The Universe Inside Your Mind

Zenos Frudakis 'Breaking Free'

2012-02-15T02:37:00.003-08:00

Zenos’ statement about his vision of the sculpture

I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process.

Although for me, this feeling sprang from a particular personal situation, I was conscious that it was a universal desire with almost everyone; that need to escape from some situation – be it an internal struggle or an adversarial circumstance, and to be free from it.

I began this work in a very traditional sculptural manner by creating a small model in clay called a macquette. The purpose of beginning in this manner is to capture the large action and major proportions of the figure within the overall design without any details to detract from the big idea. Another reason for not having details and for working on a small model only a few inches in height is that the small armature within it, holding the clay, is more easily manipulated, allowing for much greater flexibility in developing a concept. For example, an arm, a leg or a head can be pushed around without any concern for obliterating details, such as a nose or a finger.

The macquette is the original mass of clay where a concept is born and from which it grows and develops. This was important later when I enlarged the sculpture from several inches long to 20 feet long, and I retained in the larger work a sense that all the conceptual material, its forms, focus and development sprang from this rough idea. The work metamorphosized, in the way that we do.

Although there are four figures represented, the work is really one figure moving from left to right. The composition develops from left to right beginning with a kind of mummy/death like captive figure locked into its background. In the second frame, the figure, reminiscent of Michaelangelo’s Rebellious Slave, begins to stir and struggle to escape. The figure in the third frame has torn himself from the wall that held him captive and is stepping out, reaching for freedom. In the fourth frame, the figure is entirely free, victorious, arms outstretched, completely away from the wall and from the grave space he left behind. He evokes an escape from his own mortality.

In working on the large scale sculpture, I was satisfied that those who drove by getting a quick look at it would see the big picture: that it was about escape. I was also concerned that those who worked in the building and who passed the sculpture frequently would have something more to see. There was a lot of empty space between the figures on the wall, which I saw as an opportunity to develop further ideas.

It was important to me that the sculpture have more than one theme going on at once. One of the other major ideas incorporated in the work is that the very process of creating the sculpture is clearly revealed in the work itself. The maquette is cast into the sculpture in the lower left hand corner. In the lower right corner is the cast of the sculptor’s hand holding the sculpture tool with two rolls of clay also cast in bronze. Throughout the background of the Wall, I have rolled out the clay and pressed it with my fingers so that my fingerprints are all over the sculpture. I have not hidden how I have made the piece. In fact, the whole idea of the macquette is enlarged so that all the figures in the background look like a giant macquette. And at the same time, as the figures move from left to right, I have shown how figures are developed when you are sculpting from the rough to the more finished product.

Elements of the sculpture trade beside the tools that are cast into the sculpture are calipers both for their use in measuring and their reference to Protagoras’ words “Man is the measure of all things.”

Also cast into the sculpture is an anatomical man, traditionally used as a reference by sculptors. Many of the heads and figures on the wall, some in the round and some in relief, are shown partially sculpted, revealing the process of creation.

Something else I have done with the sculpture is that I have created a one man show of my work. I have always admired Rodin’s Gates of Hell. I similarly thought I would incorporate many sculptures into the wall where it was suitable.

Like T.S. Eliot and other artists, I have put many personal elements in my work. My friend Philip, a sculptor who died of AIDS, created a work that I included in Freedom because he often expressed his wish to have it in a public space. He did not live long enough to accomplish this himself. My cat, who lived with me for 20 years, my mother, father, and my self portrait are in the work. It is obvious which face is mine because there is a ballooned phrase coming from my mouth with the word “freedom”, written backwards, making it clear that the face was sculpted in a mirror. I see the whole Wall sculpture as a kind of illusion akin to Alice’s Through the Looking Glass.

The sculpture contains an original Duane Hanson -- a bronze cast of my own hands that Duane cast for me as a gift.

Much of what I did with this sculpture has to do with taking traditional forms and combining them in non-traditional ways, forming a postmodern sensibility. For example, I dropped a wax cast of my father’s bust from two or three feet in height so that it broke into large pieces. I cast those into the wall in a fractured manner over another face, an old work I found in a vat of clay purchased from a sculptor who had long ago died.

I have hidden many things in the background for people who see the sculpture more than once to discover, such as a cast of coins – a nickel and two pennies, another nickel and two pennies, and two quarters and a penny. These represent not only the relationship between money and art, but the numerals 7-7-51, my birth date.

It is important to me that the public interact with the sculpture, not just intellectually and emotionally but physically. I have created a space in which I have written “stand here” so that people can place themselves inside the sculpture and become part of the composition.

In the end, this sculpture is a statement about the artist’s attempt to free himself from the constraints of mortality through a long lasting creative

Sculpture Idea

2012-02-11T07:15:00.001-08:00

Lemons Are Alkalizing To The Blood and Tissues

2012-02-07T16:37:00.001-08:00

Lemons Are Alkalizing To The Blood and Tissues

Here are 13 amazing healing powers of lemons:

Bowel-Cleansing: The bitter taste of lemon gives these fruit the ability to increase peristalsis–a pumping-motion in the bowels–which helps to eliminate waste from the bowels and improve regularity. Add the juice of one lemon to warm alkaline 9.5pH water and drink first thing in the morning. You can also add mineral salts to increase the efficacy of bowel cleansing. Add 1 to 3 teaspoons in a glass of alkaline lemon water.

Cancer: Lemons contain 22 anti-cancerous or anti-acid compounds, including limonene—a naturally-occurring oil that slows, halts and buffers the acids that breakdown healthy tissue causing the formation of cancerous tumors in animals. Lemons also contain a substance called flavonol glycosides which stop the acids that spoil healthy cells causing a domino effect which creates more cancerous cells.

Colds and Flu: Lemons are rich in vitamin C and flavonoids that work in conjunction for a serious punch against the dietary and metabolic acids that cause the body to eliminate these toxins through the bowels, the pores of the skin, urinary tract and sinuses by inducing a fever or creating a so-called cold.

Liver: Fresh lemon juice added to a large glass of water in the morning is a great liver detoxifier. You can also drink 1 liter of salt water at 6pm adding 3 tablespoons of epsom salts and then at 9pm drink 1 liter of 500ml of lemon fresh juice with 500ml of cold pressed olive oil. You then go to be and sleep on you right side.

Nutrition: Lemons contain vitamin C, flavonoids, B-complex vitamins, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, and fiber which help to maintain the alkaline design of the body.

Balances Body Chemistry: While lemons are acidic at a pH of 3.5 they contain an alkalizing compound of potassium bicarbonate which interacts with the body’s metabolic acids to have an alkalizing effect on the bodily fluids helping to contribute to a balanced alkaline body pH.

Allergies: Lemons contain the phytonutrient hesperetin which has been shown in studies to alleviate allergic symptoms by reducing the acidic toxins that cause allergic reactions.

Brain and Nervous System Disorders: Lemons contain the potent phytonutrient tangeretin in the peel, lemons have been proven to be effective for brain disorders like Parkinson’s disease by buffering the excess acids of sugar, acetylaldehyde, and alcohol that destroy brain cells.

Eye Disorders: Rutin, found in lemons, has been shown in research to improve the symptoms of eye disorders, including diabetic retinopathy by buffering the acids that destroy the delicate rods and cones of the eye.

Anti-Acid: In addition to being effective in reducing environmental, dietary, metabolic and respiratory acids that cause the symptoms of cold and flu, terpene limonoids found in lemons have proven anti-acid effects on other types of acidic conditions, such as acid reflux, indigestion, tissue irritation and inflammation, induration and ulceration.

Diabetes: In addition to improving eye problems linked with diabetes, lemons contain hesperetin which lowers the acids in the blood, especially the acid sugar levels of glucose.

Gall and Kidney Stones: The Vitamin C found in lemon juice helps to dissolve gallstones, calcium deposits, and kidney stones.

Anti-Aging: The potassium bicarbonate found in lemons helps to neutralize environmental, dietary, metabolic and respiratory acids linked to aging and most types of dis-ease.

Some suggested uses of lemon in your daily diet:

1) Eliminate the highly toxic acid vinegar and replace it with the alkalizing fruit lemon or lime.

2) Add lemon with ginger to settle the acids of your stomach and restore the natural alkaline state of the stomach.

3) Add lemon to your alkaline water to neutralize the highly toxic hydrochloric acid in the stomach produced when the stomach is creating the alkaline buffer sodium bicarbonate to alkalize your food or drink ingested.

4) Instead of using olive oil and vinegar on your salad substitute the vinegar and add olive oil and lemon juice on your salad. Now you have an alkalizing salad without the poisonous acidic vinegar.

5) Add lemon juice with your phour salts in a glass of alkaline water to alkalize the blood and tissues.

May you choose the consequences of your life wisely!

2012-02-07T16:34:00.000-08:00

Health, Fitness, Sickness and Disease Are Personal Choices!

After 25 years of research studying the affects lifestyle and diet on the pH of the blood, I have learned that the human organism is alkaline by design and acidic in all of its functions. If one can maintain the delicate alkaline pH of all the body fluids bathing every cell from within and from without at 7.365 then life will continue without pain, suffering, sickness or disease.

Louis Pasteur’s germ theory has become a curse. Antoine BeChamp an adversary to Pasteur and his germ theory for scientific fraud said this about the germ theory, "there is nothing so false that does not contain some element of truth, and so it is with the germ theory." The germ theory is the controlling medical idea for the world. In Pasteur’s day, and ever since, other proposed theories about the cause of disease have fallen on death ear because they have tended to contradict that paradigm. NO matter how simple and logical an idea about the cause of disease, if it does not promote the concept of invasion of germs and their specific cures it does not fit into the medical paradigm.

More importantly, the germ theory has become a curse because it has encouraged individuals to give up responsibility for their own health over to the medical community. If germs cause disease it stands to reason that control belongs to the medical community whose tireless researchers spend trillions of our money to find the right pill or potion to annihilate disease-causing germs.

This quest to cure disease through medication is at the heart of modern allopathic medicine and the multi-trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry. It is a quest that persists despite evidence indicating that airborne germs do not cause the disease for which they are credited.

After more than a century of trying, the Pasteurian germ theory has utterly failed in the quest to a cure for any disease. All major degenerative diseases are on the increase, as are so called infectious diseases which are not infectious at all. Every year, old symptoms are given new names – names like MS for polio, AIDS for poor sanitation, poor nutrition, poor lifestyle choices and drug use, Epstein-Barr virus for connective tissue disorders like fibramyalgia – to make them appear to be the work of a new germ. Unless we turn this nonsense around, the human race could become extinct like the dinosaurs from the treatments of modern medicine to kill a non- threatening or phantom germ.

If we want to find the cure for disease we need only to look at our dietary and lifestyle choices. If you heed the ignored, even rejected discoveries of Pasteur’s peers and scientists of the 19th and 20th century, adding those to my own discoveries, you will learn the true cause of disease.

