my world is amazing. may i be blessed with more fun. more awareness. more love. more adventure. more talent. more inspiration. more drive. more of you. thank you. hank you.

last night. went to comedy club with sarah, ekta, matt and his girlfriend. nice. made me think that i want a boyfriend who can do impersonations. love actors. we were drinking and smoking before we even got there. we were drinking wine and packed a bowl in the car drive over there. i thank my lucky stars that for there protections when i drive.
comedy show ended we went to bakers street and we drnk a lil. talk a lil. when we walked in i remember seeing uno de sus amigos. cool dude. i think we could connect well as friends. but i didnt say anything. anyways later...we were sitting and i saw el walking. he saw me. came over to me. i gave him a hug. i can feel the feeling of his back and his shirt. i didnt get excited. just aware of how it felt for some reason. oh well i know i still like him but it didnt feel like love or anything. hmmm. i dont know. he said some ppl are hanging out over there but we never went. i told ekta but she didnt push it either, guess it wasn;t the right time. but then later we talked a lil to some dude next to us from hawaii. cool, then i saw ekta talking to And- also super cool i think we could get along really well. oh well. i talked to him for a bit with ekta who supposedly had a crush on him in highschool. hahaha. i remember that dude a lil from the bus. crazy. but anyways then i went to go hang out with sarah she was with el he was playing pool and then some dude started talking to me. and bought us all drinks. then the bar was closing and i think we left. sarah put Su number in my phone, again, after i had deleted it the other week, just bc it was so close to jessie's that i would never want to accidentally press it, you know. . oh well. haha. so then i went home. ekta was hanging out with some otherfriends of hers too so i went home alone and got home and plopped my self on the couch. i woke up at the time i was supposed to be leaving work so i texted martha saying i was sick. i left moms car light on. woops. okay quickness from here. i woke up went to go eat sandy mcgees with ekta. thought the cashier guy was cute. oh well. we talk . i am close with ekta. i dont let ppl know much about me but she knows me. oh well then i saw somepple come in who i kind of know. i saw one dude at another party boo took me to. at bro's party. oh well. i went to ektas talk to her parents about the retreat. left took at nap out in the park . absolutely beautiful. :) phenomenal. oh well. camehome. dad told me about how he will learn to play the guitar and that we can play together. :0

i love my life. i love my life. lets make it even better Weasel. lets make it even more fun. :)

allow it. allow it. allow it. and let go.

Falun Dafa

no hay que hacer nada. si no quieres escribir la composicion, no lo tienes que hacer. no lo tienes que hacer. no lo tienes que hacer. que mas harias. que mas harias. pues. nada. porque no solo buscas informacion que te gusta y si pueded escribir desde alli pues escribe. si no. no. no importa. nada important. nada importa.
anda pues.

in the lights
in the colors
in excitement

i remember.

GOD YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!! LIFE YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! LET ME LEARN MORE, MORE, PLEASE!! LET ME SHARE IT WITH OTHERS PLEASE!

trying to trust. trying to trust. it is real . it is real.

escribe escribe escribe escribe escribe..todo sera lo que sera. diversion vendra. diversion vendra. diversion vendra. que es lo que quiero con mis amores. quiero q stodo sea facil. quiero q todo sea facil. facil. dame inspiracion dame inspiracion dame inspiracion.
writing is the way to your mind's mind. its the way to express past the lies that by which you abide. hold on tight for the fight is here. never let go, you know there is nothing to fear. dont let your doubt drown you today. there is light, there is light on the way. remember the beauty of all that has come. how could you forget, you know you are the one. hold on to me and conquer this fight. you are a warrior, you are light. stand up for what is needed, stand up for what you feel. live in the moment and pray for the will. time is coming closer, moving faster and you know. its all what you make it, so stay stay low. numbers and sentences all intertwine making life harder to compromise. loving is easier with you eyes closed believe that the moment is right at your toes. let the air hit you, for the time is here the time is here, for the love to begin, the fun to begin, its all so near. hear me, hear me and you shall be free. let it all flow. today today today today today. all is all is all is all is all is all is fine. drink your wine, for your getting cold. create the magic of your heart, and know that this feeling will never part, hoping for the secret of all that i want, making things hard aint what i want. all in all, love is the key. loving is the mystery, loving is always free. make it your own, add colors to the world love the magic of your power. make it your own, so we shall see it.
be it. love it . create it. and be. flower it. amaze. and love what you should be. holding on to me. and holdin on to life, i hope that all is free from this all that is my wrist is coming clean. believe the unseen for the light is there for all, your eyes were closed and you heart numb. today you faced it, today it has come, let in the beauty and fall in love.
today.

loving love.

alone but not lonely.
not alone but lonely.

pero tengo mi fe.
tengo mi fe.
baila amor, canta amor, toca la musica mama. hazlo hazlo hazlo hazlo.
dame algo.
greateness.

face it

facing it.

real physical fear of danger- DONE!!!! on roadtrip, stranded at night with a dead car, and no one to call. calm came over me. on knees look up and saw shooting star. hehehe. i love you, i swear. slept on rocks and woke up to sunrise. no fear no fear. lost. follow intution. slept in car. car trouble. and more.

i either feel it or i don't- sorry, its just me. i dont have an issue, im just picky. sorry if you find that weird but i like the way i work. DONE!!!

school- my life does not depend on my degree. feels good. DONE!!!

others cant see your path. trust yourself.- little by little. :)


i love you guys, fuck it.

music - let the flames begin- paramore

epa epa epa

Todo me pasa alrededor, todo me pasa alrededor, no siento conneccion con mucha gente. Tal vez si siento connection pero prefiero estar sola y solo estar en mis pensamientos. No se. que me pasa? Mamita . todo se alregrela. Todo se alregrela.

Dejalo dejalo. Lo tienes muy muy muy muy bien. Amor dejalo. Seinta la musica. Sienta la musica mamita,. Por favor tu seras mucho lo seras stay strong. Stay strong. Senorita.

Es deficil mi relacion con mi hermana.

i just want to be around music. i just want to be around music. please i just want to play and sing music. its what i need to be free and feel good. i just need to use this outlet please , please, i just want escape into my music that i love and that comes so easily please.

so i dont think many people can take the truth. i think we all need to be prepared for it. it sucks when the people who want the truth can't handle it. OR maybe they can handle it but its just me who can't handle their reaction. maybe thats it. their reaction should cause some sort of feeling. maybe i just want them to accept the truth without being hurt, and it is just me who can't handle the reality of them being hurt. So whats happening is that are handling the truth, but in their own way, emotionally. But what i want to see is that their reaction does not cause any sort of emotional reaction. Maybe i just want the other person to not get hurt. WEll maybe I was right, when i say that i want people to "handle" the truth. What i consider handling the truth is just taking in the information and not getting emotional about it. The truth naturally would stir up emotions in the other person, but how a person who can "handle the truth", i would imagine
that you would be able to handle your emotions, rather, okay that must be it. Goodness. oh man. this is hard, but i dont want think i even want other peoples help. i just want quiet company. i just want quiet company. quiet company.
it makes me sad to think about billie's and my relationship. she needs help right now, and that is with being and hanging around the ones she loves, and what i need right now is alone time. i need drama free. i think deep down it frustrates me because i want what i want. i want drama free time and time to just think. i think i need alone time. and subconsciously i want to be alone and i am pissed that i feel the need to help her. Its me being selfish and wanting my own time in this time that i really should be helping my sister. how do i help her though if i just want to be in my head if i just want to think. oh lord it makes me sad.
sing it please. just sing it.
Everythings gonna be all right!
Everythings gonna be all right!
Everythings gonna be all right!
Everythings gonna be all right!
I said, everythings gonna be all right-a!
Everythings gonna be all right!
Everythings gonna be all right, now!
Everythings gonna be all right!

