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15 Universal Truths You Can Only Learn From Traveling The World

February 23, 2016 Submitted By You Leave a comment

Travel is an eye opening, perspective shattering and rewarding endeavor. It helps you prioritize your life, really figure out what is important to you.

Being away from your support group, and resources makes you really dig deep internally. You will realize facts about yourself you never thought possible and builds skills you never thought necessary. Luck for those who can’t travel, we have compiled a list of lessons learned on our roads.

1. Live for the moment not the dollar. You will remember and cherish the connections and events in your life not how much you saved or spent.

2. Kindness is a universal language. No matter where you are or who you are with kindness is appreciated. It is one of the universal ways to make a human connection.

3. Negotiation, business transactions and any kind of interpersonal relationship should be treated as a mutually beneficial experience. Don’t cheat others and they will sense your sincerity. This doesn’t mean abandon your common sense.

4. When you are frightened, the best course of action is to acknowledge. the fear and its source. Then jump into action, you know what you have to do, do it.

5. The purpose of live is to experience the variety of the world and learn to appreciate it’s nuances.

6. Expectations will always detract from the potential of your future. Disappointments aside, you are always walking into new and unknown situations. Don’t limit your potentially infinite possibilities.

7. Everyone gets a little warped in their journey on life. But at the end of the day they’re naturally good. Give people to room to express themselves and you will be able to see their natural goodness.

8. Life IS about the journey. The goal or view at the end is but one moment, your journey will be made of many. Make sure you savor the journey my friend.

9. Silence is a sound, let go of your urge to fill the silence with thoughts and emotions. Simply be, your thoughts and emotions are inherent to the silence.

10. Celebrate as often as you can! Life is full of treasures to be enjoyed and shared. Acknowledge them, and share them with others, this will not only lead to great experiences but grow your appreciation.

11. You can not go through life never listening and trying to understand what you hear. You will push people away, miss out on opportunities and miss out on so many growth options.

12. Trust your gut and intuitions. They include your brightest idea and so much more.

13. Non verbal communication is so much more important than what a person says. They show hidden emotions and intentions.

14. Don’t worry about anything. This is a severe waste of resources. Acknowledge the danger, or problem. Work towards a goal. Worrying accomplishes nothing and makes us stressed out.

15. Pain is a necessary part of life. It imparts the severity of the lessons we must learn. We should never shy away from or specifically seek pain.

Healing, Inspirational, News

6 Simple Ways To Detox Your Body From Toxic Sugar

February 21, 2016 Submitted By You Leave a comment

The past focus on fats have led many American’s oblivious to the true waist line bandit:sugar. Many diseases and health issues are propagated by sugar, such as heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, depression, acne, infertility, and impotence. If you are one of those people who don’t think you are consuming a lot of sugar, I challenge you to keep track for three days. I guarantee that you are consuming sugar by at least 3,000 grams of sugar in that period. The average American consumes OVER 150 POUNDS OF SUGAR A YEAR. That’s so gross.

Removing this dietary staple is difficult. Not only is it found in everything packaged, we become dependent on the energy and dopamine rush we get from its consumption. As you proceed to remove sugar from your life, I’d recommend you create a list of reasons to post of your fridge and have a support group you can call on to talk you out of continuing that ‘sugar life’.

Go Cold Turkey

Definitely the harshest way to quit any unhealthy pattern, it is also the quickest and most effective. No cheats, no tricks, no excuses. Be prepared to lean on your support system HEAVILY.

Stop Drinking Your Calories

Got a bottle from the last tasty beverage you drank? Take a look at the nutritional information on it. There’s a high probability that you’re surprised at the outrageous sugar content. Realize as well that the liquid form of sugar is more damaging to your body than eating it. The liquid form is broken down more easily and faster so its literally going from your stomach directly into your liver. To eliminate sugar from your diet you can just skip the entirety of the bottles drink aisle.

Start Your Day With Protein

Regardless of what you’re attempting to do to your body via your diet, NEVER SKIP BREAKFAST. EVER. In fact within the first hour of being awake you should put something in your face.

A protein rich breakfast can curb sugar cravings through out the day. It is also just good for you all around. Your body will need additional protein and good carb sources as it works to detoxify itself of sugar and sugar by products.