Until the medical community starts looking at causes rather than devoting its time looking for cures, and until we start taking responsibility for our own lifestyle and dietary choices, I believe the human race is in trouble of becoming extinct.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, Physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1776 said this: "Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship, To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic."

Where does life begin? In the womb or the grail, the holy grail, in the amniotic fluid, in a 98.6 F, one percent water and salt solution or 1 part salt to 100 parts water. This solution is called the sol. This natural salt solution, called "sol" is from the origin of the word, directly connected to the word "soul". What we call "sol" for our salt solution (a solution of two in one- no more polarity), was believed by the ancient Celtics to represent our soul, as the soul originated, in their belief, from the ocean where we are all born from the same fluids, arising from the same "sol" a solution of salt and water.

Our body in its wholeness is an ingenious creation of nature, It has been given all mechanisms to not only sustain its life but also to create new life. Every healthy person has innate regulatory mechanisms to maintain its alkaline design and self-healing powers, which ensure or reestablish the natural balance of the bodily functions, the homeostasis. It is not the doctor that heals us, nor the medication, but our own innate alkaline regulatory mechanisms. Our body is able to fully regenerate itself. Therefore, it is advised to use great discernment before labeling any disease as "incurable" or "untreatable." If doctors come to the conclusion that a disease is incurable, they would be more accurate in saying that with their knowledge and experience, they are not able to offer any further help. The word "incurable" conveys fear, or false evidence appearing real, which stifles and weakens our body’s innate alkaline mechanism.

Bio-chemically speaking Health is all about alkaline balance. Bio-energetically speaking Health is all about energy. Vibrating energy is the origin of matter and the origin of life. And matter is nothing more than organized energy.

In 1984, the Swiss physicist Dr. Carlos Rubbia, received the Nobel prize for discovering a mathematically calculable natural constant with which he could calculate the ratio of mass particles (matter) in relation to navigating energy particles, The ratio of matter to energy that forms matter is 1 to 9,746 to the power of 108 or about 1 to 1,000,000,000 which means it takes one billion energy units to create one single unit of matter in a materialized tangible form. Isn’t interesting that we for the most part, preoccupy ourselves with only 1 billionth part of reality: that which is in a material form and can be seen and touched. We fail to see the far greater amount of energy particles it took to materialize our reality. This revolutionary scientific discovery shows us clearly that every form of matter is subject to higher energetic interactions and subject to change of form and function.

When we analyze the energy content of any form of matter, we arrive at its smallest part, the atom and its protons, electrons and neutrons. There is ongoing movement without any contact- nothing tangible, just pure vibrating energy. This vibrating energy creates a frequency, which can be measured, a so-called wave length which can be seen using my photon interference photography. Every form of matter is characterized as a specific frequency spectrum. And each frequency spectrum can be measured using a decibel meter. All organized matter is nothing more than organized energy that gives off a specific frequency and a specific sound which can be measured and heard. When we turn on a light or an electrical device we can see the energy but we cannot perceive the electrical current itself, but we except its existence. This same materially non-perceivable electricity, this energy, flows through our body fluids especially our blood. Every one of us has enough measurable electrical current flowing through us to light up a 100 watt light bulb.

Life/light = energy and energy = information or intelligence.

Everything that exists not only exists as energy but also as a carrier of information or intelligence, whether it is a human being, a form of food or drink, or a rock. Life is a constant exchange of energy and intelligence and the best place to view this life energy is in live and dried blood microscopy.

Plasma which is 92% alkaline water at a pH of 7.365 is a good example for showing how matter as energy is transformed when additional energy is added or subtracted. Water has three different distinct bodies or states: solid, liquid and gaseous. Ice is frozen water or like the thickening of the blood. We can see it and feel its coolness. By adding energy in the form of heat to the ice it transforms back into a liquid. When we add more energy to the water it begins to boil and the molecules start moving faster and faster that they begin to transform into steam and become gaseous. This transformation of organized energy as matter from one form to another is know as biological or energetical transformation or also referred to as pleomorphism.

Energy and intelligence are identical.

Every form of energy has a specific wavelength

Every wavelength has its individual content of intelligence

There are no accidents in the order of Nature

Meanwhile, we know of about 40,000 different diseases and the list is growing that are treated by the 1,200 different allopathic specialty fields with 58,000 different kinds of allopathic preparations or medicines. However, the word diseases in the plural form, is not a accurate. Have you ever heard of "healths"? We are either healthy or ill. This illness signals a lack of energy and shows up in the form of a symptom. To represent a symptom as an illness is technically and scientifically inaccurate. The symptom is merely the intelligent cry of the energetically defective and suffering body, crying out for help. And normally, the body turns to a weakened organ to give us a hint, through a symptom, that things are not in order.

Our bodies either hum or honk

Upset stomachs or high blood pressure or high blood sugars is the body honking. The honks of our bodies are telling us there is a state of pH or energetic imbalance.

Why does pH balance or pH Homeostasis define good health?

pH balance or pH homeostasis in humans commonly refers to the internal balance of the body’s electro-magnetic and chemical systems in response to the changing conditions of the external world and the changing conditions of the internal world. The word homeostasis comes from the Greek words: "homeo" means similar or "alki" or "alkaline" and "stasis" means a tendency toward maintaining stability. There are many homoeostatic mechanisms in our bodies that help maintain this balance and our state of health is directly related to the health of these mechanisms. pH homeostasis is maintained by dynamic processes of feedback and regulation. pH homeostasis has only one objective: to preserve the beneficial conditions of life in the internal alkali environment. Every day we are bombarded with external influences that threaten that balanced internal alkaline pH environment. Some of these threats include becoming too hot or too cold, eating too much or eating acidic foods or drinks, breathing polluted air and being exposed to chemicals over a period of time, whether they be recreational or prescribed by our Doctor.

Our cells, especially the red blood cells can only survive when our bodies are strong enough to maintain pH homeostasis at 7.365 or to regain it quickly after we have been exposed to toxic environmental threats. Some of the pH homoeostatic mechanisms in the body include temperature regulation, dilation of the eye, blood composition, heart rate, blood pressure, water content, blood sugar level, mineral relationships, and of course the acid/alkaline balance of our body fluids.

An essential feature of these mechanisms is that they enable the red blood cells, the tissue which is a product of the red blood cells and the whole of the organism, also a product of blood, to adapt to changes in both internal and external environmental conditions. If the pH homoeostatic mechanisms are impaired the body loses its ability to regulate these mechanisms.

By looking at living blood using a compound phase contrast microscope I can view the quality of the red blood cell, its environment and how well the body is managing these pH homoeostatic mechanisms. The interdependence and close coordination of the many bodily functions, which work so well when we are in alkaline balance or health, may be upset by a chain reaction when any part of the system breaks down from metabolic acids which have not been properly eliminated through, respiration, perspiration, defecation or urination. If this chain reaction is too drastic, the red blood cells and body cells will become acidic and begin to biologically transform into other cellular forms – like bacteria or yeast.

The normal state of health is not a static condition, but a coordination response of many systems and mechanisms. Fluctuations occur within a very narrow pH range. An imbalance of a point or two on the acid/alkaline pH scale is extremely disruptive to health. A few percentiles of variation of oxygen concentration in the blood can impair function. In the bloodstream, the slightest changes can be observed in the structures of the red and white blood cells, the level of cellular debris, the creation of cholesterol or calcium crystals, etc. If the blood sugar content is continually elevated due to body cell transformation or breakdown, the body chemistry becomes upset. An infinitesimal deficiency of sodium, calcium, potassium or magnesium, the alkaline buffers of the body can cause a problem in the function of many body parts.

We must keep our pH homoeostatic mechanism strong so that we can deal effectively with our world. If we are humming and the process of pH homeostasis is orderly, life continues; if we are honking and pH homeostasis is continually being disrupted, our health is in jeopardy.

pH Homeostasis is a bit like balancing the books in accounting. It si maintained by balancing inputs with outputs - alkalinity in acids out.

How well we adapt in health and sickness is largely a function of the pH homoeostatic mechanism. The body’s chemistry response to such subtle changes that a negative thought, an acidic food or drink, or eating too much food can be a problem for maintaining alkaline balance.

In 1988 an article of the New England Journal of Medicine stated that, "most major chronic disease probably results from the accumulation of environmental factors over time in genetically susceptible people."

In 1965, Rene Dubos, a medical historian and philosopher, pointed out that the body is imperfect in its attempts to adapt and maintain pH homeostasis. She said, "the mechanisms involved in regulating homeostasis do not always return the body’s functions to their original state. They can be misdirected. The body only has the ability to adapt to insults for so long. When it can no longer adapt, inflammation and then degeneration sets in. Health is the state that the body attains when an individual responds adaptively and restores the body to its original integrity."

The term "homeostasis" was coined in the mid-1920's by the American physiologist, Walter B. Cannon. But he was building on a concept of balance that dated back to ancient Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern civilizations.

The balance equals good health equation was first suggested by Hippocrates (460-375 BC) and the ancient Greeks. Hippocrates considered health to be a state of harmonious balance and disease a state of disharmony. He and his contemporaries believed that harmony and balance existed between organs, between bodily fluids, and between body and soul. When the body is out of harmony and balance, illness occurs.

Hippocrates studied the entire patient in his or her environment, noting the effects of climate, food, and occupation on health. "Our natures are the physicians of our diseases, " he said, describing the healing forces we all have within us as the healing power of Nature. It was the physician’s objective to restore harmony with food, exercise, rest, and with medicinal remedies designed to remove the harmful acidic excesses. This conservative approach was designed to let nature do the healing and above all, as Hippocrates said, "to first do no harm."

The Greeks ideas on equilibrium and health evolved further under the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC). He felt that a healthy body worked through what he described as a hemostat, a device that returns the body to a state of equilibrium even when it is subjected to stimuli that disturbs this balance. Everything is tied to this state of equilibrium, including the psyche and emotions, and nothing could be regarded as a separate component. To lead a healthy life, the condition of balance had to be maintained, This could only be achieved if the body had an adequate feedback system, a means by which signals were transmitted to different parts of the body to help move it back into balance when it moved too far off alkaline center.

This psychological viewpoint was shared by another philosopher, Epicurus (341-270 BC). In his writing he referred to psychological stress and suggested that an individual’s quality of life could be improved by coping with what we would now describe as emotional stressors.

As early as about 120 AD in India, Eastern philosophers had reached similar ideas about the importance of balance in health. A general medical textbook from that time, the Caraks, described health as a balance of bodily elements know as dhatus, and a happy mental state called prasana.

The Middle Eastern approach incorporated the Hindu teachings with the Greco-Roman medical doctrine. Being base upon both religious and philosophical ideas, Islamic healing involved both body and soul.

Over 1000 years later, during the Middle Ages in Europe, good health was still linked to this notion of balanced physical, emotional, and spiritual state. To help people achieve this state, European hospitals were set up by religious orders and attached to abbeys, monasteries, and convents. Doctors prescribed diet, rest, sleep, exercise, and salt baths.

