Overcoming Separateness

By Ram Dass

We try so hard to overcome separateness with others. More intimacy. More rubbing of bodies. More exchanging of ideas. But always it’s as if you are yelling out of your room and I am yelling out of mine. Even trying to get out of the room invests the room with a reality. Who am I? The room that the mind built.

We spend so much effort to get out of something that didn’t exist until we created it. Something that is gone in a moment. We’ve all had moments when there was no room. But we freaked. Or explained it away, ignored it, or let it pass by.

A moment. The moment of orgasm. The moment by the ocean when there is just the wave. The moment of being in love. The moment of crisis when we forget ourselves and do just what is needed.
We each come out again and again. We turn and look and realize we’re out – and panic. We run back in the room, close the door, panting heavily. Now I know where I am. I’m back home. Safe. No matter how squalid the room is, no matter how unmade the bed, no matter how many bugs are crawling around the kitchen. Safe.

These moments appear again and again in our lives. For many people it first comes as a glimpse into other states of consciousness brought about by emotional trauma, drugs, sex, nature, or a love affair. This glimpse reveals to the person that there is something more. That he or she isn’t exactly who he or she thought.

You may link these moments with the conditions out of which they arose. Perhaps it’s the moment of sexual orgasm when you transcend self-consciousness. Perhaps it’s a moment of trauma, of extreme danger when you “forget yourself.” Perhaps it’s when you are out in the woods away from people and you let down your defenses, loosen the boundaries of your self-consciousness. Perhaps when you are lazing by a stream. Perhaps when you are sitting quietly with friends you trust and love.

For surfers it is the moment when they come into equilibrium with the incredible force of the wave. For skiers it is when the balance is perfect. When our skills fit the demand perfectly, then there is no anxiety. Then we have proved ourselves. There is nothing left to do. In that moment our awareness expands.

From: https://www.ramdass.org/overcoming-separateness/

To Everything There Is a Season

by Ram Dass

The transformation that comes through meditation is not a straight-line progression. It’s a spiral, a cycle. My own life is very much a series of spirals in which at times I am pulled toward some particular form of sadhana or lifestyle and make a commitment to it for maybe six months or a year. After this time I assess its effects. At times I work with external methods such as service. At other times the pull is inward, and I retreat from society to spent more time alone.

The timing for these phases in the spiral must be in tune with your inner voice and your outer life. Don’t get too rigidly attached to any one method – turn to others when their time comes, when you are ripe for them.

I first became involved in the journey through study, intellectual analysis and service. I found it difficult to work with methods of the heart. I would try to open my heart, but the methods seemed absurd. I recall going to the Avalon Ballroom in the early 1960’s to hear Allen Ginsberg introduce Swami Bhaktivedanta, who led a Hare Krishna chant. This chant seemed weird to me. It left me cold and cynical. I recall thinking, “It’s too bad – Allen’s really gone over the edge. This chant just doesn’t make it.” In the years since, I’ve had moments of ecstasy with the Hare Krishna chant. My heart has opened wide to the beauty of the blue Krishna and the radiant Ram, and I’ve laughed at my own changes and growth.

A student once came to me and told me that he felt turned off by devotional practices. His practice was Buddhist; his meditation was on the dharma, the laws of the universe. Yet he felt troubled that his heart was closed. So I started him on the practice of the mantra “I love you dharma,” breathing in and out of the heart saying, “I love you dharma.” He loved it.

It’s not an all-or-nothing game. You’re not totally out of one phase before you start the next – there’s a gradual shift.


From: https://www.ramdass.org/everything-season/

Holy Man Hasn’t Eaten In 75 Years – Confirmed By Doctors

What is the longest you have gone without a piece of food or a glass of water? A holy man in India claims that he has not eaten or drank anything for 75 years! Prahlad Jani is the 83-year old man who lives in a cave near Amba JI Temple without any kind of food or water since the age of 7. Why in the world would a man choose to not eat for such a long time, and how is he still alive?

Mr. Jani claims that he has left his home at the age of seven searching for spiritual mystery when he was blessed by 3 Hindu goddesses. Here is the story in his own words:

“Three goddesses appeared to me and bade me to follow. Ma Kali, Ma Lakshmi, and Ma Saraswati. I consented, prepared myself, and asked: ‘What about my food?’ They each put a finger on my lip and said ‘You need not be concerned about food ever again’. I was 7, and from that day I stopped eating and drinking.”

Ever since that blessing, Prahlad Jani claims that he has gained his sustenance from the nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate. A bunch of bogus, right? Maybe not.

His claims were scientifically studied by a team of 30 specialists during three weeks of a variety of tests at a hospital.

They took him into then Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad, India. They put him under 24 hour observation in front of cameras and found out that he did not take any kind of food or water in the 15 days that he was in hospital. No food or water for half that time would be a sure death for anybody else. And he did not pass urine or stool either.

The doctors were completely surprised at this miracle. “We believe that the sadhu Prahlad Jani’s body went through biological transformation as a result of meditation and powerful yoga in a completely natural environment that he stays.” said neurologist Dr. Sudhir Shah.

The doctors in India are guessing that this phenomenon relates the Amrita Chakra (third eye chakra), as Hindu vedas speak of it being able to produce a divine nectar which sustains life.

What’s more is that his brain resembles that of a 25 year old man at 83 years of age. His practices have somehow miraculously transformed the biological functioning of his body, which no longer needs energy and sustenance from external material sources.

Is this even possible?

This sounds crazy, but let’s think about it for a minute. What do we need from food? The minerals, which are made out of molecules, which are made out of atoms, which are made out of quarks, which are made out of superstrings, which is ultimately part of the Unified Field or Superstring Field.

At a fundamental level of nature, nutrition is really just vibrating strings of non-local energy. Could he somehow be receiving this information somehow without the need to physically ingest food? Here is a news report by the doctors who observed him at the hospital:




From: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/holy-man-hasnt-eaten-in-75-years/

Headaches After Meditation, Pineal Gland Third Eye Activation & Body Cleansing

by Nicky Sutton 

It's normal to experience some discomfort or physical pain when you start to meditate for the first time. Some individuals, not all, experience physical pain or emotional turmoil when they first achieve silence of the mind and open the gateway to cosmic energy. Much cleansing occurs within both your physical body complex and subtle spirit body. Some stored-up negative energies are dislodging and beginning to clear, causing some physical symptoms to occur. Headaches are common, especially at the top of the head or the forehead due to the pineal gland, or third eye, getting a work-out that it's not used to.

