Thursday, December 4, 2008

Intentional Chocolate!?

Chocolate infused with intentional focus by meditators trained by the Dalai Lama! Dean Radin and a band of scientific experimenters in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study that was published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal, Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (October 2007) found that one ounce of Intentional Chocolate per day for three days increased subjects’ well-being, vigor and energy by an average of 67 percent and, in some cases, up to 1,000 percent, when compared to a control group. More information on this is available at intentionalchocolate.com or watch oneminuteshift.com/videos/dean_radin/intentional_chocolate

While this is all very interesting what does it have to do with botanical body products or the election or Grennaissance? I'm glad you asked. Here's how:

Let's begin to explore the idea of the Greenaissance. What is it? What are the defining characteristics of such a paradigm shift? When we look back over humankind's previous major paradigm shift, the Renaissance, we see that there were several major components involved that interacted with each other over a period of some 200-300 years to create the shift out of the dark ages and into the beginnings of the modern industrial age. During this time there were strong changes in the religious, philosophical and technological arenas which strongly affected the social, political, and economic and artistic realms.

One of the key fundamental shifts in the world view of that time was brought about by Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. His ideas about the word of God being taken out of the hands of the priests and the Pope and put into the hands of people was revolutionary on every level. It shifted the balance of power away from the Church. And it shifted the focus of control in life away from God and into the hands of humans. The technological advance of the printing press spread these ideas far and wide and opened up a whole new world in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Philosophically this shifted the focus of how the universe worked from a mysterious, unknowable God centered universe to one knowable by humans. This was taken up by the Natural Philosophers of the time such as Newton, Decartes, Galileo, and Copernicus with the ideas that the universe was knowable and could be reduced to mathematics and discernible laws and forces that govern matter which gave rise to rationalism, empiricism and the scientific method.

What does all this have to do with Intentional Chocolate you might ask? Good question. What I am proposing here is that we begin to see ourselves going through such a major epochal shift as the Renaissance and being aware of it while it is happening. So when we look at what is coming up in the different arenas such as religion/spirituality, science, philosophy we can begin to see the effects in the economic, political, and social arenas. Or let's even take it one step further that we can begin to choose how these new ideas affect the shape of our economic, social and political lives. One area of new ideas that keeps popping up is looking at how the mind, thought, consciousness affects the physical world of matter like putting intention into chocolate and finding measurable results.

Since one of the premises of the Greennaissance is that we are moving into an awareness of the universe as based in energy rather than matter and since science is showing us that thought - focused consciousness is a form of energy that can be directed Intentional Chocolate is a delicious example of what I am talking about here. More and more we are hearing about the power of manifestation. Information about this sort of thing has been coming out on both on the pop end of the scale, like The Secret, and on the scientific end of the scale with things like Shroedinger's cat and the double slit experiment. (For more information on these things see www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger's_cat).

Similar experiments on the power of prayer and meditation have been going on for some time. Research has shown that meditation can contribute to an individual's psychological and physiological well-being. Meditation brings the brainwave pattern into an alpha state, which is a level of consciousness that promotes the healing state. Other studies have shown that group meditation has measurably reduced crime and violence in places like Washington DC and Jerusalem. There are even groups who work through meditation and prayer to effect hurricanes to detour them from hitting land or to diminish their force so their impact is not so severe when they reach landfall. Just google around and you will find many websites and blogs about all of this. There are even sites like Event Temples (eventtemples.com) which have regularly scheduled times daily to send focused intentional energy out to where it is needed if you want to join in.

In my view this is one of the new paradigm ways we are and will be working more and more. Intentional Chocolate has now become a trademarked product! I'm sure it won't be the only one. More and more website are popping up to gather people together to direct their intentional focused energy on impacting events in the Middle East or decreasing violence in certain areas or helping seriously ill patients in hospitals. There are, of course, many other applications being marketed for more personal uses of this power such as for increasing wealth or attracting relationships into our lives. The power of prayer, the power of attraction, the idea that our thoughts create our experience, that our thoughts create things this is a whole new way of looking at the world, our lives, who we are as people, as individuals and as a species. Think about it.

