Here is part 1 of 4 of a walk-through of my houseplants. I decided a while back that the air quality of my city was out of hand. There’s not much we can do to solve the over-all problems, however, we can do much to address our own homes.
Though I have many many plants right now, I plan on expanding my collection.
Plants are a fun hobby and do much to make our homes healthy.
I hope you enjoy the videos.
Vermicomposting
Vermiculture is a great way to sequester your carbon on site. Compost all of your food scraps and plant leave in your home instead of filling the landfills.
Here’s a video demonstration on vermicomposting, including how to retrieve the castings and make a compost tea for fertilizer.
Intro to the Jungle
Here is my first video blog…
Notice Disappointments
AND ACT accordingly and avoid practicing the actions that bring about less than enjoyable outcomes.
Here’s an embarrassing but honest experience and a public complaint about pizza hut. I’ve been buying from a local pizza place for years (The Pie in SLC), because I like eating and am willing to spend money to buy tasty food made by others.
One evening, I lost my mind; I don’t know what I was thinking, Likely, it was the subliminal, and not so, programming from commercials leaching in from the television. I’ve had it on recently after years without and am being bombarded with secret, and not so, messages to buy shitty things.
Anyway, I was craving pizza; like I do on the days that end in y. I got on the pizza hut website thinking how cool it would be to be able to order online… don’t. I was tempted by brownies and a flavored stuffed crust, and double the pepperoni,
I faltered and jumped in.
With a service charge and a tip, the pizza and brownies cost about 13 bucks more than the local flavor filled hearty goodness that is “The Pie” . I opened the box and pulled out a thin, floppy, visually unappealing wedge of pizza.
The smell was short lived and lacking any tantalizing aroma that normally prepares my body for food bliss.
Having enjoyed thin crust pizza before, I was forgiving. Until my teeth slid through a soft, almost texture-less bite that gave in effortlessly between the teeth with little resistance as it nearly melted on the tongue.
The flavor, a scant wisp of spice that comes with a good pepperoni. Being hungry, and committed, I took on the stuffed crust hoping to have some glory in a firm yet yielding, wax-like structure of a good cheese…
Alas, no. The flavored crust I was anticipating was hardly more than salt and vapid herb dusted crust tube with a thin layer of tasteless coagulated protein substance attached to one side.
Then, to the brownie that tempted my pallet so easily, as brownies do.
Wrenching it from the pan in bits and crumbs, the now warm, broken brownie bits sat on my plate, ready to be savored as any good brownie should… Sacrilege! This too? Hardly a hint of chocolate graced the shallow fluff cloud of dissolving matter-less goo.
Easily, this will not happen again as The Pie is my pizzeria of choice.
Let this be a warning and remember…
Make your decisions wisely. Learn from your mistakes without regret or anchor. Move on and do better.
On Brain Waves
Accessing the deeper mind through sound and language technologies to re-program the unconscious subroutines is a useful tool in personal development.
Your current state is a direct result of your ability to access or control your state of mind. It is easy, without control, to become agitated or highly upset about something. Those feelings rise up as does the heart rate, blood pressure, your breathing becomes faster
and often, we “lose our minds”. We end up doing something we “couldn’t control”.
There are basically four states of vibration that are found within the human brain. These are Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta (I’ve seen Gamma, too ).
Beta is most often our style of awareness. It is our day to day, not really mindfully paying attention to all the things going on “out there”, state of awareness.
Alpha is a slower vibration found in the brains of monks during meditation. It is a deeper state of awareness that is less affected by external phenomena. Alpha is a calmed, quiet alertness.
Theta is found in REM, or dreaming sleep. Here, the brain osculates to unwind internal imagery in vivid landscapes. We may fully disengage from our surroundings and environment and get lost in our internal imaginings.
Delta is dreamless, deep sleep.
We move in and out of these during the day.
We are often in Beta, going about paying attention to externals; move in and out of alpha when we imagine a face, or other memory that grabs our attention. Theta’s deep daydreaming, when we lose all track of our environment; often on the drive home on “auto pilot” as we check out until the driveway. And, if we’re lucky and get good sleep, we enter Delta and let go of the body for a few minutes so it can fix itself without us.
Through audio technologies, it is possible to directly affect the vibration of the brain to change it’s state of consciousness. By creating rhythms that correspond with the alpha and theta states, we have access to the subconscious.
The subconscious mind is a vast expanse of imaginary concepts. Notions we’ve held onto since they entered past the guardian of consciousness. Times when we are told things about ourselves, or attach our ideals to some ideology, or when we tell ourselves how we feel about us. All these thoughts, and others, get in, past our filters and develop roots within our internal programs. There are positive programs that help us achieve an amazing life with strong relationships, and there are negative programs that interfere with our goals and dreams, or happiness
If we want our lives to change in positive ways, we must write the programs within us that promote and direct us toward those goals. These create the drives and motivations that cause us to want to act and move ourselves to where we want to go and who we want to be.
