Monday, February 23, 2004

Notes from a Seminar Neale Donald Walsch teaches: Help others to reach their highest. The following three points are for the brave people. Second point is for braver and the last is for the bravest. 1) Practice looking in the eye of another for more than three seconds. It reestablishes contact. As long as you look you'll be in love. You can't really argue when you are looking in the eye. 2)Then SMILE - it is a small gift for yourself and others and it is for free. Smile can heal. When you smile, you give me pleasure. You are helping others to discover themselves. They will feel worth in themselves. You can heal everything, if you will smile five times a day for no reason. It does not count, if you smile for a reason. (I've tried it and it is amazing how it helps.) 3)Then say something nice about their dress, hair, their helpfulness. … Money is energy, attracted to people not because of what they do but because of what they are. People pay for beingness. Being is what I am within. You are not selling a product or a service but your feeling. All want to be happy. Make ten people happy every day for a month and you'll see how your life will change. Health - pain and suffering are two different experiences that you choose. You can have pain without suffering. Suffering will increase, if you resist it. Do not identify with the suffering. Use the power of your mind to heal yourself. It is amazing how people resist being happy. ... Thoughts are energy. Look at the mirror and see yourself as great. People are waiting for you to confirm their own thoughts of greatness about themselves. Make a list of what you want to be. Be concrete. Make a program for yourself, of visualizing 10 minutes twice a day of what you want to have. By visualizing over and over desired outcome you will start creating it. We create our own reality. Do not change your mind and you'll get what you want. Ask for all but do not expect anything and accept everything you get. Thoughts that are emotionalized are quadrupled in power. Love and fear are the greatest emotions. Do not try to work out how it will happen; just make a decision what you would like to have. You choose what you would like to happen and let God choose how it would happen. Let go and let God. Do not tell him how. Here Neale shared his own experience on how he continued to choose what he wanted and eventually he received it, although there was only a slim chance that it could happen. He knew that it would happen but did not know how it would happen. (02/23/04) Secret Pentagon Report Mark Townsend and Paul Harris write: Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters. A report, suppressed by US defense chiefs and obtained by Observer/UK concludes: --Future wars will be fought over the issue of survival rather than religion, ideology or national honor. --By 2007 violent storms smash coastal barriers rendering large parts of the Netherlands inhabitable. --Cities like The Hague are abandoned. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento river area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from north to south. --Between 2010 and 2020 Europe is hardest hit by climatic change with an average annual temperature drop of 6F. Climate in Britain becomes colder and drier as weather patterns begin to resemble Siberia. --Deaths from war and famine run into the millions until the planet's population is reduced by such an extent the Earth can cope. Riots and internal conflict tear apart India, South Africa and Indonesia. --Access to water becomes a major battleground. The Nile, Danube and Amazon are all mentioned as being high risk. --A 'significant drop' in the planet's ability to sustain its present population will become apparent over the next 20 years. --Rich areas like the US and Europe would become 'virtual fortresses' to prevent millions of migrants from entering after being forced from land drowned by sea-level rise or no longer able to grow crops. Waves of boatpeople pose significant problems. --Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do Iran, Egypt and North Korea. Israel, China, India and Pakistan also are poised to use the bomb. --By 2010 the US and Europe will experience a third more days with peak temperatures above 90F. Climate becomes an 'economic nuisance' as storms, droughts and hot spells create havoc for farmers. --More than 400m people in subtropical regions at grave risk. -Europe will face huge internal struggles as it copes with massive numbers of migrants washing up on its shores. Immigrants from Scandinavia seek warmer climes to the south. Southern Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa. --Mega-droughts affect the world's major breadbaskets, including America's Midwest, where strong winds bring soil loss. --China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because of a rising sea level, which contaminates the inland water supplies. (02/23/04) Hope and Clarity New York Times Magazine -- Abraham Verghese, MD writes: It is important to examine how optimism affects a patient's quality of life, whatever its quantity. In the early days of AIDS, the diagnosis of