So, woman, no cry;
No - no, woman - woman, no cry.
Woman, little sister, dont shed no tears;
No, woman, no cry.

love your life, love.

read this

http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm

i just want to say i love my life. i dont really have an explanation why i feel this way right now, but i feel it. i like it. bye.

song- iris googoodolls

this is how i work thru my problems in my head. yep. yep

It’s really hard man. This is really hard. I am in thing of finding myself and life and tons of other things that are interesting to me. I am not spending time studying like I should. I like the classes but not as much as I like what I am figuring out. I really just want to take go, but not just the usually…”I need to get away because my life sucks, or its hectic or stressful” but it’s different. It’s so hard to explain. God its hard to explain. I love my life here its fun, but my mind wonders to more important things, or what I consider more important. I feel like I have to perform, I have to put on an act of studying and caring about my grades. What really sucks is not that I might get a c in a class, but that what my professors think. I don’t want them to feel like I am disrespecting them. I don’t like learning under restraints, that’s one thing. Another thing, I tell my self time and time again, the grade doesn’t matter and it helps at times, but then my old conditioned ways bang me in the head again of wanting to make an A. Why? Because I care too much of what others think. It must be that I am not 100% sure of myself just yet to hold firm with how I want my life to be, and how it WILL turn out to be a success. It WILL, I don’t give a fuck what anyone says. God but everyone around me tells me things that are contradicting to want I really want. And when I talk to them I get confused, cuz I think. Well they are right I do want an A in my class. And then I feel guilty that I am not doing the work to get an A. but what the fuck. Do you really really want or need that A. why do you want that A. why? I want the A because it shows that someone knows how to study. It shows that someone is smart. So what are you saying, you’re not smart. You know that’s a load of crap. You study 20 mins b4 a midterm and you still make a b. you don’t so shit and you still do well, imagine how well you would do if you set your mind to it. _____ OKAY THIS IS IT!!! I feel conflicted because that’s what I thought I wanted. I wanted to prove to myself that I can set my mind to anything and do it. I wanted to make A’s. And I feel bad that I haven’t been as disciplined as I thought I would be. So im conflicted right now because I don’t know what I want. Do I want what I really wanted before, to make A’s, or do I want what I say I want now, to follow my happiness and find myself. I don’t know I want both. I really want to continue finding myself because its going so fast and I want it to continue going fast but if I do all that I could to make an A, then I wouldn’t be having the fun that I am having with my friends. I am living my life and I LOVE IT! Think about it, would you like it if all you did was study and made all A’s. hmm??? Not very much, okay but wait, what you want is the ability to hang out with your friends and still make A’s. I want to be able to hangout with my friends, family, and spend time with myself, sleep and all this and still make A’s. is this possible. Is this possible. Okay. Cuz when I look at me not being in school and doing everything else that I want I don’t feel complete either. Okay okay okkkay. I just have to organize for the time being. Just go. Don’t think. Just do it. Don’t think about it. Just do it. Don’t think about it just do it. That is realllllllyyyy hard. This is the challenge., do it. Do it. You will only get better. Do not feel down on yourself when you don’t do this or that. It is all game. Remember it is all a game. It is all a game. It is all a game. It is all a game. What are you giving your attention to. Think about it. Give your attention to what you want right now. Write it out.

I want to make A’s. I want to make A’s. I want to get my work done before schedule. I want to get my stuff done before schedule. I like being productive. I like my shit done way before schedule. I like always being on top of my stuff. I like always being on top of things. I love being organized. I love being organized. I love being organized. I love getting my stuff done. I love being smart enough to get things and work assignments done ridiculously fast . I am ridiculously fast. I am so fast when it comes to learning. O=h goodness please. Please. Please. Thank you. You . I want this transformation to happen really really fasstttttttttttttt. Please . thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.

i love my life.
Etima is my good friend. Love that lady. she is so chill and just awesome. she doesnt expect to be by my side everyday!! she's awesome.it is her birthday today. we had a chill little celebration at her place last night.

este muchacho, creo q nos estamos hablando. oh LORD JESUS!! this is crazy . crazy. i love it.

MUSICA- BAILe MI CORAZON.

hiljole!!!

YESTERDAY!
- Dim Sum lunch with Csite crew, laleh, sarah, Tony, Jimmy, Chris, JAson. Nice. good food. good people. make me smile.
then we went to hong kong market.
tried to meet eitma for movie. didnt make it.
so went to park with ekta, wine and smoke on wooden tower thingy at swamp, lily pad park. Sarah met us up. listened to four songs on Ekta's phone for about 3-4 hours of sitting. looking at nature, feeling the sun and wind, with chicas that just want to have fun. thats all i want. i just want fun in my life now. just fun.
im loving it, da da da dah DAH
then went home. saw padres. i love my house. my parents are so f-in adorable. played bass for short time. feel asleep.
woke up called etima- hung out till 12:30. got home sat 1:15.
copper right behind me the entire way home. so glad he didnt stop me because that would have been HAHAH, wow, just bad. haha.
fell asleep. woke up early to clean upstairs before juana came. went to sarah's. carpool. sunrise is always beautiful in morning.

umm so much to dooooooo. so much to do. get it done. get it done.
holler
dios santo dios santo dios santo dios santo te quiero te doy gracias te doy gracias te doy gracias te doy graciassssss.. Gracias.


entonces sali del trabajo. billie y su novio me recogeron del trabajo y fui a su casa. jugaron nintendo por un rato- lion king, and aladin. dormi por un rato. jugue drums for a while. despues we shot jareds pellet gun. dun stuff. then we went for free wings at Rudyards and then we talked/ argued about a lot of different things. el amigo de jared estaba alli, kalob.

lo he estado escribiendo claramente por el internet. veremos como responde. big step playa!!

so things are really confirmed now.
i know its real
i know its real
too too too many coincidences.
trip saw numbers, now i see the numbers everywhere, the best is when i dont expect them.
i love it. it will only get better and stronger. it will only get stronger. it will only get stronger.

things are still kind of hard. it really hard living this society, going to school and all, and wanting so badly to just go away for a year. im at the point that i just need to time to think and meditate. its so hard to stay motivated for anything else. i just want to go into the forest and live there for a year, and then ill come back. its just so hard when those i love, dont understand. i cant tell them. they wont understand. but its not just them. it me.
i need to be stronger in my faith before i can tell them. Naturally, they will question and everything, the stories, my beliefs. i need to be sturdy with my beliefs to not anyone bring me down. I know its real now, i know it, but its not the time to tell everyone. sometime soon tho. the right time will come. the right time will come.

i hope to be aware. i hope to observer. i hope to learn. knowledge. purification. balence. harmony.

love love love love love love love love
magic magic magic magic magic

life is good.

life is like a video game. a BAD ASS VIDEO GAME. really, think of it as if all of us are players and we heard of this bad ass, virtual reality game, with great risks and great fun. wouldnt you want to be in it. Hell yes! and we are. but we forget its just a game. we are in the game, playing it.

i have to tell myself not to forget. when i feel myself feeling doubt or sadness, i have to remind myself of all that ive seen and all that i know. it helps alot.

i love going to billies and jared's place. its like a play house. i can play on drums for 30 mins, then jump on the bass, go shoot bow and arrows, look at jareds guns. i love it . very much fun. (*****thats not english, i dont know english, this is crazy. its either very fun or mucho fun , well not that either but WHATEVER!! SHUT UP!!)

i really like my buddhism class. the teach is awesome.
ive noticed teachers tend to look at me a lot. maybe thats because i give them the same attention.
ummm what else. i really like my comp lab job. its awesomeeee.
i work this shift. 8-2 mond, wed, 8-10 tues thurs 12-4 fri. i have weekends off. im glad im not working at marfreless anymore. that jo00b didnt make me smile.

i cant wait till i can sing and make music. that will be exhilerating. that will be fun fun fun fun. that will be so much fun to travel and perform. OHHHH SHITTTT. its going to happen. life is good. life is good. life is good.

lets see what comes out of your mouth, rather your hands, my lady.
frivolouus words meaningless talks, waste of times they are not for they teach all that is to be learned. fear not for the time is near to test your knowledge and the success you seek is here. life is a riddle for the players. play and you shall find. play and you shall find the secrets to life. all is well for the game is a game, and the game is the game.
can you hear me like the wind hears the willow . no one knows. its all the reaal, its all the facts. let it be mady. for its all here. now tell me something i didnt know. i didnt know. all the time is yours. all the house is in your name, so hold on tight the flight is tonight. the flight will give you sight . my life my life, you have the sight. play the game and you shall win. you win you win yoyu all win. invision invision invision invision. all the love all the love. oh jesus. let it come let it come let it come all the way from the town. tell me something i didnt know tell me something i dont know tell me something i dont know tell me something i dont know .tell me something i dont know. the stars have aligned and tonight you will see how the heavens love thee so, how the heavens await for you to show. come come come love. the time is here., no fear no fear no fear.
feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it feel it.
i wonder if anyone will read this. if you do, wow, thanks for sticking around for all of this. i probably would have given up a long time ago. write something if you read this. i dont need to know who you are but just to see if someone randomly happened to stumble upon my page.

hold on to the light you see. the light you see will hold the up for the stars know their way and today is the day they come your way. have you not realized the timing is right. the light is in sight the light is in sight. hold on hold on hold on it should come.

time time time time time lie lie lie lie lie beautiful beautiful beautiful lie.
thats a cool concept that in this game we chose to have the factors of time and gravity to challenge us.
its a challenge you seek
its a challenge you will find
it a challenge for your mind
its a challenge that will change your life
you will win you will win you will win you will win this game....it's yours.

christmas is coming .i like this time of year.

i love my family. i dont see them enough. time goes by way tooo ooooo quickly. days are flying by . flying by. flying by. lets not waste any time. productivity. :)

First Reaction

Here we go:

1. [Beer]- Beautiful

2. [Red] - Love

3. [Relationships] - many kinds

4. [Purple] - royal

5. [Power Rangers] - fun times

6. [Weed] - where?

