My Reincarnation

 My Reincarnation is a documentary film about the relationship between a father and his son.  Tibetan-trained Buddhist master Choegyal Namkhai Norbu and his Italian born son have differing goals and desires in regard to how Yeshi (the son) should live his life.  Yeshi is believed to be the reincarnation of his father's uncle who was a famous Dzogchen master who died after the Chinese invaded Tibet. Yeshi refuses to accept the destiny he inherited from birth which is to return to Tibet and be a spiritual teacher. Yeshi just wants to live a "normal" life.

 My Reincarnation was Directed and Produced by Jennifer Fox who spent twenty years filming this documentary. My Reincarnation utilizes archival film, still photographs, and over 1,000 hours of intimate scenes shot between 1988 to 2009. In addition, interviews with Namkhai Norbu and Yeshi help tell the story of one man's struggle to keep a spiritual tradition alive and another man's struggle to maintain his personal identity.   Over time both begin to change as documented in the film.

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Play and Imagination

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” -Albert Einstein

Drinking coffee, looking at what comes up on my Facebook news feed or whatever they call it.  This one catches my eye and makes me think:

"OK, so you are ten years old, you have a laptop, iPod, Facebook, and a Blackberry.... Dude. when I was ten I only had one thing to play with. It was called outside!"

Oh yes.  Playing outside.  That was it!  That was all we wanted to do.  We played every kind of thing:  house, army, cowboys and indians, tag, hide and seek, baseball, football, all kinds of things.  Most which required making things up and imagination. Our bikes were motorcycles after all.

"I remember when we used to play a game
Take you by the hand and spin you very fast
Midspin, let you go, stop yourself
Switching into statues, rock hard
Necessary spinning in the front yard, necessary spinning in the front yard,
Everybody's spinning in the front yard
Necessary spinning in the front yard
Sometimes I wish that I were nine years old again ... "

~ Necessary Spinning -  Translator

Letting your imagination run free is an important part of growing up which is at some point socialized out of us. On her blog Social and Emotional Living, Kimberly Hackett writes,  "My children played well when children. They built forts out of blankets and pillows, upturning sofas and chairs, making a mess of the house. It didn’t matter. Their creativity and freedom made me happy and it was easy to make them happy this way. They worked together, linking imaginations through interior tunnels that had few words. This is how they loved each other. I wonder where freedom goes. As my children grow older, I find myself missing their childhood freedom. No longer can we whimsically float down the wide river of play and imagination. There was school yanking us to shore, to a reality I could not control. School gave my children what I couldn’t, the chance to become socialized. They needed to maneuver on their own. Their ability to be with other children gave them another kind of freedom, the freedom in friendship. But school is a demanding taskmaster and the freedom of play and imagination is not usually welcome. "

Wouldn't it be great to be nine years old again?  Nine years old before laptops, iPads, Blackberries, Facebook so on and so forth.

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Lennon Bronte

No, this is not John Lennon.  It sure does look like him however. This is Branwell Bronte's self-portrait.  Branwell was a poet and a painter, and the brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte.  Branwell is said to have been the most talented of the bunch though Emily and Charlotte are more famous.  Branwell is said to have had an affair with a Mrs. Robinson (remember the Simon and Garfunkel song?  How about the movie The Graduate?  Based on Branwell's affair?  Hmmm. Maybe). Like many talented artists, Branwell became an alcoholic and a drug addict.  He eventually died of tuberculosis in 1848.

Fast forward to now.  In the book All You Need is Love,  Jewelle St James points out similarities between John and Branwell:

"Branwell, like John, was an artist and a poet. Branwell drank and did drugs, actually he did more than doing drugs, he was an addict. Branwell, like John, lost his mother at an early age, and had sisters but no brothers. Oh, and Branwell had good friends in Liverpool. … Branwell and John both drew caricatures, depicting aspects of their lives. [And finally - ] Branwell’s self portraits are the image of John Lennon! The nose, the glasses, everything." -  Jewelle St James.

What you need to know is that All You Need is Love by Jewelle St james is not about The Beatles.  It is "The heart-wrenching spiritual journey of one woman discovering her past life shared with John Baron, the seventeenth-century incarnation of John Lennon."

