moodr

To all Reiki practitioners out there! Help Iranian People!

2009-06-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

You can help. If you practice Reiki or any similar healing art/method, you can help Iranian people right now. There are many injured, wounded, spiritually shaken people in Iran at the moment. The basij is trying to arrest people at hospitals so protesters are not willing to go to hospitals when they are injured. People who are initiated into the second degree of Reiki can send distant healing energy to Iran. This is an extraordinary situation and you can help right from your living room.

You can do one or all of these:

1. Find Iran on the map, especially Tehran, and use it as a link to send healing energy to people who may need it. You can be sure many people need this is at the moment.

2. Find Iran on the map, use it as your imaginary link to send peace energy. You can do that exactly in the same manner like you send healing energy. Use all the appropriate symbols which are required.

3. Light a candle to keep your concentration and imagine that Iran become free, peacefully. You don't need to force your mind. Just visualize that the protesters achieved to revolt and that Iran becomes a free, democratic country once again.

This is urgent. Please take the time to help.

Obama has won the elections. There are lessons in this for personal change and development

2008-11-08T01:54:00.001-08:00

Barack Obama was not new to U.S. politics. He has been on the seen for a very long time. There are lessons in his success as a presidential candidate. I don't talk about how he succeeded. I want to talk about people who thought that he is not going to win the presidential election. Those naive, too optimist people who try to make themselves look tough and pessimist.

Last week, I had a phone conversation with a friend about how hard or how almost impossible it is to become a famous, successful blogger. I had this discussions often in my office during my coaching sessions. People love to argue about how impossible a certain achievement is. Their argument is destined to fail. Because for every position, job, statue they argue about, there is somebody or masses of people that have achieved it.

Evaluate those arguments: "It is so difficult to get elected for presidency. So difficult that it is impossible". This is plain wrong. Obama is the 44th president of U.S. which means there have been people elected 44 times for presidency. How come that this is impossible?

"It is so hard to get an acceptance from Harvard University. So hard that it is impossible." If it is impossible, how come that there are still people, students, graduates in Harvard?

It's painful to see some people who don't see themselves worthy enough of achieving something particular. More painful to see that they think the same for everybody they keep in touch. Friends, family, colleagues. Anybody who say hello to them become an ordinary people, immediately. This is really very interesting. This is a self-worth issue that often extends to everybody those people know in person. Because they see themselves less worthy than any other people on earth and then they see people they know as their extensions so much that it is impossible for them to be worthy.

I'll try to discuss this issue this week.

Financial Crisis is not your fault

2008-10-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

There have been a lot of e-mail questions recently. In fact, I am a little overloaded with that because I wasn't really 'there' for most of the time in September. However I am sure that I'll catch up with each question and thank you very much for your patience. So, I'm gonna start with the financial crisis. There were many e-mails regarding financial crisis (about 30). Almost all of them have something in common. This is something not very clearly written but I could see them between the lines. And that was the feeling of guilt.

Financial crisis occurred as a result of a big stupidity on economic decisions by the government in the past decade. This stupidity is so huge that it is not possible for you to commit. It's not your fault. You may have overspend and that's not a big deal.

The big deal is that our financial system is way too corrupt. It is build on nothing. Not on gold, not on energy. Simply nothing. Even not on a metaphysical background. So, the crisis is in fact mostly affected by human psychology. Economic crisis is a mindset. Crisis occurs where people believe that a certain person or a certain company is not going to pay their debt and call that a financial crisis. I don't want to dive into the economics of the issue because simply I am not an economist and I am only here to help you as an individual and in an individual level.

If you already have a psychological condition like anxiety, depression, mood disorder, etc. you'll be prone to attach your feelings to the financial crisis. Try not to do that. You should at least try to calm down. Not many things in your life has changed in fact. Do not listen to news more than twice a day (In my opinion, this is even too much).

If you are in debt, always and only talk to the lawyers of the organization (bank, or any other company) instead of talking to the organization's personnel. Here is why: We are in a financial crisis and every boss is in panic now. They will tell their personnel to attack customers in order to collect the outstanding money. In this case, those people usually get very aggressive and they have usually no idea what the law allows them to do. But lawyers do have an idea and they won't ever be as rude as other people. They may be assertive but at the very least, the won't take your time with empty threats.

If you feel the need of saving your money, check whether you are overreacting to the financial crisis or not. Maybe this is the time to save but maybe not. Don't decide too quickly.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that the bailout is there to help you. The bailout is there to help to people who have done big mistakes and who are really guilty and that's not you. I know this is not fair but this is how it is.

Don't lose your faith in your own personal development. I'll repeat now: the financial crisis is not your fault.

Thank you very much for your patience with other e-mail questions. I'll be back with answers shortly.

How to affect the other using law of attraction

2008-09-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

Here is another e-mail question I am going to answer. This has been asked very much last month. How can I affect another person by using the law of attraction? Is this possible ever? This is mostly asked for relationships however as you may guess the answer would not be very different whether it is about relationships or any other interpersonal relations such as business, friendships, etc.