When you close your eyes the darkness activates the pineal gland, which then secretes melatonin into your cerebral fluid which starts the process of sleep. You are conscious however during meditation, but the same effect is felt – meditation is conscious sleep. Turn out the lights, the pineal gland activates and the gateway to intelligent infinity opens. You use your pineal gland during sleep and at certain points of the day while subconsciously sending and receiving energies and communications to and from the spirit world. However, the process of meditation gives your pineal gland a more strenuous workout than usual.

If you rarely used your left arm and had to lift a heavy weight, it'd be hard work right? It might even hurt at the time or ache after. The same is true for the pineal gland. You need to exercise this organ and increase blood flow by using it. It will become stronger as a result.

During the first week or two you may experience headaches straight after meditation. The headache can last for several hours. There are two possible causes for the headache – the new strenuous workout as already mentioned, plus the clearing of negative energies from the pineal gland and the head area itself.

Imagine that many years of stress, anxiety, and negative energies have built up in this area before your spiritual awakening and urge to meditate began. The process of dislodging and expelling these negative energies causes pain and discomfort in the affected regions of the body. As few as five to ten, half-hour long meditation sessions could clear these blockages, but meditation should be continued to keep them clear.

Pain can be felt throughout the body. One reason is that you may not be used to sitting in your meditative position, such as the lotus position. This may be resulting in some backache. Set down some cushions and give yourself a back rest to lean against. Your body should adjust and get used to your new positioning over time.

(Here's a good book: Pineal Gland & Your Third Eye: Proven Methods to Develop Your Higher Self).

Pain can also be felt throughout your physical body, or in different areas of the body due to accumulation of negative energies. Daily stresses, worries and negative emotions are stored in several parts of your body, but each person tends to have a main area where these energies build up. Some people experience upper back pain, others digestive discomfort, others headaches, and so on.

Have you ever noticed that during times of intense stress, your usual physical ailments flair up? You are collecting and storing your negative energies in the usual place in your body. Once your area of concentrated negative energy accumulation is targeted by healing energies, a great deal of pain can be experienced in that area. You're being healed however and you will feel better soon.

When you first start to meditate, you open the gateway to intelligent infinity and cleansing healing energies. These enter through the top of the head, through the pineal gland and trickle down through your body. Your subtle (or spirit) body is cleansed and your physical body in turn is cleansed. Your chakras are being unblocked so that energy is free to flow in balanced amounts, your sub energy centers and energy pathways too are cleared and energized. Negative energy is ousted and removed.

The mind is also rejuvenated by the in-pouring of healing energies. The process of cleansing the mind, and the unblocking and balancing of the chakras, can cause emotional flare-ups and turmoil. You may find yourself thinking 'why am I acting like this?' You could become quite bi-polar in your emotions, that is for instance, angry for a time and then very happy soon after. Stored up negative thought forms and emotional energies are being dislodged and cleared. This outpouring of negative energies can cause emotional and erratic behavior on it's way out.

While physical pain and emotional flare-ups only occur for some people when they start to meditate for the first time, it should not discourage anyone from meditating. More and more meditation will clear your physical complaints and fully activate your energy centers, cleansing the physical and subtle body over time. Know that the benefits both physically and mentally will have a big impact on your life.

Headaches After Meditation, Pineal Gland Third Eye Activation & Cleansing - Video
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http://www.spiritual-awakening.net/2014/06/beginners-meditation-headaches-and-pain.html

This Is What's Happening In the Brains of People Who "See" Music

By Tom Barnes 

To Pharrell Williams, the verses of his years-long hit "Happy" have always been yellow and red. Or reddish. "[W]ell ... it's not red, it's more like orange, but then it's a little pink, a little rainbow-y, because of the minor chords or whatever," Williams told the Dinner Party Download.

Williams has an auditory-specific form of a neurological condition called synesthesia. It's a condition in which one's sensory perceptions are involuntarily unified. Seeing colors and patterns based off music is one of the most common varieties, also called chromaesthesia. But other synesthetes can taste music, or, see colors associated with certain numbers or days of the week. 

Though it was once thought of as a disorder, it is common to some of the most brilliant musicians. The list of artists who have it is long, including Billy Joel, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Dev Hynes, Frank Ocean and Mary J. Blige. This is what we know about the mysterious inside of the synesthete's mind.

Disorder or eccentricity? For years, synesthesia has suffered the stigma of being a mental "disorder." Throughout the years, many synesthetes remained silent about their gifts. In some artists' cases, they feared it would invalidate their actual musical talents.

"People were very afraid to admit they had it because they didn't want people to think that this special gift was the sole basis for their talent," Carol Steen, co-founder of the American Synesthesia Association, told Pitchfork. "They'd think, 'If I tell people that I have this gift, maybe they'll think that all the practicing I've done doesn't mean anything.'"

But the sting of that stigma has lessened recently, replaced by a fascination. Indie pop crooner Dev Hynes has been very open about his synesthesia. Last November, he gave a TED talk describing his process of writing music using his synesthetic connections. His tone colors are markedly different from those Pharrell describes, which points to a fundamental truth about synesthesia: Every artist's color associations and experiences with the condition are different. Several artists, like Melissa McCracken, even put what they see onto canvas.

Early research. Scientists largely declined to study synesthesia until around the 1980s, when MRIs suggested there was a legitimate neurological basis for the feeling. Early research suggested that synesthesia was simply a case of crossed mental wires. The auditory cortex, where music and sound are first processed, is close to the occipital lobe, where the brain distinguishes color and shape. 

Simultaneously triggered senses are examples of the brain making excess neurological connections or failing to prune existing connections. In fact, the brains of infant primates show evidence that their senses are all a hyperconnective blend until a few weeks or months after birth. By that logic, we all may be synesthetes until we grow out of it.

Neonatal theory has been criticized in recent years, though, as has all research that frames synesthesia as a neurological disorder. Researchers out of the University of London and the University of Oxford argued that the development of adult synesthesia is "better explained by their being learned" than by erroneously pruned connections.