7. [Steroids] - i prefer asteroids

8. [Cartoons] - i miss them

9. [The President] - el presidente * with latin accent

10. [Tupperware] - "where the hell is the top???"

11. [Florida] - orlando

12. [Santa Claus] - bear hug

13. [Halloween] - dress up

14. [Bon Jovi] - new jersey

15. [Grammer] - i want to master it

16: [Myspace] - music addciction

17. [Worst fear] - fear

18. [Marriage] - perhaps

19. [Paris Hilton] - paris hilton

20. [Patrick].- okay

21. [Redheads] - that reminds me i need to dye my hair

22. [Blondes] - soon

23. [Pass the] - haha you already know

24. [One night stand] -if he's worth it

25. [Donald Trump] - impressive

26. [Neverland] - how much is a one way ticket

27. [Pixie stix] - swim team

28. [Vanilla ice cream] -mmm with strawberries

29. [Hooters] - id be making some MOOONNAAYY

30. [High school] - can i go back just to eat the nachos and the cookies? im going to do it

31. [Pajamas] - i shouold buy a pair

32. [Woods] - ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

33. [Wet Socks] - hahah

34. [Computer] - can i get one for free

35. [Love] - everyone

so ive been on this road trip

so ive been on this road trip. its been amazing. ive learned so much about myself. ive found something crazy cool spiritually. life is amazing but its hard. people make it hard, and when you just want to be free and live others have a way of weighing you down, with the best intentions in the world. let me specify.

so im on this US roadtrip. phenomenal. im following intuition and its leading me to wherever and im loving wherever i go. life is beautiful, but i hate the phone, and i wanted this to be a full getaway but i have to call home becuase the folks are worried. but bc im not planning and not following the conventional "safe" plan ppl worry and their worry brings me down. it affects me subconciously and i feel it. it really bothers me. and then my mom got sick from the worry and my sisters are pissing me off telling me that have to call home. anyways so i was getting really hurt and upset by this but i know why now. its because i know the way that i want to live my live so different from that of the people who now surround me that if i were to tell them, they would not be able to take it. so until i am 100 % sure footed on my feet, and in my life i have to lie to them. That really hurts. the fact that the way i want to live my life with no fear and just fun an free ( something that gives me so much joy and what i would like to share with others) will only lead to their disapproval. so the only way i can keep a relationship with my family now is if i lie to them. it makes me sad. life is changing and those who dont accept you will no longer have standing in my life to come. love will always be there but if people grow in different directions, what can you do but wish them the best.

i feel different. i feel like people are to caught up in the world. i think its just because ive been gone for so long but i really prefer just to talk about nature and animals. people might say, dont you have anything better to talk about?, but what else would i want to talk about. someone elses problems? sure if its to help you out but i dont want to dwell on mine thats for sure.

i just want to be around others who just want to live, love and laugh. no drama. no drama. well some is fun, but when its starts to get exaggerated, thats when it needs to end.

oh gosh. sometimes when i hangout with people, there problems seem so boring and meaningless. i guess thats what they think about when i talk about nothing. oh life is crazy .

somethings going to change. it has. it will . its the only thing that can happen. there's no turing back.


for this life of mine i wish ...
danger glazed with calm.
roadtrips off of intuition.
showers in the sunshine and the wind.
talks with myself.
more time in the woods
trampling my fears until i can laugh in their face
to be forever young.
conversations on how beautiful something is.
laughter.

the best vacation ive ever had.
many a town ive seen, on this lil trip of mine. many different faces and different lives. makes me thankful for mine, and makes me hopeful for the future.
i dont want to worry about things, why? there's no fun in it. i dont think ive met one person who doesnt think im a lil looney, but if they only really knew how weird this mind of mine can get.


i want to live my life for the fun of it. it crazy how for each different person, there are things that hold them back from what

i really dont know what to right about my trip.
i think it was the best trip of my life.
it was very introspective, and very unconventional, but im safe, im alive, and i feel great, but a little different. things are a little clearer. pressures are a little li

i dont know what to say.
nothing i say can really describe how amazing this trip was for me.
i really enjoy my own company, maybe a little too much. hehe
life is so crazy, scary, and amazing, and i can feel how worries weigh down on my emtions and my physical body. im not a fan of it.
life can be scary, dont fear it.
and when things work out, take a second to appreciate it.
life can be lonely, relish in it.
dont give a fuck what they say, dont give a fuck what they say, only you really know!!!!!!!
dont look back until your ready or you might lose your step.
worry less.
see the world as pictures.
imagine your life as a movie.
dont be afraid to smile. dont be afraid to cry. dont be afraid to live. dont be afraid to let go if the time has come.
i dont know where im going and that the exciting part about. i understand your concern but i like it this way and its staying for a while.

if i could give the best gift in the world it would be a shower in the sunshine and the feelingof a sunset in a box.

seems like life's a changin'.
sorry if im changing loved ones.
its a good thing, really.

hey hey now thank you.

i'm being tested constantly. it's hard at times, but they are good to me. i am able to release fears little by little. they are good to me. thank you. besitos.

late to work- started to freak out- but calmed my self with their help, got here. helped for move. all is good. all is good.


RELIANT K- MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING RIGHT


i hope my road trip is bad ass. i want it to be amazing. i have a feeling it wil be because i want it so bad and my eyes are tearing up now. i think thats a good sign. :)

i enjoy crying because of so much joy and awe of the world. its nice and fun.


Thank you Patrick, Steve, and i dont know your name but you know im talking to you, but i hope you can help me, if you see it fit.

:)

face readers

Read all about it

To read the face, you would take into consideration:

• the shape of the face

• the size of the face

• the colours of the face

• shape, size and placement of each feature

• markings, moles, shadings, lines and wrinkles.

You would also consider the characteristics of the 12 major facial features:

• Ears: risk-taking ability, longevity

• Hairline: socialisation

• Forehead: parents' influence

• Brow bones: control

• Eyebrows: passion, temper, pride

• Eyes: receptivity

• Cheekbones: authority

• Cheeks: confidence

• Nose: ego, power, drive, leadership

• Lips/mouth: personality, sexuality

• Chin: character, will

• Jaws: determination

Mien Shiang is quite straightforward: more is more and less is less. So the bigger the nose, the more ego-driven the person will be by nature. The larger the lips, the more intense the sexual focus and drive will be (Angelina Jolie is a great example of this, with her large, cushiony lips).

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21858282-5006051,00.html

AKE a good look. You can learn to read personalities through the ancient Chinese art of face reading. Why is it that I am always being asked for donations by charity collectors? And could there really be a "directory" sign taped to my forehead, judging by the number of little old ladies who stop to ask me the way to Town Hall? My friends say it's becauseI look like a soft touch.

Author Patrician McCarthy would say it can be traced to the fact that I have a mouth that's on the large-ish side and eyes that are big and sparkling. These facial characteristics combined indicate a generous person who freely takes in and gives out of their heart's emotions, according to the ancient art of Chinese face reading, Mien Shiang.

Mien Shiang is a Taoist practice that dates back almost 3000 years. Experienced practitioners can determine anyone's personality, health, romantic compatibility and longevity simply by looking at his or her face. Ears, chin, cheeks - they all have their own special meaning in this ancient science, as do wrinkles, moles and markings. From its earliest beginnings in the imperial courts of China, Mien Shiang regarded the face as a mirror that records your past, reflects your present and forecasts your future.

"During Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Chinese government tried to suppress all of the old Chinese medical practices and theories, especially the esoteric ones such as Mien Shiang," explains McCarthy, an expert in the art and author of The Face Reader (Dutton).

"They were adamant in replacing those practices, such as traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and herbalism, with the 'modern' concepts and practices of western medicine."



Read my lips

McCarthy, who consults to executives from Fortune 500 firms and advises attorneys in the USA on how to select the most sympathetic juries simply by looking at their faces, has established the Mien Shiang Institute in Los Angeles to promote the practice internationally.

Students are shown how to consider and interpret the size and shape of the face, the different, changing skin colours, and the size and shape of each of the features. Markings, bumps and indentations on or near each feature should also be considered.

A diamond-shaped face, for example, may indicate a confident, unpredictable and charming perfectionist. Those with round faces tend to be adaptable, sincere and influential.

The individual features tell their own stories. The forehead is associated with intelligence and the mouth is a sure gauge for personality (and sexuality in women), just to explain two. Wrinkles and laughter lines can say a lot about how we have experienced various emotions and, depending on their position on the face, can even indicate the age at which we had the experience.

sfgsdfa

so, so much is done and realized. there's contentment ( a real word maybe???), but also a feeling of lacking what more there is.

YellowCard- light up the sky
lights and sounds
Paramore- acoustic- misery business, pressure,

mucho. quiero vivir libre. quiero ser todo lo q quiero ser. quiero tener adventura este verano and be safe at the same time. its going to be fuckin wild... im excited. im excited.

im going to have so much fun.

things i need on my vacation

cd player
cds
flashlight
tape
paper and pen
lotion
mouse
soap
hand towel
socks
tennis shoes
safe wallet
map
clippys and hair holder
fuckin camera IM EXCITED IM EXCITED IM EXCITED!!!!!
ziplocks many
chapstick
deoderant
permanent marker IM EXCITED IM EXCITED IM EXCITED!!!!
little clothes
waterproof mascara
waterproof camera

so, so much is done and realized. there's contentment ( a real word maybe???), but also a feeling of lacking what more there is.