To begin with, I have to say that law of attraction does not differ topic by topic. It is the same thing regardless of what you are thinking about or what you are going to create. Although it is open to speculation, any attempt to use the law of attraction and to start creating deliberately, it already involves others. Suppose that you are imagining having big profits in stock exchange. Don't you think that it involves other people? In today's economic system, somebody has to lose so that you can win.

Suppose that you are imagining having a certain house. What about other people that want the same house, or the same position in the workplace, or the same person, or... we've been over this. Well, it always involves other people. It isn't very important whether you particularly want to affect somebody or not, somebody will be affected always.

So, having said that, let's come to the question again: How can I affect another person? Is this possible?

According to the law of attraction, it is absolutely possible. All you have to do is imagining like in any other attempt to create or change the physical reality. But how to imagine?

At this point, I want to talk about relationships. This is the most popular question. Suppose that somebody wants to be in a relationship with another person and it doesn't seem very likely to happen. What is this person supposed to do? What to think and imagine in such a situation?

The original law of attraction by Ester & Hicks and Abraham, you have to imagine the relationship you want to be in. You have to dream about the two of you being happily together. Do not concentrate on anything, any possibility that you don't want. Suppose that your loved one is together with somebody else. Don't dream and imagine about their separation. This is destructive thinking and that will affect your imagination in a way which will weaken your thoughts about your relationship. Instead, just think about you two being together and happy. Imagine nights-out, imagine birthdays, anniversaries. Imagine that you take her out to dinner on your first anniversary. Or imagine that he bought you a present that you want so much on your birthday, as your lover.

The key is positive thinking. Don't bother about his or her recent state and recent behavior towards you. Think about possible outcomes. Pick the most positive ones among them and concentrate on it.

How is this possible? How is it possible to affect somebody else with your thoughts and imagination?

It is possible because of two reasons or two different theories. One of them is the subjective reality. In a subjective reality, you are the only consciousness in the whole universe. You are the only one that truly exists and every other thing including your physical self, is the creation of your mind. Of course this is a discourse that will lead you to feel really really alone however this is what subjective reality is all about.

Another reason or another theory is that we are all one. There is only one consciousness out there and your are both part of this consciousness and you are this consciousness. This is different from the theory of subjective reality because it doesn't propose that you are the only one and everything else is the creation of your mind. Instead, oneness states that you are part of a whole and there are other souls or spirits with you. You together are one big reality and one big consciousness. This is harder to grasp in comparison to subjective reality and many people fail to get the point. Don't give up. Study this perspective, meditate on it.

Well, there are still questions to be answered I am trying to handle each e-mail. Then I go about the frequent asked ones. I am sure more questions will arise after this post, I'll answer them too. You can also use the comment form so other people also benefit from your response and your questions.

Symptoms of inner peace

2008-09-16T09:38:00.000-07:00

UPDATE! ~~Well, this is from the net. http://symptomsofinnerpeace.com/ looks like a forgotten, left into the cyberspace web site consisting of one page. The content is below.~~

Saskia Davis, the author of this text contacted me along with a complete text with her copyright information. This is a very nice piece of text to share:

THE SYMPTOMS OF INNER PEACE (TM)
© 1984 Saskia Davis
Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great
many have already been exposed; and it is possible that people, everywhere,
could come down with it in epidemic proportions.
This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly
stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

* A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based
on past experiences.

* An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.

* A loss of interest in judging other people.

* A loss of interest in judging self.

* A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.

* A loss of interest in conflict.

* A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom.)

* Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.

* Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.

* Frequent attacks of smiling.

* An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them
happen.

* An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well
as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

WARNING: If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be
advised that your condition of inner peace may be too far advanced to
be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of
these symptoms, remain exposed only at your own risk.

Saskia Davis
(for permission to reprint, write: to Saskia Davis <symptomsofinnerpeace@gmail.com> or 10640 Exeter Ave. N.E. Seattle, Wa. 98125>)

How and why to stop yourself?

2008-09-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

After my last post about how I handle and treat my bipolar disorder, I received e-mails about this 'stop yourself' advice. There was a variety of opinions involved. Some have completely missed the point and argue that self limiting is not a good practice in terms of self development. Those who got the point and understood the importance of just stopping, asked about more ways and suggestions on how to stop themselves.

To begin with, let's clarify what do I mean by stopping myself. Stopping means to stop your thoughts which are of no real value to you. Sometimes, thinking deeply about how to do or why to do a certain thing just turns you into a inefficient human being. Your thinking stops you in a preventive way, preventing what you really want to do. In some cases, this thought also turns into meaningless action, making frantic gestures or just running up here and there without accomplishing a mile.

Therefore, one has to stop himself when such a rush of useless thought hits. That is what I mean by stopping.

As a suggestion, I would start with something new. Learning something new will stop your useless thinking. For instance, if you never had flowers in your home, try planting some new flowers and learn about them. Here is why: Our brain works with a notion of indexing things. For instance, if you index legs with sex, then you have a leg fetish. If you index a beautiful image of a happy party environment with some awful memory than you hate parties and you end up being frustrated when you are invited into one.

