation of self through resistance to the negative effects of its own manifestations. It doesn't have to be this way. We are meant to rise above creation, not repeat our life through it in ever-descending cycles.

There's only one way for us to transcend the limitations of our present nature. We must see - as has been the purpose of this whole lesson - this one great fact: These limitations don't belong to us any more than the clumsy body of the caterpillar belongs to the butterfly liberated from its husk. Then, we must act on this new understanding by daring to let go of any part of us that wants us to embrace its limited view of life as our own.

True freedom is not an achievement; it is our awakened relationship and participation with the genesis of real life. We cannot create a life without limits by trying to overcome what we think stands in our way. Real limitless living is the fruit of this higher understanding: what is in our way is part of the Way. To know this is to know that all of creation has been made for you, just as surely as you have been made for everything that happens to you within it.  "
http://www.dreammanifesto.com/invite-light-shatters-selflimitation.html

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Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote

"I Don't Need to Have Money to Attract Money. . .

You do not have to have money to attract money, but you cannot feel poor and attract money. The key is, you have to find ways of improving the way you feel from right where you stand before things can begin to change: By softening your attention to the things that are going wrong, and by beginning to tell stories that lean more in the direction of what you want instead of in the direction of what you have got, your vibration will shift; your point of attraction will shift-and you will get different results.  ........."
__________

"I'm Developing the Skill to Direct My Thoughts. . .

The most valuable skill or talent that you could ever develop is that of directing your thoughts toward what you want-to be adept at quickly evaluating all situations and then quickly coming to the conclusion of what you most want-and then giving your undivided attention to that. There is a tremendous skill in deliberately directing your own thoughts that will yield results that cannot be compared with results that mere action can provide. ...."
__________

"I Will Praise Success Wherever I See It. . .

When you find yourself critical of the way anyone has attracted or is using money, you are pushing money away from yourself. But when you realize that what others do with money has nothing to do with you, and that your primary work is to think and speak and do what feels good to you, then you will be in alignment not only about the subject of money, but about every important subject in your physical experience. ......."
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"I Can Always Tell a Different Financial Abundance Story. . .

What anyone else has or does not have has nothing to do with you. The only thing that affects your experience is the way you utilize the Non-Physical Energy with your thought. Your abundance or lack of it in your experience has nothing to do with what anybody else is doing or having. It has only to do with your perspective. It has only to do with your offering of thought. If you want your fortunes to shift, you have to begin telling a different story. ......"

Great article, awesome information.  Hope you enjoy!     

"New Science Will Change the Direction of Civilization

By Bruce H. Lipton July 10th, 2008

Source DreamManifesto

"An Intimate Interview with Author Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D.

Q: What is it like for you to be pressing the edges of the conventional, entrenched wisdom of the medical/health care field?

A: I am on an amazing journey that is filled with exhilarating life experiences expressing both sweet and sour consequences. On the sweet side is the fact that I am having the most exciting time of my life!! My research revealed a revolutionary understanding of how life "worked" twenty years ago and this awareness is now beginning to be recognized by leading edge science. The beautiful part is that with a twenty year head start over my former colleagues, I have not only benefited by applying this empowering awareness in creating the joyous life I am experiencing, but I have been able to extend that knowledge to reveal how the world can thrive and evolve.

The sweetness of that knowledge is also where the "sour" part comes in to the picture. Our conventional world is engaged in a ruthless survival of the fittest competition, based upon science's endorsement of Darwinian theory, a belief that emphasizes, "life is a struggle for survival." In contrast, the new biology reveals a completely different understanding of our place in the world.

Science is now recognizing that we are an integral part of a giant living community, collectively referred to as Gaia. The new science underscores the fact that our survival is based upon the cooperation of all the organisms in the biosphere. Unfortunately, our social consciousness, shaped by Darwinian science, is so destructive to the environment that it has already precipitated the planet's sixth mass extinction-which of course threatens the survival of humanity.

Yet there is also good news. Just as some terminal cancer patients undergo a spontaneous remission, the living Gaia can do the same. As with those cancer patients, all we need to do to save our world is change our beliefs, and this is precisely the consequence of the evolving new science. My book, < snip >, provides an easy to understand explanation of how our thoughts and mind create both our internal (biological) and external (social) life experiences.

Q: What about your discoveries has most profoundly affected your life and the way you live it?

A: In the first instant of acquiring my new insights into how cells worked, I was completely transformed. As a conventional scientist, I taught my students that genes controlled life and that we were essentially "victims" of our heredity. When I first recognized that the brain of the cell was the cell membrane, rather than genes, I was blown away, for the mechanism revealed that life was controlled by signals from the "environment." The significance of this finding is that the identity of the "self," distinguishing one individual from another, would also represent an environmental (external) signal.

If the cell (organism) dies, its identity signal is still present in the environment. At that moment of awareness, I realized that we have an externalized "identity" (spirit) and are immortal. The realization of a transcendent "identity" brought an amazing sense of peace into my life, for I had truly lost the greatest of all fears...death. It was the most profound experience for me, a non-spiritual scientist that wasn't even looking for that particular understanding.