In 1600 Thomas Sydenham had begun classifying diseases, even though he believed disease was a result of imbalance, consistent with Hippocrates and Galen.

In 1628 Harvey traced the circulation of the blood, arguably perhaps the single greatest achievement in medicine.

In 1753 James Lind showed that Scurvy could be reversed with the limes that contain limonene - an antitoxic or antacid.

Doctors began to lose their way in 1796. In 1796 Benjamin Rush observed that all fevers were associated with flushed skin, he concluded that this was caused by distended capillaries and reasoned that the proximate cause of fever must be abnormal "convulsive action" in these vessels. He took this a step further and concluded that all fevers resulted from disturbances of capillaries and since the capillaries were part of the circulatory system, he concluded that a hypertension of the entire circulatory system was involved. Rush proposed to reduce this convulsive action by "depletion" or bleeding. A reminder that the medical establishment’s acceptance of bleeding exists today in the name of the British Journal "The Lancet" one of the leading medical journals in the world. Today bleeding is called phlebotomy.

Also, In 1796 Edward Jenner took the pus from the runny sores of sick cows and injected it into the blood of his "patients. He thought that since pus is seen routinely in all kinds of wounds, pus was seen as a necessary part of healing.

In 1788 vaccinia was the bacteria that medical science suggested caused cowpox.

In 1830 the development of the first modern day achromatic microscope.

In 1835, Harvard’s Jacob Bigelow argued in a major address that in "the unbiased opinion of most medical men of sound judgement and long experience . . . the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less, if all disease were left to itself."

In 1840 Jacob Henle in his essay, "On Miasmata and Contagia" first formulated the modern germ theory. He suggested that disease seem to germinate, grow and spread – like a first point or origin, a seed, a bacterium. The germ theory said that minute living organism invade the body, multiply and cause disease and that a specific germ causes a specific disease.

In 1850 Samule Thomson said, " May the time soon come when men and women will become their own priest, physicians and lawyers – when self-government, equal rights and moral philosophy will take the place of all popular crafts of every description . . False theory and hypothesis constitute nearly the whole art of medicine."

In 1860 Louis Pasteur suggested that living organisms, not a chemical chain reaction caused fermentation, winning converts to the germ theory.

In 1881 an American scientist George Sternberg was the first to isolate the fungus, pneumococcus and the first to observe the white blood cells engulfing bacteria, a key to understanding the immune system.

In 1882 a German, Robert Koch isolated the tubercle bacillus and declared it as the bacterium that caused tuberculosis that further confirmed the germ theory of Pasteur.

In 1884, German scientist Friedrich Loeffler isolated the diphtheria bacillus from throats of patients, grew it on a special medium (labs today call this Loeffler’s serum slope to grow the bacteria from suspected cases), and began careful experiments in animals that took several years. His work suggested that the bacteria themselves did not kill; the danger came from a toxin, diptherium, an acidic poison that the bacteria excreted as a waste product from sugar metabolism.

In 1885 Max von Pettenkofer insisted that Koch’s bacteria were only one of many factors in the causation of disease. His dispute with Koch became increasingly bitter and passionate. Petterkofer determined to prove himself right, prepared test tubes thick with lethal cholera bacteria. Then he and several of his students drank them down. All survived. Petterkofer claimed victory that germs do not cause disease.

In 1889 Pasteur’s proteges, Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin grew broth thick with diphtheria bacteria and used compressed air to force broth through a filter of unglazed porcelain. The filter was designed by Charles Chamberland, a physicist working with Pasteur; though only a tool, the filter itself would prove to be immensely important. NO bacteria or solids could pass through the porcelain. Only liquid could. They then sterilized this liquid. It still killed. That proved that bacteria, an insoluble could not kill, but a soluble, an acidic toxin did the KILLING.

The cure from diphtheria was not in killing the bacteria but neutralizing the acids or excretions from the bacteria.

In 1900 Frederick Gates an intellect and Baptist Minister and an assistant to John D. Rockefeller, saw an opportunity to exploit the medical field because of its admitted uncertainty and ignorance of the time. He had organized many business ventures for the Rockfellers’ and convinced John D Rockefeller to open the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The Rockefeller Institute saw medicine itself as its field from its earliest existence scientists studying disease based upon the germ theory of Pasteur.

In 1901, William Henry Welch was hired by John D. Rockefeller to set up the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. William Henry Welch was steeped in the germ theory and established its strong hold on the medical model. You might call Dr. Welch the Father of American Medicine and the perpetrator of the Pasteurian Germ Theory.

After the civil war medicine had discovered drugs – such as quinine, digitalis and opium of which Oliver Wendell Homes the physician Father of the Supreme Court justice said, "I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom fo the sea, it would be all the better for mankind – and all the worse for the fishes."

In 1911, the head of the school training French army doctors in public health said that germs alone were "powerless to create an epidemic." But it was too late, this particular view was now considered simply a minority opinion. The germ theory now had its hold on the governments of the world!

In 1911, the medical establishments made up a story that Peyton Rous discovered a bacteria that caused cancer and received a Noble Prize for his discovery posthumous in 1966. This gave rise to the term virus named after Peyton Rous’s bacteria. Peyton Rous never suggested this in any of his research that his bacteria caused disease let alone cancer. This story gave rise to a new group of bacteria called filterable bacteria that the medical community now refers to as virus - beginning 1996. There is NO scientific evidence that shows that virus’s have ever caused ANY disease.

These ideas of balance were some distance from those of earlier societies that ascribed illness to the supernatural powers they believed governed their lives. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the ancient Americans saw disease as an entity unto itself, a potent demon that struggled to dominate, attacked, penetrated, and possibly even kill its unfortunate host.

Offend the Gods, an ancestor, or an evil witch and be struck down as punishment. Lead a sinful life and you were tempting fate.

Of course, we perceive that these ideas about disease are no longer widely believed, which makes it all more the ironic that Pasteur’s germ theory has had and still has a stranglehold on 19th, 20th and now 21st century medicine. As medical writer Alberto Seguin described in an article entitled, "The Concept of Disease," the demonic idea of disease reached its full height with the germ theory. It became possible to bring together rational and scientific thought with irrational tendency to personalize disease. The germ in what ever name it is called, West Nile Virus, Ebola, Hunta, HIV, Anthrax, SARS and now AVIAN, are the scientific demon, the curse, the lie and the fraud that is said to attack and kill!

If we will consider disease as a symptom of disease not the cause, then the germ is nothing more than an expression of acid/alkaline fluid imbalance and a biological transformation of blood and body cells of what use to be organized to that which is changing into a new form. This was my discovery in 1994. I witnessed biological transformation as seen on pg. 126 of my book "Sick and Tired" the transformation of a rod bacteria back into a red blood cell and then back into a bacterial rod. I knew for the first time that bacteria was not a demon, not an entity but a biological transformation, a new formation of a preceding form. Not the cause of disease but the expression of a change in the internal environment which had given rise to change. For several years I felt alone in this discovery until I learned of the works of the giants that proceeded me that had their finger on the magic of life.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) "The terrain is everything the germ is nothing." And upon the death bed of Louis Pasteur admitting to Claude Bernard that he was right in 1895.

Antoine BeChamp (1816-1908) "Disease is born in us and from us."

Florence Nightingale - a famous nurse (1820 -1910)

Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann (1839)

Gunther Enderlein ((1872- 1968)

Walter B. Cannon (1871-1945) "Only by understanding the wisdom of the body shall we attain the mastery of disease and pain that will enable us to relieve the burden of the people."

Royal Raymond Rife (1888-1971)

Wilhelm Reich (1897 - 1957)

Gaston Naessans (1924-2005)

Philosophically speaking, Pasteur had an ally in Napoleon III, who came to power in 1852. The Emperor believed in a police state and in using complete control to rule. Pasteur’s mechanistic idea of disease, finding the right cure for each germ, fit into this philosophy of control.

Giving the responsibility to the any government to cure disease is giving up control and our personal freedom. It takes responsibility – and power – away from the individual. In the words of Antoine BeChamp, "there is nothing so false that does not contain some element of truth and so it is with the germ theory."

One of six of us will become diabetic

One of three of us will develop cancer

One of two of us will develop cardiovascular disease

One of six couples will suffer from unexplained infertility.

One of seven women in the US will develop breast cancer.

We need to get out of the disease business. If we want to understand health, energy and vitality then we need to study the people who are healthy. Over the last 25 years I have been studying health and how it relates to the blood, the diet and our personal lifestyle choices. Viewing live and dried blood under a pHase contrast microscope is the pinnacle of understanding health and how to achieve health with alkaline foods, drinks, exercise, breathing, getting adequate rest, etc.

Now, it is my hope that you will realize that we are all responsible for our own health – you alone. A medical practitioner can only help to relieve symptoms. Ultimately, you are the one who has to take charge. Health is a choice just as disease is a choice. You are responsible for what goes into your mouth and what comes out of your mouth, as well as for what you think, feel and do. Health is all about personal choices and consequences.

The health and energy of the human organism is the knowledge that our bodies are alkaline by design and acidic by function. I have found that the best way to maintain that alkaline design is through an alkaline lifestyle and diet, I call the pH Miracle.

Finally, the quality and quantity of ones life is a personal choice with personal consequences. One can choose daily health, fitness and life by living in a way that maintains the alkaline design of the body fluids and cells or one can choose an acidic lifestyle and diet and reap the consequences of pain, sickness, disease and death.

May you choose the consequences of your life wisely! I believe it is a matter of life and death.

To learn more about the pH Miracle lifestyle read The pH Miracle Revised and Updated by Dr Robert and Shelley Young.

Become part of our healthy alkaline community? For more information go to: www.phmiraclel.c

Present Tense, 1996 Mona Hatoum

2012-01-31T05:11:00.000-08:00

In 1996 Mona Hatoum was invited to create a site-specific work for Gallery Anadiel in Jerusalem.

This was her first visit to Jerusalem and during this stay she came across a map with a multitude of small areas circled in red, indicating the territories which were meant to be returned to Palestinian control under the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.

This map was the inspiration for Present Tense, Hatoum’s response to this deeply problematic version of peace which left many Palestinians divided and controlled in these disconnected islands of habitation. Hatoum recreated the map using bars of traditional Palestinian olive oil soap from the famous factories in Nablus, north of Jerusalem. The red delineations of the map were made with small red glass beads from the local souk, which she pressed into the surface of the ivory coloured soap.

The pure, cleansing material of soap was deformed by the red beads that appeared like a disease disfiguring its surface; a reference to how these new borders attempted to deform the land and cripple the Palestinian people. Rendering the map in soap, a transient material, held the promise that one day it, like the borders, would be dissolved and washed away.