When you start something very new, where you have to learn something, your indexing may stop for a while. You will get closer to freeing your mind. If you are a driver, think about the first several times while you are on streets driving. You were not able to think anything other than how to drive. The same holds valid for skiing or snowboarding. You can't think of anything else while you are at it because it is just very new and not yet automated by your brain.

So, by engaging in something that your brain has not automated yet will help you stop your useless and harmful thinking. That's why I also suggested starting reading a new book.

Many questions still remain about this. I have to articulate a brief explanation and move on just because I have sessions waiting in the following hours but you can be sure I'll continue next week.

How do I handle my bipolar disorder?

2008-09-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Well, although I think that I am not quite there, I am doing pretty well since a couple of years right now, so I decided to share what I do. After all, mood is what gave its name to this blog :)

It has been around 10 years that I have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the time, I dived into clinical psychology books and learned more about it. I became an expert on the subject but that was not what helped me.

I suffered from this mood disorder very much when I was a university student. I remember times when the depressed side of bipolar disorder hit me and I couldn't study anything or the high mood hits in an irrelevant time and I had to isolate myself or escape from many environments.

Bipolar disorder made me a very social person and a very isolated person at the same time. However, it took time to identify what it does to me and how it hurt me. It took years to understand its mechanism.

First of all, I should say that you have to develop your own methods on dealing with bipolar disorder. However I will make some suggestions and give advice so that you can see a way, an assessment to approach your uneasiness.

As I have written earlier about lifting your mood, my first suggestion will be about trying to keep and prolong your normal mood. I need to emphasize normal because the definition of normal is entirely up to you. To me, it means that I am content or happy and I can efficiently do what I want to do or what I have to do.

Acknowledgement

Know and understand you have a mood disorder. As Jung pointed out, what you resist, persists. Therefore, don't reject the fact. The idea "I have to be very normal because I am a strong person" is another type of rejection. Forget about being normal. There is no such thing, especially in your condition. You will define a normal and act about it. Accept the fact that you have a condition and know that you are going to handle it. Know that there won't be a straight line in handling it. Ups and downs will continue but you will learn to catch and heal your mood. So, don't fall into the rejection trap.

Having said that, don't become a social mood disorder person either. Don't identify yourself with your condition. Don't exaggerate taking part in discussion groups about bipolar disorder. This will just help you to continue with your swinging moods without having any control over them.

Learn to stop yourself

This is both valid for the high mood and the low mood of bipolar depression. Learn to become still when the mood goes to extremes. There are a couple of ways to learn it. First and foremost, engage in meditation. Learn breathing techniques. Meditation will not be easy in the beginning but by using it frequently, you'll see that you will have a control on your mood. How you breath (this is an important aspect in meditation) is a way of control on your physical body. There are tons of articles on meditation on the net but there aren't much which clearly tells what meditation is all about. Meditation is to allow your feelings and thoughts to flow freely and finally after a certain time they pass. This is the mechanism of meditation. You allow anything and everything that flows through your mind and heart so that they don't persist. This is the core of meditation and nothing else is close to define it. It is not about nailed chairs, it is not about levitation. You can do it in anywhere in any position.

If meditation is not your fit, you can still find your own way to stop yourself. Stopping yourself is important because mood swings usually hurt when you are not completely aware of your condition and behave according to a certain mood and then regret about it.

You have to work on this not when the mood hits you but when you feel content. And then you will use your techniques when the mood hits.

Try to imagine the time when you are up or you are completely down. Most probably, the first thing that will come to your mind will be the reason that triggered your mood. Skip that reason. You would be moody anyway. The reason that comes to your mind is not the reason. This is a game that your mind plays to you. Your mind is very skilled at writing and acting out scenarios. Keep in mind that your mood would swing without any actual reason. Of course there are triggers but this is another issue and I will mention them below.

Be suspicious about your mood. When you start feeling down, try to look for actual reasons. Since you will be ready and practiced before, you may easily understand that there are no reasons. And even if there are reasons, choose anger over anxiety.

Here are a couple more things to help you stop yourself:

Start reading a new book. I say new because that would distract your attention and this what you need at the moment: to distract your attention.

Call a close friend and tell your situation. Tell her / him beforehand about you are going to call when your mood swings and ask for help to remind you your conversation about this before.

Try herbal teas. In my experience, mint and rosemary helps me so much. It is miraculous.

I know this may sound difficult for moody times especially when the depressive side hit but take a shower. While taking a shower, imagine your mood flows over your body and leaves you like dirt or any image that fits you. Imagination is very effective on any mental and physical illness including bipolar disorder.

And things you have to stay away in order to be able to stop yourself:

Caffeine, alcohol, and similar stuff that would trigger and couple your mood many times.