YellowCard- light up the sky
lights and sounds
Paramore- acoustic- misery business, pressure,

mucho. quiero vivir libre. quiero ser todo lo q quiero ser. quiero tener adventura este verano and be safe at the same time. its going to be fuckin wild... im excited. im excited.

im going to have so much fun.

things i need on my vacation

cd player
cds
flashlight
tape
paper and pen
lotion
mouse
soap
hand towel
socks
tennis shoes
safe wallet
map
clippys and hair holder
fuckin camera IM EXCITED IM EXCITED IM EXCITED!!!!!
ziplocks many
chapstick
deoderant
permanent marker IM EXCITED IM EXCITED IM EXCITED!!!!
little clothes
waterproof mascara
waterproof camera

ready

fuck this shit. i need to live for me . my individual dreams!!! fuck this attachment. fuck it. im tired of it.
ok yea, in a way there is a bitter sweetness. yes there is beauty in this longing and questioning, but fuck it, i'm done. i'm now ready to move move movee, im ready but i need your help. you think we're ready. think i am,. i am ready . i am. but im fucking ready for me, me, me. all of me . i almost want to cry

crazy cool.

'Cause I'm a wanderer, yeah I'm a wanderer

So when I graduate from UH I think I’m going to go to different cities throughout the U.S and just live there for a while. Maybe a few months in each place, that’s about the time it takes me to get sick of a job.

I really think I might do it.

Maybe.

But, seriously, If I do…this is my Pre-Farewell Warning… once I leave Houston I’m probably not coming back.


So SOAK ME UP BITCHES, before I’m gone.

pages nice

http://www.toodledo.com/info/learn.php
www.lifehack.com

oneironaut

Lucid dreaming is the conscious perception while in one’s dream. http://www.lucidity.com/DreamYoga.html

use this

http://travel.msn.com/Guides/article.aspx?cp-documentid=388010

op 10 Extreme Vacations

Some travelers seek heart-pounding destinations and activities to test their. Here are 10 thrill-seeking, extreme vacations that will get any traveler’s adrenaline pumping.

By Editorial Staff, ShermansTravel.com

Some travelers live on the edge. Never satisfied with lazing away their vacation days on the beach, these thrill seekers look for adventure on their days off. If orbiting the Earth, bungee-jumping from a tower on the Las Vegas Strip, or getting up-close-and-personal with a gorilla sounds like your idea of a good time, you're in luck. We've found 10 extreme vacations to get your heart racing and, just in case you aren't quite ready to swim with the sharks, we've also included a similar—albeit less-adrenaline-pulsing—alternative with each of our top adventure-filled trips.

Drag racing

If your adrenaline pumps just watching The Fast and the Furious, your heart will feel like it's about to come out of your chest when you experience the real thing. Street racing is illegal, but law-abiding drag-racing schools abound. Doug Foley's Drag Racing School (www.dougfoley.com) offers several dates in Atco, N.J. (plus a duo of options in Michigan and Pennsylvania); for the highest HBM (heart beats per minute), opt for the Super Comp Dragster package, a two-day program that includes safety instruction and step-by-step familiarization with your car. Then it's time to hit the track, open the throttle, and make like Mario Andretti.

Low-adrenaline alternative: Not quite ready to get behind the wheel? Get behind Andretti himself and ride with him when you sign up for a Mario Andretti Fantasy Day (www.andrettiracing.com). Yes, autographs are included.

Gorilla Safari

For the chance to interact with the one of the world's most-endangered species, follow in the footsteps of Dian Fossey, the anthropologist immortalized in the 1988 movie Gorillas in the Mist. No more than 700 mountain gorillas remain, but Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is still the best place on the earth to spot—and maybe even touch—one of these gentle herbivores. Their distinctive personalities are endearing, while the ruins of the Karisoke Research station where Fossey was murdered and buried are themselves quite moving. JK Safaris (www.gorillasafaris.net) runs four-day safaris to the area that include ecolodge stays.

Low-adrenaline alternative: If you're not up to the intense safari necessary to track the mountain gorillas, a visit to Monkey Mountain in France (www.montagnedessinges.com) provides primate interactions of a different kind: the 280 Barbary Macaques monkeys here roam free among visitors, but be careful, as these mischievous creatures are known to take food right out visitors' hands!

Heli-Skiing

If you're a top-notch skier with a penchant for adrenaline, get off the trails and take to the skies by boarding a chopper and going heli-skiing, a sport that makes the trek up the mountain as exciting as the run down. Lured by the promise of untouched slopes, wilderness solitude, and challenging terrain, those who dare to get airborne access otherwise inaccessible peaks. Valdez Heli-Camps (www.valdezhelicamps.com) operates tours to the Chugach mountain range in Alaska; serious extremists book the four-day Sound to Summit package that tackles Chugach's 13,000-foot peak and offers accommodations on a ship (complete with heliport) anchored in the Prince William Sound.

Low-adrenaline alternative: Have a fear of flying? Consider backcountry skiing in the Colorado Rockies instead; Paragon Guides (paragonguides.com) offers great off-the-trail treks in Vail.

Mountain Climbing

As the holy grail of mountain climbing, the legend of Mount Everest looms large in travelers' minds, and with good reason: risking passage through the "death zone" (which takes lives every year) and reaching the summit is the achievement of a lifetime. If you're an accomplished climber, Adventure Consultants (www.adventureconsultants.co.nz) offers summit expeditions from Nepal that will set you back about $60,000 and come with no guarantees of summiting.

Low-adrenaline alternative: If you've just got to see Everest but don't want to risk your life (or spend your life savings to do it), entirely doable (and more affordable) trips to base camp—complete with spectacular views—are available from KE Adventure Travel (www.keadventure.com) for about $2,100.

Sandboarding

Whether you already consider snowboarding passe or simply can't wait till winter to carve up the slopes, try strapping on your board and tackling a mountain of sand. Sandboarding is a four-season extreme sport that's recently gained in popularity with snowboarders looking for a similar rush and surreal, desert landscapes. Sure, you could try surfing the dunes at your local beach, but for the real deal, head to Cerro Blanco near the Andes mountain range in Peru to find the world's tallest sand dune. Peru Adventure Tours (www.peruadventurestours.com) runs eight-hour outings (leaving at 5 a.m.) that include board and lunch.

Low-adrenaline alternative: If carving up the sand isn't your thing, explore via dune buggy in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area instead (www.fs.fed.us).

Read More About Adventure Travel

Shark Diving

If Jaws didn't permanently scare you out of the water, pack your gear and go deep-sea diving with the sharks off the coast of Cape Point, South Africa. Apex Shark Expeditions (www.sharkbookings.com) runs day trips into False Bay (some 30 minutes from Cape Town) between November and June, inviting you to swim for over an hour with Mako and blue sharks without anything but your wet suit between you and their fins

Low-adrenaline alternative: Check out the world's largest predatory shark—the great white—in the Pacific waters around Mexico's Isla Guadalupe; Shark Diver (www.sharkdiver.com) outings put you underwater—and safely behind bars—in a secure steel cage.

Space Travel

The typical vacation will liberate you from the tedious orbit of the work day, but the 10-day space journey offered by Virginia-based Space Adventures (www.spaceadventures.com) blasts you from a launch pad in Kazakhstan into the actual orbit of the Earth, where gravity itself becomes obsolete as you circle the globe every 90 minutes. But if the thought of piggybacking on a Russian rocket for a cool $25 million grounds you, wait for a comfy chair on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic (www.virgingalactic.com), set to launch in 2008 with suborbital flights that will set you back $200,000.

Low-adrenaline alternative: Zero-gravity thrills at an even less-astronomical price ($3,500) are available in Fort Lauderdale through Zero G (www.gozerog.com), where you can simulate weightlessness via the same parabolic-flight maneuvers used to film a buoyant Tom Hanks in Apollo 13.

Spelunking

Rappel down the side of a limestone cliff, squeeze through damp crevices covered with luminescent glow worms, leap from a subterranean waterfall, and go "black-water rafting" in the underground rapids at Ruakuri Cave, part of the otherworldly Waitomo cave system in New Zealand. The five-hour Black Abyss adventure offered by The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co. (www.waitomo.com) is the most challenging of the region's guided tours, with a mix of climbing, rappelling, and cave tubing.

Low-adrenaline alternative: For a less-demanding domestic descent, go to Carlsbad Caverns National Park (www.nps.gov/cave) in southern New Mexico. Rather than rivers and waterfalls, the 300 caves here were carved out by limestone-dissolving sulfuric acid, making for a much drier—yet still "deeply" satisfying—experience.