October 2010

Goji (Gou Qi Zi) for Pineal De-calcification and Feeding the Endocrine System

2012-01-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

Goji (Gou Qi Zi) for Pineal De-calcification and Feeding the Endocrine System

Thursday, January 26, 2012 2:41 PM by Ryan Wade

We are lucky enough for the Goji Berry (Gou Qi Zi) to have become commonplace to the point where we stop looking for it for answers. I say that we are lucky because a decade ago there was absolutely ZERO public awareness about the Goji. However, the availability of Goji has come at a huge cost, and that cost being that we have, in fact, stopped looking to Goji for answers, when this now largely ubiquitous fruit holds so many answers for us.

Goji, or Gou Qi Zi, is a powerful food for anyone interested in anti-aging and longevity. I should really say this over and over again. In fact, Goji very well might be the most powerful anti-aging and longevity food in the world. Goji also specifically targets several areas of aging which most people would like to reverse, such as increasing immune function, improving eyesight, repairing sexual dysfunction, and improving sleep.

Can you guess why Goji is traditionally called the Matrimony Vine Fruit in China? But there is already a ton of good information out there about Goji and immune function, eyesight, sexual (dys)function, and sleep. What is lacking is good information about how it does this as well as how to traditionally--how to correctly--prepare Goji in the Chinese method.

Goji is, above all, an endocrine food. This makes it a strong anti-aging supplement in the West, and makes it a strong Kidney Yin tonic in the East. It is a sweet-neutral tasting food in Chinese theory, making it a safe food for almost everyone. Goji is able to accomplish so much because it feeds the endocrine system, repairing and regenerating every gland. As we age, the glands that make up our endocrine system begin to shrink to the point of atrophy. Think of our health, our vitality and our longevity as a plant and our endocrine system as our roots. As we age our roots die, and as they die they cut us off. Goji not only prevents those roots from dying but it will cause them to regrow should they have died. Goji has this restorative power on all the glands.

Why did I end the last paragraph with the statement "all the glands" Well, because I want to talk about the elusive Pineal gland. The Pineal gland is known as our third eye, and it is shaped as a tiny pine cone (hence the name, and also a reference to another powerful Pineal gland food). This gland is responsible for the production and secretion of melatonin, pinoline (free-radical scavenger and acts as an exogenous MAOI--a powerful anti-depresent), and appears to play a major role in sexual development, hibernation, metabolism, and seasonal breeding in animals. Another traditional name for Goji is the happy fruit.

Research into melatonin in only just now blossoming, though it was first identified in 1958, and many people believe that there is a connection between melatonin and DMT, since all of the "building blocks" of DMT are present in the Pineal gland and because DMT is analogous to melatonin (as well as serotonin). While the connection is unclear as to how DMT is related to the Pineal gland, the conscientious is clear, through science and philosophy, that a link does exist.

Most interesting is that is that there is a deep spiritual connection with the Pineal gland, that the Pineal gland is involved with several important processes in the body, that research is just now discovering the vital role of melatonin in the body, and that the Pineal gland calcifies in the vast majority of adults, largely by the age of 40 (many speculate that fluoride products cause this calcification).

How do we reverse that calcification and restore the proper functioning of the Pineal gland? Easy, the Goji. Using a traditional preparation of Goji we can begin to remove the calcification of the Pineal gland and restore its proper, youthful functioning. The powerful effect of Goji on improving sleep is the direct result, the clinical proof, of its ability to restore healthy function to this elusive gland. Based on the science around Pineal function in animals, it seems logical to extrapolate that Goji's effect on the Pineal gland explains part of its power in improving sexual function as well.

Making the traditional preparation.

This is straightforward, and anyone who has experience making traditional Chinese herbal extracts will already be familiar with the process. To do this, you'll want to combine 8 cups of spring (or other fluoride and chlorine free water) with 1 cup of rinsed Goji berry. Simmer this with a lid for 30 minutes and strain the Goji (they can be tossed out or eaten at this point) and the liquid. Drink this in four parts (one part today, one the next, one the next, and one the next). Take one day off and repeat the process, making a fresh batch of the extract.

This is the traditional, and the correct, method for using Goji.

Ryan
RAW Forest Foods

Sunlight

2012-01-26T06:19:00.000-08:00

A Sip Of Soda: How Soft Drinks Impact Your Health

2012-01-18T01:48:00.001-08:00

http://visual.ly/how-soft-drinks-impact-your-health

Eric Fischl

2012-01-18T01:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.ericfischl.com/index.html

Greg Joubert Burnt Wood Sculptures

2012-01-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

To me art is a process. First is the process of learning and finessing one’s skill. Then it is the process of finding and acting on inspiration. It is creative meditation. It is the process of allowing emotions, insecurities, and illuminations to wander through one’s consciousness while hands are busy acting as interpreters or simply holding active presence. It is therapeut

ic and aggravating. It is the way of allowing the raw material to reincarnate, exposing its blueprint and offering itself to manipulation. It is trusting both the symbiotic relationship between the artist and the materials and the struggle to push limitations both in materials and in self. It is the embodiment of the searching, finding and losing. It is a reflection of perpetual cyclical flow of life: birth to death, confusion to clarity, joy to sadness, pain to health, and so on. It is the enterprise of revealing the collaboration to the world, to interpretation from others with similar views and those who look through different veils.

The sculptures and paintings I create are my path of processing the world, its infinite span of complexities and imperfect beauties through a multi-dimensional, undefined vernacular. Mine is an artistic vocabulary of surface textures, forms, and colors. The pieces are the markers of my process, my evolution, my regression, and my metamorphosis. At times my work follows patterns and other times they shape shift into a new vein. I devotedly allow for that spontaneity in creativity. The human making the art changes, therefore the art will at times follow and sometimes I return to my familiar base to investigate more deeply my beginning. Watching my grandfather refashion discarded soda cans into pinwheels when I was a child was an influential precursor to my practice of harvesting material deemed useless and reshaping it in a way that raises one’s spirit. Most of my work is reductive. I remove layers to expose the mystery underneath.

My work is the representation of the basic movement from light to dark and the ebb and flow of living. It embraces scars and imperfections as the strongest attributes. My collection does not simply go from raw material to finished product. I ask of it a full life cycle. I stress it, color it, carve it, burn it, strip it back down to almost bare and take it back to dimension and colors of its present life. It is its journey, being polished, redone, and finished repetitively that gives it its true integrity. It gives me my true integrity. Art is my process.

Crazy Wisdom & New Age Narcissism — Honouring our collective narcissistic shadow

2012-01-11T08:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.energygrid.com/spirit/2006/06ap-narcissism.html

A ramble through the world of crazy wisdom, New Age narcissim, spiritual teachers, psychological & physical abuse, our collective shadow and malignant self-love.

LOVE TONY BLAIR AND GEORGE BUSH. No, really I do! I like them because they have been so appalling in government, so wicked in their foreign policies, and so corrupt with their erosion of human rights and democratic freedom, that people are waking up to the bankruptcy of our current political system. As a result, never before have so many of us been united in creating a new world for ourselves, and bypassing government. We realize we can no longer afford to keep asking permission for things to change because the very "democratic" system itself is hardwired to maintaining the status quo. It only gives us the illusion that we are being listened to, and at this critical period in our history, when so much is teetering on the edge of the abyss, we can no longer afford illusions, no matter how "democratic" they seem to be.

So I do love Bush and Blair because they have shown us the way. They are the light-bearers for the new world, in the same tradition that Lucifer was and is. Synonymous with "Satan", Lucifer's name means "light-bearer" and he was said to be the very brightest in the heavenly host before he assumed the status of a fallen angel. Could it be that it wasn't hubris that toppled Lucifer from his high perch in Biblical mythology, but service? After all, some amongst us need to assume roles that help the collective play out their shadow. As Jung said: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." And so in this vein, Blair, Bush, Lucifer and every other evil-doer on the planet share a tradition of giving us opportunities to make the darkness conscious.

When tragedy happens, we often see the best of human spirit, because tragedy shakes us from lives of complacency and routine. We glimpse our vulnerability and our humanity, and in so doing we naturally come together to comfort and love one another. The modern Western life is, however, in direct opposition to this coming together, with countless barriers to human co-joining: we compete for jobs, live in containers, drive containers, get lost in media illusions, use sex to avoid intimacy, hanker after the chimeras of fame and fortune, and live practically our whole lives behind the ego's mask. Tragedy cuts right through these barriers, so that we glimpse once again our innate unity, before the momentum of Western society has a chance to resurrect the barriers on which its dysfunction depends, separating us out again into competitors and waring factions.

This glimpse of our innate unity is our greatest grace, and it is something that we all pursue under many different guises. Formally, it might be known as spirituality, religion or community; but everybody is looking for unity to some degree – we try to get it from the "tribal" buzz of supporting a sports team, from the ephemeral ecstasy of the sexual embrace, and from alcohol's comforting inebriation. The Holy Grail has always been that place beyond barriers, where we can collectively flow free.

Recently, a survey was done by journalists to determine which city-dwellers were most polite to strangers. Surprisingly, New York, with its reputation for rudeness, turned out to be the politest city in the world. Ex-mayor, Ed Kock, explained that, "Since 9/11 New Yorkers are more caring. They understand the shortness of life." This is the power of darkness… it can show up the light in blazing contrast. But it raises an interesting question: does this mean that the plane hijackers who crashed into the towers were in any way themselves "bringers of light"? Their actions, although most terrible, most certainly catalyzed some positive changes across America, and the rest of the world that initially united with America in the face of such tragedy (before it was eroded by the American-led invasion of Iraq).

Of course, most people's would be outraged by such a suggestion. Bringers of the light indeed! Does that mean that we should be grateful to Hitler for his unspeakable crimes because in committing them he united the whole world in taking steps to stop this level of evil happening again? Hitler certainly made the darkness conscious for the rest of humanity… but does this therefore condone his actions? Perhaps in the bigger picture a soul like Hitler's was doing the ultimate service by playing out an extreme of evil, and in the process giving us all a place to project our own darkness or shadow, until, as a society, we become strong and conscious enough to face it in ourselves? (Although, just because his actions might be doing the rest of humanity some service in the long run does not imply that he does not face the karma from his actions, or that those destructive actions were morally justified.)

It would be true, from a psychological perspective, to say that when we find we have less monsters in the world it is an indication that we have learned to accept more of the darkness within rather than needing to project it externally. Darkness is only dark because it is unconscious, not because of any labels of "bad" or "negative" that are usually placed upon it. Integrating this darkness, which means accepting it and preferably expressing it harmlessly, can be an enlightening experience. But it takes courage because of our own and society's predilection to owning it as little as possible.

Jack Kornfield tells the myth in one of his books of the Devil meeting the Buddha, and as they walk arm in arm the Devil complains how hard it is to play his role of darkness, to which the Buddha replies, "Do you think it is easy being a Buddha?". Light and dark; dark and light… two sides of the same coin of wholeness… the place where we can flow free from duality.