Learning to see sound. In March 2015, neurologists Jean-Michel Hupé and Michel Dojat studied the brain scans of synesthetes and found no evidence of any structural differences in their brains. "If none of the proposed structural or functional differences [claimed to exist in synesthesia are] confirmed," they write, according to Discover, "this would speak against synesthesia being a neurological condition. But, then, what could be the nature of synesthesia?"

They proposed that synesthesia may be learned and arise from childhood memories. A 2014 study performed by Olympia Colizoli of University of Amsterdam supports this hypothesis to a certain extent. Colizoli trained a group of participants to associate colors with specific letters to simulate a grapheme-color synesthesia (one of the most common forms) by having participants read passages where specific letters were colored. Another 2014 study from the University of Sussex reviewed a 1944 study in which researchers successfully taught listeners to create sound-color synesthesia connections. 

How exactly children learn sound-color synesthesia, and why some children retain the ability and some don't, remains a mystery. But science is getting closer to finding an answer, and if it does nail down the process, it could prove to be a game changer for music education. In a February 2015 article for the Psychologist, Jack Dutton looked at research that found that people with chromaesthesia are more likely to engage with creative pursuits and play instruments, which would explain the long list of artists with that specific neurological profile.

"These findings imply that if scientists are able to figure out a way to teach people chromaesthesia, it may enhance how well people learn to read and compose music," Dutton wrote. 

It's a fascinating prospect. One day, any child might be able to grow up see Pharrell-like rainbows in music, if they so choose. 

Whether it's considered a disorder, a blessing or a choice, synesthesia is one of the most strange and magnificent things the human mind can do.

 From: http://mic.com/articles/120435/this-is-what-s-happening-in-the-brains-of-people-who-see-music

The Warriors of the Rainbow Prophecy

One day... there would come a time, when the earth being ravaged and polluted, the forests being destroyed, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, the fish being poisoned in the streams, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist.

This is how the ‘Rainbow prophecy’ begins, as retold by a woman of the Cree Indian nation of America over a century ago.

The Cree are one of the largest groups of the First Nations Native Americans in North America. There are over 135 bands of Cree living in Canada, with a total population of approximately 200,000 today.

The Rainbow prophecy, as it has come to be known, refers to the keepers of the legends, rituals, and other myths that will be needed when the time comes to restore the health on Earth.  It is believed that these legendary beings will return on a day of awakening, when all people will unite and create a new world of justice, peace and freedom, and they will be named the ‘Warriors of the Rainbow’. They will reteach the values and the knowledge that has been lost in time, demonstrating how to have wisdom and extra-perception, and how unity, harmony and love is the only way forward.

The rainbow reference relates to the different colours of the original people:

At the beginning of this cycle of time, long ago, the Great Spirit came down and He made an appearance and He gathered the peoples of this earth together, they say on an island which is now beneath the water, and He said to the human beings, "I'm going to send you to four directions and over time I'm going to change you to four colours, but I'm going to give you some teachings and you will call these the Original Teachings and when you come back together with each other you will share these so that you can live and have peace on earth, and a great civilization will come about.
Prophecy as told by Lee Brown of the Salish Tribe at the 1986 Continental Indigenous Council, Alaska.

A particularly interesting part of the prophecy relates to the choosing of leaders.  According to the story, a leader will not be the one that talks the loudest, boasts of successes, or has the support of the elite. Leaders will be those whose actions speak the loudest, the ones that have demonstrated wisdom and courage and have proven that they work for the benefit of all. Isn’t this how things should be?

The Rainbow has always held special significance among the different Native American Indian Nations. It is connected to the Spirit (Supreme God/Creator) in all things. Apart from the Cree prophecy there are many prophecies and stories from the Hopi, the Zuni and the Cherokee related to the rainbow warriors.

There will come a day when people of all races, colors, and creeds will put aside their differences. They will come together in love, joining hands in unification, to heal the Earth and all Her children. They will move over the Earth like a great Whirling Rainbow, bringing peace, understanding and healing everywhere they go. Many creatures thought to be extinct or mythical will resurface at this time; the great trees that perished will return almost overnight. All living things will flourish, drawing sustenance from the breast of our Mother, the Earth.

The great spiritual Teachers who walked the Earth and taught the basics of the truths of the Whirling Rainbow Prophecy will return and walk amongst us once more, sharing their power and understanding with all. We will learn how to see and hear in a sacred manner. Men and women will be equals in the way Creator intended them to be; all children will be safe anywhere they want to go. Elders will be respected and valued for their contributions to life. Their wisdom will be sought out. The whole Human race will be called The People and there will be no more war, sickness or hunger forever.
Navajo-Hopi Prophecy of the Whirling Rainbow

In the time of the Seventh Fire, a New People would emerge. They would retrace their steps to find the wisdom that was left by the side of the trail long ago. Their steps would take them to the elders, who they would ask to guide them on their journey. If the New People remain strong in their quest, the sacred drum will again sound its voice. There will be an awakening of the people, and the sacred fire will again be lit. At this time, the light-skinned race will be given a choice between two roads. One road is the road of greed and technology without wisdom or respect for life. This road represents a rush to destruction. The other road is spirituality, a slower path that includes respect for all living things. If we choose the spiritual path, we can light yet another fire, an Eight Fire, and begin an extended period of Peace and healthy growth.
Grandfather William Commanda, Circle of All Nations Prophecy of the Seven Fires of the Anishnabe, From Ancient Wampum Belt

References to a new Era, a Golden Age characterized by harmony, stability and prosperity, do not just belong to the Native Americans, but can be found in myths and legends from all over the world.  It is known as Chryson Genos in Greek mythology, the Kali yuga in Vedic and Hindu culture, and gullaldr in Norse mythology.  One aspect that is common among many legends of the Golden era is the return of beings or gods that will aid in the restoration of the Earth.

In classical Greek mythology the Golden Age was presided over by the leading Titan Cronus. In some version of the myth Astraea, also ruled. She lived with men until the end of the Silver Age, but in the Bronze Age, when men became violent and greedy, fled to the stars, where she appears as the constellation Virgo, holding the scales of Justice, or Libra.

