Life Energy

Life energy is as important to us as life-blood.  Our energy consists of three different types: physical, intellectual, and emotional.  Physical energy provides stamina, allows for feeling fully rested, and fuels alertness.  Intellectual energy powers the mind – thought processes, information processing, and creativity.  Emotional energy manages stress, brings patience, and helps navigate through difficult situations.  It is so important to avoid things that drain energy, especially self-induced things like worrying about the future or things that have happened in the past.  It is also draining to be overly hard in self-judgment or in judging others.  When low in energy, think of things that bring happiness and calmness into your life.  This may differ from person to person.  Some examples: talking to a friend, going for a walk outside, listing to a favorite song, treating oneself to lunch, yoga, exercise, meditation.  No matter how busy the day looks, the short break will pay dividends in providing renewed energy to face the day’s challenges.

Photo courtesy of Morguefile

Patience – the Calm in a Storm

Patience is likely the most positive attribute a person can possess.  It is the calm in a storm and the helping hand that leads through tough times.  Patience is the salve that soothes anger and brings emotional control.  It freezes problems in their tracks and provides the time to come up with a solution.  Patience provides wisdom and discretion.  It gives others the permission to be human, listens to what the other person has to say, and empathizes with how they feel.  Patience is love.

In an emotionally charged situation, patience is often the last thing that comes to mind.  Taking a short, quiet pause and momentarily detaching from the situation may provide just enough of a break to allow the healing patience to flood in.

Nature's Energy

Stirring in the early dawn

Mind racing in ten different directions

Resisting the need to awaken

Finally drag myself out of bed

Sun painting its good morning hues

Dress and head out for a hike

Walk slowly toward a wistful day

Two cardinals sing a joyful duet

Enter the darkness of the forest

Feel the coolness warm the heart

Woodpecker drums to a natural tune

Walking a bit faster to the rhythm

Scintillating sunlight greets the eye

Beams dancing with the wind

Forest infusing sharp awareness

Mind slowly starts to clear

Move with purpose on the path

Forest scents spark the senses

Arriving at the verdant meadow

Wildflowers paint the picture

Dancing into a brand new day

Nature sparks the soul to life

Peaceful calm powers the mind

Prepared to do amazing work

Stock photo

Anger or Caring?

Most people wish to avoid situations that lead to anger.  Yet, it is inevitable that one gets angry or does something that causes anger in someone else.  Anger is almost always a surface emotion that results from deeper emotions and very often comes from having a strong desire for something, often from another person.  When that desire is not met, a person may feel grief, loneliness, abandonment, and/or the sense of not being valued.  Yet, these emotions often manifest outwardly as anger.  Sometimes anger stems purely from one’s own foolishness or unrealistic expectations.   When two people are working through anger, it is often difficult to remember that anger almost always stems from caring – if someone did not care, they would likely act in indifference, apathy, or ignore the issue, perhaps even breaking contact.  Remembering that caring is one of the root feeling will help both individuals work together to expose the root emotions or unmet need, help lead to a resolution, and ultimately strengthen the relationship.

Stock photo from Morguefile

When Not to Lend a Helping Hand

Most everyone wants to help out when they feel there is a need.  Having a helping hand from someone may be just the lift we need to get something done, get through a difficult situation or endure a tough day.  Yet, there are times when the best way to help out is not to do anything.  These situations are often difficult to identify, especially if a person has a giving personality.  Providing help when help is not needed, however, can be counterproductive, may stifle a learning opportunity, could lead to resentment, or even harm the other person.  It is best to find out if help is actually needed before jumping in and doing something that may lead to a regretful situation.

~Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Telepathy from a Scientific Perspective

Have you ever experienced a situation where you knew what someone was going to say just before they said it?  Or knew who was calling when the telephone rang?  The concept of telepathy, or the ability to read someone’s thoughts and wordlessly send someone information, appears frequently in works of fiction and fantasy, but considered by most people as a mythical talent.  Telepathy is considered one of many “psi” talents, or a form of extrasensory perception, other examples of which are synchronicity and precognition.  This article attempts to explore telepathy from a scientific perspective.