Fight Sugar With (Good) Fats

To reiterate fats are not your enemies. Healthy fats help you feel full, balances your blood sugar and is an excellent source of cellular energy. Combine healthy fat sources with protein and it will boost your natural metabolic rate. Some common foods that are healthy fat options: extra virgin olive oil, avocados, coconut oil, coconut butter, nuts and seeds, and fish with high Omega 3 content.

Keep Up With Your Carbs

Carbohydrates are the basic building blocks for energy. You probably need to up your carb input to keep similar energy levels to when you were eating sugar. You will want to avoid starchy food options as best you can, so breads, pastas, any potato, winter squash and beets for the first ten days. This ten day period is what will be necessary to reset your natural energy levels. I know we cleared away a lot of meal staples with the last list but don’t worry you still have many options. Greens, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, collards, asparagus, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, fennel, eggplant, artichokes, and peppers are just a few of the options that are in line with your goals.

Drink Water, Rest and Breathe!

Take the time and congratulate yourself for your efforts. Keep in mind your goal list and call on your support group when you need. Don’t underestimate the severity of the chemical change you are subjecting your body to. Drink lots of water so the toxins your body frees can leave the body. Detoxifying is a heavy drain on your bodies energy stores so rest up. You have the perfect excuse to take naps over the next couple of weeks, so make good use of it!

News, Science

9 Ways To Increase Your Dopamine Levels Without Any Pharmaceuticals

February 19, 2016 Submitted By You Leave a comment

Dopamine is a powerful and influential neurotransmitter naturally produced by our brains. Related to the reward centers of the brain, it helps regulate movement and emotional response. It not only helps us recognize rewards but helps reinforce our minds to seek them.

Avoid Chemical Dependencies

Alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sex, pornography, shopping and any other instant gratification have negative results for long term dopamine levels.

These patterns rewire our ‘reward circuitry’ for fast release.

This rewiring is not conducive to sustainable dopamine production.

Checklist Tasks

Make a checklist for any of your tasks, and as you complete them mark them off. This formal manner of physically tracking your accomplishments solidifies the rewarding feeling you get from marking each task. This intensified feeling leading to more dopamine being produced. It also helps to form productive patterns of success.

Create Something

The focus and creative juices required to create something are influenced heavily by dopamine.

The process itself creates dopamine. Continue reading →

Check this out!, Inspirational, News

The Most Beautiful Hand Drawn Video: The Day That Death Fell In Love With Life

February 18, 2016 Submitted By You 1 Comment

This is an entirely hand drawn short video by Marsha Onderstijn, an animator from the Netherlands. This video follows a fun representation of death. Death appears as a cute specter wearing a skull as a mask. Death is going through a forest when it see’s a dear. There is a prolonged sense of longing as Death projects a sense of loneliness. Everything Death touches, dies.

A really well done video, done entirely by hand which is a rarity these days. Most animated videos are products of massive production lines and computer projections This video has been received warmly at various animation festivals. It was even featured on the EYE film DVD of Selected Dutch Shorts.

The idea that death is in love with life, and that is why Death takes living beings, isn’t a new idea. That doesn’t stop it from being a fun concept!

This version of Death is softer than most, metaphorically relating a more ‘human’ side of Death. It would make sense that Death is a sad spirit, with a unquenchable desire for contact and communication. We fear and hate the idea of death, if everyone hated you it would color your character strangely as well.

The Life of Death from Marsha Onderstijn on Vimeo.

Check this out!, News, Science, Technology

What is This Strange Object That’s Been Orbiting The Earth Since 1920?

February 18, 2016 Submitted By You Leave a comment

The Black Knight Satellite is an metallic object in a polar orbit with Earth. There has been a lot of fairly fantastical speculation over the origins and purpose of this 100 meter long (328 feet) satellite. The satellite was discovered in the 1920’s by means of radio transmissions. Scientists, including the brilliant Nikola Telsa were believed to receiving radio transitions from the spinning hunk of metal. This was one of the first recorded cases of Long Delay Echoes (LDE), a phenomena in which the sender of a radio transmission receives an echo of the transmission after a minimum of 2.7 seconds.

The orbit of the object is highly eccentric. It is in a polar orbit, meaning that its flight path passes over both magnetic poles of the planet. Humans launched the first satellite that had an intentional polar orbit in 1960. The Black Knight is the only non terrestrial object to have this flight pattern. It circles the Earth at 79 degrees off the equator, not the 90 degrees that is considered a standard polar orbit. The Black Knight is moving quickly, completing it’s orbit every 104.5 minutes. No country has claimed the object.