Subsequently, my life was transformed when I realized how my developmental experiences programmed my genes and behavior. With this knowledge I was able to rewrite limiting, self-sabotaging beliefs that were keeping me from experiencing the health, love and joy we all seek. I have actively created a wonderful healthy, fulfilling life and supporting environment. I love my days, sleep like a baby and enjoy life without the necessity of taking a single pharmaceutical drug!

One of the most important things I learned through my research was that human beings were biologically modeled after the anatomy and physiology of single cells. Cells are in a sense, miniature people. My research provided insight into understanding how the fifty trillion cells that comprise the human body can live in health and harmony under the skin. I was able to apply the fundamental principles of cellular life to the way I was living my life with great success.

In the words of old hippie philosophy, I was "cleaning up my own backyard before cleaning up the world." I learned to live better and healthier on less money, not only through modeling my efficiency upon cellular life, but also because my personal joy and satisfaction in life was no longer linked to consumerism. My pleasures are now directly derived through my appreciation of Gaia, my family and my community.

Q: If you were to choose one area that you feel is your greatest challenge in sharing your discoveries, what would that be?

A: As mentioned, the new science reveals that our preoccupation with competition and consumerism is compromising our species and our environment. There is a lot of money trying to keep us from evolving. Corporate and government interests, playing on our Darwinian fears, are undermining our civilization and environment. Simply, self-empowerment is not in the interest of those whose focus is to "control" civilization.

Wars, social and moral decay, faltering education, famine and much of our disease will be eliminated when the new science becomes common knowledge. The self-empowerment offered by the new science is a threat to those organizations that profit from war and ill health. Among others, these organizations include the military-industrial complex, the larger biomedical-pharmaceutical industry and those fundamentalist religions that encourage violence and self-limitation in seeking their ends.

Presently, these organizations are spending vast sums of money, enough to solve civilization's problems, to "control" and limit our abilities via the news, magazines and television programming. Consequently, it is a difficult endeavor to fight the tide of self-limiting, self-defeating propaganda sponsored by the moneyed interests. Yet, in recent years I have noticed vast changes in consciousness by people who intuitively know we are on the wrong track and are looking for a course correction.

Fortunately, books like The Biology of Belief, as well as a number of other new works of science, are aimed at introducing the mass reading audience to the life-changing power of their conscious mind. I believe we are approaching a threshold, like the notion of the hundredth monkey, where the new science will appear to spontaneously change the direction of civilization and save us from our excesses.

Q: When you consider your existing science and what other discoveries undoubtedly lie ahead, who do you believe human beings are capable of becoming?

A: We will learn that if there is a "heaven," it is right here on Earth. We will learn how to recreate the proverbial Garden of Eden. In this new awareness we will be able to guide our own stem cells to renew our lives, without the use of pharmaceutical agents. Like breathairian's, we will also learn to capture energy directly from the environment and will no longer be dependent upon the massive quantities of food we now think we need to eat.

This awareness should provide us with a natural lifespan of at least 120-140 years, while simultaneously taking the pressure off the environment to feed us. Interestingly, current research reveals that we can double the life of laboratory organisms by simply curtailing their metabolic intake.

The new science provides insight into how we manifest our reality. Since most people are looking for happiness, joy and health, their collective vision can create such a reality. Such a culture would be one that does not encourage disharmony and disease. That's already a good start in revitalizing Eden.

Q: When you witness the range of responses to your material - from great joy to outrage, no doubt! - what is it that keeps you moving forward?

A: The simplest answer is that I have found Heaven on Earth by personally applying the principles of the new science to the way I carry out my own life. I love my job of bringing this new science to the public, for in my travels, I have seen many people use this information to "taken control" of their own lives. There is nothing more joyous than to see an individual overcome physical and emotional adversity through self-empowerment. And on a more self-serving level, the more people create harmony in their world, the more harmony I experience in my world.

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/science-change-direction-civilization.html
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Abraham-Hicks Daily Quote

"The Law of Attraction Adds Power to Both Problems and Solutions. . .

The realization that something is not as you want it to be is an important first step, but once you have identified that, the faster you are able to turn your attention in the direction of a solution, the better, because a continuing exploration of the problem will prevent you from finding the solution. The problem is a different vibrational frequency than the solution-and all thoughts (or vibrations) are affected by (or managed by) the Law of Attraction. ....."

"My Attention to Unwanted Attracts More Unwanted. . .

For every pleasing thing, there is an unpleasing counterpart, for within every particle of the Universe is that which is wanted as well as the lack of that which is wanted. When you focus upon an unwanted aspect of something in an effort to push it away from you, it only comes closer, because you get what you give your attention to whether it is something that you want or not. It is up to you to focus upon and attract what is wanted. ........."

"The Better It Gets the Better It Gets. . .

When you deliberately seek positive aspects of whatever you are giving your attention to, you, in a sense, tune your vibrational tuner to more positive aspects of everything. And, of course, you could tune yourself negatively as well. But as you are deliberately looking for positive aspects in yourself or in others, you will find more of those things: "The better it gets, the better it gets," for you get more and more of what you are thinking about-whether you want it or not. ......"

"I Can Deliberately Choose to Feel Better Now.

Not only does the thought you are choosing right now attract the next thought and the next . . . and so on-it also provides the basis of your alignment with your Inner Being. As you consistently and deliberately think and speak more of what you do want and less of what you do not want, you will find yourself more often in alignment with the pure, positive essence of your own Source; and under those conditions, your life will be extremely pleasing to you. ......."   