Stunt Vacations

Making a living as a stunt person sounds crazy to most, but if you fancy yourself a daredevil, it probably sounds like a dream job. For a taste of the car chases, burning buildings and free falls seen in high-octane action movies, head to Las Vegas. Thrillseekers Unlimited (www.thrillseekersunlimited.com) offers hear-pounding adventures taught by working SAG stunt professionals; book the five-day Stunt Experience and you'll stunt fight, set yourself on fire and bungee jump from the AJ Hackett Tower on the Strip.

Low-adrenaline alternative: If you'd rather take it one adventure at a time, try a tandem skydive (www.skydiving.com) offered at hundreds of locations across the U.S.

Titanic Dive

You've seen the movie, but nothing prepares you for seeing the RMS Titanic up close. You don't have to be an oceanographer to get a look at the shipwreck of all shipwrecks, either—head to Newfoundland, where The Great Canadian Adventure Company (www.adventures.ca) runs expeditions aboard the Akademik Keldysh, a Russian research vessel capable of descending nearly 2.5 miles underwater to reach the ship's resting place. The privilege of seeing the Titanic up close costs nearly $40,000 but, for fanatics, it's a small price to pay to be one of the first non-scientists to make the dive.

Low-adrenaline alternative: If your pockets aren't that deep, a snorkeling excursion in the Bahamas should satisfy some of your curiosity—minus the major expense. Bimini, Grand Bahama, Paradise, and Andros islands (www.bahamas-guide.info) all have shipwrecks right offshore; all you need to explore them are your mask and fins.

Read More About Adventure Travel

http://travel.msn.com/Guides/article.aspx?cp-documentid=388010

BAD ASS

so

http://www.signaturelandscapes.com/

thats the landscape artist im going to use when im rich. he does 3d designs that helps visualize what you want.

i've had a hard time with some stuff recently. i get over it, in my own healthy way, but when i stay to long without 'getting away' i just get bogged down with life, responsibilities, and 'realities' that just make me feel overwhelmed and then, somehow, inhibits me from being productive. also, with this guy. im really trying not to be celosa, pero es muy dificil. i can now understand what people are going thru in relationships with that problem. its hard to get over but its possible. you need to think away your problem. it took me first to think... " well, el puede estar con ella. PFF. es que El es todo en mi vida. HAH! no necessito a ese pendejo ( pero un pendejo lindo). then i tried to focus on what i need to do. my life.my dreams. my hopes. that dont involve him. SO , i did that. im still working on that department tho. but whats nice is that by focusing on what i want, i was able to see beyond any jealousy. EL todavia me quiere. yo soy como ningun otra. esa muchacha, si es muy bella y sensual, pero, wait. and your not? tu puedes tener eso con el pero con mas. tu tendras amor, respeto, a mucho mas. Dejalo tener su fun. you want to have fun too. piensa en un muchacho q es guapo. ok? y despues feel the feeling that you would get with him. te gustara mucho fiscamente, sera divertido, aventurado. sexy fun. pero eso sera todo. no. tendras eso MAS lo que tienes con este muchacho. PIensaLO. El siente lo mismo para ti. PIENSALO! tu tienes su corazon, y ella lo tiene by the balls. esta bien. esta Perfecto. no te preocupes. esto es el tiempo para SUCCESS. es tu tiempo HAZLO!! HAZLO AMOR!! HAZLO!

peace.


organization- bad ass- prepared for life. after school program in houston.

good article. - Cover: The Trouble With Boys

They're kinetic, maddening and failing at school. Now educators are trying new ways to help them succeed.

By Peg Tyre

Newsweek

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - Spend a few minutes on the phone with Danny Frankhuizen and you come away thinking, "What a nice boy." He's thoughtful, articulate, bright. He has a good relationship with his mom, goes to church every Sunday, loves the rock band Phish and spends hours each day practicing his guitar. But once he's inside his large public Salt Lake City high school, everything seems to go wrong. He's 16, but he can't stay organized. He finishes his homework and then can't find it in his backpack. He loses focus in class, and his teachers, with 40 kids to wrangle, aren't much help. "If I miss a concept, they tell me, 'Figure it out yourself'," says Danny. Last year Danny's grades dropped from B's to D's and F's. The sophomore, who once dreamed of Stanford, is pulling his grades up but worries that "I won't even get accepted at community college."

His mother, Susie Malcom, a math teacher who is divorced, says it's been wrenching to watch Danny stumble. "I tell myself he's going to make something good out of himself," she says. "But it's hard to see doors close and opportunities fall away."

What's wrong with Danny? By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent. This widening achievement gap, says Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, "has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy."

With millions of parents wringing their hands, educators are searching for new tools to help tackle the problem of boys. Books including Michael Thompson's best seller "Raising Cain" (recently made into a PBS documentary) and Harvard psychologist William Pollack's definitive work "Real Boys" have become must-reads in the teachers' lounge. The Gurian Institute, founded in 1997 by family therapist Michael Gurian to help the people on the front lines help boys, has enrolled 15,000 teachers in its seminars. Even the Gates Foundation, which in the last five years has given away nearly a billion dollars to innovative high schools, is making boys a big priority. "Helping underperforming boys," says Jim Shelton, the foundation's education director, "has become part of our core mission."

The problem won't be solved overnight. In the last two decades, the education system has become obsessed with a quantifiable and narrowly defined kind of academic success, these experts say, and that myopic view is harming boys. Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls—and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one. "Very well-meaning people," says Dr. Bruce Perry, a Houston neurologist who advocates for troubled kids, "have created a biologically disrespectful model of education."

Thirty years ago it was girls, not boys, who were lagging. The 1972 federal law Title IX forced schools to provide equal opportunities for girls in the classroom and on the playing field. Over the next two decades, billions of dollars were funneled into finding new ways to help girls achieve. In 1992, the American Association of University Women issued a report claiming that the work of Title IX was not done—girls still fell behind in math and science; by the mid-1990s, girls had reduced the gap in math and more girls than boys were taking high-school-level biology and chemistry.

Some scholars, notably Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, charge that misguided feminism is what's been hurting boys. In the 1990s, she says, girls were making strong, steady progress toward parity in schools, but feminist educators portrayed them as disadvantaged and lavished them with support and attention. Boys, meanwhile, whose rates of achievement had begun to falter, were ignored and their problems allowed to fester (click here for related essay).

Boys have always been boys, but the expectations for how they're supposed to act and learn in school have changed. In the last 10 years, thanks in part to activist parents concerned about their children's success, school performance has been measured in two simple ways: how many students are enrolled in accelerated courses and whether test scores stay high. Standardized assessments have become commonplace for kids as young as 6. Curricula have become more rigid. Instead of allowing teachers to instruct kids in the manner and pace that suit each class, some states now tell teachers what, when and how to teach. At the same time, student-teacher ratios have risen, physical education and sports programs have been cut and recess is a distant memory. These new pressures are undermining the strengths and underscoring the limitations of what psychologists call the "boy brain"—the kinetic, disorganized, maddening and sometimes brilliant behaviors that scientists now believe are not learned but hard-wired.

When Cris Messler of Mountainside, N.J., brought her 3-year-old son Sam to a pediatrician to get him checked for ADHD, she was acknowledging the desperation parents can feel. He's a high-energy kid, and Messler found herself hoping for a positive diagnosis. "If I could get a diagnosis from the doctor, I could get him on medicine," she says. The doctor said Sam is a normal boy. School has been tough, though. Sam's reading teacher said he was hopeless. His first-grade teacher complains he's antsy, and Sam, now 7, has been referring to himself as "stupid." Messler's glad her son doesn't need medication, but what, she wonders, can she do now to help her boy in school?

For many boys, the trouble starts as young as 5, when they bring to kindergarten a set of physical and mental abilities very different from girls'. As almost any parent knows, most 5-year-old girls are more fluent than boys and can sight-read more words. Boys tend to have better hand-eye coordination, but their fine motor skills are less developed, making it a struggle for some to control a pencil or a paintbrush. Boys are more impulsive than girls; even if they can sit still, many prefer not to—at least not for long.

Thirty years ago feminists argued that classic "boy" behaviors were a result of socialization, but these days scientists believe they are an expression of male brain chemistry. Sometime in the first trimester, a boy fetus begins producing male sex hormones that bathe his brain in testosterone for the rest of his gestation. "That exposure wires the male brain differently," says Arthur Arnold, professor of physiological science at UCLA. How? Scientists aren't exactly sure. New studies show that prenatal exposure to male sex hormones directly affects the way children play. Girls whose mothers have high levels of testosterone during pregnancy are more likely to prefer playing with trucks to playing with dolls. There are also clues that hormones influence the way we learn all through life. In a Dutch study published in 1994, doctors found that when males were given female hormones, their spatial skills dropped but their verbal skills improved.

In elementary-school classrooms—where teachers increasingly put an emphasis on language and a premium on sitting quietly and speaking in turn—the mismatch between boys and school can become painfully obvious. "Girl behavior becomes the gold standard," says "Raising Cain" coauthor Thompson. "Boys are treated like defective girls."