And just in case you were wondering - yes indeed Greensong Botanicals are all made with intention. Every time I start to make anything I very consciously focus my attention and direct the intention of healing, joy, and love to go into the products I am making and that they serve the highest good for all those who come in contact with them. Does it make a difference? I don't know. You tell me. All I know is that it can't possibly hurt and I truly believe that it makes a powerful difference.

Stay tuned for the next installment which will focus on living systems based on the ideas of Elizabeth Sahtouris and Biomimicry.

Aloha and thanks for listening,

Lisa

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Election Day

Well election day has finally arrived. What will happen and how will things be from here on out? I'm sure many around the world are watching and wondering this same thing. I am sitting here in the early morning light of possibility. From this place, in this moment, everything is possible. While I know voting has been going on for some hours in other parts of the country, here the day is just beginning and I can sit in this space of possibility and potential.

What I think as I sit in this space is that this campaign and election cycle has been an amazing process. While it has in many ways been tedious, stressful, full of strife and hope it has also been unprecedented in motivating people to get out and take action. In this respect, regardless of what the the election result turns out to be, I think, our greatest lesson and achievement has already taken place. Americans have been historically less politically active than people in other countries. All over Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia people regularly take to the streets and demand the attention of their politicians. Now we begin to see what can be done when we put our hearts, minds and bodies into action.

My view is that we have been asleep at the wheel for some time now in this country. There are many reasons for this. Many of us are just too busy making ends meet and taking care of our families and have no energy left over for other things. It takes a lot of time and work to keep ourselves really informed. Most of us don't have time to get out in the world and talk to other people in other countries and see for ourselves the impact of our policies on other nations. Most of us are too worn out and tired, or too entrenched in holding on to what we have to look behind the curtain at who is running our country these days. Writing and calling our congress people or even attending local community meetings seems too much for us to manage.

But during this year many people did manage to do a little something extra to try and make things change. This is inspirational, it is momentous. It is the most important thing to come out of this election process. But it doesn't end here. It doesn't end today. It doesn't really matter who gets elected if we remain asleep at the wheel. No leader can create change by themselves nor should we expect or desire such a thing. If that happens it is called a Dictatorship. Dictatorships don't usually give people what they want or need and they usually require military support to maintain. Democracy is really our responsibility, not our leaders. Our leaders can help or hinder the process but the power and choice is really ours.

It is always possible to abdicate responsibility and hand our power over to others who will without a doubt use it to their own advantage which is basically what has been happening for many years. Now it looks like the overwhelming majority of people in this country would like to see a change in the way we are running this country. Well, a big part of that change is going to have to be, not in our elected leaders but in all of us. We are going to have to find the time and space to pay attention, to take action and to tell our political leaders what it is that we want in this country. We are going to have to keep ourselves really informed and educated and not just with the nightly news and the morning papers. Unfortunately, our media has been completely taken over by those whose interests are not necessarily our own and they have no reason to tell us anything that would upset their apple cart. So we have to look a little deeper and a little more broadly by reading foreign newspapers and finding alternative voices.

I'm not saying that any source should be believed completely. All media sources come from a particular slant. Complete, neutral objectivity is not possible so we have to look across a range of sources to get a fuller picture on things and then make our own personal decisions about what is important to us and what we will support. Then take action by voting with your voice and your dollars. Tell your elected officials what you want. We need watchdog groups to hold our politicians accountable and to counter the power of lobby groups and special interests. Buy those things that support your values not just what is cheapest because inevitably what looks cheap is very costly in outsourced jobs, unfair and subsidized competition, unjust labor practices in other countries and environmental degradation. These costs may not be apparent to you in terms of how they effect you but they ultimately cost us all a lot more in the end. A little research will show you this. Watch the "Story of Stuff at www.storyofstuff.com for a place to start this research.