Walter Reeves has been featured on PBS programs, has a weekly call in radio program and is considered the how-to person for gardening and tree advice.  Great article, his site is very informative for anyone looking to plant or care for anything.

"Ragweed Identification    (great to know for anyone allergic to it)

http://www.walterreeves.com/qa_display.phtml?qaID=2398

By Walter Reeves

Source WalterReeves.com

http://www.walterreeves.com/how_to/article.phtml?cat=26&id=288

Somewhere down the line I sense a class action suit by people traumatized by hatched global warming bs  .... when historical scientific facts demonstrate an impending ICE AGE ..... as NON-fearmongering scientists are saying.  Works for me!!!   

"Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

By Andrew Bolt
Source Herald Sun

"PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

(So have Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery, Profit of Doom Al Gore and Sir Richard Brazen, but I digress.)

"The patient had also developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies."

But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.

Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: "If we do not begin reducing the nation's levels of carbon pollution, Australia's economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands."

And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd's guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: "Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . ."

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd's next campaign slogan?

Of course, we can laugh at this -- and must -- but the price for such folly may soon be your job, or at least your cash.

Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity, from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licences to emit carbon dioxide -- the gas they think is heating the world to hell.

The cost of those licences, totalling in the billions, will then be passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food, housing, air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power. In some countries they're even planning to tax farting cows, so there's no end to the ways you can be stung.

Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth.

But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions.

The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.

Indeed, so fast are the world's emissions growing -- by 3.1 per cent a year thanks mostly to these two giants -- that the 20 per cent cuts Rudd demands of Australians by 2020 would be swallowed up in just 28 days. That's how little our multi-billions of dollars in sacrifices will matter.

And that's why Rudd's claim that we'll be ruined if we don't cut Australia's gases is a lie. To be blunt.

Ask Rudd's guru. Garnaut on Friday admitted any cuts we make will be useless unless they inspire other countries to do the same -- especially China and India: "Only a global agreement has any prospect of reducing risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels."

So almost everything depends on China and India copying us. But the chances of that? A big, round zero.

A year ago China released its own global warming strategy -- its own Garnaut report -- which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions.

Said Ma Kai, head of China's powerful State Council: "China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments . . . our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth."

In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: "It is quite inevitable that during this (industrialisation) stage, China's energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high."

Last month, India likewise issued its National Action Plan on Climate Change, and also rejected Rudd-style cuts.

The plan's authors, the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change, said India would rather save its people from poverty than global warming, and would not cut growth to cut gases.

"It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people."

The plan's only real promise was in fact a threat: "India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries."

Gee, thanks. That, of course, means India won't stop its per capita emissions (now at 1.02 tonnes) from growing until they match those of countries such as the US (now 20 tonnes). Given it has one billion people, that's a promise to gas the world like it's never been gassed before.

So is this our death warrant? Should this news have you seeing apocalyptic visions, too?

Well, no. What makes the Indian report so interesting is that unlike our Ross Garnaut, who just accepted the word of those scientists wailing we faced doom, the Indian experts went to the trouble to check what the climate was actually doing and why.

Their conclusion? They couldn't actually find anything bad in India that was caused by man-made warming: "No firm link between the documented (climate) changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."

In fact, they couldn't find much change in the climate at all.

Yes, India's surface temperature over a century had inched up by 0.4 degrees, but there had been no change in trends for large-scale droughts and floods, or rain: "The observed monsoon rainfall at the all-India level does not show any significant trend . . ."

It even dismissed the panic Al Gore helped to whip up about melting Himalayan glaciers: "While recession of some glaciers has occurred in some Himalayan regions in recent years, the trend is not consistent across the entire mountain chain. It is, accordingly, too early to establish long-term trends, or their causation, in respect of which there are several hypotheses."

Nor was that the only sign that India's Council on Climate Change had kept its cool while our Rudd and Garnaut lost theirs.

For example, the Indians rightly insisted nuclear power had to be part of any real plan to cut emissions. Rudd and Garnaut won't even discuss it.

The Indians also pointed out that no feasible technology to trap and bury the gasses of coal-fired power stations had yet been developed "and there are serious questions about the cost as well (as) permanence of the CO2 storage repositories".

Rudd and Garnaut, however, keep offering this dream to make us think our power stations can survive their emissions trading scheme, when state governments warn they may not.

In every case the Indians are pragmatic where Rudd and Garnaut are having delusions -- delusions about an apocalypse, about cutting gases without going nuclear, about saving power stations they'll instead drive broke.

And there's that delusion on which their whole plan is built -- that India and China will follow our sacrifice by cutting their throats, too.

So psychiatrists are treating a 17-year-old tipped over the edge by global warming fearmongers?

Pray that their next patients will be two men whose own delusions threaten to drive our whole economy over the edge as well. "

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23991257-25717,00.html

Awesome photos second link, they're doing some serious damage control.   

From a quick search the problem appears similar to a hair algae I got in my aquarium several years ago which attached itself to the bottom and sides, wafting in turbulence caused by filtration.  Definitely a pest species which takes over everything around it. 

Quick search for that type algae.