Know and appreciate yourself and your interests

Having interests and having the will to spend time with them is a way to bipolar disorder treatment. Like I said about choosing anger over anxiety, you can choose to love and appreciate yourself instead of anger. You have to develop a self-respect and self-worth. When your mood starts to swing, it is possible that you cannot recognize your true worth. Most probably you will see yourself less worthy than you would normally see.

At those times, it is important to deal with something you are good at. Any hobby may do. This will remind you fo the good things in your life and help you to accelerate your mood shift faster.

I know that questions may arise from this, and I will go on with them if you wish.

Comparing yourself to others

2008-08-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

Leo Babauta wrote about comparisons that people make between themselves and others. I've commented under his post but I would like to tell a little more about this here:

Comparing yourself to others is not only a depressing habit but it also sets wrong or maybe low barriers in one’s self-achievement.

When you compare your self to successful people in your society, that leads to an establishment of the idea about what success is and where it is going to end. This is a self-limiting perspective.

How do you know that you have less or more capacity than the people you are comparing yourself to? What if you have a far more potential in comparison to them?

Comparing yourself to others just limits your scope in being successful.

Sometimes, people compare themselves to other people so much that it brings to my mind benchmarks made about computers or other products. People aren't products and should not get compared as such.

Any wise person can see that such comparison is extremely hazardous to one's success, self-respect, etc. It doesn't look like so first because comparison looks like sometimes that you mimic or imitate somebody else's success. If comparison always would mean that, then there would be not that much harm to one's self. But it isn't.

When you imitate somebody successful on the area you want to be successful too, that's a good thing as a beginning. This is also harmful and will not lead you to success if you exaggerate the habit of imitating. However, in comparison to "comparing yourself with others", this is something else.

So, the problem lies in the meaning. In what we all understand from the word comparison. If you just compare yourself to others in order to convince yourself that you are inferior, than this is most probably one of your methods of procrastination. Procrastination is an expert at writing scenarios and story-telling, procrastination makes propaganda to you so that you are truly convinced that it is the right decision not to do anything about what you want to achieve.

Almost all people carry such resistance towards what they seemingly want.

Do you really need to lose weight before achieving your goals or are you just procrastinating?

2008-08-24T01:35:00.000-07:00

Many people put barriers in their own way by not prioritizing their goals. Do you really need to lose weight, quit caffeine, quit smoking, or any other thing before achieving your goals or are you just procrastinating in a different, hidden or creative fashion?

Suppose that your goal is to double your income in a given time. What you have to do is to work on ways how to just do that and then decide on certain actions and then simply act. I know it is not as simple as that but the mechanism is that simple. However, when it comes to action, sometimes people just start thinking about keeping their home clean, quitting caffeine, losing weight, and a series of things that are not directly relevant to their goal at all.

This is just another type of procrastination. It comes so real that you cannot separate quitting smoking or starting jogging from doubling your income in three months. In fact, it is irrelevant. This is just something your defense mechanisms come up with. The aim is to prevent you from going on with your prior goals. This is self-sabotage. When you think that you have to lose weight before doubling your income, you make it harder to achieve your goal in your conscious and unconscious thoughts. Unfortunately, you end up doing neither of them.

What is the solution? The solution is to decide on what you want to achieve first, and then to concentrate on only that. You have to get clear about the tools and actions required for you to accomplish your goal. You can make a list about those tools and actions and then you can carefully go over this list to see if there are anything irrelevant.

It would be very helpful to write clear statements so that you can see on paper whether what you think is really logical and relevant or not. For instance:

I want to double my income in three months. Therefore, I have to lose weight.

I want to start exercising for a healthy body. Therefore, I have to keep my room clean.

Can you see? There are a lot of things that you want to do and achieve but you may have irrelevant things in your mind preventing you from acting or just making your goal seem more difficult than it is, in your mind.

Moreover, if you want to double your income and you start from quitting caffeine, this can just result in a decline in your attention to things and this would even harden your action towards your particular goal.

Procrastination is not laziness. It is rather an intelligent and tricky way of resistance to the good and self sabotage. What about your particular irrelevant roadblocks? Would you like to inspect and share them?

New generation is more adaptive to the law of attraction

2008-08-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

Today, there are people on the web like Steve Pavlina, Tina Su, Leo Babauta who successfully implemented the intention & manifestation model. Among them, I see the Leo Babauta and Tina Su have a faster development in comparison to Steve Pavlina, especially on how they earn their lives from the web and how long it took.

This is very normal. There is a quote of Max Planck that use very often in this blog:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Quantum mechanics has been around for a century and it became more and more popular in the 70's when scientists have better tools in experimenting with it. Along came the spiritual side that discusses whether really consciousness causes collapse or not and the famous law of attraction.

Recently, I visit their blogs very often and observe their approach to the intention manifestation model. Tina Su, among them is the fastest who learned and adapted to it. Why? because the youngest among them (28) and like it happens with the new generation's adaptation on computers, new generation also adapts to the idea of "thoughts become things". They are born into it.