The question still remains whether this means that there are no wrongful acts, no matter how cruel, destructive and unkind, because such acts have the potential to stir things up, crack the container, and let in the light. Are classic evil-doers let off the hook, their actions merely misinterpreted service to humanity, playing out the shadow for the rest of us? Is murder therefore justified in some cases? How about genocide? Or if these are too extreme to contemplate, how about deliberately hurting someone because we know it is "good for them"? Can we beat a child to instill discipline, or kick our dog to show who is the leader of the pack? Are we justified in acting unkindly if that unkindness leads to greater overall kindness? Can we experiment on animals because we are helping so many human beings in the process? In other words, does the end justify the means, and does the end therefore excuse the person enacting those means if that end is ultimately regarded in a positive and constructive light?

There are several mythical illustrations of beings who committed murder because they were so evolved they were beyond karma… the laws of wrong doing. In Tibetan mythology, Padmasambhava (Dorje Trollo) murdered a man so that he could stop living the life of a king and fulfill his spiritual destiny which was to found the dhama in Tibet. And the old Testament of the Bible is full of murders and wars justified because they were part of God's plan. But myth is myth, and whilst it has great value in speaking to us symbolically, it may never originally have been intended to be taken literally.

So let's look at something a little more factual and contemporary — the life of guru Franklin Jones (called variously Da Free John and Adi Da) for example. Jones lives with his community of devotees on an island in Fiji, although he has many other devotee communities around the world. He was originally a member of the Church of Scientology back in the '60s before he branched out and declared of himself, "I am He", and started his own church.

Jones is an advocate of "crazy wisdom", a term coined largely by Chogyma Trungpa to refer to someone whose spirituality is supposedly so developed, free-flowing and detached from "expected" behavior that they will often throw up the unexpected — they act crazy. This can be valuable because, in bringing up the unexpected, their followers are continually discouraged from building up concepts and masks of spiritual piety. Crazy wisdom challenges the ego big time. An example might be a teacher of a vegetarian spiritual community who suddenly eats meat to break down the concept in her disciples' eyes that vegetarianism is spirituality. After all, true spirituality is supposed to be the free flow of the heart and pure being beyond all concepts (at least in the Eastern traditions — crazy wisdom in the West is just labeled hypocrisy).

So Franklin Jones, an advocate of crazy wisdom, acts not in a way that you would expect a spiritual teacher to behave. However, even from the point of view of the tradition of crazy wisdom, Jones takes it to excess. Ex-followers of his have told stories of a guru that practiced sexual excess, used illegal drugs, drunk to excess, ate meat (whilst forbidding others to), presided over beatings and rapes, and who demanded absolute obedience in all things. He would hold mock trials for his disciples, hit them, seduce them. Everything in his community has become centered around himself and his demands, under the claim that everything he does is for the good of his followers. For example, a woman who admitted she had been molested as a child was ordered by Jones to publically perform oral sex on three men, before having sex with Jones. Ex-follower, Mark Miller, explained that, "Once he had our trust, he exploited us for whatever we were worth. As sex slaves, or laborers, or whatever it was we had."

That is crazy wisdom for you, taken to the extreme. Jones would claim that in acting in the way he does, he destroys the ego of his followers, for they are unable to form a concept of spirituality because their guru keeps breaking any concepts by his erratic behaviour. (Actually, I am sure they are forming concepts of spirituality anyway, but rather negative and destructive ones.) But where is that dividing line between teaching spirituality and exploitation. Perhaps there is none: maybe exploitation itself leads to spiritual development? I have little doubt that Jones is sincere in his actions, and that he genuinely believes that he is helping his disciples when he forces such outrage and excess upon them.

A more secular example of crazy wisdom is demonstrated by Richard Bandler, one of the founders of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). NLP is now used extensively in the personal development world, and few would deny that Bandler has genius. But there is another side to Bandler that few who walk the halls of sanitized NLP workshops know about. An article entitled, "The Bandler Method" featured in Mother Jones Magazine in 1989, described Bandler as a disturbed individual at odds with the world: a heavy cocaine user; an alcoholic; a wife-beater; a man who has threatened to murder on many occasions; a man who thinks nothing of drawing a gun in a therapeutic session to "encourage" change; and a man who strongly implicated in the murder of prostitute Corine Christensen who one morning was shot in the head at close range, having been told by Bandler just eight hours before, "I'll blow your brains out." (Bandler was never convicted for this, despite his blood-spattered shirt and inconsistencies in his account, because his story of events that morning mirrored that of his friend who was also at the scene of the crime and who also told an unconvincing story, and so the jury had to reluctantly let both men walk away because they could not decide which one of the two had actually killed her.)

Although Bandler may have this dark side, there is no denying that her has helped thousands of people reprogram their minds over the years with the NLP techniques that he was instrumental in developing. And there is no doubt that his "crazy wisdom" approach to teaching has made him a very memorable teacher and a high-profile proponent of NLP (whether his confrontational style makes him an effective teacher is open to question). But does the fact that he has also helped people mitigate his unsavory and immoral behavior over the years?

The writers of the Mother Jones article on Bandler, Frank Clancy and Heidi Yorkshire, have a very perceptive take on this. They write: "Bandler's story is, in a sense, a parable of the New Age. Having rejected many of the boundaries that govern relations among people, he was like a sailor without anchor or sails, adrift in a peculiarly New Age sea. Here the individual was sovereign; problems were solved easily and self-examination was denigrated; the past could be reimagined at will, and morality was relative. Here Bandler could deny not only guilt, but all responsibility for the death of Corine Christensen." Maybe that is a display of effectiveness of his NLP techniques – the ultimate reframing – so that even the most heinous crimes can be deleted from the mind?

Whether Bandler is a con man and/or a psychology genius (NLP is a method of conning ourselves into accepting a new brain pattern), and whether Franklin Jones is an exploiting predator and/or a spiritual teacher, actually doesn't make a lot of difference to their followers. Whatever the truth is about their inner psychological states and motives, both are undeniably powerful catalysts for change. The question for their followers is whether that change is in the right direction and long-term, and whether it could have instead been achieved by less confrontational and extreme means. Otherwise, any abuse is just not worth it – the teachings may be crazy but they only lead to long-term trauma.

If the change in the followers is life-enhancing, then do the means by which it came about become irrelevant? If Bandler stops an alcoholic drinking by holding a gun to his head and threatening to blow his brains out if he doesn't stop, or if Jones helps an abuse victim get over her past by forcing her to participate in public sexual acts, are these acts then justified because of their "healing" context? Can threatening to kill someone or raping someone be recontextualized so that these acts are seen as desirable under certain circumstances? Does this mean that morality becomes entirely relative, dependent upon circumstance and context? If that context is just a matter of perspective, then with the correct mental juggling we can hold ourselves with impunity under any circumstances.

Many believe that despite the outcome of our actions, our motivation for those actions determines the personal moral debt or karma we will need to pay off. And as we can never really judge another's motivation without being inside their skin. But even motivations are not clear cut to ourselves — there can be many conflicting motivations mixed together in the same person. We may want to genuinely help someone, but at the same time we may be attracted to them and want to help them rather too intimately. Or we may genuinely want to heal someone whilst denying to ourselves that the excessive fee we are charging for this help is not part of our motivational factor. Often, we are not even conscious of our motivations as they are buried in the subconscious. But then karma is not usually conscious either, so we can certainly pay for motivations that we are not consciously aware of.

But how do we get out of so much relativism and call a spade a spade? Are we therefore doomed to letting individuals like Jones and Bandler continue in ways that most of us feel are not right? Perhaps it is the heart we have to appeal to if we want to see these situations more clearly. As St. Exupery says in his book The Little Prince, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. The essential is invisible to the eye." And yet both these men, especially Jones, have followers who deeply love them. Does that mean their hearts are deluded? Probably not. The heart looks for a different kind of truth — connections. And it will find these even in the most hellish of circumstances. But just because someone who perpetrates "evil" actions is lovable to some people does not automatically condone his or her actions. So the heart is the glue that connects us all together, and its strength is that it can deliberately overlook the most hideous of actions and motivations because that is its nature: it sees only what is essential — connection.

But feelings are more than just the heart. And I think it is here that we can most successfully appeal for a more solid framework with which to have discernment in situation such as these. We feel with the full spectrum of our energy centers (chakras), not just the heart, and this includes intuition and mind. And from this feeling place most people would instinctively recoil from the Jones' and Bandlers of this world. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. But that may also uncharitable because some individuals need these types of maverick teachers in order to learn their lessons. They are not fools, but may intuitively recognize that this level of "abusive" behaviour is the only thing that is going to shake them into making fundamental changes in this lifetime, such is the stuckness of some people.

So we come back to the fact that even "abusive" teachers like these have a place in the world. Maybe once all of us lay the "abuse-me" or "he can do it for me" programs to sleep, these teachers' service will be over and they themselves can move on? Again, no clear answers. All we know is that most would classify their actions as "abuse", and that some appear to grow as a result of this "abuse". Using trauma to heal, however, is like playing Russian Roulette… you never quite know how it will turn out, and quite frankly I am sure these sorts of teacher, although sincere, don't really care as they are totally immersed in their own worlds and justifications. As Steven Goodman says in an interview on crazy wisdom, "What we call crazy is only crazy from the viewpoint of ego, custom, habit. The craziness is actually higher frequency enjoyment. Besides, the great spiritual adepts, the mahasiddhas, don't decideto be crazy. Crazy wisdom is natural, effortless, not driven by the hope and fear machine of the ego."

This of course could just be a justification for hurtful, egotistical and destructive behavior. One of the best defenses of the ego is to for it to claim that it is beyond ego, flowing with higher frequencies. Delusion after delusion after delusion. I think the clue that Goodman inadvertently lets out the bag is that, "The craziness is actually higher frequency enjoyment." When Jones forces a woman to have sex or Bandler pulls out a gun to force change, they are actually in the flow of their own enjoyment. This indicates that crazy wisdom may have a strong link to the pathological narcissism. Both states do share a lot of the same characteristics; they are just usually described from different perspectives — crazy wisdom from a spiritual perspective and narcissism from a psychological perspective. But although different vocabularies are used, the concepts and outcome are essentially the same.

Sam Vaknin describes pathological narcissism in his book, Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited, as "a life-long pattern of traits and behaviours which signify infatuation and obsession with one's self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one's gratification, dominance and ambition." If we compare that with Goodman's description of crazy wisdom: "It refers to someone who seems to be intoxicated with an un-bounded, luminous, loving energy," it would seem that the two are unconnected. However, if you have ever been around someone with pathological narcissistic tendencies you will know the intoxication of their loving-energy. But that loving energy is actually being directed to themselves or to reflections of themselves in the mirror of other people. A narcissist in a room of people is actually completely alone because he or she sees others as merely extensions of self. This is why constant attention is so fundamental to narcissists — without it they literally have no sense or connection to themselves, they cease to exist. And from the crazy-wisdom perspective, the love of God inside is so strong that other people are regarded as servants to that God. The intention may be good, but there is little awareness of "the human other" because the experience of self becomes an all-consuming divine relationship.