Species Name:       Enteromorpha flexuosa
Common Name:                  (Hollow Green Weed)

http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/Entero_flexuo.htm

Translation 

" Also some 40 days must hold the Olympic Games which attracted worldwide attention, Qingdao took the only Aofansai host city, actually has faced the unprecedented challenge. Recently, the massive eruption's enteromorpha caused the Qingdao seashore to lose former days's deep blue, turned a piece of green. Has the high nutrition even for medicinal purposes value enteromorpha, because is actually in flood in reproduction into Qingdao even Chinese heart's pain. Critical moment which must convene immediately at the Olympic Games, looked into the causes or holds responsible did not have the enough time, now can do only has by the quickest speed eliminates these seaweeds, but also Qingdao by deep blue, guaranteed the Qingdao Aofansai smooth success advance.
    At present the enteromorpha has not created the ecological hazard, actually serious influence Qingdao's seashore landscape and foreign image. After the national seaweed expert's urgent consultation, everybody thinks under the present this condition, only then one method can the quickest elimination enteromorpha, that be a character - fishes! Presently, fished the enteromorpha to the seashore already to become the entire Qingdao most urgent duty. At this moment, already had the formidable fishing for troop which composes in the blue army officers and soldiers and the local fisherman in the Qingdao offshore sea area to carry on the uninterrupted fishing. But more people already were also mobilized to participate this critical time Qingdao, even in Chinese image motion.

The following to help with the horizon arrives personally the photography the real-life scenery, Qingdao's POPER, go into action, my strength, ascends the Qingdao blue sea blue sky again, "


http://pop.pcpop.com/zpt/default.html?MainUrl=http://pop.pcpop.com/080630/4287272.html&referrer=http://pop.pcpop.com/top/5-5.html

Well looks like the Olympics may serve to direct environmentalists attention to real pollution problems.  If that happened in the US the media would have the the rest of the world throwing a hissie-fit at us.

Having kept an aquarium in the past there is a cycle in which waste is broken down with phosphate as the final by-product.  Phosphate is not toxic to fish but is a superb fertilizer for algae which is what happened here on a much larger scale.  Algae overgrows choking out other beneficial plants.

Looks like China could at least build some sewage treatment plants using water hyacinth then harvest those for fertilizer.

"Olympic nightmare: A red tide in the Yellow Sea -

Source  International Herald Tribune

Stumbled on this checking out something else.  First link to Neal Boortz for a summary of events, next links are two articles used to base this summary. 

 Times, dates events and people cited for historical verifiable reference.

"HILLARY FIRED? SHOULD HAVE BEEN DISBARRED!

Couple of great articles from halfway around the world. Enjoy and have a great Sunday!

Source  The Times of India for both articles

"MIND SET: THINK ABOUT IT

"Thoughts are things. You have probably heard this idea at one time or another. You have probably nodded your head in agreement understanding that thoughts are in fact, things. You probably believe this and accept that your thoughts, being things, do in fact have power.

Have you really thought about this? Do you apply this to your day-to-day life? Hopefully you do, because your every thought and word is contributing to your life experience.

For openers, your thoughts produce your emotions, which, in turn, result in how you feel about a particular event occurring in your life.

It has always amazed me how people can walk around feeling a particular way and not understand that it is their own thoughts, or more accurately what they are telling themselves that is producing the feeling in the first place.

This is why two people can look at the exact same event and have opposite feelings about it. You are creating your own reality, moment by moment, with the thoughts you choose to think and what you say, both to yourself and others. Let us explore this a little further.

Most people will agree, and science can demonstrate, that everything in our world is a field of energy and therefore has a particular frequency. The chair you are sitting on, your car, your cat, dog, you and everything else including thoughts, have a field of energy or vibration. "

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/SUNDAY_SPECIALS/Mind_Over_Matter/MIND_SET_THINK_ABOUT_IT/articleshow/msid-576729,curpg-1.cms
___________________

"Thank God for what you have

Has this ever happened to you? You pick up a book and a sentence leaps off the page as if it had been written just for you. Or you hear a revelation in the lyrics of a song. Sometimes an angel seems to whisper in your ear.

One ordinary morning I realised I was emotionally and physically exhausted from concentrating on things I wanted to buy but couldn't afford. I felt trapped in a vicious circle. The more I focused on lack and on what I couldn't have, the more depressed i became. The more depressed I became the more I focused on lack. My soul whispered that what I really yearned for was not financial security but financial serenity. I was still - quiet enough to listen. At that moment I acknowledged the deep longing in my heart. What I hungered for was an inner peace that the world could not take away. I asked for help and committed to following wheresoever Spirit would lead me. For the first time in my life i discarded my five-year goals and became a sojourner.

When I surrendered my desire for security and sought serenity instead, I looked at my life with open eyes. I saw that I had much for which to be grateful. I felt humbled by my riches and regretted that I look for granted the abundance that already existed in my life. How could I expect more from the Universe when I didn't appreciate what I already had? Immediately I made an inventory of my life's assets: my health, a wonderful husband, a beautiful and happy daughter, their health, our home and three precious pets who daily bring me faithful companionship and great joy. There's always plenty of good food on the table and wine in the pantry. We are also blessed with many wonderful friends who care deeply about us and share in our lives.