If you look closely to Steve Pavlina's articles and posts about the law of attraction, he clearly states that any positive thought can bring you success while any negative thought can bring you limitations on your success, if not a complete failure. Yet, on several articles, I can clearly see that he limits himself too.

This limiting himself comes out of the habit of seeing the world as it is there. Even an intelligent and creative person like Steve Pavlina can come across with limitations through his thinking and perceptions.

I have a great respect for him and there are a lot of things I have learned from him and of course this is not a criticism of him. I just want to make clear that our thinking habits are really very determined on how we do things in our lives.

Now I am thinking of the future. How would todays five year olds would assess the law of attraction and intention manifestation model in the future, let's say around 2020's and 2030's?

It looks like that the word miracle will have new meanings when we arrive there.

How to overcome learned helplessness

2008-08-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

The most efficient solution for learned helplessness is to open your eyes and free your mind. Many of us think of learned helplessness as an inability. We tend to imagine this situation as not being able to do something. We also tend to believe that it involves fear.

Those are not close to the truth of learned helplessness. Let's review and remind the concept and then go on with the solution.

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to act or behave helpless in a particular situation, even when it has the power to change its unpleasant or even harmful circumstance (wikipedia).

This is a case of strong learning. Usually, the inability does not come out of fear or strong emotions but it comes out of the new reality tunnel and established beliefs of the subject.

When a person is suffering from learned helplessness, he or she is not even aware of his or her state. When confronted with a situation which requires an act on the part of an individual, and this individual does not act accordingly, this is not because of a feeling of helplessness. It is because he even cannot think that he should act or he does not know that he can act.

Therefore, the key solution to learned helplessness is not courage but awareness. This is not a road in which the subject will be empowered. This should be a way of "dis-learning" or forgetting and learning again in a new fashion, what is being learned beforehand.

Learned helplessness is not an emotion, it is a belief.

Then how can one overcome learned helplessness? How is it possible for an individual who is not really aware or just barely aware of his situation?

So, learned helplessnes itself not an emotion but it can produce negative emotions usually so much that the individual knows deep inside about his helplessness. However the big obstacle is the resistance towards such a negative emotion and willing to work on it. It takes time.

When it comes to social interaction, learned helplessness has to be evaluated with feelings of guilt too. One feels helpless however she thinks she is the only reason for this feeling. In fact, since this is something learned, one should be sure of the fact that outside effects made her learn this helplessness.

So, the biggest help is insight about the helplessness and trying to decondition (can be also identified as reconditioning but deconditioning is a better definition) and unlearn it.

Starting with small steps may help. Let's suppose that your learned helplessness is about communicating with the opposite sex. In that case, the helplessness can be formulated this way: You are not able to affect any conversation with the opposite sex. This is the belief learned that causes helplessness. It comes as if he or she will not hear you. So most probably, you have been ignored in the past and learned that whatever you will do, the situation won't change.

To overcome such a learned helplessness, you have to try and expose yourself to the same situation again.

Awareness

Your emotions tell you that there is something wrong. Maybe you think that you have to be more assertive to make yourself heard. Maybe you think that you are not from this world, you are rather an alien. Anyway, all of those thinking is very normal at this time.

Try to understand that what you think you are not able to do puts you in a special situation. Try to understand that you cannot be that special, it is simply impossible.

Act

Your act should be based on your awareness. Since helplessness is something you have learned, at the unlearning phase, you may have to lose yourself a little bit. Try to forget who you are so that you are less bound with your conditioning. Meditate on the idea that you are somebody who is born just a couple of minutes before and everything you will do is up to you and not up to something you may have learned earlier because there is no past.

Really meditate on it. The problem with that meditation might be that you may be not aware of what you are not aware of.

Therefore, it may be a good idea to take help from a friend or a professional who will enhance your vision.

If you can achieve the meditation part successfully than you can start living a different life, day by day. You are going to become another you, who has unlearned the helplessness or has not learned it at all.

Learned helplessness is a kind of brainwashing and you can brainwash yourself for unlearning it.

There is going to be lots of trail and error and that's okay. Love yourself for your failures and convince yourself that your failures are just steps that will bring you to success with your unlearning process.

(to be continued)

Where do I go?

2008-08-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Recently, I am really irritated what I do with this blog. There is a significant difference in my posts before July the 15th and after. I thought about a bit and then understood what happened. Only then, I was able to make this distinction about the date. Have a look at this:

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A thoughts become things experiment

There are many websites and blogs around the world which claim to teach the law of attraction but in none of them are live experiences. I decided to show one for you.

In fact, it is not an experiment for me because I don't think about it as an experiment. I just know that it is going to happen.

So here is the real deal. Within three months from now, I will make this blog one of the most popular blogs around the world. Recently, the only criteria for this in my mind is the Technorati Top 100 blogs. Maybe I can find other criteria in time as well.

After achieving this goal, I will have other goals to achieve and share.

After posting this, my attitude towards my blog have changed. If you take the time to have a look at posts I have written between June 18 and July 21. That was what I wanted to talk about mostly. Maybe the sharpest turning point was this post: New week, new thoughts.