This is not to say that there are not teachers that can facilitate crazy wisdom in a way that does not have a pathological edge — in a way that retains respect for the other. These teachers tend to be Eastern because the character of the Eastern psyche has traditionally been different from the ideal Western psyche: whereas the Western society developed individuality, self-indulgence, egotism and self-expression, the Eastern society developed collectivism, temperance, humility and empty-mind. And you can only execute crazy wisdom compassionately and wisely if you have temperance, humility and an empty mind. (Of course there are many exceptions, and more so these days as the two cultures blend. Also some Eastern cultures may be more individual than others and some Western cultures more collective than others. However, just because the demarcation is not clean does not mean that it is invalid.)

Most Eastern and Western practitioners of crazy wisdom have the same goal: to help the student move into empty mind by challenging that mind and its preconceptions at all levels. However, the application of crazy wisdom tends to be different in the two cases, with the Eastern practitioner focused on the collective goal whereas the Western practitioner can become extremely self-indulgent. (This is not to say that Western crazy wisdom is not as effective.) So we hear stories of Tibetan crazy-wisdom teachers who seem quite balanced and temperate, whilst Western crazy-wisdom teachers can become quite excessive and extreme.

Narcissism has traditionally been more of a Western psychological condition because individuality is such a strong component of the Western psyche. (Again, there are and have been many narcissists in the East — we are talking in general terms here.) When the Dali Lama was fairly recently told that shame and self-loathing were some of the issues that Westerners have to deal with, he was amazed as they are not issues at all in his own country. Shame is strongly linked to pathological narcissism. Of course, the East has "pride" issues, but narcissism goes much further than pride. So narcissism may be the necessary price a society has to pay that promotes individual expression above collective synergy. Here in the West our religion is mixed strongly with psychology because individualism is so important. In bookshops, spirituality has become a strong part of self-help and motivation sections. In fact, it is often difficult to separate them.

Narcissists can be found in all walks of life, but they are particularly attracted to spiritual communities because is is on the the main areas in society in which anybody can be the center of attention just by who they are, and not by what they have achieved. All it takes is confidence in your superiority amongst men, and narcissists have this in abundance. (The other area in which narcissists thrive is fashion, mass-media, personal development coaches and the film industry — in fact anywhere were the "look" or form takes precedence over the substance.)

Most traditional religions that are ideologically-focused and not person-focused tend not to suffer as much infiltration from pathological narcissists because they have a structure that has developed over hundreds of years that specifically discourages personal aggrandizement. And even the traditional person-focused guru-mediated type religions of Eastern countries are less open to narcissistic abuse because each guru tends to come from a long lineage and therefore his narcissism is kept in check because his own guru is always regarded as greater than himself. So a certain level of humility is maintained. In fact, those gurus who have displayed the greatest hubris tend to be those with false or no spiritual lineage; they have assumed a role for their own reasons. (This does not imply that those with no spiritual lineage are necessarily narcissists, only that this route tends to attract a greater share of individuals with this psychological profile.)

Limiting factors on narcissism, however, go completely out the window with the New Age or cultural creative movement. Here, there is no lineage. Rather, the individual declares himself a spiritual being, and he rides that declaration for all it's worth.

The New Age is a term used for the spiritual counterculture that arose in the later part of the 20th century and which holds that there is a new spiritual era dawning at this time which will transform the world, lifting it out of its current despair and destruction. Many of us sincerely believe that this is in process, as evidenced by the strong spiritual awakening that seems to be taking place. You could call it the democratization of spirituality, whereby the authority of what it means to be spiritual, who exactly is spiritual, and how much they are spiritual is taken out of the hands of a spiritual elite and put back into the hands of each person. We declare our own spirituality; we define our own evolution, our own limits, and our own place in the grand order of things. We accept our birthright as spiritual beings with no need for permission or initiation rites or outdated religious systems.

Whilst this throws the door open to each of us who want spirituality without the traditional religious dogma (we get New Age dogma instead, but at least we have more possibilities to choose from) it also invites every narcissist to become "the one" that they have always believed that they were born as. So the New Age has a greater share of people displaying narcissism than in most other areas of culture and society (except in the areas such as fashion and film mentioned above).

This explains the popularity of the belief within the New Age movement in "indigo" or "crystal" children — realized souls specifically being born into this world to save it by breaking down outdated systems (system busting) and raising its vibration. If we can appoint ourselves spiritual beings then we can appointed our children as well. Again, nothing particularly wrong with this. There is certainly evidence that advanced souls are coming through at this challenging time to help the birthing process of this new spiritual age that is currently dawning. But at the same time this scenario offers a perfect cover for those with pathological narcissism to "strut their stuff"… although putting up with them is a small price to pay for the freeing and empowering paradigm shift of not having to ask permission from some authority to be spiritual any more!

So many New Agers can come across as a little narcissistic — this is perfectly natural and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is to be somewhat expected from the foundational beliefs and practices of this spiritual movement — herein lies its power to escape from religious dogma that has enslaved humanity for thousands of years. But if that self-appointing aspect appears all-consuming and excessive, then we are probably dealing with a pathological New Age narcissist, one that is expounding on spiritual philosophy and divine self-importance primarily for reasons of self-validation. Of course, as in the case of those who teach with crazy wisdom, New Age narcissists are likely to appear sincere, wise and extremely appealing. They will usually go overboard with their expressions of love for others, to mask the fact that they actually feel very little love. So just someone is a narcissist does not mean that he or she is not spiritual, although pathological narcissism and spirituality may well be mutually exclusive.

Someone who becomes addicted to attention and who cannot just enjoy its moment and let it pass (the difference between pathological narcissism and ordinary narcissism) has a problem because in the effort to continually up the ante and keep attention flowing, the pathological narcissist veers away from authenticity in order to artificially remain the center of things. And as authenticity is a requirement for spirituality, the pathological New Age narcissist actually cuts herself off from the genuine spiritual experience. New Age narcissists may delude themselves into thinking that the "honey pot" self they have constructed IS authentic, but those more perceptive around them will know that it is just the addict's fabrication to maintain supply — the supply of attention. All pathological narcissists are serial liars. Franklin Jones' lie is that he is a spiritual teacher helping individuals become free. This lie attracts in unsuspecting followers. Richard Bandler's lie is that the responsibility for our actions can be dropped just by reframing our thoughts, and this lie is reflected by events in Bandler's own troubled life. Ron Hubbard's lie is that what he wrote is more than bad science fiction, although he did base his work on biofeedback which has some usefulness for some individuals. The list of lies by narcissistic teachers is endless.

It can be very difficult for us to determine whether the confidence that self-appointed spiritual teachers tend to have comes from true spiritual development or psychological narcissism (or perhaps both). Seekers hooked on truth "out there" will always end up putting their lives into the hands of the most charismatic teacher or guru going, in the false belief that their "feel good radar" gives them the appropriate discernment. But feeling good is not enough because narcissistic individuals are experts at making others feel good. That is their game, and they are experts at it. In fact, many will go so overboard with giving the spiritual seeker attention and affection that it is very easy for the unaware to get sucked into this narcissistic game — the sort of game that Franklin Jones is so good at. And whilst the bait of love and specialness may first be used by the narcissistic teacher to hook in followers, once they form an emotionally codependent relationship with the teacher, one that becomes extremely strong and intimate, the love can be replaced by a whole array of emotions and behaviour… anything that supplies attention. This is why those on the outside of these types of spiritual groups only hear about the teacher's love, whereas only those who have managed to work their way into the teacher's inner circle will see the temper tantrums and inconsistencies. But by this time the student has too much invested emotionally and intellectually to back out, and a pathological relationship between narcissist and supplier is established.

Is there much difference between narcissism and crazy wisdom? Whilst crazy wisdom is a tradition in the East, and pathological narcissism a tradition in the West, as the world becomes more global these two traditions are increasingly melding together, so both crazy wisdom and narcissism are increasingly seen in the same individuals. It takes real emptiness, authenticity and humility to execute crazy wisdom without narcissism, something which most Western teachers do not have these days, so they would be wise to avoid the crazy-wisdom approach. In a society which values individuality, crazy wisdom can be extremely traumatic. Jung spoke about the "individuation" of the ego, not its abuse and annihilation. Narcissism is a natural progression to that individuation, provided that it does not develop into addiction.

For those of us who have experienced pathological narcissism either in themselves or in another, it is all too easy to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and to spurn all "self" and "self-love". We know how destructive it can be and so we will sometimes run a mile when we see it. In fact, the general consensus with regards to how to deal with narcissists is to get away! But narcissism is endemic to Western society itself… our media is full of narcissism. The Western way IS the narcissistic way. Pathological narcissists are the light-bearers that play out our collective narcissism because few of us consciously own it. And yet we must if we are to pass through to healthy individualism — Jung's individuation. Otherwise, we just oscillate between narcissism and poor self-esteem, never understanding our predicament because we are in denial.

Why don't we own our narcissism? Because if we are part of the New Age movement we have very little outlet for our shadow except through either conspiracy theory (which projects it away from us) or malignant self-love (which most of us are in denial about). Either way we actually lose wholeness and integrity (those obsessed with conspiracy or those addicted to self-love are both notoriously unbalanced). If we refuse to formalize ways of expressing darkness, it will be expressed unconsciously — the psyche ALWAYS balances itself. Conspiracy and pathological narcissism, however, are not really helpful to the true spiritual seeker because they are so easy to get stuck in; there is so much about their expression that is unconscious. In Jung's terms, they are not making the inner darkness conscious. We have to remember that although it is easy to reject orthodox religion as being out-of-date and dogmatic, they have evolved over hundreds of years to express both our innate light and our innate darkness. And we avoid the darkness at our peril.

With the influx of Eastern religions like Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, narcissism has acquired a bad name — self-love has been replaced by empty mind. But the Western way is through self-love; narcissism is part of our dharma. So rather than denying our narcissistic tendencies, or becoming completely addicted to them, we need to find a middle way: a balanced appreciation and conscious awareness of healthy narcissism. And in so doing, we will no longer employ the services of pathological narcissists as our light-bearers (or conspiracy theorists for that matter), in the same way that when we learn to stop asking permission from our politicians to create a new society. They will all become redundant.

So as well as Tony Blair and George Bush who I thanked at the beginning of this article for their "selfless" service to humanity, I would like to add Franklin Jones, Richard Bandler, Ron Hubbard, and every other pathological narcissist /crazy-wisdom teacher that has made a difference. You, my friends, are the light-bearers in dark times, and the sooner we no longer need your services the better it will be for all of us!

Bruce Lee

2011-12-29T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."-Bruce Lee

Photo Experiments

2011-12-28T05:24:00.001-08:00

Quote Of The Day

2011-12-27T05:09:00.001-08:00

Don't move the way fear makes you move.

Move the way love makes you move.

Move the way joy makes you move.

-Osho

Quote of The Day

2011-12-27T05:07:00.000-08:00

Life is bumping into you, new every moment.