Our Constitution begins with the words, "We the People." This is what the founding fathers always intended. They created a structure for government - for the people and by the people. Our elected officials are meant to be servants of the will of the people. To make a democracy really work it requires an informed an active population. This is truly what the cost of freedom is. It does not have to be paid in blood but it does have to be paid in active attention and participation.

So regardless of what happens today. We the People of the United States have all already won and we must continue these efforts if we hope to maintain our freedoms and our rights as individuals. We also have to be aware that we are part of a much bigger world. The things we do here affect many others around the globe just as the things others do affect us. Being the world bully or police force never makes us any safer it only makes us a target. Maybe we can use our technology, resources, and military to begin creating drinking water for all those in the world who have none. Maybe we can use our great might to help green the planet rather than to escalate it's devastation. Maybe we can use the power of We the People to solve some of the challenges of food shortages and the need to develop and distribute alternative forms of power and to really address health issues in our own country and around the planet. My belief is that then we would be really living in the country that we think we are - America the Home of the Free and the Land of those who get things done by helping ourselves and others. We can make many good things happen in this country and all around the world. It all starts now. Stay awake, Stand Up, Voice Yourself.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Welcome to the Greennaissance



The Renaissance was a time when a new paradigm was birthed. Ideas about realities were shifting that would govern and shape the world for the next 500 years. Once again we are in such a time. This time we can be conscious and aware of how we are redefining ourselves as humans and in doing so redefine our relationship to the universe and all things. We can make choices about where we are going and what we want to create. This is a unique and momentous time which will happen with or without our conscious participation. Face it folks, things are changing rapidly and rather than to become Chicken Little running around in fear that the sky is falling let us embrace the opportunity and choose the future we are moving into. We are not helpless pawns at the mercy of the rich and powerful. We are each in our own way important, necessary and capable of adding to the collective vision of what humanity is at this point in time and on into the future. When the Iriquois talk about stewarding the planet so it will still be a beautiful, healthy, sustaining environment for the next 7 generations this is what they mean. The choices we make now, each of us, affects what will be here 7 generations from now. Never before have we really been so aware of this as a collective group of humans. The choices each one of us makes everyday affect the shape of that future.

For me, one major aspect of this paradigm shift, is a change in the way we understand Nature and our relationship to it. I call it behaving as if living systems mattered (borrowing from Machaelle Small Wright who wrote a book entitled Behaving as if the God in all Things Mattered). It is a change in our frame of reference. It’s about seeing that there are living systems that are of critical importance to our survival as a species such as the watersheds, the rain cycles, the systems in the soil, the forest ecosystem, the ocean ecosystem, etc. There are also living systems within us and they are fractal images of each other.

We as humans are living systems of trillions of cells, bacteria, and microbes. We live within a larger living system which is called Nature. Nature exists within a larger living system known as Earth. Earth resides in a larger framework known as the galaxy, and so on. The cells inside our body constitute many levels of living systems. We, as human beings are in a sense a universe to the sub-atomic particles inside us. One of the points of this framework is for us to begin to see that what we do to the environment outside of ourselves we do to the environment inside ourselves as well. Only our skin divides the inside from the outside, or so we think, but actually the skin is not a wall or barrier separating the inside from the outside. Skin is a living system through which things pass in and out all day long like at an airport terminal, and it is part of the bigger system which is our body.

Welcome to the Greenworld. This is the place where there is a dynamic and conscious relationship between multiple levels of beings because in essence they are all part of the Greenworld. Greensong is the energy, the sound, the vibration that runs through all living things. It runs through the geometric structures that make up the components of matter and brings them to life. It is everywhere around us and in us. It runs through all life and connects everything together. It is the voice of the plants transforming sunlight into life force. It is the OM the primordial sound of creation. And it is from this perspective, the interrelated, interdependent, fractal, view of "reality" that my posts in this blog will be framed. I hope you will enjoy the time you spend in the Greenworld, that you will feel your connection to the Greensong and thus to all things and that you will feel inspired to consciously participate in the Greenaissance by commenting and posting here and/or by whatever you think, do and say wherever you are.

Aloha,
Greensong