Two years ago Kelley King, principal of Douglass Elementary School in Boulder, Colo., looked at the gap between boys and girls and decided to take action. Boys were lagging 10 points behind girls in reading and 14 points in writing. Many more boys than girls were being labeled as learning disabled, too. So King asked her teachers to buy copies of Gurian's book "The Minds of Boys," on boy-friendly classrooms, and in the fall of 2004 she launched a bold experiment. Whenever possible, teachers replaced lecture time with fast-moving lessons that all kids could enjoy. Three weeks ago, instead of discussing the book "The View From Saturday," teacher Pam Unrau divided her third graders into small groups, and one student in each group pretended to be a character from the book. Classes are noisier, Unrau says, but the boys are closing the gap. Last spring, Douglass girls scored an average of 106 on state writing tests, while boys got a respectable 101.

Primatologists have long observed that juvenile male chimps battle each other not just for food and females, but to establish and maintain their place in the hierarchy of the tribe. Primates face off against each other rather than appear weak. That same evolutionary imperative, psychologists say, can make it hard for boys to thrive in middle school—and difficult for boys who are failing to accept the help they need. The transition to middle school is rarely easy, but like the juvenile primates they are, middle-school boys will do almost anything to avoid admitting that they're overwhelmed. "Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?" says Thompson. "And if it does, he isn't going to do it." That's part of the reason that videogames have such a powerful hold on boys: the action is constant, they can calibrate just how hard the challenges will be and, when they lose, the defeat is private.

When Brian Johns hit seventh grade, he never admitted how vulnerable it made him feel. "I got behind and never caught up," says Brian, now 17 and a senior at Grand River Academy, an Ohio boarding school. When his parents tried to help, he rebuffed them. When his mother, Anita, tried to help him organize his assignment book, he grew evasive about when his homework was due. Anita didn't know where to turn. Brian's school had a program for gifted kids, and support for ones with special needs. But what, Anita asked his teachers, do they do about kids like her son who are in the middle and struggling? Those kids, one of Brian's teachers told Anita, "are the ones who fall through the cracks."

It's easy for middle-school boys to feel outgunned. Girls reach sexual maturity two years ahead of boys, but other, less visible differences put boys at a disadvantage, too. The prefrontal cortex is a knobby region of the brain directly behind the forehead that scientists believe helps humans organize complex thoughts, control their impulses and understand the consequences of their own behavior. In the last five years, Dr. Jay Giedd, an expert in brain development at the National Institutes of Health, has used brain scans to show that in girls, it reaches its maximum thickness by the age of 11 and, for the next decade or more, continues to mature. In boys, this process is delayed by 18 months.

Middle-school boys may use their brains less efficiently, too. Using a type of MRI that traces activity in the brain, Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, director of the cognitive neuroimaging laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., tested the activity patterns in the prefrontal cortex of children between the ages of 11 and 18. When shown pictures of fearful faces, adolescent girls registered activity on the right side of the prefrontal cortex, similar to an adult. Adolescent boys used both sides—a less mature pattern of brain activity. Teenage girls can process information faster, too. In a study about to be published in the journal Intelligence, researchers at Vanderbilt University administered timed tests—picking similar objects and matching groups of numbers—to 8,000 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 18. In kindergarten, boys and girls processed information at about the same speeds. In early adolescence, girls finished faster and got more right. By 18, boys and girls were processing with the same speed and accuracy.

Scientists caution that brain research doesn't tell the whole story: temperament, family background and environment play big roles, too. Some boys are every bit as organized and assertive as the highest-achieving girls. All kids can be scarred by violence, alcohol or drugs in the family. But if your brain hasn't reached maturity yet, says Yurgelun-Todd, "it's not going to be able to do its job optimally."

Across the nation, educators are reviving an old idea: separate the girls from the boys—and at Roncalli Middle School, in Pueblo, Colo., administrators say, it's helping kids of both genders. This past fall, with the blessing of parents, school guidance counselor Mike Horton assigned a random group of 50 sixth graders to single-sex classes in core subjects. These days, when sixth-grade science teacher Pat Farrell assigns an earth-science lab on measuring crystals, the girls collect their materials—a Bunsen burner, a beaker of phenyl salicylate and a spoon. Then they read the directions and follow the sequence from beginning to end. The first things boys do is ask, "Can we eat this?" They're less organized, Farrell notes, but sometimes, "they're willing to go beyond what the lab asks them to do." With this in mind, he hands out written instructions to both classes but now goes over them step by step for the boys. Although it's too soon to declare victory, there are some positive signs: the shyest boys are participating more. This fall, the all-girl class did best in math, English and science, followed by the all-boy class and then coed classes.

One of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests on a single question: does he have a man in his life to look up to? Too often, the answer is no. High rates of divorce and single motherhood have created a generation of fatherless boys. In every kind of neighborhood, rich or poor, an increasing number of boys—now a startling 40 percent—are being raised without their biological dads.

Psychologists say that grandfathers and uncles can help, but emphasize that an adolescent boy without a father figure is like an explorer without a map. And that is especially true for poor boys and boys who are struggling in school. Older males, says Gurian, model self-restraint and solid work habits for younger ones. And whether they're breathing down their necks about grades or admonishing them to show up for school on time, "an older man reminds a boy in a million different ways that school is crucial to their mission in life."

In the past, boys had many opportunities to learn from older men. They might have been paired with a tutor, apprenticed to a master or put to work in the family store. High schools offered boys a rich array of roles in which to exercise leadership skills—class officer, yearbook editor or a place on the debate team. These days, with the exception of sports, more girls than boys are involved in those activities.

In neighborhoods where fathers are most scarce, the high-school dropout rates are shocking: more than half of African-American boys who start high school don't finish. David Banks, principal of the Eagle Academy for Young Men, one of four all-boy public high schools in the New York City system, wants each of his 180 students not only to graduate from high school but to enroll in college. And he's leaving nothing to chance. Almost every Eagle Academy boy has a male mentor—a lawyer, a police officer or an entrepreneur from the school's South Bronx neighborhood. The impact of the mentoring program, says Banks, has been "beyond profound." Tenth grader Rafael Mendez is unequivocal: his mentor "is the best thing that ever happened to me." Before Rafael came to Eagle Academy, he dreamed about playing pro baseball, but his mentor, Bronx Assistant District Attorney Rafael Curbelo, has shown him another way to succeed: Mendez is thinking about attending college in order to study forensic science.

Colleges would welcome more applications from young men like Rafael Mendez. At many state universities the gender balance is already tilting 60-40 toward women. Primary and secondary schools are going to have to make some major changes, says Ange Peterson, president-elect of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, to restore the gender balance. "There's a whole group of men we're losing in education completely," says Peterson.

For Nikolas Arnold, 15, a sophomore at a public high school in Santa Monica, Calif., college is a distant dream. Nikolas is smart: he's got an encyclopedic knowledge of weaponry and war. When he was in first grade, his principal told his mother he was too immature and needed ADHD drugs. His mother balked. "Too immature?" says Diane Arnold, a widow. "He was six and a half!" He's always been an advanced reader, but his grades are erratic. Last semester, when his English teacher assigned two girls' favorites—"Memoirs of a Geisha" and "The Secret Life of Bees" Nikolas got a D. But lately, he has a math teacher he likes and is getting excited about numbers. He's reserved in class sometimes. But now that he's more engaged, his grades are improving slightly and his mother, who's pushing college, is hopeful he will begin to hit his stride. Girls get A's and B's on their report cards, she tells him, but that doesn't mean boys can't do it, too.

With Andrew Murr, Vanessa Juarez, Anne Underwood, Karen Springen and Pat Wingert

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965522/site/newsweek/

wastefully useful

livescience.com and myspace just took up four hours straight of my life.

watched trailers for about and hour, too.

my love for my sisters beyond the physical

So I think the reason why we don’t see each others ages, is because we are all so connected beyond just the physical. I think we all connected so much as children that it is easy for us to easily see each other as souls, rather than just what we look like physically.

Jessi, you remember when I was looking at you, one time a long long long time ago, that all of a sudden I could see you just physically and I almost could see how it felt to see you as I stranger.? I think you got offended, cuz I know is sounds weird but it really was a weird outer body experience for me. It was me just looking at you’re physically. It was weird and a little freaky, I almost felt a void because I was seeing you but not the REAL YOU. I think I was scared because deep down inside I knew I DO actually know you.
Just thought you guys should know what I think about sometimes.