Anyway, I think that this was a mistake. I should go back to my own style and continue like that. By the way, it would be also interesting to post about details how all this mistake occurred. That adds to the self-development course too.

Welcome back to me and moodr.

Omnos' Mandalas

2008-08-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

Omnos has nice drawings and great mandalas acquired from those drawings on Flickr. Here are my selections among them:

Here is his mandalas set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/omnos/sets/1078523/.

Swimming Cure for ADHD

2008-08-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Diller from Psychology Today evaluates Michael Phelps' success on olympics from a clinical pscyhologist's perspective. Phelps was suffering from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) in his childhood and that may have helped him develop his success in being a professional swimmer. Below are two notable paragraphs from that article:

Michael’s success cannot be fully explained by his athletic prowess alone. His drive must also be incredible and those qualities of personality – persistence and intensity – can be highly problematic in the childhood years when a child’s interests and strengths are not academic. Things change dramatically once a child finds his/her niche which often doesn’t occur until late high school or beyond.

The Phelps' ADHD story is otherwise important for two reasons. First it calls into question whether we should really be labeling a child with Michael with a mental disorder. One could hardly call him impaired at this time of his life. Yet academics regularly pronounce that ADHD is a life-long disorder. Indeed, perhaps the outcome for the well screened highly impaired university selected children with ADHD is more guarded. But for the garden variety, front-line Tom Sawyers, Pippi Longstockings and now Michael Phelps that make up my and most doctors’ practices, the future is much brighter (once they find their niche).

Shroud of Turin is subject to reexamination

2008-08-17T13:58:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Times has a story titled Shroud of Turin stirs new controversy.

The photo you see on the left is a heavily post-processed version (credits: omnos)of a documentary photo of what some have claimed to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. It is believed by many to be the cloth placed on Jesus of Nazareth at the time of his burial (Wikipedia, The Shroud of Turin).

Two Masonic historians, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, have written a controversial book called The Second Messiah: Templars, the Turin Shroud, and the Great Secret of Freemasonry, which claims that the Turin Shroud is actually an image of Jacques de Molay, not of Jesus Christ as is common belief. They claim that when King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V seized and dissolved the Order of the Knights Templar, that one of the French king's inquisitors, Guillame de Nogaret, tortured and crucified de Molay in a parody of the crucifixion of Jesus. He then put a cloth on de Molay's head, and de Molay's face was imprinted on the cloth. The authors claim that one of the reasons the Knights Templar were suppressed was because they knew a secret true history of Jesus which had been distorted by the Roman Catholic Church. According to Knight and Lomas, Jesus considered himself not God, but a Jewish revolutionary working to establish God's kingdom on Earth, and that the Templars' initiation ceremony involved a denial of Jesus as God.

Apart from Knight and Lomas' suggested scenario, there is a connection in the provenance of the Shroud of Turin and the Templars. Geoffroi de Charny's widow Jeanne de Vergy is the first reliably recorded owner of the Turin shroud; his uncle, Geoffrey de Charney, was Preceptor of Normandy for the Knights Templar. This uncle is the same Geoffrey de Charney who was initially sentenced to lifetime imprisonment with de Molay, and was burned with de Molay in 1314 after both proclaimed their innocence, recanting torture-induced confessions. (Wikipedia, Jacques de Molay)

Doc Kazi (the above photo is from his Flickr images) on Flickr says:

The most controversial cloth in human history is the Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have been physically traumatized in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is presently kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Some believe it is the cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth when he was placed in his tomb and that his image was recorded on its fibers at or near the time of his proclaimed resurrection. Skeptics contend the shroud is a medieval hoax or forgery — or even a devotional work of artistic verisimilitude. It is nevetheless the subject of intense debate among some scientists, believers, historians and writers, regarding where, when and how the shroud and its images were created.

Los Angeles Times story tells:

It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Catholic Church; it led John to suspend himself from an 8-foot-tall cross to study how blood might have stained the cloth. Together, the two have committed to memory every crease, scorch mark and unexplained stain in their years-long pursuit of the mystery.

But John Jackson, one of the shroud's most prominent researchers, was among those who insisted that the results made no sense. Too much else about the shroud, they said, including characteristics of the cloth and details in the image, suggested that it was much older.

Twenty years later, Jackson, 62, is getting his chance to challenge the radiocarbon dating. Oxford University, which participated in the original radiocarbon testing, has agreed to work with him in reconsidering the age of the shroud.

If the challenge is successful, Jackson hopes to be allowed to reexamine the shroud, which is owned by the Vatican and stored in a protective chamber in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy.

Here is the photo of the shroud:

Slow Motion Lightning

2008-08-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

If you thought lightning couldn't be any more awesome, you thought wrong. The power of slow motion let's you see every last spark as it dances across the sky.

Source: Today's BIG Thing

Would you travel faster than light?