Once I started, my list grew. I loved my work; it was being sent out into the world and had been well received. What you give to the world will be returned to you. When I looked at my life's ledger I realised I was a very rich woman. What I was experiencing was merely a temporary cash-flow problem. Finally, I came to an inner awareness that my personal net worth couldn't possibly be determined by the size of my checking account balance. Neither can yours.

It doesn't matter how awareness arrives. What matters is that it comes. My heart began to overflow with gratefulness. I started giving thanks for everything: daisies in a jelly jar on my kitchen windowsill, the sweet fragrance of my daughter's hair, the first sip of tea in the morning and hearing the words "I love you" before I went to sleep. Each day began to offer me authentic moments of pleasure and contentment. But hadn't they before? The difference was that I was now noticing and appreciating each day's gifts. The power of gratefulness caught me by surprise.

All I ask you to do today is to open "the eyes of your eyes" and give your life another glance. Are your basic needs met? Do you have a home? Food on the table? Clothes to wear? Is there a regular paycheck coming in? Do you have dreams? Do you have your health? Can you walk, talk, see the beauty that surrounds you, listen to music that stirs your soul or makes your feet want to boogie? Do you have family and friends whom you love and who love you? Then pause for a moment and give thanks. "

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lifestyle/Spirituality/Mind_over_Matter/Thank_God_for_what_you_have/articleshow/2948028.cms

"Ideas Are The Easy Part - What Do You Need For Innovation?

By Wally Bock  June 14th, 2008
Source Dream Manifesto

" Ideas, including good ones, come naturally to human beings. As Robert Tucker said: "Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had a good idea." But good ideas are only the starting point for innovation.

No less an authority than Joseph Schumpeter put it this way: "to carry any improvement into effect is a task entirely different from the inventing of it, and a task, moreover, requiring entirely different kinds of aptitudes." In other words, it takes work to turn good ideas into something helpful and profitable.

Get Ideas from Everywhere
Human beings naturally have good ideas. They'll share them with you if you let them. But if you shoot down or ridicule every new idea you hear, people will stop sharing ideas with you.

Companies that produce lots of innovation start with ideas. They encourage idea sharing. As Jack Welch recommends, they get every brain in the game.

They also know that most great ideas don't sound so great at first. Great ideas become great as people work at molding them and shaping them and stretching them into useful form.

To get as many ideas as possible, create a climate where people can share ideas. They won't all be great ones. But some will and that's all you need. The other advantage of getting ideas from everyone is that you'll benefit from ideas you didn't have to develop yourself.

Learning from Others
Not only do other people get lots and lots of ideas. Some of them take the time to work out the details that you wouldn't spend time on. My experience with yogurt is an example.

I love yogurt and my favorite is fruit-on-the-bottom. For years I figured I had two options. I could eat through the yogurt down to the fruit. Or I could stand there in the kitchen and mix the fruit and yogurt together by stirring with my spoon.

Then, one day, I was at a friend's house and I watched his daughter take a container of yogurt out of the refrigerator and shake it vigorously. "What are you doing?" I asked her.

The girl gave me a look that only a teenager can give to a slightly-subnormal adult. "Mixing up my yogurt." She was polite enough not to add the word, "stupid."

What a neat trick! Now I shake my yogurt to mix it. Why didn't I think of that? I probably could have analyzed the problem and come up with the shaking solution, but what I did was working OK, so I didn't look for anything better.

Look around for innovations that others have created. Ideas that are almost sure to work are the best practices of other companies in your industry. But the breakthrough ideas often come from outside, from an industry that routinely solves a problem that's new to you. But, sometimes, innovations grow out of accidents or things that some curious soul happens to notice.

Hmmm, that's Interesting

Interesting things happen all the time. And they can become the source of innovation. But someone has to notice and take the next step.

At the National Institutes of Health, just like in laboratories around the world, researchers used frogs for experiments and often that involves surgery on the frogs. Researchers put the frogs away for the night in water that was filled with organisms that should have made the frogs sick.

But the frogs didn't get sick. Thousands of researchers for dozens of years thought nothing about that.

Then, in 1987, Dr. Michael Zasloff noticed and wondered why the frogs, with open wounds and in a septic environment weren't getting sick. I don't know what he said then, but I bet it was some variant of "Hmmm, that's interesting." That curiosity led Dr. Zasloff to the discovery of a new class of antibiotics, which he, being Jewish, named with the Hebrew word "Magainins."

The fact is that while everybody gets good ideas, not everyone is good at spotting a fortuitous coincidence and then doing the work necessary to turn it into something worthwhile. Japanese researchers Teruyasu Murakami and Takashi Nishiwaki found that only 5 percent of the people in most organizations are "idea creators." They suggest that a further 10 percent are idea supporters and promoters, but that 85 percent are "idea killers."

It's easy to spot the idea creators in your shop. They're the people who always want to find out why something works the way it does or try out an idea about improving a process. Put them together with supervisors who are idea supporters and promoters and they'll be an unending source of innovation. But they probably won't get it right the first time.

Inventors Don't Know Everything
You would think that the person who came up with a product idea or invention would be the best person to predict the uses for it. You'd be wrong. Thomas Edison is a good example.

When Thomas Edison introduced his phonograph in 1877 he could think of several uses for it. Why, you could record the last words of people who were about to die. You could teach spelling. You could make a talking clock. You could have a dictating machine for your office.