Persist in the direction of your dreams.
Nettle Tea
So here’s my recipe for Nettle tea.
It’s not official. I change it up depending on what I have.
Boil some water and pour it over some nettle leaf. Let it steep at least 4 hours. Drink
This one, I added alfalfa leaf, turmeric and black pepper.
After it steeps, I throw it in the refrigerator.
When I’m ready, I thin it with water and add some of this honey concoction.
I had a jar of crystallized honey, added aloe vera juice and liquefied it again. It’s a good trick.
This stuff is so good. And the benefits are amazing.
On Breathing
Breath in. And relax.
Luckily for us, breathing isn’t something that we have to think about doing to survive. It just happens. Our body breaths for us. So most of us, probably just let it happen, and forget about it most of the time.
This is not the best strategy. Breathing is an important habit to make… voluntarily.
Through the act of conscious breathing, you can become more aware of your body, and focus, or slow the mind. Body awareness is essential because the body is the vehicle that you are in that keeps you alive and able to act on the physical world and it’s people. Don’t worry, someday, you will die. But slow deep breathing has a good chance of elongating the time spent on the earthly voyage.
There are many techniques available to learn. This guide has only one or so examples of breathing techniques, that may include the breath of fire technique, were one breathes in and out in intense bursts to raise ones heart rate, blood pressure and overall energy. Some people may vocalize as well to accentuate the affects. Some can also pass out or have a stroke if they don’t know how healthy they are.
Hara Breathing
Another technique is what is called hara breathing. The hara is the physiological, human center of gravity. Imagine, the human body has a specific shape, mostly all the same, outside deviations. As such, the human physiology is made with a center of gravity that resides, floats if you will, within the pelvic bowl. It shouldn’t be thought of, so much as a thing just yet, is it more like a place in space inside of your body. This is a good place to put the attention. Be inside there, and pull down on the respiratory diaphragm, just beneath the lungs. The diaphragm is one large muscle, and like most muscles, is under the volitional control of the mind and will. Another diaphragm in the body is called the pelvic diaphragm. And I bet you can imagine where it is, and how it may be moving, and relaxing deeply.
The slower the breath, the deeper the breath. To allow for the descension of the upper diaphragm into the belly, the abdominal muscles must relax and get out of the way, moving outward. This is often called belly breathing, and will make you have a “Buddha belly”. It’s okay, it might just help you live longer. You may even go so far to imagine the obliques, to the sides, and notice how they too move in and out, and relax.
Focus on the hara, breath into it. Allow the abdominals to relax as you inhale deeply.
The methodology behind this form of conscious breathing is to “simply” create a steady, slow, deep rhythm. The purpose of rhythm is to control the speed, or rate of the mind. The depth and rate of the breath, controlled by the mind conversely affects the rate of activity in the brain. States of profound thought, meditation and states of hypnosis are slower than normal waking conscious awareness. Often, a relaxed body and mind follow from conscious relaxed breathing, while erratic, or manic thinking and behavior are associated with increased respiration.
Oxygenation of blood
The lungs have five chambers generally. The right lung has three lobes, and the left two, this is because the heart is mostly in the left side of the chest cavity.
I’ve noticed that most people breathe only with the upper chest, lifting the chest up by the neck muscles, causing neck tension and headache, and slowing chi to and from the cranium, and brain. So, in this case, normal is not alright.
The upper lobes of the lung have fewer capillary (blood vessel) connections than the lower lobes. What this means is that the lung contacts the blood stream most in the lower chambers of the lungs.
Why is this important?
When we inhale, we inhale vital nutrients from the environment. The deeper the breath the more of those nutrients will access the most entries into the blood stream to deliver those nutrients to the body’s cells.
The more oxygen, and things, that the body takes in (generally), the healthier the body, cells and organs will be. And, the longer you may live.
That seems like a pretty good reason to breathe deeply, now and again.
You can, but don’t need to count, you just need to relax and follow the natural rhythm of the body’s needs.
If you are in a calm space, you may want to breathe without any effort. You can simply relax the mind and observe the movement of the breath without trying.
If you wanted to count, you could find, or experiment with ways to inhale, hold, and exhale in different patterns to achieve different results, with the mind and body.
When the mind focus’ on conscious breathing, not because it has to, but because it can, different things happen to how the awareness of the body, and the world, change in interesting ways.
Another important benefit of this style of conscious breathing is that you can practice anywhere, at any time.
Here are three good books you should read, of many, on breathing.
