Pain

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which 

the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink

his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, 

is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.

-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Amazonia: Healing With Sacred Planets

Amazonia: Healing With Sacred Plants is a documentary by Alberto Villoldo,  a Cuban-born psychologist, anthropologist and author who has devoted 25 years of his life to studying the shamatic healing practices of Amazon and Inca shamans.

Villoldo started his career in a brain laboratory in San Francisco where he and others were studying the development of psychosomatic disease.  According to Villoldo, "One day I realized that I had been looking out of the wrong end of the microscope, becoming caught in the minutiae of neurons and brain chemistry, and missing the larger picture of the mind. I decided to leave my lab and traveled to the Amazon, to work and study with medicine men who had no MRI’s and brain scans, only the power of the mind and local herbs to heal their patients."

High up in the Andes mountains, Villoldo discovered a group of healers who specialized in treating illness before it manifested in the physical body. They achieved this by working on a person's Luminous Energy Field rather than the physical body.

Villoldo eventually returned to The United States and founded The Four Winds.  The Four Winds Light Body School offers students extensive professional training in energy medicine based on the 50,000-year-old wisdom teachings of the ancient Americas.  The school's goal is to teach people how to become modern day shamans who "learn to live in balance, and share their skills to be of deepest service and make a difference in the world."

Villoldo learned a great deal about energy medicine and healing with sacred plants in the Amazon.  He has authored several books on the subjects and produced the beautiful and informative documentary, Amazonia:  Healing With Sacred Plants.

Another fascinating video related to this subject is Peru:  Hell and Back  which is a National Geographic Adventure exclusive.

Books by Albert Villoldo:

Healing States: A Journey Into the World of Spiritual Healing and Shamanism 

Dance of the Four Winds: Secrets of the Inca Medicine Wheel

Island of the Sun: Mastering the Inca Medicine Wheel 

Shaman, Healer, Sage: How to Heal Yourself and Others with the Energy Medicine of the Americas 

Mending The Past & Healing The Future With Soul Retrieval

Yoga, Power, and Spirit: Patanjali the Shaman 

The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers

Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being

Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment 

Seth Speaks

Seth Speaks was one of the most important and interesting books I read in my life.   This book simply resonated with me.  Prior to its publication, I was reading every Edgar Cayce book I could get my hands on.  Cayce's work also resonated with me, but Jane Robert's Seth books were easier to read as the syntax was more modern and less convoluted. I purchased this book more than once.  I would read it over and over and when it somehow disappeared, I would buy another copy.

Seth was a non-physical personality who spoke through Jane Roberts.  In other words, Jane Roberts channeled Seth. Seth spoke about topics I was interested in: the power of belief, life after death, karma, reincarnation, God, the nature of reality, so on and so forth.  I can't remember anything that Seth said that did not resonate with my own beliefs.  I think I was attracted to the Seth series of books as they validated my own thoughts and ideas.

I read one Seth book after another, but Seth Speaks was my favorite.  I also enjoyed The Education of Oversoul 7 which is a novel and the first book of a trilogy.  The Oversoul 7 Trilogy is a work of fiction in which Roberts attempts to demonstrate the concepts she channeled in story form.

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"The human personality has no limitations except those which it accepts. There are no limits to its development or growth, if it will accept no limits. There are no boundaries to the self except those boundaries which the self arbitrarily creates and perpetuates." - Seth

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Book List

Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul

The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book

The "Unknown" Reality, Volumes I & II

The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression

The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events: A Seth Book

Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Volumes I & II

The Magical Approach

Nebuchadnezzar II and Saddam

I have an interest in reincarnation so I often browse the internet reading reincarnation case studies.  Today I stumbled upon an article reporting that Saddam Hussein sincerely believed that he was the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar II.  Normally I would have bypassed this as I have little interest in Saddam Hussein and know next to nothing about Nebuchadnezzar II.

