An Inside Glimpse to the Beginning of Life

Researchers in Japan revealed this week that they have formed cohesive functioning brain tissue from stem cells.

“The researchers at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe said their new tissues are able to self-organize into four distinct zones very similar to the structure seen in human fetuses, and conduct neuro activity such as transmitting electrical signals among themselves.”

What I found fascinating about this development is that the tissues self-organized into a structure seen in human fetuses. On May 27, in my blog post, Is Your Mind Making a Monkey of You?, I wrote about thought originating from the dan tian and not the brain. The lower dan tian corresponds to very beginning of human life. It is intriguing that the stem cells self-organized into four distinct zones. In the early development stage of life, in the first two weeks, the heart, brain, spinal cord and gastrointestinal tract begin to form. These are the four neural crests that also correspond to the main qi centers and meridians in the body. In the second to sixth week of life, neurogenesis begins with brain activity and a heart beat apparent by the sixth week.

For the first time, scientists have an inside look at the genesis of life and the very beginnings of qi functioning (neuro activity and electrical signals).

You can learn more about stem cells at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/

Science and creationism are growing ever closer to being one.

Intention vs. Will – Which is Greater?

“Let us say then frankly that the education of the Will is the object of our existence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“The moment that one definitely commits one’s self, the Providence moves too.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

In response to my post on The Greatest Power in the Universe, someone wrote me and asked, “What is the difference between Intent and Will?”

Man is man by virtue of willing.

This is a very important question, especially in light of The Law of Attraction if you believe in it. The Law of Attraction teaches when you make an Intention, you draw it to you. I think the more clear “reality” is that you are brought to your Intention. What is moving – you or the thing intended? The thing intended has always been there. The difference is you are now ready to receive it or to be in presence with it.

Let’s look at the definition of Intention. Intention, Intent and Purpose all mean a wish or desire that one means to carry out. Purpose implies having a goal or determination to achieve something. Determination is the root of Will.

A goal is an anticipated outcome that guides your planned actions. So you set an Intention, a goal, and with that are planned actions to arrive at the anticipated outcome.

Let’s use a story to illustrate. There is a traveler who has stopped on a road. The road is narrow and winding. The traveler can’t see very far down the road. Way off in the distance, the traveler can see the road climbing in a winding way up a mountain. The traveler is on a journey to the temple at the top of the mountain. The Intention of the traveler is to get to the top of the mountain. To do that, the traveler needs a map to find the way.

The traveler is You. You see your Intention off in the distance. You know your Purpose is to get to that Intention. You don’t know How. You can’t see the road directly in front of you. What do you do?

You Determine, or Set Your Will, that you will continue on the road. You do not know what will come your way, but you are determined no matter what that you will reach your Intention.

Where there is no doubt and no fear, faith is expressed perfectly. This can be called Living Faith. Living Faith is different from practiced faith. Practiced faith is faith that you have but it is based on conditions. I will continue forward down the road IF….  Living Faith is absolute. It just IS. This is the path I must walk, so I will walk it.

You, the traveler choosing to walk in Absolute Faith find as you go forward that there is a more direct path to the temple. What you perceived to be a long journey, you can complete in a very short time. This is Will moving to Intention. The way is made straight in Absolute Faith. This is why some people seem to manifest almost immediately. They align themselves almost instantly to their Intent.

Will is a faculty of consciousness and especially of deliberate action. Will is the Power of control that the Mind has over its own actions and desires.  Desire is a strong feeling or emotion that impels (moves one forward towards) you to the attainment or possession of the thing. Desire comes from the Latin that means “await what the stars will bring.” Literally, it is “from the stars.” Stars can be equated with Universe.

“The carnal mind is enmity towards God.” (Rom 8:7) Carnal mind is Ego, the monkey mind. The Monkey Mind will dissuade you every time from following your inner guide, your spirit within, intuition or gut. The Monkey Mind creates Fear and Doubt and says Show Me How. It causes you to lack Absolute Faith. You need to put the Monkey Mind aside and learn to listen to your heart, your intuition, your inner guidance.

The Mind needs to center within and commit to change. It needs to commit to being open and receptive to following spiritual guidance. It needs to believe, which is to know absolutely, that what it desires WILL BE. The Mind bypasses the Monkey Mind, it let’s go of Ego, allowing spirit to connect with spirit. You STEP OUT IN ABSOLUTE FAITH. What you Desire Is MANIFEST.

The answer to the question, “What is the difference between Intent and Will,” is…

Intent is the destination; Will is what propels you to reach your destination.