The Reason For Wizards
What is a wizard in the 21st century?
A wizard is a sage, mystic, shaman, healer, teacher, a seeker of personal understanding, someone wanting awareness of their place within the universe. A wizard is a student of emotional intelligence, inner peace, self awareness, an aspirant of self mastery.
Why use the term wizard? Because, the word Jedi was taken, and we’ve all got to aspire to something.
Why I’m becoming a wizard. Or how I got swept along for the ride of my life.
Like most of us, when I was younger I was thinking heavily on what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I had no idea. I had a fairly conventional attitude and understanding about what adulthood was supposed to be like. Before I hit 20, what I thought I wanted to be didn’t work out, and I didn’t have a strong plan B.
So, I went on a tangent. I didn’t hold down any jobs that would lead to a career. Didn’t aim for the life with the wife and 2.3 kids. I just let life happen to me. Being a smart and odd sort of person, I had always asked some pretty strange questions about reality, and I was exploring some interesting ways of experiencing it. Both chemically and through the exploration of esoteric philosophy, I was developing a more “life is what you make it” world view with a magical bent.
On my journey, I started asking myself what I was good at, what I liked to do, and began asking the universe to put me where I needed to be. Then, I attended massage school. I was inspired one day, a total shock to myself, when I uttered the words, when driving passed a local school, “I need to go there.” It wasn’t that I knew I wanted to be a massage therapist, it was that I was listening to an inspiration.
At that moment, I said to myself, in one of those internally profound voices, I was going to be a wizard. I saw this image of myself, an old man, happy, surrounded in a library of knowledge, connected to nature and the deepest connections with the greater universal being. And that’s when I knew I wanted to become… old and happy! The rest seemed like some fantasy and I didn’t worry too much about it. But then life kept unwinding. I kept finding myself in this self fulfilling prophecy. Confirmation bias would sound reasonable if it weren’t for all the weird, synchronous, magical and mystical experiences I’ve had along the way.
My life, thus far, has proven to me, or reinforced, that the universe and my relationship with it is only experienced through me, as this one body, right now; and that I shape my experience of the universe from within, through my consciousness.
I’ve become aware of how our awareness of the universe is deeply rooted in our thoughts about it. And, that if I control my thoughts, and “consciously” drive my body through the sands of time, I can ride the tides of change more smoothly. There are ways to be, that make life seem more like grace than hardship. These ways have many teachers.
Understanding deep inside, that the universe is moving quickly with us in it. And that it moves in ways, patterns, and rhythms that are not yet known or understood by most of us.
This is what the wizard is for. To be a student of life, learning to become aware of a different, more profound relationship with the world in which we find ourselves. An explorer of altered states of consciousness, able to access greater realms of human experience.
Tao, Heaven, hell, Nirvana, Prana, Chi, Orgone, Aka, Mind, Akasha, Soul, Spirit, Mana. These are some of the many names for the facets of reality. Because there are so many languages and cultures that speak of these concepts, they are still known and recognized. This is not new science. This is ancient human wisdom.
I’ve come to believe that the mastery of the human experience is one where the individual begins to grasp their place within the cosmos, and becomes able to adjust their individual experience. Responding also, to these other universal forces, to reduce or remove the experience of pain and suffering that comes from the friction of being out of sync with the flow of the universe. Once suffering ceases, the individual is capable of accessing more of their potential, through their ready-available abilities of the human body.
I’ve come to believe that as I focus my awareness and attention in my physical form, instead of just on it, I enter it and my perceptions begin to change. That’s when all the cool thoughts start popping in and I become… inspired.
Why there should be wizards.
Our experience of the universe seems to mirror the minds conscious limiters. Changing these filters, changes the world.
Humanity, though conscious, does not yet access full conscious awareness. But can.
Individuals can access and affect both their physical form and consciousness in ways that appear magical.
Through non-ordinary states of consciousness we have access to resources and information held deeply within our minds, and can gain access to potentials we may yet be unaware.
That in a world of war, greed, poverty, and strife, we are not fated to a future of the same.
The more people holding onto this way of perceiving reality, the more people there are holding back those forces of entropy. Those forces that are in opposition to the growth and exploration of the human experience.
I believe that these ancient, more primitive understandings are still available to us all. And that we are able to access ways to harmonize with the universe and bring about positive circumstances for all of humanity.
The forces of nature move the wilderness to plant indiscriminately, on its own. But, to tree and shrub the landscape, consciously, with knowledge and purpose, within and around mans dwelling places, creating forests of food. This is the ability of using these same energies and models of nature, in ways that serve man’s place within it. This is how to be, and live, not just with the land, but within the mind.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 6:12
This is the reason for Wizards
Love all ways
Stace the Wizer