I remember seeing billie in a picture and thinking I don’t see this person when I talk to billie.
She was right next to me, I told her, and she agreed with me.

i love my sisters so much.

heyyyyllloooo

we will never dispell the myth of human inequality unless we stop judging. judging involves the valuing of one thing over the other. that leads perhaps, to the valuing of one self as either better or worse than the other. its a very good thing to value oneself, but just as destructive to devalue someone else.
it is one thing to judge, and quite another to observe with true love.

everytime you see yourself judging someone and viewing them in a negative light, whether hate or pity, truly put yourselves in their shoes and then you will understand them, you will see things from their perspective and will feel a certain appreciation for them.
its not easy, but how beautiful it is when you understand someone, how beautitul it is to view someone in a negative view in one moment and then a loving view in anther. great.

i ...

i want to watch Donnie Darko again. i think i would understand it more.

i am readind Alchemy; formulas for self-transformation

maci decided that she didn't want to work tonight. i dont necessarily want to work either, but im going to go for it. i will have a great time at work tonight. i will laugh and make tons of money

i will be succesful in my class tomorrow.

lovely.

at csite work, at front desk, after voice for actors class.

i love my life.
Ive been getting so much it’s incredible. I ask and visualize for a perfect parking spot I get it. I get worried about something, I say it will all work out, and motha fuckin it does, bitch. Hahah. I love it. Oh so today I was worried about test and it was really not hard at all. I wish I had more time but I’ll make sure to put that into my visualization next time I plan ahead. Oh but I also did visualize someone coming in late and vuala, someone did come in after me, heheheh.. iii loovveee ittt.

oh the power.

So why did I mess up so much that one night that I thought I was progressing so much. Well, I think it’s just because when one becomes more aware of one’s feelings and therefore intentions then one becomes automatically more powerful. I just heard Abraham say something about the energies moving faster. And she said when some one feels like their doing so well and then something bad happens and it seems pretty big and you don't know why, it’s because of the speed and power of the energies is greater the realization is stronger. So the effect is greater and it just keeps on getting bigger because we are not removing or changing our vibrations to a good one. I think that is why I had such a hard time that one night. I wasn’t prepared for how strong my thoughts were. I am glad my mom told me to just forget about it because that's EXACtly what I needed to do. It is the process, it is the way to control you life. Haha. This is fun. J

progress

voy a tener dr. lo se, lo se. :) porque ya seinto su amor por mi. es increible. de verdad, no te miento, el va ser mio. pues, y tambien el lo esta sintiendo ahorita, mismo.

but that's irrelevant .


entonces. viernes, fui al trabajo de la escuela, y despues, fui a ver una teminooo esto dewspues

el otro dia yo estaba pensando que tal vez vemos el cuarto dimension en nuestros suenos. talvez es la habilidad to truly feel something from more than one different perspective at the same time. like how in a dream you can see yourself and what you see, and just knowing it's you. but also at the same time you can see yourself from the other persons perpective and then again you see yourself from the perspective of the a complete outsider. it weird but i think that might be it. i am experiencing this all the time. its really weird and fun. i have been talking to myself and my subconcious a ridiculous amount today. iTS fucking radical. at one point after much talking with myself, i cam back into the physical being, and i could feel my body get sad, or tired, and even weak in a way. my greater self had to tell myself, Calma, Calma. so i accepted everything and just calmed down. and in that moment i was calm, i realized that i had just experienced what i had read about the other day in the pwer vs force book. i remember thinking that i wanted to get so deep into the feeling that i could experience what the other felt. the author felt a void, a fear, almost at the loss of the feeling. well, i felt that slightly because i was wondering, fuck, what happens if i don't conciuoslly remmeber all this. i felt really sad at the thought that i was making all this progress and discovering so much and that i wouldnt remember, or that i "would lose" all of it. but then i realized that i never forget. the subconcious is always with me, i always have access to it. i will never ever forget because i am my subcincious all that i know is here to stay.

:)


good article.


Dowsing for God— Critique of Power vs Force by David HawkinsAndrew Paterson—02/2005

With the recent popularity of books like Power vs Force by Dr. David Hawkins, it is timely to examine dowsing and the objectivism being claimed for it.

[There is a lot of good info at the end of this article, so if you don't read it, it might be worth scrolling down to check it out.]

HETHER WE ARE SEEKING water, ley-lines, health or the answers to specific questions, dowsing has proved invaluable through the ages for connecting ourselves to a huge source of information — our own subconscious. Dowsing allows our conscious minds to draw on the greater perspective and wisdom of the unconscious; it presents a communication channel by which our subconscious can express itself to our conscious minds in as clear and unambiguous a way as possible.

We learn to dowse by teaching our subconscious a simple language — for example, move the little pendulum suspended from the right hand up and down for yes, sideways for no, and in circles for maybe. There is nothing objective about this language; we could equally well teach our subconscious to move the pendulum sideways for yes and up and down for no. The important aspect is to practice so that the subconscious learns the language that we want to use. With enough practice, this process becomes easier and easier, and in some people, they become so sensitive to the whispers of the subconscious, that they can "feel" its answers without the use of paraphernalia such as pendulums.

Another form of dowsing is muscle testing, which forms the diagnostic foundation of applied or therapeutic kinesiology. In this case, the subconscious expresses itself, not via a pendulum, but by the strength of a particular muscle group, usually the shoulder of an outstretched arm. (Kinesiology is more complicated than this and involves many energetic circuits in the body which can be directly manipulated to restore optimum function, but muscle testing remains its diagnostic foundation.)

In a standard muscle test, the person or "patient" being tested or dowsed holds out an arm parallel to the ground and resists a gentle push downwards by a second person (the tester or kinesiologist) with two fingers on the wrist area. This gives the latter a good idea of the base strength of the patient's shoulder muscles and allows any changes in muscle strength to be noted. The tester will then change the state of the patient mentally and/or physically — by asking a question out loud or having the patient hold a particular product or food — and then test the muscle again. The basic theory goes that if the muscle weakens during the second test, then that particular change of state is not vital to the person being tested. If, on the other hand, the arm remains strong or becomes even stronger than usual, then that change of state is a beneficial one.

I remember years ago as a teenager going to the English kinesiologist, Brian Butler. He told me that I had a particular food allergy, something that no doctor had been able to tell me, and with this information I quickly returned to full health. Muscle testing not only works, it can be adequately performed by anybody with almost no training, although a fuller understanding of all the principles of kinesiology can take many years to learn. There is no doubt that kinesiology is of huge therapeutic benefit.

What muscle testing, pendulum work and other forms of dowsing do is to allow us to "interview" our own or another's subconscious mind. The more we trust, practice and let go to these methods, the clearer and more consistent the communication. We become adepts at the language of the subconscious, and the information we learn greater and greater trust in the information that we receive. (I know of water dowsers in Ireland that are spot on every time when looking for where to sink a well, which is just as well as a mistake in location would be very costly in time and money.)

Some people, however, claim that these whisperings of the subconscious can potentially give us a method to determine absolute or objective truth to questions relating to matter beyond the health and vitality of the body. Recently, a book called Power vs Force has appeared on the New Age book shelves, and its author, ex-psychiatrist Dr. David Hawkins, has begun a whole program to calibrate "truth" on a scale of 1 to 1000. So for example, he and his team of muscle testers claims that Jesus calibrates at 1000, Mahayana Buddhism at 960, the Koran at 720, love at 500, reason at 400, fear at 100 and shame at 20. 85% of the world's population, according to Hawkins, calibrates at under 200 — the threshold of integrity.

In a post modern world of relativism and uncertainty, the ordered and simple objectivism that this book promotes is refreshing and reassuring. We all love to feel that there is an absolute scale on which to measure things because it takes out much of life's constant guess work and gives us a strong element of safety. The meaning we assign to things is pre-packaged and we can live our lives within a framework of quantification. (The left brain loves calibration!)

Whilst Hawkins' work is interesting and raises some challenging questions, what is concerning is that few in the "New Age" and progressive communities seem to question it. For example, a recent article published on Dr. Hawkins and his work in Kindred Spirit magazine does not challenge any of Hawkins' assertions. The author appears to have swallowed Hawkins's work hook, line and sinker. And yet, the paradigm that Hawkins is promoting is not as healthy as it seems, and could even be a huge step-back in our spiritual development. (Part of the reason nobody criticises his work may well be fear of judgment — criticism may get them calibrated below 200.)

The first clue to the shortcomings of Hawkins' calibration theory is his intellectualism: Force vs Power is a very dry read. Whenever something relatively simple is presented in an intellectual and scientific manner way beyond what is necessary or justifiable, you know that you may well be staring at a nude emperor. Gregg Braden did it with his new work the God Code, and Hawkins does it with his simple muscle testing implications. What happens is that the overly intellectual and scientific context in which a theory is presented ends up giving it a high standing in the eyes of ordinary people, because it is so easy for the authority of the scientific context to bleed into the unsubstantiated nature of the content. So you get a situation whereby the only criticism for works like these comes from those conversant in science — which is mostly the scientific establishment. And "they" would criticise such cutting-edge alternative research, wouldn't they!