What wasn't important to Edison was using the phonograph to play music. Maybe it was because he had hearing problems, but Edison thought that the reproduction of music was a frivolous use of his wonderful invention and cheapened its image.

Other people didn't think the same way. They liked the idea of using the phonograph to play music. When they wanted to create an early jukebox that would play music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected. It took him almost twenty years to accept the fact that playing music was the use that mattered most to people, that mattered most to the market.

Don't fall in love with your technology. Don't think people will love what you love. Remember Edison and the phonograph. Remember Sony.

Sony was sure that their Beta format videocassette recorder would conquer the market and the world. It didn't, in part because the higher quality video that Beta offered was less important to customers and video rental stores than longer running time per cassette. In the end, the customer knows.

Get the Customers Involved
Customers may not be able to tell you what spiffy new products and services they will like, but that's OK. They can tell you what their problems are. They can react knowledgably and helpfully to an idea you've got for a product or service. And they'll find ways to use your product that you never thought of.

This afternoon I was in the supermarket. A man near me was using his camera phone to beam a picture of a can back to his wife at home. After he sent the picture, he put the handset to his ear, "Is that the right one?" he asked. He listened, then picked the can off the shelf and put it in his basket.

The people who invented the camera feature for cell phones never imagined all the uses people put them to. My contractor uses his to check on a job across town without driving to see if an installation is done correctly. People take surreptitious photos in locker rooms. They take pictures of auto accidents to use later in court. And, my favorite, my daughter sends me a picture of my grandson, at his birthday party two time zones away, while the party is in progress.

Customers know best what works for them. That makes one of the best innovation strategies the simple one of getting the customers involved early.

Give it a Try, and Quick!
The company with perhaps the most amazing record of innovation over the last century is the 3M Company. William McKnight was hired as an assistant bookkeeper at 3M in 1907 for the princely sum of $11.55 per week. He rose to become president in 1929 and was chairman of the board from 1949 to 1966. In that time he created the innovation culture that made 3M famous.

As I was working on a way to close this piece, I discovered a collection of his sayings that seemed better than anything I could say. Here they are.

Listen to anyone with an original idea, no matter how absurd it might seem at first.
Encourage, don't nitpick. Let people run with an idea.
If you put fences around people you get sheep. Give people the room they need.
Give it a try, and quick!"  "

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/ideas-easy-part-innovation.html

Read somewhere that Buddhists practice appreciation, gratitude, thankfulness and in remote monasteries whatever they needed somehow managed to be provided at the perfect time.  Thinking outside the box maybe a similar mindset might be applied to getting winning numbers.  

"Gratitude is a Key to Health And Happiness

By Catherine Price  June 18th, 2008

Source   DreamManifesto.com

"I have a confession: When I go to a bookstore, I like hanging out in the self-help section. I don't know if it's because I think I'll find a book that will solve all my problems, or if seeing all the books on problems I don't have makes me feel better about myself. But whatever it is, I keep going back.

On recent visits, I've noticed a trend: The market has been glutted by books promising the secrets to happiness. That might not seem new (isn't happiness the point of the entire section?), but these aren't touchy-feely self-help titles - they're books by scientific researchers, who claim to offer prescriptions based on rigorous empirical research. It's all part of the "positive psychology" movement that has spilled out of academic journals and into best-selling books, popular magazine articles, and even school curricula.

As I glanced through a few of these titles, two things quickly became clear. First, positive psychologists claim you can create your own happiness. Conventional wisdom has long held that each of us is simply born with a happiness "set point" (meaning that some people are constitutionally more likely to be happy than others). That's partially true - but according to positive psychologists Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ken Sheldon, research now suggests that up to 40 percent of our happiness might stem from intentional activities in which we choose to engage.

Second, in trying to explain which activities might actually help us cultivate happiness, positive psychology keeps returning to the same concept: gratitude. In study after study, researchers have found that if people actively try to become more grateful in their everyday lives, they're likely to become happier - and healthier - as well.

So how do positive psychologists recommend that you increase your level of gratitude - and, therefore, happiness? They endorse several research-tested exercises. These include keeping a "gratitude journal," where you record a running list of things for which you're grateful; making a conscious effort to "savor" all the beauty and pleasures in your daily life; and writing a "gratitude letter" to some important person in your life who you've never properly thanked.

These gratitude exercises all sounded pleasant enough, but would they work for me? While I'm not currently depressed, I'm very aware that depression runs in my family: I'm the only person - including the dog - who has not yet been on Prozac. So I decided to indulge in all three of these exercises over a six-week period, risking the possibility that I might become an insufferably happy and cheerful person.

I emailed University of Miami psychologist Michael McCullough, a leading gratitude researcher, to ask what he thought I could expect as a result of my gratitude overdose.

"If you're not experiencing more happiness and satisfaction in your life after this six-week gratitude infusion," he wrote back, "I'll eat my hat!"

Getting Grateful
My first step was to get a gratitude journal. Luckily, a year earlier my recently retired father had stumbled across a bookstore that sold "quotable journals" - blank books with inspiring quotes on their covers. My father, always a sucker for inspiration, sent me seven of them. I settled on one with a cover that said, in all caps, "Life isn't about finding your-self. Life is about creating yourself." Given my experiment in manufactured happiness, this seemed appropriate.