Years ago I bought one of Dick Sutphen's astral projection hypnosis tapes.  Every time I listened to it, I fell asleep.  There was one time, however, when Sutphen commanded me to wake back up, that I was left with a vision of a man in a white robe and I heard the name "Nebuchadnezzar."  Was the man in the robe Nebuchadnezzar?  Who knows.  I told a friend, who told a friend, who said he was some guy in the Bible.   I looked in the Bible and found this name in the Book of Daniel.  That was the extent of my research.

Reading that Saddam Hussein believed he was a reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar II brought memories of this experience back into my consciousness and peaked my interest a bit.

Nebuchadnezzar II was "the greatest king of ancient Babylon" according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia.  He ruled Babylon from 634 BCE to 562 BCE.  Babylon become the most powerful city state in the region under this warrior king.  In the Bible he is said to be portrayed as an enemy of God.

Like many ancient kings, it seems that Nebuchadnezzar was bent on conquest and attaining power.  What is more interesting, at least to me, is that he hoped to make the city of Babylon one of the wonders of the world.  Today, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, Surviving an apparent seven-year bout with insanity (the cause of which is still not known today) Nebuchadnezzar II created a city which was not only wonderous to behold but also a center for the arts and intellectual pursuits. Women enjoyed equal rights with men under Nebuchadnezzar’s rule (though, certainly, not completely equal in status nor opportunity by any modern-day standard) schools and temples were plentiful and literacy, mathematics and craftsmanship flourished along with a tolerance of, and interest in, other gods of other faiths. The great king died, as he had hoped, in the magnificent city he had built, an old man."

Back to Saddam.  According to investigative mythologist William Henry, Saddam believed himself to be the literal reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar II.  "It is well known that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has connected himself with Nebuchadnezzar, spending over $500 million during the 1980's on the reconstruction and the re-establishment of ancient Babylon, the capitol of Nebuchadnezzar. Over sixty million bricks have been made to place in the walls of Babylon, each engraved with the inscription 'To King Nebuchadnezzar in the reign of Saddam Hussein.'" - William Henry.

Was Saddam once Nebuchadnezzar or was he delusional?  I don't know.

Dolphins Respond to Their Names

The BBC reports that scientists have evidence that dolphins call each other by name.  This name is a unique whistle.   When one dolphin sounds a particular whistle, the dolphin whose whistle, or name, it is responds.  Dolphins only respond to their own whistle and not that of other dolphins.  

Marine biologists Dr. Stephanie King and Dr Vincent Janik, of the University of St Andrews, conducted sound playback experiments with bottlenose dolphins on the east coast of Scotland and found that each dolphin only reacted when hearing a computer version of its own unique whistle, but not to other whistles played to it.   They concluded that these whistles function as names. 

According to DR. Janik,  "Our results present the first case of naming in mammals, providing a clear parallel between dolphin and human communication. In experimental work, parrots are also good at learning novel sounds and using them to label objects. Some parrots may also use these skills in their own communication. Thus, both dolphins and parrots present interesting avenues of research for understanding labelling or naming in the animal kingdom.”

Although this research is interesting, its not really surprising.  What I'd like to know is how each dolphin is assigned a particular whistle.  By its mother?

Reading about this study reminded me of one of my favorite movies - The Day of the Dolphin - a science fiction thriller from the 70s.

"A brilliant and driven scientist, Jake Terrell, and his young and beautiful wife, Maggie, train dolphins to communicate with humans. This is done by teaching the dolphins to speak English in dolphin-like voices. Two of his dolphins, Alpha ("Fa") and Beta ("Bea"), are stolen by officials of the shadowy Franklin Foundation headed by Harold DeMilo, the supportive backer of the Terrells' research. After the dolphins are kidnapped, an investigation by an undercover government agent for hire, Curtis Mahoney, reveals that the Institute is planning to further train the dolphins to carry out a political assassination by having them place a limpet mine on the hull of the yacht of  the President of the United States." - Wikipedia


BBC Article

Research Abstract

University of St Andrews News

The Day of the Dolphin on YouTube