Most scientists do not recognize telepathy, citing that there is no compelling evidence that it exists and further suggest that there is no physiological function in the brain that supports it.  Critics cite poorly controlled experiments and inconclusive results.  [1,2]  Jan Dalkvist writes:

"Within the scientific community however, the claim that psi anomalies exist or may exist is in general regarded with skepticism…the scientist at least officially requires replicable results from well controlled experiments to believe in such phenomena - results which according to the prevailing view among scientists, do not exist." [3]

William Drees adds:

"Let me take the example of claims in parapsychology regarding telepathy across spatial or temporal distances, apparently without a mediating physical process.  Such claims are at odds with the scientific consensus."  [4]

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung are two notable exceptions.  Jung proposed the concept of synchronicity to explain coincidences that are not explained by rational means and also attempted to link synchronicity to quantum mechanics.  [5]  Alan Haas further suggests there is little difference between synchronicity and telepathy.  [6]   Freud speculated that telepathy was a form of communication used in the early days of man prior to the development of speech and believed that he could communicate telepathically with his fiancée. [7]  He further speculated on the possible relationship between quantum physics and telepathy, and felt that psychoanalysis could be used as a tool to study thought transmission.  [8]  His scientific research did not pan out, but he still believed in the ability, as shown in his comments on a case that he studied:

“The event becomes perfectly clear if we are inclined to suppose that this knowledge has transferred from him to her, presumed prophetess, through  unknown ways and with exclusion of the communication methods that everybody knows. Therefore, our conclusion should be that thought transmission exists”  [9]

Parapsychologists attribute the following factors are present in persons who show success at telepathy and other forms of ESP: belief in psi talents, success with psi talent in the past, the practice of meditation or another similar discipline, creativity, artistic ability, and emotional closeness with the sender.  [10] 

There are numerous experimental studies that have studied telepathy.  J.B. Rhine, often called the “Father of Modern Parapsychology,” ran experiments at Duke using Zener cards.  These are a 25 card deck with each card having one of five different symbols.  By random chance, there is a 20% probability of obtaining a correct answer.  His telepathy studies showed statistically significant results, with one set of experiments showing a 40.3% correct guess rate out of 2400 trials, a one in a million chance by random chance.  [11]  Ganzfeld experiments, devised by Wolfgang Metzger in the 1930s, are another technique used in testing for ESP.  In one version, a subject sits in a relaxing position with a translucent shade over their eyes.  The room is bathed in red light and the subject listens to white noise.  While in this state of sensory deprivation, another person observes a randomly chosen target and mentally sends this information to the subject.  The subject is then removed from the ganzfeld state, is shown the set of targets, and is asked which one most resembled what they saw during the test.  A study performed in 1983 by Charles Honorton using a sound-proof chamber and four targets demonstrated in 354 trials a statistically significant 34% hit rate vs. the expected 25%.  A follow-up study in 2010 of several different studies showed a hit rate of 32.2% out of 1498 trials, also statistically significant.  In this study, people who had traits conducive to psi performed substantially better than others.  [12]

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake also has studied telepathy.   In a 2003 Journal of Scientific Exploration article, he looked at the ability of people to predict from whom an email was coming before they actually sent it.  The subject had to guess from three possible senders.  In Sheldrake’s study, a statistically significant 41.8% hit rate was obtained in 419 trials vs. the 33.3% expected based on random chance.  In an earlier study on telephone calls where participants predicted out of four different people who was calling, a startling 45% correct guesses were obtained vs. the expected 25% based on random chance. [13]  In the same study, an astounding 61% success rate was achieved when the caller was familiar to the receiver.  [14]  A similar study involving text messages was also found to be statistically significant.  [15]

Sheldrake researched telepathy in animals and believed that it was a normal talent in the animal kingdom, further extrapolating that belief to humans.  [16]  Marta Williams also has studied telepathy between animals and humans.  At first skeptical, she kept an open mind and now firmly believes in this form of communication.  She shared a story where a horse sent her the feeling of grief over missing his previous owner.  In another case, she was telepathically communicating with a horse in Wisconsin – she was in California.  The horse told her that he had a rib out of place.  A chiropractor examined the horse later that day and confirmed the dislocated rib.   [17]  Others also claim the existence of animal telepathy.  [18, 19]

There are numerous articles that demonstrate telepathy between people, usually between people that know each other very well, such as married couples and identical twins.  Kings College Researcher Dr. Lynne Cherkas performed a survey that found that 20% of all identical twins and 10% of all fraternal twins have experienced telepathy.  [20]  In his blog, Steve Pavlina reports telepathic activity between him and his wife Erin.  He alleges that they have to be careful when playing a trivia game not to look at the answer when reading a question as the other often is able to read the answer from the other’s mind.  They often send each other thoughts telepathically, for instance:

“…I may be out running errands and have the thought to bring home take-out food from a certain restaurant, even though we haven’t eaten there in months.  I may not even be hungry.  But when I arrive home with the food, Erin will say, ‘Oh good…you heard me.’  This sort of thing happens quite often with us.”  [21]

He suggests that telepathy works best when not forced and kept in the subconscious.  [22]

Stephen Wagner reports [23] on several examples of twins exhibiting telepathic communications, especially with respect to feelings or situations.  In 2009, the Houghton twins made news when Gemma suddenly felt her twin sister Leanne was in trouble, rushing into the bathroom to find her drowning in the bathtub, apparently from a seizure.  She revived her, saving her life.  Wagner also shares telepathy researcher Guy Lyon Playfair’s knowledge of three other examples of telepathy leading to one twin saving another’s life.  In a less dramatic example, he reports the account of a mother of four year old identical twins:

“One twin, Heather was with Paula in the classroom while the other twin, Catherine was in the gymnasium on another floor. Suddenly, Paula heard Catherine crying downstairs, and Heather declared that it was because a certain person had just run over her with a scooter. There was no way Heather could have seen what happened. Sure enough, when Paula asked Catherine about what had happened she confirmed that that certain person had run over her with a scooter.” [24]

In 2003, Playfair set up an experiment between a set of twins, Richard and Damien, where one of them was placed in a soundproof booth with a bucket of ice while the other was set apart and hooked up onto a polygraph machine.  Richard placed his hand in the ice water and let out a gasp.  When checking the polygraph, Playfair saw a blip on the respiration line that indicated that Damien may have gasped at the same time.  The effect was confirmed in a second, different test.  Playfair deliberately set up his tests to use the element of surprise as opposed to communicating images under the assumption that "Telepathy tends to work best when it is needed" and that emotions and physical response are easier to transmit when in need.  [25]  Looking further at transmission of emotions, Digby Tantam reports in Psychology Today that neuroscience is demonstrating telepathic transfer of emotions and emotional attitudes, citing the spirit of cooperation achieved by military groups in drill and march.  [26]  This type of phenomenon through personal experience is also seen in musical bands and sports teams.

The various talents and, in many cases, the very workings of the human brain continue to be mysteries that elude science.  Although intuition is commonly accepted as a mental talent, telepathy and other psi talents such as precognition are considered enigmatic and are not understood, if not downright discredited by science.  However, between experimental results and the numerous cases of telepathic messages that have no other explanation, there does appear to be substance behind the presence of telepathy in at least some people.  People are often scared by these seemingly irrational talents and find it easier to deny their existence rather than exercise the talents.  Recognizing and embracing these abilities will potentially increase the ability for people to evolve their mental capacity, facilitating the continued evolution of mankind.

References:

1.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment

2.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy
3.      Dalkvist, “Telepathic group communication of emotions as a function of belief in telepathy,” (1994), Dept. of Psychology, Stockholm University.
4.      Drees, “Religion, Science and Naturalism.” Cambridge University Press.  (28 November 1998).
5.      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics
6.      http://psychobiophysics.org/HaasElectroFreudTelepathy.pdf
7.      http://www.paranormal-encyclopedia.com/t/telepathy/
8.      http://www.psicoanalisi.it/psicoanalisi/psicosomatica/articoli/psomaing1117.htm  Written by: Quirino Zangrilli © Copyright * Translated by Flavio D'Ambrogio and Linda De Nardo
9.      Ibid.
10.  See 1.
11.  http://archived.parapsych.org/members/jb_rhine.html
12. See 1.
13.  Sheldrake and Avraamides, “An Automated Test for Telepathy in Connection with Emails,” Journal of Scientifi c Exploration, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2003), pp. 29–36.
14.  Sheldrake and Smart, “Videotaped experiments on telephone telepathy,” Journal of Parapsychology, Vol. 67, (2003), pp. 187-206.
15.   Sheldrake, et.al, “Sensing the sending of SMS messages: an automated test,” Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Vol. 5, (2009), pp. 272-276.
16.  http://www.sheldrake.org/Research/telepathy/
17.  http://www.martawilliams.com/WhatIsAnimCom.htm
18.  http://www.animaltelepathy.com/about.html
19.  http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Wittels1.html
20.  http://paranormal.about.com/od/espandtelepathy/a/Twin-Telepathy-Best-Evidence.htm
21.  http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/06/telepathy/
22.  Ibid.
23.  See 19.
24.  See 19.
25.  See 19.
26.  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-mind-and-spirit/200909/can-we-really-read-minds

The Healing Power of Love

Love is by far the most amazing emotion.  It has the power to heal, to motivate, to inspire, to forgive, and to treat others in the best possible way.  Every soul needs love, just as the body needs food, drink, and oxygen.   Love is at the root of many emotions along the entire emotional spectrum.  These include positive emotions like happiness, joy, empathy, and compassion, but also negative emotions like anger, worry, frustration, and sorrow.  It is often hard to remember in the heat of anger that the root of anger is love and caring.  Handling strong emotions from a framework of love invokes its healing power, prevents an adverse situation from escalating, and ultimately replaces the negative with the positive.

Photo courtesy of NASA

Protect our Planet

One of the best ways to make a positive difference is to take measures to protect our planet and conserve its limited resources.  Limiting the impact we have on the earth helps to pass a healthy planet on to our future generations, a priceless gift for our children.  Even the little things matter, so every day, think of a way you can decrease your environmental footprint.

Personal photo