Whether these prophecies are true or not, much of what is spoken about – the era of greed and violence – is a reality throughout much of the world today.  Corruption, greed, poverty, consumerism, power to the few, and injustice are predominant characteristics of our civilization accompanied by a great technological advancement that has become a weapon for mass destruction and a tool for supressing resistance.  Whether beings from the past will interfere or not, one thing is for sure, life cannot continue in this way forever.


By John Black


http://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/warriors-rainbow-prophecy-001577

Feel Lost, Disconnected, Without Passion or Purpose? Unexplained Physical Pain? Here's Why You Are Expanding

For those of you have unexplained symptoms of physical or emotional pain, know that you are not alone. Feeling lost, disconnected, without passion or purpose? You are on a path of self discovery. You are riding a wave of new energy. What you are feeling at this very moment is a transition--only one step of many on this grand journey of ascension on this planet that is progressing every second. Much of what you still see in the world and in your experiences is illusion and it is competing heavily with what the heart knows to be true. It's time to start listening to what matters most and embracing that you are now in an accelerated state of expansion.

The 6 shifts in consciousness are being realized. The spring equinox has brought a fascinating wave of expansion throughout the planet. It is pushing people outside of their comfort zone and that is manifesting in some very interesting ways inside and outside the body.

Outside the body, electronic devices are behaving erratically. Your mobile phone, television, computer, network devices or even internet connection may not be functioning as they have in the past. You may experience unusual and unexplained downtime, yet there is nothing wrong with the actual devices because the problem is not the devices. The problem is your energy not properly grounding to where it needs to be. For some others the problem is appearing in their motor vehicles. They are all signs of what is happening in and around you.

Inside the body, unexplained symptoms, pain and illness may have surfaced in the last 3-6 months. Sleep patterns, fluctuating biorhythms, changes in blood pressure, intense pain in joints, headaches, changes in blood sugar and even more serious illnesses may have presented themselves. Although many of these symptoms are prolonged, rest assured they are not permanent.

The cellular structure is currently being recoded in the human body and in the process it is purging and letting go of predominant resident frequencies that are being eliminated. For this energy to clear, the immune system and actually all systems within the body must be effectively weakened. So while the body may appear to be in a state of illness, it is more or less in a state of clearing.

Unfortunately, this is the only way you will be able to prepare and move into the energy that is coming in the next 18 months--an energy critical for the Earth in the next decade. If the body fails to make the upgrade it will stop functioning entirely. The important thing is to recognize that you can change every single symptom that appears with the appropriate intention. Do not fall into negative patterning with assumptions that it is your own negative thoughts that have created these symptoms or that you must "fix" the problem. Focus on the fact that you are realigning your body to where it needs to be. Avoid statements to yourself such as: "I'm in pain...I'm sick...I'm ill". Focus on: "I am healing...I am realigning...I am clearing my energy." You are not broken, so there is nothing to fix. Accept what is and move forward while welcoming the wonderful changes that are leading to the new you.

The reason more people are feeling disconnected and without a sense of purpose is they are still holding on to old programming. "It's not safe", "I fear for my future or my family's", "people don't understand me", "the world is doomed", and any other self defeating things you tell yourself which are based on fear, not reality. With practice and repetition, you are breaking out of this patterning at the subconscious level and consciously creating a different reality. Consciously directing energy is far more powerful than subconscious directives and this is part of what humanity is now transitioning to.

The media and engines of deception that control your world understand exactly what is happening so they are attempting to condition the public further with mass mind manipulation which is failing on a grand scale since so many people are now awakened. This unfortunately is causing more separation between those who are ascending and those who have chosen not to, as each in their own right will be true to their path and each will be exactly where they need to be.

If you could comprehend how many battles are being won right now, how many terrorist events are being stopped in their tracks, how many wars are being averted simply by the changing energy, you would see what is happening in the world in a very different light. These events are now daily, all because intention is spurring from the heart and more than ever before. Lower frequency experiences are being rejected worldwide.

The dominant masculine energy on Earth no longer has a hold on humans as it once did. You can no longer create from masculine energy alone which is how your society is structured.

The feminine energy is being grounded everywhere. It now surrounds the planet and it is allowing humanity to nurture and integrate benevolent experiences at all levels. The most efficient manifesters moving forward will be those who are attentive to calming, opening and receiving information in a way that allows it to pass through the feminine filter.

Again, those who still feel the need to control global governments are in full manipulation mode and they understand these processes operating at different dimensional levels. So they will place a female president in 2016 in the United States in an effort to capitalize on this wave of feminine energy. Unfortunately, this person will not have benevolent intentions and the world will realize it very quickly, but her role will be significant in the sense that she will serve as a symbol of global acceptance of the feminine divine. The irony is that because she will largely manifest from the masculine divine, she will fail miserably as leader in a country that can no longer be conditioned by fear. The next 18 months are truly a defining period of change for the United States and the rest of the world.

It's imperative to connect with children and their energy at this time. If you have children, be involved with them as much as possible. If you don't have children, then seek a loved one who does and learn as much as you can from a child's energy. They have the ingredients so many adults are missing at this time.

Come to terms with how important your life is right now on the time space continuum. You are on the Earth at possibly the best time EVER in the history of the human species. You are integral in the consciousness equation moving forward and you're inspiring others in ways you cannot imagine. Any feeling of insignificance, disconnection, fear, anger, loneliness are simply illusions because you are nothing but significant, connected, loved and could not be alone if you tried.

You complete the Earth and you matter, so wake up each and every morning with one thought..."I am here and I am making history," and never think for a second that your contribution, no matter how small, is not important, because it is significant.

Michael Forrester is a spiritual counselor and is a practicing motivational speaker for corporations in Japan, Canada and the United States.

From: http://preventdisease.com/news/15/050815_Feel-Lost-Disconnected-Unexplained-Physical-Pain-Heres-Why-You-Are-Expanding.shtml

Awakening To The Truth: You’ve Felt It Your Entire Life

Written by Sophie McAdam  at trueactivist.com

If you haven’t seen this short video by Collective Evolution (entitled You’ve felt it your entire life), it’s well worth watching (and sharing). With Morpheus‘s message to Neo making a powerful voice-over, the video uses a montage of clips from films like The Matrix, Into the Wild and cult classic They Live to illustrate a few (difficult) truths about the society we live in.