“Not going out of the door I have knowledge of the world. Not peeping through the window I perceive heaven’s Tao. The more one wanders to a distance the less he knows.

Therefore the wise man does not wander about but he understands, he does not see things but he defines them, he does not labor yet he completes.”

Lao Tzu’s Tao and Wu Wei: Tao Te Ching 47 Seeing the Distant

 

 

Is there a Mind Monkey in You?

Part III

[Final Installment]

It’s time to GET IN THE FLOW.

In Part I, I talked about the lower dantian and the middle dantian. Were you aware that there is actually a third dantian? It is located at the middle or third eye position, the 6th chakra. It is called the Mind Monkey. Now, picture in your mind for a moment, a monkey. What is a monkey like? What antics does a monkey do?

Mind Monkey is a Buddhist term that means “unsettled, restless, capricious, whimsical, fanciful, inconstant, confused, indecisive, uncontrollabe.”

This is exactly how the mind/brain reacts to the inner guidance of the “intellect” (the spiritual lower dantian and emotional middle dantian). The Mind Monkey takes over and convinces you to ignore your intuition or gut feeling. The Mind Monkey says that you have to listen to reason. The Mind Monkey makes you confused by convincing you not to follow your heart. The Mind Monkey is capricious making you go off on all kinds of tangents.

Haven’t you had enough of the Mind Monkey? Wouldn’t you like to get him off your back and off your mind and get your mind/brain focused on your inner guidance?
 
You can! It’s not as hard you might think. It takes a little time and a little practice, but you can LET GO and GET IN THE FLOW. Excessive emotion, sadness, anger, anxiety, overjoyousness, and overexcited are unbalanced emotions and create energy blocks in the body. There are simple ways to clear the blocks and put your body back in a state of harmony, in a place of calm where your energy in all centers is harmonized.

I coach my clients to identify their energy blocks and show them how to release those energy blocks. We then work on identifying the main causes of the energy blocks. In six to 12 weeks, you can begin experiencing fun, joy and relaxation again with little effort. You will learn how to recenter yourself into a place of calm where you can experience the emotions of highest vibration – Peace, Joy and Love.

As you LET GO of the Mind Monkey and find your true purpose for being, you will experience inner happiness, peace, a feeling of being connected to the universe.

You will learn how to get your energy moving and keep it moving freely, renewing your inner person daily, staying revitalized through the continuous flow of Universal Energy.

Isn’t it time for you to LET GO and GET IN THE FLOW?

You are a cell in the body of the Creator. The Universe is waiting for you to reconnect.
 

Citations:

The Hidden Face of God by Gerald L. Schroeder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_crest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo

http://science.jrank.org/pages/3247/Heart-Embryonic-development-human-heart.html”>Heart

http://www.islam-guide.com/ch1-1-a.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_monkey

Monkey in the Mind?

Part II

[This blog post has 3 parts; to find the answer read each post daily. You'll be surprised!]

After coming to this conclusion that the “intellect” in man actually resides within the very core of our being, I went looking for sources to help validate this. Here is what I found:

I began in Genesis, 2:7 “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

The breath of life, vital life force, energy, was breathed into man. As man procreates, that energy comes directly from it’s source, the Creator, into the very core of our being.

The margin reference in my bible referred me to topic 2242 Spirit of Man. Here is what I found:

Job 32:8 But there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.

Pr 20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly. (Eccl 3:21)

Eccl 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

2 Cor 4:16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

Here is instruction to renew the inward man. To keep the energy flowing.

There is a passage in the Koran (Quran) that corresponds to Gen 2 and Eccl 12

“We created man from an extract of clay. Then We made him as a drop in a place of settlement, firmly fixed. Then We made the drop into an alaqah (leech, suspended thing, and blood clot), then We made the alaqah into a mudghah (chewed substance…” Quran 23:12-14

[emphasis in the above passages is mine, whether or not you believe in a higher "BEING", physics tells us that everything is energy and we come from that energy]

Here is what the world of physics and metaphysics tells us:

Quoted from The Hidden Face of God  [emphasis mine]

“A single consciousness, an all-encompassing wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, those that explore the molecular complexity of biology, and those that probe the brain/mind interface, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to have within it a level of information, of conscious wisdom.” (prologue, page 1)

“There’s no competition here between the spiritual and the material. The two are complementary, as in the root “to complete.” When we see through the camouflage haze that at times convinces us that only the material exists, when we touch that consciousness, we know it. A joyful rush of emotion sweeps over the entire self. This emotional response – some might call it a religious experience – is reported in every culture, from every period. It tells us that we’ve come home. We’ve discovered the essence of being. Everyone has felt it at some time or other. Perhaps at a brilliant sunrise, in a work of art, the words of a loved one. The physical and the metaphysical have joined.” (prologue, page 2)

When you LET GO and Reconnect Spiritually, when you discover your very essence of being – you have unlocked your purpose for being. When we are on purpose, we are following our heart. We are not focusing on the how, we just know IT IS. We know in our heart that it is right. The physical and the metaphysical (spirit) have joined, they are in alignment.