-Osho

Quote of the Day

2011-12-27T05:05:00.000-08:00

A creative act enhances the beauty of the world; it gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. A creative person comes into the world, enhances the beauty of the world — a song here, a painting there. He makes the world dance better, enjoy better, love better, meditate better. When he leaves this world, he leaves a better world behind him. Nobody may know him; somebody may know him — that is not the point. But he leaves the world a better world, tremendously fulfilled because his life has been of some intrinsic value.

- Osho

Poetry of the foot

2011-12-27T04:47:00.000-08:00

''expressing what it too deep to find for words''

Amelia by Human Steps Lalala

First of all, the name of this ballet movie is "Amelia" and it is performed by the dance company "La La La Human Steps". It is choreographed using mostly classical ballet forms, most notably pointe work(the choreographer and producer, Edouard Lock, really loves pointe work!) and pas de deux, although other groupings are included and the men dance in the usual way, with one exception: there is a pas de deux with a man and a woman, both dressed as men and both on pointe! The costumes are typical of modern dance, the woman wear leotards and the men wear pants and jackets. Amelia is freely adapted from a stage production of the same same, but this is first and foremost a dance-for-camera movie, where the camera becomes an integral part of the action, using shots of many different angles, and rotation, dolly, and crane shots. The dance space itself is quite interesting and is difficult to describe, but it looks a little like the inside of a ceramic vase. The lighting is also very intricate. The action is mostly very fast and frenetic, and the choreography is very challenging including some very difficult steps, both on the floor and in the air.

This is a two disc set, the first disk is the ballet itself and includes an optional commentary, and rehearsal footage(accessed in interactive mode). The second disc is a little tricky. It includes printed facts on productions, biographies, and awards of the dance company. On some of the production boards, there is a media section with either one or two icons. The icon to the left is for still images and the icon to the right is for video clips, so be careful not to miss those features as I did the first few times!

If you like ultra-modern ballet, you should enjoy this. by M.J.

Quote of the Day

2011-12-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

- Albert Camus

Hiroshi Sugimoto Lightning Fields.

2011-12-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

Lightning Fields is a series of dramatic and spectacular photographs produced through the play of violent electrical discharges on photographic film. Sugimoto moved his studio six times in an attempt to overcome a problem of static electricity which would often ruin his photographs with their tell-tale white flashes on the finished image. He decided to investigate further the phenomenon and to make ‘an ally of my nemesis’. Eventually, rather than try to suppress the random acts of nature, Sugimoto found ways to generate them by using a Van de Graaf Generator to induce electrical charges on the film. His large photographs expose in minute detail the remarkable effects of light particles not visible to the human eye. The results offer a fascinating range of interpretations, from powerful lightning strikes to images of weird and wonderful life forms.

For his 2009 series Lightning Fields he abandoned the use of the camera, producing photographs using a 400,000 volt Van de Graaff generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto the film.

Tacita Dean

2011-12-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean’s short film The Green Ray was shot on the west-coast of Madagascar. It depicts the last ray of the dying sun refracting and bending below the horizon and producing, for a fraction of a second, a distinctive greenish glow. For Dean searching for this elusive event became about the act of looking itself, about faith and the belief in what you see

Some pictures from my Travels in Israel

2011-12-19T02:14:00.000-08:00

Maya Lin

2011-12-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.mayalin.com/

Maya Lin
Systematic Landscapes
Henry Art Gallery
Seattle, Washington

“Maya Lin has an extraordinary ability to convey complex and poetic ideas using simple forms and natural materials.”
Richard Andrews
Director Henry Art Gallery

Photo: arcspace

The exhibition is on view through September 3, 2006.

Maya Lin works with a vocabulary of form culled from her study of landscape. By altering scale and materials, she creates works that connect the ideal and the real.

The three installations all engage with the problem of bringing land masses into architecture by translating landscapes, two real and one imagined, into the materials of architecture while inviting viewers to move under, on, or through the works.
Each work is composed of a single material. Each, configured to evoke a different aspect of landscape, went through the same process of design: creation of a three-dimensional model in Lin’s studio, translation via scanning or plotting into digital drawings, and finally, full scale construction in Seattle.

2x4 Landscape is composed of more than fifty thousand vertical two-by-four boards placed in a configuration minutely detailed in models and drawings. Covering approximately twenty-four hundred square feet, it rises from a plane of short two-by-four segments to a hill ten feet tall. From some views the sculpture reads as a land from, and from others as a rising wave.

Photo: arcspace

Water Line is a line drawing in space of a particular underwater location on the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The site rises a few miles from the sea floor and is visible on the surface as Bouvet Island, one of the most remote islands in the world. Working with scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Lin and members of her studio, developed a topographic rendering of the seascape. The rendering was translated into architectural scale and fabricated from quarter-inch diameter aluminum tubes.

Photo: arcspace

Blue Lake Pass, takes its name from a landmark within a selected zone. The cubes forming the sculpture are made from vertical sheets of particle board with the top edges cut to match a topographic line. Pulled apart into a grid, the topographic image is disjointed and the spaces between the cubes become narrow paths, or cuts, through the geography of the sculpture, exposing strata much like a highway carved through a mountain pass.

Photo: arcspace

The unseen landscape is further explored in the Bodies of Water series, Lin’s portraits of specific inland island seas, whose expanses of salt water are partially or wholly landlocked.
Here Lin takes up the representation of these immense volumes of water and shapes them from plywood layers. The resulting sculpture is balanced on its deepest point. The three bodies of water represented in the exhibition, the Caspian, Black, and Red Seas, are the most endangered in the world.

Photo: arcspace
Black Sea 2006 (Baltic birch plywood)

Photo: arcspace
Red Sea 2006 (Baltic birch plywood)

Photo: arcspace
Caspian Sea 2006 (Baltic birch plywood)

Pin River is a linear view of a river system, composed of tens of thousands of straight pins pushed into the wall to create a flow of silver that is a shadow image of the Columbia River. A subtle environmental message is underscored by the slightly exaggerated swelling of the pins at the multiple dam sites on the river.

Photo: arcspace

Also featured are plaster reliefs of imagined landscapes that are embedded directly into the walls, large drawings of land forms and river sheds, and photographs and video of Lin’s recent large scale earthworks.
Models and plans for the Confluence Project, Lin’s biggest undertaking to date, are also included in the exhibition.

Photo: arcspace
Cape Disappointment State Park Model (2004 - 2006)
Viewing Platform to Fish Cleaning Platform

An ambitious collaboration between the artist on the one hand and various Pacific Northwest communities on the other, the Confluence Project will create permanent environmental art installations at seven sites, strung along a 450-mile stretch of the Columbia River and its tributaries. These site-specific works will mark the route of contact between Native Americans and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, providing opportunities to reflect upon the past, think about the future, and experience the connection between human history and the natural world.
The ceremonial completion of Cape Disappointment State Park, the first of seven sites, took place on April 22, 2006.
Cape Disappointment arcspace feature

Photo courtesy Maya Lin Studio and Gagosian Gallery

25 INCREDIBLY DETAILED BLACK AND WHITE PORTRAITS OF THE HOMELESS BY LEE JEFFRIES

2011-12-13T06:39:00.000-08:00

http://thumbpress.com/25-incredibly-detailed-black-and-white-portraits-of-the-homeless-by-lee-jeffries/

Lee Jeffries career began as a sports photographer, capturing the beautiful game of football in Manchester. Then a chance meeting with a homeless woman living in the streets of London changed his life forever. He has since dedicated himself to capturing gripping portraits of the disenfranchised.

Shooting exclusively in black and white, Lee Jeffries’ 135+ pictures can be viewed in his Flickr Photostream. The majority are closeup portraits with incredible detail. Each photograph exudes so much raw character and depth, you find yourself studying each shot with great intensity. Below is a sample of his large collection, the Sifter strongly recommends you check out his entire set on Flickr.

in honour of the fact that life is short: ecstatic sex, quitting, and wearing your best

2011-12-13T06:27:00.000-08:00

wear your white shirts. get them pressed.

use your good dishes -- everyday.

shave on weekends.

do not wait for special occasions.

do not tuck your best away in the drawers, in the back of the closet, in your heart.

don't wait for holidays or invitations.

declare that your today is the special occasion.

call instead of emailing. (it feels so good to connect.)

go for coffee.

quit.

take care of it.

renounce your glory days. you've told all of those stories more than twice.

focus forward.

wear perfume for yourself. toss your only-wear-around-the-house clothes and let your good clothes graduate to around-the-house status.

intend to feel good all of the time.

write your book.

launch.

make ecstatic sex a priority. (this deliberateness will make you more creative, productive and generally gracious. on your death bed, you will think about all the amazing sex you had this lifetime.)

burn your to-do list.

write poetry. one a day.

make a point to be as encouraging as possible, as much as possible, to everyone possible.

don't look back.

if you feel like you're always failing, consider that this is part of being an artist. let it be a divine inclination. keep going.

enter.

leave.

eat real food.

often refuse to be in the presence of people who make you feel repressed, anxious, or pull your frequency down.

do not entertain haters.

send light to the haters.

give it away. you probably don't need it and someone else does.

turn off the tv.

let it be easy.

burn candles. during the day.

fall in love. with yourself. with the person you're with. with the persons in your orbit.

because no one is perfect, but you can let the love be perfect for the both of you.

because everyone -- everyone -- is a doorway to God.

because you can get there from here.

because life is short.

Latest Painting

2011-12-11T07:33:00.000-08:00

Acrylic on wood. First painting Ive ever done on wood, got a bit of inspiration from painting class im taking once a week. Had some leftover acrylics so I created this. What is it? Great question, what I was trying to do was create a perfect blend/smudge between the grey and the white background and the red and the white background. Colours are a match in heaven, shapes... well they come somewhere from inside my skull. I like it anyway, it pleases me when I look at it, good compostion, good colours, no real concrete meaning though, 6 out of 10 probably.

Black wood maquettes

2011-12-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

Maquettes developed from an original experiment in sculpture class where our theme is 'black'. They are found wood from the Jerusalem forest covered with black plasticine.

Experimenting with placement and composition and thinking about material to use for larger scale.

Latest Almond Sculptures

2011-12-01T02:12:00.001-08:00

Working with the shapes from the almond skins to make small clay maquettes. Idea is to do a larger version, maybe in glass or clay stacked one on top of the other as seen below.

Delicate flowing shapes, up and up and up, growing from the earth.

Culture is your Operating System

2011-11-30T02:56:00.003-08:00

Quote of The Day

2011-11-30T02:38:00.001-08:00

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels.

-Albert Einstein

Quote of The Day

2011-11-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.