Contrasting some beautiful shots of nature with some ugly shots of our violence towards it, this video has a powerful message. Morpheus says it better than anyone could:

“You’ve felt it your entire life. There’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”

It doesn’t have to be this way, the film tells us. There is so much more to life than consumerism, mainstream culture and media lies, environmental devastation, working in jobs we hate until we die, eating junk food and spending more time on social media than we do speaking to our friends and family. This is a real-life matrix. But all of us have the power to take the red pill, offer it to others, and makechoices to change our lives- and the lives of those around us- for the better.

We Are Living In A Hologram Designed By Aliens, Says NASA Scientist

by MessageToEagle,

Who says there are no open-minded scientists at NASA?

A NASA scientist suggests you are living inside a hologram created by advanced alien species.
What if everything you have ever done or will do is simply the product of a highly-advanced computer code? Every relationship, every sentiment, every memory could have been generated by banks of supercomputers.

This was the intriguing theory first proposed by Nick Bostrom, Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University and founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute and of the Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology within the Oxford Martin School, there are several scientists who subscribe to this theory.

MessageToEagle.com has previously reported on how Rich Terrile, director of the Centre for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggested our creator is a cosmic computer programmer.

This would imply that we are living in a holographic world and everything around us, including ourselves is not “real”. Rich Terrile, still stands by his opinion. “Right now the fastest NASA supercomputers are cranking away at about double the speed of the human brain,” the NASA scientist told Vice.

“If you make a simple calculation using Moore’s Law [which roughly claims computers double in power every two years], you’ll find that these supercomputers, inside of a decade, will have the ability to compute an entire human lifetime of 80 years – including every thought ever conceived during that lifetime – in the span of a month.

“In quantum mechanics, particles do not have a definite state unless they’re being observed.

“Many theorists have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you explain this.

“One explanation is that we’re living within a simulation, seeing what we need to see when we need to see it.

“What I find inspiring is that, even if we are in a simulation or many orders of magnitude down in levels of simulation, somewhere along the line something escaped the primordial ooze to become us and to result in simulations that made us – and that’s cool.”

The idea that our Universe is a fiction generated by computer code solves a number of inconsistencies and mysteries about the cosmos, like for example our quest for extraterrestrial life and the mystery of dark matter.

However, there also those who think the Matrix theory is flawed. “The theory seems to be based on the assumption that ‘superminds’ would do things in much the same way as we would do them,” Professor Peter Millican, who teaches philosophy and computer science at Oxford University says.

“If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?

“They assume that the ultimate structure of a real world can’t be grid like, and also that the superminds would have to implement a virtual world using grids.

“We can’t conclude that a grid structure is evidence of a pretend reality just because our ways of implementing a pretend reality involve a grid.”

However, Professor Millican does believe there is worth in investigating the idea.

“It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas,” he told The Telegraph.

“You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.

“You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box.

“This Matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago. “Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all.”

What Happens to People Who Meditate for the First Time

There have been numerous studies detailing what happens to the brain in long-term meditators, but what exactly happens to people who meditate for the first time?

Sara Lazar, a Harvard researcher, has gained quite some notoriety detailing how the brain actually grows grey matter when people meditate.

Other studies have shown that meditation improves IQ, and lessens depression. In addition to these benefits, meditation also:

• Reduces alcohol and substance consumption, reduces blood pressure (Chiesa, 2009),
• Decreases anxiety, depressive symptoms, and relapses (Coelho, Canter, & Ernst, 2007; Kim et al., 2009)
• Helps patients suffering from various types of chronic pain (Chiesa & Serretti, in press)
• Lowers the incidence of stress (Chiesa & Serretti, 2009)
• Aids cancer patients (Ledesma & Kumano, 2009)

Most people think they have to meditate for years before they start seeing any of these improvements, but a study conducted by Chiesa, Calati, and Serretti shows that after just eight short weeks of meditation, people start to experience improved cognitive functioning.

Still not fast enough for you?
Meditation for the First Time

Here’s what happens to the brain after someone completes just one meditation session who has never meditated before:

• People start to become less ‘me’ centered as the brain balances the Ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which allows us to ruminate our worry, and the Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), which allows us to empathize with others and feel more connected to those who we usually view as dissimilar to ourselves.

• The fear-center is calmed via the amygdala and the two branches of the nervous system. You know that ‘uh-oh’ feeling you sometimes get? Meditation helps to make sure that you only feel low-level stress when you really need to, such as when you are about to put your hand on a hot stove, or you need to put the brakes on in traffic. Even then, meditation can help take the stress out of stress-full experiences.

• The very first time you try to meditate, the mind calms down. It doesn’t mean you will experience profound inner peace the first time your bum touches a meditation cushion, but it does mean that you are already setting up new neural pathways that allow positive change. Each time you ‘sit’ again, you enhance them.

• You’ll feel less depressed. Meditation is getting a lot of press lately because of this study by Mahav Goyal published at JAMA. 47 trials conducted with over 3,500 patients proved that meditation was as effective as anti-depressants. (The effect of meditation was moderate, at 0.3. If this sounds low, keep in mind that the effect size for antidepressants is also 0.3.) The difference is, of course, that meditation can’t kill you or cause other unwanted side effects, like psychotic episodes, panic attacks, hostility, etc.

Beginner Meditators

Though it takes a few more sessions, here is what happens when you meditate a little more frequently:

• You’ll feel less physical pain in just four meditation sessions. Brain activity decreases in the areas responsible for relaying sensory information surrounding a feeling of pain. Also, regions of the brain that modulate pain get busier, and volunteers who participated in a study reported that pain was less intense after meditation practice. These results were all reported at an annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.

• The ‘me-center’ slowly evaporates. As the connection between bodily sensations and the vmPFC withers, you will no longer assume that a bodily sensation or momentary feeling of fear means something is wrong with you or that you are the problem. You can just let it rise and pass, without hardly giving it a second thought.

• Empathy becomes stronger. The vmPFC part of the ‘me center’ subsides and the dmPFC grows more dominant, which means you can feel others’ pain or sadness, but with the same ability as you’ve learned to handle your own bodily sensations.