H.I.V. infection was tantamount to a death sentence. As a young physician in the mid-80's, caring for people who had contracted H.I.V., I lost two of my patients to suicide at a time when the virus was doing very little harm to them. I have always thought of them as having been killed by a metaphor, by the burden of secrecy and shame associated with the disease. It became urgent for us -- both patients and physicians -- to seek to lighten that burden. In that era, my own experience as a clinician, anecdotal tales and at least one study all suggested to me that a good attitude and a good support system had a positive effect on H.I.V. sufferers' survival. But I saw much false optimism, unrealistic hope; I saw patients who sold all their possessions and used their parents' savings to obtain fringe treatments that did not work. I saw patients refuse preventive treatment because they believed in a divine intervention that never came or did not come in the form they wished for. Those patients whom I think of as having negotiated the illness most successfully were those who managed to use the illness to find meaning in their lives. The phrase ''person living with AIDS'' reflected a salutary change of attitude; it became a willful counter to the notion that one was ''dying of AIDS.'' Many of my patients hung on long enough to experience the appearance of lifesaving antiviral drug combinations. Many others did not survive that long, but neither did they simply succumb. They did not give up hope, but, instead, the nature of their hope changed; they wished for simpler things like a good night's sleep or the strength to make a trip to a theme park with their children. In some cases, they seemed to live life more fully than the rest of us. Roxy Ventola, an artist who lived with AIDS until 1994, articulated what such a life is like in a performance piece: ''Everyone wears a watch, but the uninfected wear a digital watch. They have to look down to be aware of the passing of time. Those of us with AIDS wear a ticking watch. We can hear it -- tick-tock, tick-tock.'' She went on to add: ''I know time is precious. So I don't waste it anymore. Things that matter to the uninfected aren't important to me. . . . Now I'm free to be the person I always wanted to be. I make every moment count.'' It is not necessary to have a lethal medical condition to develop such a profound insight, but it is remarkable how often it takes no less. My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the time we have, to be generous -- that was their lesson for the Uber-mind, and it was free. Do that, they said, and then perhaps death shall have no dominion. (02/23/04) Protecting Biodiversity BBC Nature -- More than 180 countries have signed an agreement that it is hoped will slow the loss of species and habitats around the world. Delegates agreed to set up networks of protected areas on land and sea and to offer incentives for poorer nations to better protect the environment. It was nearly dawn by the time final agreement was reached at the United Nations-led conference. Campaigners say there have been some missed opportunities. The meeting in Kuala Lumpur decided to set targets and timetables towards its goal of achieving a sharp cut in the rate at which species are dying out within six years. By 2010 it is intended that the remaining areas of the world boasting a huge diversity of species will be part of a network of protected areas. However, there is disappointment among those who wanted to see oceans safeguarded. Though delegates agreed to establish link-protected areas at sea in the next eight years, no plan was agreed for doing so. Money also remains an issue. Developing countries seem to have been appeased by promises of aid from richer nations. But the issue of how to pay for conservation is certain to be argued over for years to come. (02/23/04) Great Barrier Reef Gone by 2050 BBC Environment -- The Great Barrier Reef off the east coast of Australia will be largely destroyed by 2050 because of rising sea temperatures, according to a new report. Researchers from Queensland University's Centre for Marine Studies said there was little evidence that corals could adapt quickly enough to cope with even the lowest projected temperature rise of 2C. Over-fishing and water pollution were also contributing to the destruction of coral on the reef. The new study predicts that within about 15 years the Barrier Reef tourist and fishing industries will lose thousands of millions of dollars and many thousands of people will be forced out of work. By the middle of this century, less than 5% of the reef coral will remain alive. Most of the colourful fish for which the reef is also famous will disappear. Entitled "Implications of Climate Change for Australia's Great Barrier Reef", the study was commissioned by the Worldwide Fund for Nature, and was paid for in part by the Australian government. "Under the worst-case scenario, coral populations will collapse by 2100 and the re-establishment of coral reefs will be highly unlikely over the following 200-500 years," it said. (02/23/04) 6:13:15 AM

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