2008-08-14T21:20:00.000-07:00

I may not yet travel faster than light but particles do:

From Live Science: Spooky Physics: Signals Seem to Travel Faster Than Light

From Scientific American: Quantum weirdness wins again: Entanglement clocks in at 10,000+ times faster than light

Debate on online therapies

2008-08-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

Psychotherapy over the net. It is a matter of debate among academicians and practitioners. I have also briefly discussed this in a post titled Pros and cons of online counseling and psychotherapy.

There are ethical, legal and practical concerns over online counseling and psychotherapy. Ethical concerns include things such as controlling the access to valuable and secret information on the net. There is going to be continuing flow of private information and communication between the therapist and the client. Thus, a strong network security is needed. People are concerned about what would happen, if anybody is going to intercept the communication.

Other ethical issues revolve around some conventional sides of therapy. Therapy is a human interaction. Like on any debate over online dating, education, friendship, etc., there is also this debate about online therapy. How is it possible under such a virtual atmosphere.

I think that this is not an ethical question. Rather, this has something to do with our current reality tunnel and habits. It's like the fact that people didn't build ships out of metal until nearly 17th century, not because they couldn't but because they don't 'believe' that metal ships could float. They thought that metal would sink anyway. We have the same reasoning here. Our resistance to the idea of online practices is not related to ethics but it is highly affected by our belief systems.

Legal concerns are about evaluating great failures of therapists. Questions arise about control and detection of misbehaving therapists. But again, what is the difference here between an online therapy and a face to face therapy? Any stupid person like me can have a clinical psychology degree and get to practice online or offline. Who is going to control? Who is really controlling therapists right now? How do we know what is happening in the sacred tower of privacy? This has nothing to do with online concerns either.

In practice, body language and several physical factors like tone of voice, etc. can be of very valuable information for a therapist. This is another contra argument for online counseling and online psychotherapy. However, we are in a time where we can establish audio-visual communication over the net. If an online therapist is able to provide such technical setting, this can be set up by the client side too.

So, you see that although there may be something lacking in online therapy, there can be also added values of it. Of course, this is going to be discussed for years. It's a hot topic and it also reminds me of Max Planck's quote. I have posted it a while ago here but I am going to note down again:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Extramarital Affair Ad Gets Banned

2008-08-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

From ABC:

ESPN Says It Has Asked Affiliates to Pull an Ad for a Cheaters' Matchmaking Service

A website commercial is banned.

The story over on ABC: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=5499877&page=1

The forbidden ad video (from Break.com):

A beautiful paper set from Flickr

2008-08-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8485049@N07/sets/72157600267313831/
(there are 38 items in the set)

photo credits: Karaku

Photographing Japanese figures

2008-08-13T20:49:00.000-07:00

This is Ronald Bayan's work (using the nick captchaos on Flickr). Here is the whole set consisting of 405 photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronaldbayan/sets/72157594225767628/

See more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ronaldbayan/sets/72157594225767628/

There and back

2008-08-13T10:45:00.000-07:00

I'll try to answer most of the questions about the power of positive thinking and deliberate creation.

For the last seven days, a frequently asked question is "how to get rid of negative thoughts and emotions?", this is being asked in order to achieve more with positive thought and prevent any negativity from interfering with the creative process.

Well, fear not. Of course it is a bummer, a show-stopper when you think the opposite while trying to concentrate on what you want to happen in your life. However, remember the buffer of time.

As with any positive creation attempt, this buffer of time is also valid for what you don't want. This is an opportunity for you to correct your concentration and thinking.

How to get rid of it? There is not a rule-book about that. As I was telling earlier, you can try psychotherapy (I mean talk therapy, either cognitive or dynamic) to eliminate negative thoughts and emotions. Another reason for suggesting therapy is about understanding one's wishes. It may sound weird but if you think throughly, you will see that wanting is a difficult issue. It's difficult to make a distinction among what you consciously want and what you want via thye pressure of society, peers, media, etc. Therapy would help you to gain consciousness on that.

Another important practice with which you can gain consciousness is meditation. If you don't feel comfortable meditating in a certain position, try a meditation chair or just lie flat on your back and meditate that way. Position does not interfere your meditation or decrease your concentration.

Anyway, to sum up for now, deliberate creation is a mental process where you create change in physical plane. And it takes time. It is very normal that it takes time. Be patient and try to enhance your consciousness.

Psychotherapy is seemingly a luxury for the majority

2008-08-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Anyone seeking a talk therapy nowadays may come across a harsh opposition. The U.K. government is trying to put a ban on psychoanalysis. This is maybe the most scary example of under what kind of a threat talk therapy recently is.

Psychotherapy can be very abstract at times. It can be so abstract that most people feel difficulty to understand what it is all about. Since it deals with defense mechanisms and resistance of the mind, it is really very easy and quick to show resistance towards such an abstract approach.

Of course it is far from being an abstract thing for people who have a good and strong psychotherapy experience.

There are several arguments on why psychotherapy is not as popular as it was in the past. One of those arguments is about the developing medical industry working on brain chemistry. I am really against this because on most types of depression and anxiety, playing with the brain chemistry is only a rehabilitation and not a treatment.