-William Blake

Quote of The Day

2011-11-30T02:36:00.000-08:00




If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

-Marc Chagall

I am in you and you are in me

2011-11-21T01:28:00.000-08:00

2011-11-20T02:48:00.000-08:00

''Thirty years ago and one block from the site of this exhibition, Gordon Matta-Clark created one of his most important works, turning an abandoned Hudson pier warehouse into a “sun-and-water temple” that he called Day’s End. During the summer of 1975, Matta-Clark made a series of large cuts into a 600-ft long metal hangar on Pier 52 that had once belonged to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company. Removing sections of the floor and ceiling, along with portions of the western and southern sides of the building, the artist exposed the river and sky, creating a changing sculpture of light out of a structure the city had largely abandoned.

Though not his first use of a Hudson pier—others included Untitled Performance (1971) and Pier In/Out (1973)—Day’s Passing, as the work was also known, incurred the wrath of the law. Matta-Clark’s opening event was shut down by the police, and dock authorities immediately locked the warehouse. The artist had hoped to let visitors in twice a week during the fall of 1975, but he soon found himself facing an arrest warrant and the threat of a million-dollar lawsuit. After leaving the country, Matta-Clark argued that he had created an indoor park, beautifying a decrepit space. The claims were eventually dropped.

This film—or rather, the filing for a film permit by two of Matta-Clark’s friends—seems to have been what tipped off the authorities. Though stuck in a confiscated and inaccessible state, Day’s End survived longer than many of his other works. A quick walk from the exhibition to the end of Gansevoort Street brings you to Pier 52, which survives today as a Department of Sanitation parking lot.''

Damián Ortega, "Tool Beat: Melody

2011-11-17T04:02:00.001-08:00

Damien Ortega Brick Works

2011-11-17T03:54:00.000-08:00

Damien Ortega Glucose/Cola work

2011-11-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

In 2002 Damián Ortega collaborated with Italian glassblowers to make alterations to 120 Coca Cola Bottles. Entitled “120 Days”—in reference both to the de Sade novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” and to the film Salò—this artwork follows the logic of the package-as-body metaphor to it logical (sadistic) conclusion.

“The idea of the Coke, the disorder produces fun but also some strange feeling, like something is wrong. ‘This Coca-Cola is so weird. Something’s wrong with them.’ It’s like the birds in the Hitchcock film, no? It’s like, hmm. Who are we? What are we doing? What are we thinking? What is our own relationship with the objects within society or the context.”

From Greg Cook’s Interview with Damian Ortega

“Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” (an installation composed of bottle-caps strung on steel, loosely based on the glucose molecule)

In “Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” Ortega used bottle caps to make a giant hanging glucose molecule. (Coincidentally alluding to that secret ingredient that has recently set Mexican Coke apart in the minds of some consumers—namely: sugar.)

“Molécula de glucose expandida is a work that deals with the consumption of sugar in Mexico as a collective and cultural phenomenon. It is exhibited as a molecule formed by particles that are soda bottlecaps collected from stores and restaurants in Mexico City. I enlarged the molecule to a huge size. It is a rhizome hanging from the ceiling, growing and expanding in the space like an alien. This work can be grasped from the inside or from the outside. It is a chemical structure, but also a social one: micro and macro.”

–Damián Ortega from Champ de Vision, Damián Ortega Part 2
by Anna Hiddleston and Sinziana Ravini

Quote of The Day

2011-11-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

“We need art to live fully and grow healthy. Without it we are dry husks drifting aimlessly on every ill wind, our futures without promise and our present without grace.” -Maya Angelou

Turbulent by Shirin Neshat

2011-11-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

Although Shirin Neshat lives and works in the United States, her artwork explores issues of her native Islamic society, especially the position of women. She uses the specifics of her background culture to create works that communicate universal ideas about loss, meaning, and memory. Neshat’s most recent work has consisted of films in the form of dual video projections. By projecting images on opposing walls, the viewer, who stands in the middle of this work, is engaged in a visual conversation, physically experiencing both screens, thus eliminating the passivity permitted by traditional cinema situations. Neshat’s new film, Soliloquy, which she directed and acted in and is being premiered at the Carnegie International, tells the story of a Muslim woman who is in constant negotiation between East and West, between tradition and present-day pressures.

Eldad Rafaelie ''Sleeping on Rotschild''

2011-11-03T04:02:00.001-07:00

Nicholas Nixon

2011-11-03T03:26:00.000-07:00

An early associate of the New Topographics movement, Nicholas Nixon (born 1947) achieved fame for his widely exhibited ongoing project The Brown Sisters (begun in 1975), for which he has made one black-and-white portrait per year of four sisters, one of whom is Nixon’s wife. Nixon’s Live, Love, Look Last brings together similarly intimate photographs from the past decade. Each of the series presented—Nixon’s family, couples, Boston cityscapes and critically ill patients—originated as a project of its own, but Nixon soon realized that the four independent series collectively articulated his continual effort to simply render life’s most intimate moments, and so has gathered them here. Nixon brings a moving candor to his sense of portraiture, and takes care to strike a balance between “on the one hand, getting the picture I want, and on the other, having (his subjects) like the experience. I don’t want them to feel like I’ve taken anything they don’t want to give me.”Unflinchingly honest in his approach, Nixon explores the relationships between individuals and their environment, and how these bonds are affected by birth and death.

Know Hope

2011-11-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

There isn’t much about Adam Yekutieli’s street art that is immediately distinguishable as Israeli, and in fact his fanciful and compassionate drawings and phrases go against much of what most would recognize as Israel’s characteristically macho culture. Yekutieli is best known by the street tags “Know Hope” and “Please Believe” — phrases that line the boulevards of Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, and ones that Yekutieli is currently bringing abroad through a summer tour of New York, Los Angeles, London and Stavanger, Norway.

Yekutieli’s whimsical personification of urban objects, such as electrical lines holding hands and speaking light bulbs, calls to mind Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein, but his often cryptic messages — such as, “This is for the homeless hearts and anxious fingers,” or, “These every-day breaking points bear minor symphonies” — veer much more toward solemnity.

“I want to address the human conditions that compose the political and social issues that you see in a lot of other street art,” Yekutieli told the Forward.

Yekutieli was born in Huntington Beach, Calif., in 1990, and as a young boy he moved to the Tel Aviv suburb Ramat Hasharon with his parents, who are both professional artists. He attended an arts high school, but he describes his post-high school move to the city of Tel Aviv as the real beginning of his work.

Though Yekutieli began by spray-painting and posting long blocks of text, he has come to prefer a “less bold” aesthetic that solidifies his message into shorter, more easily read bites. About two years ago, he started what he calls his “library project,” in which he pasted drawings and phrases on the street with double-sided tape, inviting removal. On the wall behind the pieces, Yekutieli wrote, “I let you borrow my heart for a while but others borrow it as well.”

In the past year, Yekutieli has worked almost exclusively on site-specific installations that bring his “character” — as he calls the figure at the center of his work — to life in cardboard 3-D. In these installations, the character interacts physically with the surroundings, climbing across Tel Aviv’s landmarks or feeling out crosswalks as if they were Braille.

“I’m trying to create a common moment with the viewer,” Yekutieli said. “It’s a misconception that people think my work is expressing despair…. In a good way, I am trying to express all the aspects of our environment that are temporary and fading away.” When Yekutieli sets up installations, he says, he takes photographs immediately, because they will be gone in minutes. “And I’m all right with that…. I’m creating full stories in real time.”

Asked about how specific his work is to Tel Aviv and Israel, Yekutieli notes that all art made in Israel has “an automatic political layer” and that the moments he portrays are certainly rooted in a geographic context. He does not, however, see his core themes as necessarily Israeli — and certainly not as Jewish. “I’m starting to realize that I don’t see myself as connected to any country,” he said. “I am primarily an external observer” — a point of view that certainly plays itself out in the often lonely and distant themes of his work.

“I identify with the intentions of political street art, but this location is so political that if you do anything overtly political, it gets washed down by the context,” he said. “I think that to be meaningful, the political should relate to the everyday: Everyday life is the most subversive thing, because everybody can relate.”

Yekutieli’s character has certainly gone through his share of “everyday” experiences. Throughout a series of images around the city, viewers have watched the character — literally — give away his heart, have it sewn back on his sleeve by his bird companion, have his arm cut off and engage in other symbolic misadventures.

Yekutieli has gotten a range of viewer reactions to his work, from copycat tagging to writing back, thanking him for creating a particular human connection. He also has been in touch with artists around the world who are interested in collaborating with him.

His work will be on display through the fall season, at the Carmichael Gallery in West Hollywood, Anno Domini in San Jose, The Gallery on Cork Street in London, the Nuart Festival in Norway and wherever else it appears — that is, for the moment.

Yoram Lehmann

2011-11-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

Yoram Lehmann was born in 1939 in Tel Aviv and is a
photographer and instructor of photography specializing in documentary
photography and commercial photography.

At the age of 14 he was accepted as an apprentice to the photographer
Alfred Bernheim in Jerusalem and after two years he was certified by
“the master” to be an assistant photographer in his studio.

After completing his army service, he was appointed as the photographer
of the the French archeological expedition led by Jean Perrot.

In 1966, he traveled to New York and began to work as an assistant
photographer in the studio of Richard Avedon. Two years later, he
ventured out on his own and opened a studio. In 1974, he was sent by
the development department of the UN to photograph projects in South
America and Africa.

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In 1977, Lehman returned to Israel and continued his photography career
in Jerusalem. From 1996, he served as head of the Photography
Department at Hadassah College. In 2007 when the department received
academic accreditation from the Council of Higher Education, he accepted
the role of professional coordinator of the Department of Photographic
Communications.

Iridilogy Reading

2011-10-30T08:15:00.000-07:00

Photos from my Iridology reading a few months back.

''One of the most wonderful things in Nature is
a glance at the eye, because it transcends speech,
our eyes are the bodily symbol of our identity''

Almond Drawing

2011-10-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Drawing of outer almond shell from almonds I brought back from Sardegna.

Quote of the Day

2011-10-07T03:07:00.000-07:00

''Health is the only wealth that really counts. All the money in the world means nothing if you're not healthy enough to be around and put that money to good use.''

Together as One

2011-10-06T15:34:00.000-07:00

Lets Get Naked!

2011-10-06T04:48:00.001-07:00

Yes Steve Jobs died today, yes everyone is posting about it and yes im gonna post about it too.

Love these quotes by him. A big inspiration and reminder for me to always choose my highest choice in any given moment.

Lets give it all we got!

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

Fear of The Uknown

2011-10-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.insideoutproject.net/s/cerWuq

Fear of the unknown should never stop you from plunging headlong into it. Fear should be a motivator, not an inhibitor. Take a chance...

My story

An enigma wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in bacon... The thing I fear most is mediocrity. My travels through the world are to seek perspective and expand my horizons; to better know myself through knowing others. I believe we never stop learning and the best way to learn is to try. Never be afraid to fail. Take action, don't wait for someone else to do it for you. Nothing will ever change unless you take a chance.

2011-10-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Upload a portrait. Receive a poster. Paste it for the world to see.

http://www.ted.com JR, a French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face. He makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. A funny, moving talk about art and who we are. Learn more at insideoutproject.net.