This ends the factual list for the Black Knight Satellite. The rest of the available information is mainly speculation. The United States and Russian government have shown marked interest in the device but not shared much of it’s information.

‘Black Knight is a jumble of completely unrelated stories; reports of unusual science observations, authors promoting fringe ideas, classified spy satellites and people over-interpreting photos. These ingredients have been chopped up, stirred together and stewed on the internet to one rambling and inconsistent dollop of myth,’ said senior education support officer, Martina Redpath, of Armagh Planetarium.

There is the theory that it is a bungled spacecraft part or a broken satellite. This is the most easily dismissed theory, as the discovery of the object predates the first satellite launch. Its massive size also eliminates the remaining probability of it being a forgotten human construct.

The more popular theories say the Black Knight is an alien probe, spy device, or part of a larger alien communication network. This is due to a number of people recording radio transmissions seeming to originate to the satellite. Tesla said the frequency and elements of the transmission were unlike any he had seen before. There are many natural phenomena that Tesla could have been receiving that science as a whole had not yet to identify. While we can not validate the theory that he was listening to the Knight it is an interesting theory.

In 1973, Duncan Lunan, a science fiction author and graduate of the famous University of Glasgow, experimented with the transmissions emanating from the Black Knight. The strength and intervals of the transmissions led him to believe that the signals were coming from Epsilon Bootis, a star near the Moon. Translating the messages led him to believe the transmissions had been going on for 13,00 years. The Black Knight was send star charts and information to find other intelligent life!

The lack of information creates appropriate space for varied interpretations of available fact. People desperate for conformation of alien life are willing to view elements in a certain light to create hope. As space travel becomes more sophisticated, hopefully we will be able to extract the device for study. It is bizarre that such a mystery has been spinning around our planet for at least decades, and organizations aren’t more interested in it.

Check this out!, News, Science

Gazing Into Someone’s Eyes For 10 Minutes Creates Altered States Of Consciousness

February 18, 2016 Submitted By You Leave a comment

Most people have gotten bored to the point that they will stare at walls, and objects in varying degrees of lighting. By focusing our eyes and shifting attention, we can blur the outline of objects or watch plain surfaces bend and take on unorthodox properties. Staring randomly out of windows during class or looking at the multicolored designs of public space carpets, another phenomena occurs. We start to see faces and animals where none was apparent or intended.

Giovanni Caputo is a psychologist at the University of Urbino, Italy. He combines the abstract theories of dissociation, hallucination, dysmorphia, and projection to stretch what humans can create, perceive and experience. He shows how a meditative and altered state of consciousness can be created out of nothing more than staring into another person’s eyes for ten minutes.

He took twenty individuals and paired them up randomly. The participants were not informed about the purpose of the experiment, they were only told that researchers were exploring meditative avenues.

There was a control group of another twenty people that were also randomly paired up. Instead of staring at each other, the control group pairs sat in the room with one another and stared a a blank wall.

The experimental group was instructed to sit facing one another at a distance one meter (3.28 ft) from one another and stare into their partner’s eyes. The room was dimly lit to distort their color perceptions. There was enough light to easily distinguish each other’s features.

At the end of the ten minute stare down, participants given two questionnaires. One was geared towards exploring any dissociation symptoms experienced during the sessions.

Dissociation symptoms are disruptions of perception, awareness, or identity. Basically the experience of reality and how it changes. The other survey was about the specific perceptions of their partner’s face. The results were wild!

The experimental group (the group that stared at each other) reported high levels of dissociation. All test subjects experienced wild distortions in time, colors, and sounds. 90% of the participants hallucinated their partner’s face morphing and distorting.

75% saw their partners change into variations of monsters. 50% saw their own faces be super imposed and 15% saw their partner change into a relative of theirs.

Remember that they hadn’t been told that the researchers were looking for dissociation trances.

Caputo had done another study back in 2010, involving mirrors. Fifty participants were asked to look at their reflections under similar lighting schemes. The results were similarly fantastic.

Participants saw their parents, animals, monsters and portrait styled archetypes that weren’t readily recognized.

Spirit Science