Journal at my side, I decided to start by taking a happiness inventory (available, along with a bunch of other quizzes, at authentichappiness.org, the website run by positive psychology guru Martin Seligman). I scored a 3.58 out of 5, putting myself ahead of 77 percent of participants, but still leaving plenty of room for improvement - as evidenced by my first journal entry.

"It's been a somewhat depressing day," starts my gratitude journal. "Or, rather, week."

At first, it felt a little awkward to keep a journal specifically for gratitude - I felt as if I should plaster my car in cheesy bumper stickers ("Happiness is") and call it a day. But even on that first downbeat afternoon, my journal did make me feel a little better about things. Listing things I was grateful for made me feel, well, grateful for them - and since I'd also decided to jot down moments each day that had made me happy (another positive psychology-endorsed exercise), I had a concrete list of cheerful experiences to look back on when I was feeling down.

Thanks to my journal, I know that on January 18th I was happy because I'd exercised, had a good Chinese lesson, and spent 15 minutes dancing around my room to Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie." On January 30th, I was grateful for my perseverance, the Pacific Ocean, and the fact that I have really, really good cholesterol.

I've always kept a journal, but once my initial excitement about my new project had passed, my writing schedule felt a bit contrived - I often had to force myself to stay awake for a few minutes before bedtime so that I wouldn't miss an entry. But I quickly found that encouraging myself to focus on the good in my life instead of dwelling on the bad was helping me gain a bit of perspective on things. "The actions in my day-to-day life are actually quite pleasant," I wrote on January 21st, in a moment of insight. "It's anxieties that get me derailed."

It was also good to get in the habit of countering bad things in my day with reflections on the good. For example, on February 1st - which I described as "having a lot going against it" - I wrote that I "spent a bunch of the day cleaning my room and trying to get my new phone to work, went on fruitless errands, ripped out part of a sweater I was knitting, and when I emailed the pattern designer - who goes by "Yarn Boy" - to ask if he could help me figure out where I'd gone wrong, he sent me an email back telling me to 'take it to a yarn shop.' Thanks a lot, Yarn Ass." And yet the entry ends as follows: "But I did get my phone set up and cleaned my room a bit. Chinese went well. I got cute new barrettes. I worked out even though I didn't feel like it, then I savored the feel of my calf muscles."

That might not sound like much, but trust me: It's an improvement.

Despite my calf muscle appreciation, I wasn't exactly sure how to practice my "savoring" exercise, so I emailed Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University who teaches an immensely popular class called "Science of Well-Being and Character Strengths." Kashdan, who worked on the floor of the stock exchange until a late night revelation on a golf course made him realize he'd rather spend his life studying creativity and happiness, wrote back quickly.

"You can do something simple, such as stop and notice an instance of natural beauty, e.g., a sunrise, a flower, a bird singing, a couple gazing at each other," he suggested. "Or start keeping a journal of beautiful moments in which you write down each day the most beautiful things you saw and then return to it before you go to sleep."

Not wanting to start another journal, I instead tried to take more time to appreciate my surroundings. On an eight-mile run on a fire trail, I stopped at a bench on top of a steep hill to give myself a chance to "savor." I felt a bit like I was cheating - after all, the real reason I'd stopped was that if I hadn't, I'd have thrown up - but as my heart rate slowed I allowed myself to appreciate what was around me: the view of San Francisco, the warmth of the sun, the cool breeze, and the sounds of the birds. It made me feel nice, and since it didn't involve jogging, I continued to savor for 20 minutes before forcing myself back on the trail.

Surprisingly, that exercise made me want to try to savor other small things in my day: watching a mechanic on break from work crack open a beautiful ripe pomegranate, noticing rays of light outside my kitchen window - even enjoying the feeling, weird as it might sound, of brushing my own hair. These were all small, private moments, but consciously trying to find things to savor was kind of like looking for manhole covers on the street: Once you start paying attention, they're everywhere.

For my gratitude letter, I decided to write one to my grandmother back in New York for her 84th birthday. It took me three weeks to build up the emotional energy to do it (something about putting all that emotion down on paper made me procrastinate), and, as expected, as soon as I started writing, I began to cry.

"I remember you singing me to sleep when I was little," I wrote. "And helping me with my math homework and quizzing me on spelling while I tried to do handstands in the living room, and picking me up from the school bus, and coming into school for grandparents' day - I was always so proud to have you there." I told her how lucky I felt to have her in my life, how much I respected her for having raised my mother on her own, and how much it meant to me that we were so close. By the time I finished writing the letter, I was exhausted - and when I called to read it to her (since she lives across the country, I couldn't do it in person), we both ended up in tears.

Negativity Bias
Halfway through my experiment, I was running into problems. I had been trying to appreciate happy moments in my life, but that didn't stop me from getting into a verbal fight with a mechanic, who became so angry that he threatened to have me arrested. I had delivered my gratitude letter to my grandmother, which did make us both happy, but also made her think I was writing her eulogy; she told me, pointedly, that she wasn't planning to die yet. And when I tried to savor a beautiful afternoon by taking a hike along the coast with my boyfriend, we got poison oak.