“The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics.” (prologue, page 2)

“The upsurge of interest in meditation, Eastern religions, and kabala reflects an almost desperate search to rediscover our spiritual roots.” (prologue, page 4)

“To relegate, a priori, those feelings of love and joy and spirituality to some assumed function of our ancestors’ evolutionary drive for survival masks the greatest pleasure in life, the experiential realization of the metaphysical.” (prologue, page 4)

“The universe is the physical expression of the metaphysical. All that we know of the putative Creator is found within the physical creation.” (Chapter 1, page 5)

Rom 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

Is your Mind making a Monkey of You?

Are monkeys playing around with your mind?

[This blog post has 3 parts, to find the answer read each post daily; you'll be surprised at the end!]

I’d like to start by asking – What is mind? Where is your mind? Is it in your brain? What are memories? Where are memories stored? We used to think that memories were stored in areas of the brain. While the brain controls many functions related to memory, cellular memory challenges that all memories are stored in the brain.

Not long ago, I was listening to Bob Proctor’s 30 minute audio recording on Communication. In the audio, Mr. Proctor stated something along the lines that man believes the “intellect” to be in the mind. He goes on to talk about the gut feeling and how we feel strong emotion in the solar plexus region. The ancient Greeks referred to the solar plexus as the “Heart of Man,” and this is where we get the phrase “heart-to-heart.”

This got me thinking. What if the “intellect” isn’t in the mind/brain at all? What if it is in the very center of our being. The place where we are connected to other people emotionally and where our spiritual center lies.

I began practicing Qigong several months ago. The center of energy (qi or chi) in the body lies in the lower dantian region. This region is located two fingerbreadths behind and three fingerbreadths below the navel. There is also a middle dantian located at the solar plexus responsible for respiration and the health of the internal organs. The solar plexus is also the location of the 13th chakra, or external heart chakra.

This area corresponds to the very beginning of human life, the umbilical area. About seven days after conception, the blastocyst implants on the uterine wall and trophoblast cells start to proliferate. Where implantation occurs is where the umbilicus will form and grow. In the next two weeks, the heart, brain, spinal cord, and gastrointestinal tract begin to form. Then neurogenesis begins. Brain activity and the heart beat appear about the sixth week.

There are four neural crests in the body that also correspond to the main qi centers and meridians in the body. It is interesting that the back and front energy channels correspond to development that occurs in the first two weeks of life.

There are 12 main energy channels and 8 secondary energy channels in the body. The secondary channels act as reservoirs. It is also important to note that the other channels pass extra energy to the front and back channels for storage.

There are many causes of energy blockages and they are better left for another discussion. What is important to know about energy blockages is that energy seeks energy. It desires to flow. The Law of Circulation is constantly in effect. If you dam a stream, the water behind the dam desires to continue to flow. It desires to join with a larger body of water. The energy in man desires to flow as well. It desires to flow into the greater Universal energy field and come back to us.We are energy. Everything that exists is energy. When energy isn’t able to flow through our body, our body tells us, “Hey there, I’ve got a problem. You need to pay attention to me and take care of this.”

Unfortunately, we’ve been taught to ignore our body when it speaks to us. We’re taught to take care of the symptom caused by the energy block, and the lack of energy flow goes unattended. What happens when the water pressure behind a dam becomes so great that the dam bursts? What do you think would happen to you if this occurred inside of you?

Where we connect with a greater energy, a greater force than ourselves, doesn’t occur in the mind/brain. We don’t communicate from the mind. Language is formed in the mind. Thought (communication) is formed from deeper inside of us. From the very center, the core of our being. We think that thought is formed in the brain because we hear thoughts in our head. That’s just the language mechanism working. The brain is like the Grand Central Station of the body. It’s a large switching station. The spirit or energy within us originates all thought and emotion. The signals get sent to the brain where they are translated into what we perceive to be thought. Have you ever listened to your intuition or gut feeling? It guides us through every situation in life. All we have to do is STOP and LISTEN! BE PRESENT IN THE MOMENT.