Masters of Meditation

Once you’re an old pro at meditation you can look forward to even more benefits, many of which science is still reaching to understand.

• Tibetan monks can sit for hours in meditation as easily as most of us can spend the same amount of time sleeping or surfing the net. These monks recently dried wet sheets with their bodies by utilizing a form of meditation called g Tum-mo. Monks were cloaked in wet, cold sheets (49 f / 9.4 c) and placed in a 40 f (4.5 c) room. In conditions such as these the average     person would likely experience uncontrollable shivering and suffer hypothermia. However, through deep concentration, the monks were able to generate body heat, and within minutes the researchers noticed steam rising from those sheets. In about an hour the sheets were completely dry.

• Yogis in India who practice meditation are able to slow their hearts so completely that they are hardly detectable on EKG equipment. In 1935 a French cardiologist, Therese Brosse, took an electrocardiograph to India and studied yogis who said they could stop their heart. According to Brosse’s published report, readings produced by a single EKG lead and pulse recordings indicated that  the heart potentials and pulse of one of her subjects decreased almost to zero, where they stayed for several seconds. (Brosse, 1946)

• A master meditator, Munishri Ajitchandrasagarji, is a Jain monk who credits his incredible memory to meditation practice. He can recite 500 items from memory, whether it is a phrase from one of six different languages, a math problem, or the name of a random object. He recently performed this  feat in front of an audience of 6,000 to verify his amazing level of skill. It took six hours for the crowd to feed him the list of items, and he recited them back perfectly.

• Dutchman Wim Hof is able to control his immune system with meditation. He has been in the Guinness Book of World Records 20 times for accomplishments like climbing Mt. Everest and Kilimanjaro in nothing but a pair of shorts and shoes, with no water or food, when temperatures easily reach 50 degrees celcius. He uses a special breathing meditation.

So maybe the first time you learn to control your thoughts by focusing on your breath, or simply observing your thoughts like clouds passing in the sky won’t make you a master meditator capable of these staggering acts, but even with your first twenty minute ‘sit’ you are well on your way to other-worldly abilities.

By Christina Sarich, Collective Evolution

The Bond

by Boltzman Brains

The Egg

The heliosphere is the region of space inhabited by the Sun. The heliosphere is a magnetic bubble-like medium and is located as far as beyond the orbit of Pluto. Plasma “blown” out from the Sun, known as the solar wind, creates and maintains this bubble against the outside pressure of the interstellar medium, the hydrogen and helium gas that permeates Milky Way Galaxy. The solar wind flows outward from the Sun until encountering the termination shock, where motion slows abruptly.

The Voyager spacecraft have actively explored the outer reaches of the heliosphere, passing through the shock and entering the heliosheath, a transitional region which is in turn bounded by the outermost edge of the heliosphere, called the heliopause. The overall shape of the heliosphere is determined by the interstellar medium, through which it is traveling and the sun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field

Earth’s magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from the Earth’s interior to where it meets the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. Its magnitude at the Earth’s surface ranges from 25 to 65 microteslas (0.25 to 0.65 gauss).

Roughly speaking it is the field of a magnetic dipole currently tilted at an angle of about 10 degrees with respect to Earth’s rotational axis, as if there were a bar magnet placed at that angle at the center of the Earth. Unlike a bar magnet, however, Earth’s magnetic field changes over time because it is generated by a geodynamo (in Earth’s case, the motion of molten iron alloys in its outer core).

Layer upon layer of protection lays over us protecting us from the forces of the universe that would obliterate us in an instant without their protection. Arising from this Is a system of binding that creates all life. Energy creates patterns which persist in fractal progression from scales large and small. Much of what we think of as a self is defined by ideas of what life is but we should realize that these definitions show more about our perspective than the reality of our existence.

What makes life? 

I believe it to be a matter of homeostasis that is regulated in such a way as to create a self regulating pattern within a dynamic system. This is caused by a system of value which defines the self the same way axioms define a model. The basis of life is algorithmic action manifest as direct representation through contextual energy upon physical reality.

The key to understanding the algorithm is in the binding selection. The first particle to exhibit polarity and connect to another particle making the first chain creating a line of energy which will then fold causing secondary and tertiary field generation through n dimensional space begins Physics and Chemistry.

Proteins may be created from folding and the quantum chemical bonds resulting from the simple arrangement of the four positions of the letter V as positive poles exist and attraction possibilities from inside outside + and – meet and create chains of particles which in turn create chains capable of chemical action.

It is so simple for such things to exist but do they necessarily have to exist only as physical objects or could you find such simple machines created by algorithms inherent in the action of the existence of energy to any abstraction of infinite reality?

To put it in perspective could cultures, memes, personalities and other such energy patterns also exhibit quantum chemical reaction?

What is addiction?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html

This is a good article I found recently on addiction and ist causes. It seems likely that people become addicted because of the need to bond socially rather than as previously thought a physical need for a chemical. Bonding builds into a social organism and may work on many levels previously unrecognized.

Though this is interesting and indicative, I am looking for an explanation for a different phenomena.

How alive and conscious is the planet as a system?

I noticed something unusual one day, I was cloud watching while driving and each puffy little cloud was sailing about five hundred feet up and trailing what looked like rain. I drove farther and then saw a barn on fire, as the clouds went past they were vacuuming up the dust and smoke from the fire, visibly. I didn’t know that clouds would cross the earth vacuuming up the particles that would give them substance and growth. They must have been using electrical differences to cause this transference. The earth and sky are continually exchanging electrical forces and the systems involved are as complex and little understood as just about anything we see. The earth itself is an electrical dynamo consisting of a liquid iron, nickel core that creates a strong magnetic field. It is in constant pattern of binding with scales outward and inward.