They say that depression is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. This chemical is serotonin and the primary role of contemporary antidepressants is to increase the traffic of serotonin in the brain. I think the opposite about serotonin. I think the decrease of serotonin traffic in the brain is the result of depression, not the other way around.

Therefore, if you really want to cure depression, medical industry is not the answer. Human mind and emotions have a different language than the biochemical language. It is very possible that symptoms of depression are biological. However, symptoms are symptoms, they are not depression itself. Depression treatment has to be applied differently. I can accept antidepressions as a mean of rehabilitation, since rehabilitation is also an important factor in treatment, however it cannot cure your depression.

Psychotherapy can cure your depression and anxiety. Moreover, it is you, who is going to cure and rescue your mind and soul from depression. Psychotherapy - especially psychoanalysis - deals with your subconscious and your subconscious is nowhere to be found in your brain. It is not something physical. It is not something you can touch and try to repair through medicines.

What is getting ill and being healed is the mind and mind is not the brain. People have to be more open to the seemingly mysterious and abstract framework of human mind. Of course, what psychotherapy is able to cure and what not is another debate but I am sure that it is the right treatment for many mental illnesses.

Magic mushrooms, spiritual awareness and Johns Hopkins

2008-08-07T00:05:00.000-07:00

Johns Hopkins seeks volunteers to take magic mushrooms. This is from their website:

Seeking Volunteers with a Cancer Diagnosis
to participate in a scientific study of self-exploration
and personal meaning

In recent years, scientists at some U.S. universities have been conducting studies using entheogens, resuming research in pharmacology, psychology, creativity, and spirituality that was suspended following the drug excesses of the 1960s.

Entheogens include the peyote cactus used by the Native American Church, the psilocybin-containing mushrooms used as sacraments in Mesoamerica, and certain other plants and chemicals. Such substances have been used for thousands of years in cultures from the Amazon to ancient Greece as a means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness for psychological self-exploration and spiritual or religious purposes.

These states of consciousness are most widely known in connection with practices such as meditation and prolonged fasting. Context seems to play a major role in shaping entheogen experiences and their consequences. Despite the well-known problems that can arise in unstructured settings, the risks of entheogens in research and ritual contexts have proven to be very small.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are seeking volunteers with a current or past diagnosis of cancer who have some anxiety or are feeling down about their cancer to participate in a scientific study of self-exploration and personal meaning brought about by the entheogen psilocybin, a psychoactive substance found in mushrooms used as a sacrament in some cultures, given in a comfortable, supportive setting. Questionnaires and interviews will be used to assess the effects of the substance on consciousness, mood, and behavior.

Volunteers enrolled in the study will receive careful preparation and 2 sessions in which they will receive psilocybin. Structured guidance will be provided during the session and afterwards to facilitate integration of the experiences. The study complies with FDA regulations.

Volunteer must be between the ages of 21 and 70, have no personal history of severe psychiatric illness, or recent history of alcoholism or drug abuse, have someone willing to pick them up and drive them home at the end of the two psilocybin sessions (around 5:00 PM).

If you would like to discuss the possibility of volunteering, please call 410–550–5990 or email cancer@bpru.org and ask for Mary, the study’s research coordinator. Confidentiality will be maintained for all applicants and participants.

Principal Investigator: Roland R. Griffiths, Ph.D., Protocol: NA_00001390

Link: http://www.bpru.org/cancer/insight/

(via boing boing)

Muslim comics is on the way

2008-08-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Time.com says that Islamic Superheroes Going Global:

The 99, a comic-book series based on characters that each personify one of the 99 qualities that the Koran attributes to God, met early resistance in places like Saudi Arabia. Local authorities worried that the series might mock Islam. But after Mutawa guaranteed that he would remain respectful of religion and won backing from a major Islamic bank, the series took off around the Gulf. Initially given away for free with Arabic versions of Marvel comics (the license for which Mutawa owns in the region), The 99 is now a stand-alone success, with some 500,000 copies given away and sold across the region in the past two years.

Given the catastrophic crisis about Mohammad cartoons, this seems to be a little milder than that. In fact, 99 names are really of great importance in Islam as well as Sufism (Islamic mysticism and occult). 99 Names are used in Islamic magick too (Islamic havass) for both good and evil purposes.

Let's go back to the world of comics. This is a business by Naif Al-Mutawa. Here is additional info about him from Time.com:

Mutawa, who has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a master's in business administration from Columbia University, spent 10 years as a psychologist working with the victims of war before founding Teshkeel Media Group in 2004. His patients included men who were part of the Iraqi army that invaded Kuwait. "When you hear these stories of Saddam Hussein, who was cast as a hero and then ended up torturing his own people, you ask yourself what kind of message we are sending our kids about what a hero does," says Mutawa. "With The 99, I wanted to make a difference and give Muslim kids positive role models."

What is going to happen and whether any further objection would arise, only time will tell.