What's more, I noticed that when I was particularly stressed or angry or feeling down, I didn't want to reflect on things I was happy or grateful for. During those moments, thinking about reasons my life was good just made me more anxious.

I decided to call Julie Norem, professor and chair of the psychology department at Wellesley College, for reassurance. She told me my reaction made sense.

"If you're trying to be grateful all the time but are in a really sucky situation," she said, "then you set yourself up for feeling like things are even worse than they were before because you didn't get cured by this gratitude thing that was supposed to make you happy."

Granted, Norem has her biases. She's the author of a book called The Positive Power of Negative Thinking and believes that for some people, whom she calls defensive pessimists, trying to be constantly positive and optimistic can lead to more stress. But apparently I'm biased, too, because as I read through her website, I could feel myself identifying with it.

"Defensive pessimists lower their expectations to help prepare themselves for the worst," says her website. "Then they mentally play through all the bad things that can happen. Though it sounds like it might be depressing, defensive pessimism actually helps anxious people focus away from their emotions so they can plan and act effectively."

Intrigued, I took the quiz on Norem's website titled "Are you a defensive pessimist?" and scored exactly in the middle between optimism and defensive pessimism - which makes sense, given the fact that I do try to be positive about things, but use negativity to cope. It goes along with a saying I learned from my grandmother: "Hope for the best; expect the worst."

Perhaps ironically, thinking about pessimism made me feel better, especially when University of Michigan psychologist Christopher Peterson admitted to me that even positive psychologists like himself are not always brimming with joy. "I'm not a Pollyanna," he said when I called to ask how positive psychology had affected his life. "And obviously, someone who's unrelentingly cheerful can be a pain in the ass."

Happy Meal
But how about unrelenting gratitude? To celebrate finishing my experiment - not to mention filling up my journal-I took my boyfriend out for dinner at a restaurant here in Berkeley called Café Gratitude. It's a place that is anathema to my cynical New York roots: cheery waitresses who call everyone "darling," posters on the walls that ask questions like, "Can you surrender to how beautiful you are?" and, worst of all, a menu of organic, vegan dishes, all named with life-affirming sentences. For example, saying to your server, "I am fabulous" means that you would like some lasagna. "I am fun" indicates that you want some toast. Unfortunately, there is no organic, vegan interpretation of "I am about to vomit."

My boyfriend and I settled on being generous, fulfilled, and accepting (guacamole, a large café salad, and a bowl of rice), and in honor of my experiment, I insisted on ordering the "I am thankful" (Thai coconut soup, served cold). To offset the restaurant's unrelenting cheer, we both ordered alcohol (luckily, even in Café Gratitude, a beer is just a beer).

While nibbling on carrot flaxseed crackers ("I am relishing"), we talked about the past six weeks. McCullough doesn't need to eat his hat - I definitely had experienced moments of feeling happier and more consciously grateful as a result of the exercises, and by the end of my experiment, my happiness index had gone up to 3.92. But I also found that there are times when I need to allow myself to feel bad without fighting against my negative emotions. And my cynical side continues to dream of opening a rival restaurant next door called the Cantankerous Café, with menu items like "I am depressed" and "I am resentful."

My biggest question was how long these exercises' effects would last.

"Sometimes positive psychologists sound like we're trying to sell miracles to people. There are no miracles. ... There are no long-term quick fixes for happiness," said Peterson, when I asked him how I could maintain my happiness boost. "So if you become a more grateful person and you add those exercises to your repertoire, you'll be different six months or a year from now. But if you say okay, I'm done with the story and I'm going back to the way I was, it'll just have been a six-week high. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not going to permanently change you."

Perhaps that's why, when I got home from dinner, I went straight to my bookcase where I keep stuff my dad has sent me - and picked out another journal.

Reprinted from Greater Good magazine, Volume IV, Issue 1 (Summer 2007)  "

http://www.dreammanifesto.com/gratitude-key-health-happiness.html

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Abraham-Hicks quotes

" Hard work is not the path to Well- Being. Feeling good is the path to Well-Being. You don't create through action; you create through vibration. And then, your vibration calls action from you.

Excerpted from a workshop in Washington, DC on Saturday, May 7th, 2005

All Is Well "
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"  You can never have a happy ending at the end of an unhappy journey; it just doesn't work out that way. The way you're feeling, along the way, is the way you're continuing to pre-pave your journey, and it's the way it's going to continue to turn out until you do something about the way you are feeling.

Excerpted from a workshop in West Los Angeles, CA on Saturday, August 6th, 2005

All Is Well
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"Find thoughts that feel good, because it is inevitable that you are going to always be moving toward something. So why not be moving toward something that is pleasing? You can't cease to vibrate, and Law of Attraction will not stop responding to the vibration that you are offering. So, expansion is inevitable. You provide it, whether you know you do, or not. The only question is, what is the standard of joy that you are demanding for yourself? From your Nonphysical perspective, it's a high, high standard.

Excerpted from a workshop in Seattle, WA on Saturday, July 2nd, 2005

All Is Well "
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"You cannot continue to beat the drum of things that don't feel good when you beat them-without filling your future experience full of things that don't feel good. At some point, there's going to be a tipping point that's going to become a manifestation.

Excerpted from a workshop in Philadelphia, PA on Thursday, May 12th, 2005

All Is Well "