Another thing I watched while cloud watching, when wondering about the contextual energy systems on different scales I like to look up. There are many systems of great complexity that have raised questions in my mind. As I drove home one day I noticed two shapes in the clouds that looked like a set of eyes. Glancing back I watched them slowly changing as they filled with an iris and then filled with bright light which seemed to give them life. It suddenly seemed as if something very large was looking down at me. I suddenly felt like an ant must feel and wondered how such a thing could be?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_creativity

Stephen L. Thayler P.H.D. on creation machines and how they are a different form of AI created from artificial neural networks of imagitrons and perceptrons which create a system of logic and actually learn by using simple rules that arise spontaneously from natural means. What this means is that you have something that creates patterns and an observer of some form and then throw in some random noise within the system and you can easily create an entity with a creative imagination. Scale and energy are not the only things that occur to affect the context of conscious being within the fractal of our existence.

And today this creation of life is spreading into the realm of technology. There are many questions to be answered and I think it is bonding that will hold many of the answers.

The U.S. Supreme Court Makes History on Marriage Equality

By Amanda Fickett

After decades of struggle, marriage equality is now the law of the land. Millions of Americans have been waiting for our nation’s highest court to recognize marriage equality–and it just did in a 5-4 opinion, issued by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Ever since the tide turned sharply in 2013, when the Court found that the federal government had to recognize same-sex married couples under federal law, case after case pointed toward what seemed an inevitable national consensus–at least until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a contrary decision, setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court.

The decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was announced to the cheers of hundreds who gathered on the Court’s steps. Writing for the majority, Kennedy’s words resonated with the import of the decision: “It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry.”

To recap, Obergefell v. Hodges comprises four consolidated cases from Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee which pose the same essential questions: (1) are state bans on same-sex marriage constitutional and (2) if such bans are constitutional, are states that ban same-sex marriage required to recognize such marriages performed in other states.

In his eloquent majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy answered the first question with a resounding “no.” The Court’s four left-leaning Justices agreed with him that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to perform same-sex marriages. According to the Court, “[t]he nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation.” The Court held that the right to marry is protected under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, stating that the right to marry is fundamental: as a result, marriage equality is now the law of the land in all fifty states.

Justice Kennedy is an unlikely champion for LGBT rights, having been appointed as a presumably “safe” conservative seat by President Ronald Reagan. For decades, Kennedy voted fairly consistently with his fellow conservatives, leading to an often fractured 5-4 majority on a number of key cases with far-reaching social and legal implications. But on the question of LGBT rights, Kennedy surprised nearly everyone with his first seminal opinion, Romer v. Evans, which struck down Colorado’s anti-gay Amendment 2 in 1996. Then nearly a decade later, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which ruled homosexual sodomy laws unconstitutional, flatly overturning the notorious case of Bowers v. Hardwick written just 17 years earlier.

But it was his opinion in United States v. Windsor, in which the Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that set the stage for today’s historic ruling. Kennedy wrote in that case that DOMA imposed a “disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages.” In his dissent Scalia warned, “By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.” His dissent, ironically, was cited often by challengers to state laws restricting the right of marriage to just heterosexual couples.

While momentous, to many the Court’s decision comes as no great surprise. After all, as court watchers noted, the Court all but guaranteed a favorable outcome in February when, in an unprecedented move, the justices declined to stay a federal judge’s order that invalidated Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. Moreover, traditionally conservative Ireland recently became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote, and just last Friday, the Supreme Court of Mexico, a country that is more than 80% Catholic, legalized same-sex unions. On the question of human rights, Justice Kennedy is known to look not only to recent trends in U.S. law, but to the state of the law in other nations. But surprise or no, the Court’s decision today will go down in history as a capstone of one of the most significant civil rights movements in a generation.

Today, Justice Kennedy closed his opinion, and an era, with a particularly poignant thought:
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one civilization’s oldest institution. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Advocates have long insisted that the fight for marriage equality was never just about the right to marry; it was about basic human dignity. The story at the heart of the named case, Obergefell v. Hodges exemplifies that well. The facts of that case are compelling: Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, a couple for over twenty years, had flown from their home in Ohio to Maryland to get married, due to  Arthur’s rapidly failing health. Arthur had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the swift progression of his disease heightened the couple’s sense of urgency to have their union recognized before Arthur passed away. The two were wed aboard a medical jet in Maryland in July of 2013; Arthur died a few months later. Despite the fact that Obergefell and Arthur had won the right to have Arthur’s death certificate reflect his true marital status, that decision was appealed by the State of Ohio—meaning that the death certificate could be rewritten to say that Arthur was single at the time of his death.

After today’s decision, couples like Obergefell and Arthur will never again have to face that kind of indignity at the hands of the state, nor will they have to endure the painful uncertainty of wondering whether their relationships will be recognized depending upon where they happen to live. Marriages in America will no longer be artificially bifurcated based on the sex of the participants. Love has always been love—but after today, marriage is also just marriage.

For a more indepth look at the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court case, read this article: From Heartbreak to History: How One Gay Spouse’s Dying Wish Might Change the Law for All Time


From: http://secondnexus.com/social/the-supreme-court-makes-history-marriage-equality/?ts_pid=5

An Inward Journey

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” ― Adyashanti
 

All my life I've been afraid to reveal who I truly am and what I intuitively feel about this life and this existence we all find ourselves within. I grew up surrounded by fundamentalist christian ideology, I even told myself that is what I believed in. Yet deep within, I knew there was something so much deeper, so much more expansive and all-encompassing at work in the universe. 

As time passed, I questioned more and more, knowing if I approach the truth with pure intentions, I will soon discover it for myself. What is the truth? It simply is. What we rely on are our perceptions of truth, ideas and influences we gather outside of ourselves. We are so busy looking outward, we rarely take the time to be silent, do nothing and simply sit in the state of being-ness.

That is why I took time off from this blog, I needed to spend time grounding within myself. I get so enamored with what is happening in the world around me, I loose sight of the serenity and peace I have within, that gentle undercurrent beneath the wind and the waves. 

I'd like to share a song I wrote and recorded. Music has been a huge part of my life and I'm rediscovering my passion all over again. This time with a sober mind and a peaceful heart. I hope you enjoy :)




Well I finally find
You asleep at the front of the battle line
Close to enemy hands
With your feet to the fire of the great I Am
Still love will level this land
And besiege every strait where the darkness stands

Oh my soul
Oh my mind
Nothing is ever as easy as falling in line

Well I've grown to despise
Every smash from the hammer that fastens time
Well no more daily advice
From the drone of the drums that will close my eyes

Oh my soul
Oh my mind
Nothing is ever as easy as falling in line

the semicolon project

From: https://hpwritesblogs.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/www-thesemicolonproject-com/

Today I went to a tattoo artist, and for $60 I let a man with a giant Jesus-tattoo on his head ink a semi-colon onto my wrist where it will stay until the day I die. By now, enough people have started asking questions that it made sense for me to start talking, and talking about things that aren’t particularly easy.