Apparently Jewelle St John had a session or two with Kevin Ryerson who confirmed that Lennon was Michael Byrne, John Baron and Branwell Bronte in past lives. Ryerson also went on to say that Cynthia Lennon was Mrs. Robinson in the past. 

Kevin Ryerson is an intuitive and trance channel much like Jane Roberts and Edgar Cayce.  Jewelle St James wrote a follow-up book titled The Lennon-Bronte Connection in which she talks about Lennon as Branwell and herself as Emily Bronte.

The interesting thing is that John and Branwell do look alot alike!  Do some googling.  You will see.


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An updated version of this article can be found here

Psychedelic Sufi Trance Rock

Stumbling around the internet I came across the phrase "psychedelic sufi trance rock."  What I found was an article about a singer/guitarist named Haale (Gofori).

"Haale grew up singing in Sufi with her Iranian family while listening to Patti Smith and Jimi Hendrix on the side. She fuses these two styles instinctually, combining meandering guitar riffs with transcendental Sufi lyrics and Persian rhythms, played on instruments such as the sitar and tonbak drum - Janera: Curating Conversations

Being that Patti Smith is my favorite artist, I like middle eastern music, and I have a thing for psychedelic music, I naturally went over to YouTube to see what I could find.  The first few videos I did have a Patti Smith/middle eastern/ psychedelic flavor.  No doubt about it.  I was going to post one of those but after watching a few more I decided this one is my favorite:



This is called "Wild Poppies" by The Mast.  The Mast is Haale (vocals/guitar) and Matt Kilmer (percussion). 

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Learn to Avoid The Taste That Kills

Diet Soft drinks. Don't bother. You won't lose weight, actually you might gain some. When confronted with a choice of sweeteners, steer clear of anything in a pink, blue or yellow packet. Choose the brown or white packet. Raw sugar is the best choice. Artificial sweeteners are excitotoxins. Excitotoxins kill brain cells. 

“Ex-ci'-to-tox-in: a substance added to foods and beverages that literally stimulates neurons to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees. Can be found in such ingredients as monosodium glutamate, aspartame (NutraSweet®), cysteine, hydrolyzed protein, and aspartic acid.” - Wikipedia.



The best source of information on excitotoxins is the book Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills by Russell Blaylock. Blaylock is a retired neurosurgeon who studied and researched excitotoxins for many years before publishing this book. He knew the food industry would do everything in their power to keep his findings from public awareness and attempt to stifle his work. Knowing this would be the case, he took care to make an airtight case against excitotoxins which would be hard for anyone to dispute.

Seventy-five to ninty percent of the food products found in a typical food store have been enhanced to some degree by the addition of excitotoxins. These chemical agents are often listed as “spices” and “natural flavors” on ingredient labels. Learn to read labels and avoid the following ingredients:

Monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed protein, hydrolyzed plant protein, plant protein extract, sodium casseinate calcium casseinate, yeast extract, textured protein, autolyzed yeast and hydrolyzed oat flour.

Think twice about these additional ingredients: malt extract, malt flavoring, bouillon, broth, stock, flavoring, natural flavoring, natural beef or chicken flavor, seasonings and spices. Most of these terms are used to disguise the use of chemicals that are excitotoxins.

Aspartame alone is found in over 6,000 food products (read the label on that container of non-fat yogurt). Although they have not banned its use, the FDA released a list of 92 side effects associated with aspartame consumption. These include: Abdominal Pain, anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma, bloating, edema (fluid retention), blood sugar control problems (hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia), brain cancer, breathing difficulties, burning eyes or throat, burning urination, chest pains, chronic cough, chronic fatigue, confusion, death, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, excessive thirst or hunger, fatigue, flushing of face, hair Loss or thinning of hair, headaches/migraines, hearing loss, heart palpitations, hives, hypertension (high blood pressure), impotency and sexual problems, inability to concentrate, infection susceptibility, insomnia, irritability, itching, joint pains, laryngitis, marked personality changes, memory loss, menstrual problems or changes, muscle spasms, nausea or vomiting, numbness or tingling of extremities, panic attacks, phobias, poor memory, rapid heart beat, rashes, seizures and convulsions, slurring of speech, swallowing pain, tremors, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss and weight gain.

For more information on aspartame click here.  Better yet, get a copy of Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills.  It's a real eye opener.

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