We’ll start here: a semi-colon is a place in a sentence where the author has the decision to stop with a period, but chooses not to. A semi-colon is a reminder to pause and then keep going. 
In April I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. By the beginning of May I was popping anti-depressents every morning with a breakfast I could barely stomach. In June, I had to leave a job I’d wanted since I first set foot on this campus as an incoming freshmen because of my mental health. Depression took a lot from me, but one of the most difficult things that my mental illness snatched from me was the title of Summer Welcome Leader.

I got this tattoo as a promise to myself that I would never willingly end my sentence. I got it as a reminder to take this summer as a pause, and then to keep going strong next year. I also got this this tattoo to open up conversations between myself and other humans about mental illness, because as difficult as mental illness is, what’s more difficult is feeling stigmatized. Or like you failed. Or like people are feeling sorry for you. There’s no question that the stigma surrounding mental illness inhibits struggling humans from finding the help that they need, and I find this absolutely heartbreaking because I know I am not alone when I say that depression destroyed my GPA, my relationships with my friends, my involvement on campus, and much, much more.

So if one out of every four people struggle with mental illness, then why did I feel like I was they only person who had ever experienced this before? If 25 of every hundred people I pass on the street have a clinical need for psychiatric care, then why did I feel like I had to hide my shaky hands every time the panic hit my harder than a train or feel like I had to shove every suicidal thought on a shelf behind old dictionaries and behind classic novels where no one could find them? 30,000 people die from suicide every year and that’s more than twice that of HIV and AIDS but still I am embarrassed to tell you that I can’t get out of bed in the mornings.

Let me make this clear for those who don’t know me well: I am not who you would expect to be depressed. Let me say this louder for those in the back: you cannot put me in a box decorated with black nail polish and frequent trips to Hot Topic because you don’t wear depression like a necklace or put on anxiety like a hat. You cannot spot depression because you become depression.

I am depression and I am not the silent girl dressed in all black hiding in the back row of your lecture hall. I am depression and I the perfect picture of a 20 year old sorority girl at an SEC school. I am depression and I am oversized fraternity formal t-shirts and Nike shorts that hang off my frail, starved hips that the Greek town girls envy so much. I am depression and I am the shining face on my sorority’s executive board and the bright smile touring high school seniors around my beautiful, botanical garden of a college campus. I am depression and behind stylish sunglasses too big for my face and a resume too long for a college sophomore, no one ever knew that my illness had crippled me so severely that I spent 20 hours a day wrapped in blankets in my bed, trying desperately to fight away the bitter cold that had taken residence in my heart and mind.

I hid myself away in my 7 million dollar sorority house, tucked somewhere between “you bought your friends” and “can’t daddy’s credit card fix your problems?”. I called 250 women on my campus by the name of sister but I was still lying at the bottom of a lake, unable to breathe while, effortlessly, everyone around me grew gills. Because no one tells you what to do when your life becomes a ten-car pile up during rush hour traffic. Because no one tells you how to tell the very people who framed your life and hung it up on the wall for everyone to admire the girl who has it all together that nothing is going right anymore. No one tells you what to do when the good days dwindle so severely that you can’t remember the last time you woke up and didn’t want to die.

I was 13-year old the first time someone told me that suicide was a selfish act. I was 15 the first time someone I knew killed themselves. I was 20 years old when suicide started to make sense.

Every 16.2 minutes, someone takes their life. In the time you’ve been reading about the crippling disease that made me want to take my own life, someone just took theirs. And still, we shame and stereotype and stigmatize the people who need the most help and teach our children that having to ask for help is something we should feel bad about, when in fact sometimes strength is admitting that you don’t have any left.

Oftentimes I feel like depression ruined my life. It took so much that it’s become a desperate desire for something good to come from this horrible experience. My hope is that, because of my experience, I can be an advocate and champion for mental health awareness. That I can start conversations with girls in my chapter and students on this campus and hopefully influence someone’s life for the better.

I am lucky. I am lucky because I live on a campus where my therapy visits are free and my antidepressants only cost $10 and there’s a disability center that will help me get through my classes. I am lucky because I have a mother who believed me and supported me when I said I was depressed and never made it sound like my fault. I am lucky because I have a sister who drives all the way to Columbia to see me when I need it. I am lucky because I have a job with Mizzou Tour Team and bosses that aren’t afraid to sit me down and make sure I’m eating and sleeping and doing okay. I am lucky because I have Carter and Jackson and Esther and Jordan and Kenzie and Erin and Brittany and Jim and Grace and so many others who in their own individual way have weaved a support network so caring and strong that there was no chance of me ever falling through the cracks.

The problem is that people struggling far worse than me don’t have half the support I do. Mizzou saved my life. Not everyone has a “Mizzou”.

So I will show my tattoo proudly and champion for the people who cannot champion for themselves. Every day that I say no to the dark thoughts depression tries to tangle my mind with, I am winning a battle that society has not made easy to win. I’ve learned a lot from my struggle with depression. Every day is another day of riotous and endless waves of transformation and as much as I wish it didn’t hurt so bad when it hit me, I can’t say that I’d change who I am or the struggles I went through.
Another thing: my tattoo is just slightly crooked. At first that bothered me. And then I remembered that life’s a little crooked, too. And now I love it even more.

It’s hard to find a place to end this think piece, but I’ll end it with the quote that I keep on my computer screen at all times, so I never forget. I hope anyone that’s ever struggled with their mental health never forgets, either:

“You are worthy of breathing. Someday you will learn that.
So don’t ask yourself why you can’t be
Smarter
Stronger
Cuter
Because depression took a lot from you and you are still fighting to take it back.” 

For more information on the tattoo I got, please visit http://www.projectsemicolon.com. If you need help, please check out online resources or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

And as always, ask for help. Never fear admitting you need more than you can give yourself