The irony here is that Richard Beaumont, in his Kindred Spirit article, uses Hawkins' smokescreen of intellectualism as an indication that his work must have value because, "all truth, it seems to me, is protected from the uninitiated. Barriers are erected that can only be overcome by years of dedicated spiritual practice." So by implication, Richard can get past Hawkins' intellectual barriers and recognize the value of his work because of his years of dedicated spiritual practice. Well, I am sorry Richard, but you could just as well be someone scolding the little boy because he is so deluded as to think the emperor might have no clothes on. (Throughout history spiritual truths were often hidden because you could get killed for your beliefs, but more often than not these days they are lying on a deckchair getting a tan, whilst a distracted world passes them by.)

If you strip down Hawkins' work to its bare essentials, you have a man that is basically dowsing for God. He is taking the whisperings of the subconscious as absolute measure of all things, even something as abstract as "truth". But surely, to understand whether this is justified, we need to understand what the subconscious is and what truth is. Without examining these terms, we end up making meaningless assertions, such as Hawkins' "a cat's purr calibrates at 500".

The subconscious mind (sometimes called collectively the unconscious), by definition, is that part of ourselves that we are not consciously aware of. It keeps all our bodily functions working smoothly, heals us when we are sick, makes us ill when we are unhappy, etc. It is the part that paints our dreams, speaks to us in myths and symbols, and gives meaning to our thoughts. To become whole, wise and mature human beings, we have to acknowledge all of ourselves, and as most of who we are is below the conscious threshold, that means we have to embrace our subconscious. There is no other way. This is why love and acceptance for ourselves is so important, without it we end up rejecting or denying parts of ourselves that we do not like, which subsequently become unconscious. (They are unconscious precisely because we disown them!)

The subconscious holds a lot of information about us that the conscious mind is unaware of. From a purely physical perspective, the bandwidth of our senses far exceeds that which our conscious minds can cope with, so there is a massive filtering and approximating process going on. Actual studies of perception show that our conscious minds can only be aware of 2000 bits of the 400,000 bits of information that impinge on our senses per second. This means that we are filtering out about 99.5% or more of our experience, and if we can get in touch with our subconscious, then we have access to a lot more information. There is nothing necessarily magical or psychic here — the subconscious mind picks up so much information that it is often aware of subtle clues that our conscious minds are not. So, for example, a water dowser may unconsciously be picking up certain environmental features that indicate sub-surface water, features that he is not conscious of. (That said, the subconscious is also the channel through which we receive psychic impressions so we can never be certain of the source of its information.)

The subconscious is also where you find all the disowned parts of ourselves. The "good" person will therefore find many qualities that he or she would label as "bad" in the subconscious. That is why many people don't like looking below the surface of their conscious minds — they are afraid as to what they might find.

Because many diverse cultures and civilisations have and continue to share similar symbols and myths, some believe that at some level all our subconscious minds are connected in some way — that there is a universal human mind. The great psychologist, Carl Jung, was a proponent of this "collective unconscious", and he used its wisdom to great effect in dream work and other analysis that he did with his patients. He knew that working with the subconscious is instrumental to our mental and spiritual growth, and once wrote, "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." However, working with the subconscious and acknowledging the universality of many of its symbols and myths is very different from stating that it has an rigid or objective landscape. Jung himself would have baulked at such a suggestion.

When we work with the subconscious, we do so in full understanding that we are dealing with the subjective landscape, one in which the meaning we give things changes with different perspective, and in which we learn the humility of realizing that our "truth" may not be the truth of others. The primary rule in dealing with subconscious material is not to take it literally but creatively. This is why dreams, for example, take a little interpreting — we know that it is speaking to us in symbols and that any attempt of understanding dreams requires that we creatively explore what the symbols mean to us. The value of our interactions with the subconscious is precisely because it is a subjective experience: we are learning to interact with ourselves and our own energies.

Hawkins, however, uses the simple dowsing technique of muscle testing to cajole the subconscious into manufacturing an objective reality (an anathema to its nature), complete with a calibrated frame of reference. His work is based on the following five assumptions:

1.
Muscle testing of certain individuals (those with calibrations over 200) is infallible, or at least infallible enough to absolutely calibrate "subjective" comparisons such as the level of truth in various statements. In other words, the whisperings of our subconscious, provided we have integrity, can be taken as gospel. (Any method of absolute calibration must, by definition, itself be absolute.)


2.
Any disagreement in calibration by different individuals is either due to one or more of those individuals not have integrity (ie. calibrate below 200) or to the fact that we can only calibrate in the "now" and things have changed. (Or, the right questions are not being asked.)


3.
Any consensus in calibration by different individuals is due to the objective and absolute nature of the calibrations themselves. It is not due to cultural similarities, physical, mental or spiritual entrainment, telepathy and/or shared delusion.


4.
Dr. David Hawkins and his books calibrate extremely highly… and so they are as close to truth as you are going to get. (Power vs Force, according to Hawkins, calibrates at 850, which is higher than the Bible or the Koran, or indeed almost anything else ever written by a human being.)


5.
We intuitively know what is meant by a particular calibration, even though it is sometimes used as a measure of truth, sometimes as a measure of energy, sometimes as a measure of safety and sometimes as a measure of spirituality.

These five assumptions are never directly stated. That would be too punishing to the theory because they are actually very difficult to justify. Rather, they are quietly assumed whilst focus is concentrated almost entirely on their implications.

Most leading medical kinesiologists would actually disagree with Hawkins' first assumption. Muscle testing is not infallible in anybody. At best, it accurately shows what the particular patient being testing believes, although kinesiologists are well aware of the presence of false positives and reversed patients. When you deal with the subconscious, nothing is straightforward. Hawkins' framework allows him to basically select only those people for his calibration program that are likely to agree with him. After all, any disagreements in calibration can be explained away by the second assumption.

The third assumption is an interesting one. Just because there is agreement amongst a group of people does not mean that what they are agreeing must necessarily be objective. For example, many of the symbols in our dreams are shared because of our shared cultural heritage, or perhaps even because of our collective unconscious. We all intuitively know that love must be a higher vibration than hate, or that the Bible is a higher vibration than Peanuts (although some might disagree with that!). But that is very different from assigning to symbols and meanings fixed calibrated values. It is similar to the difference from using absolute dream interpretations written in a dream dictionary, and doing the deeper work to interpret what the symbols and images mean for us. The first may show us some of the way, but to actually walk the path to greater consciousness we have to do the subjective work of individualising these symbols and integrating them into our unique mosaic of being. There is nothing objective about this. In fact, those people stuck in left-brain thinking are notoriously unproductive with dream work because their rigidity precludes the process of subjective flow and free association that is needed.

Also, whenever a group of people work closely together (we are not necessarily talking about distance here but mindset), there is a natural tendency to corroborate each other's work, especially in this case whereby corroboration is itself integral to the work. That is why, when scientific researchers get stuck on a problem, they will often call in someone from outside their group to give a whole new perspective. Otherwise, there is a strong possibility of collective delusion, where each person's emotional stake in belonging to the group can cloud objectivity. This is not necessarily dishonesty, just the strong and usually unconscious desire to maintain the group and its raison d'etre above any evidence that damages it. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Hawkins's group can appear consistent and "objective" in their calibrations.

The forth assumption is an absolute necessity. Hawkins' own work must itself calibrate extremely highly, otherwise the theory collapses. But not too highly so that it becomes unbelievable. 850 out of 1000, which is what Power vs Force calibrates at, seems about right from a credibility point of view, allowing him the authority to comment on the veracity of almost all other works. (As happens with most fundamentalists, his self-delusion and hubris is increasing as he collects followers, and this has given him the confidence to calibrate his subsequent books higher and higher. In fact, he calibrates his third book I: Reality and Subjectivity at 999.8! Where do you go from there?)

The fifth assumption results from the process of calibration itself. Calibration is a one dimensional measurement of a system — reality — that is at least three dimensional (most would say multi-dimensional). Whenever you calibrate a system with a model which has less dimensions than the system itself, then you automatically get huge distortions and losses of information. Physicists today need at least 13 dimensions to calibrate physical reality, and yet, Hawkins believes he can calibrate the more complicated abstract concept of truth with just one. The result is that he ends up interchanging terms and meanings because this single calibration scale is so hard to fit with the complexity of real experience.

Truth is central to Hawkins' motivation for developing his system. In his world view, he sees humankind's inability to distinguish between truth and falsehood as its basic defect — a defect that he believes muscle testing will compensate for. He believes that by returning to a "Newtonian" framework of absolute objectivity, which is in essence what he has done, he can get rid of the modern relativism and postmodernism that many of us in modern societies have to reluctantly face.

But the level of truth of a statement depends entirely on whether we can verify it for ourselves, or how much we accept the authority of the person making the statement. If for example, our government tells us that a particular country has weapons of mass destruction, and we are unable to verify this for ourselves, we have to decide whether the government is believable — and considering its track record for poor intelligence, spin and outright lies, we would probably rate the truth level of its claim very low. But what does it mean to say that, for example, a cat's purr has a higher level of truth than the average person? It is only true for us if we fully accept all five of Hawkins' assumptions and the integrity of his work. I have little doubt that Hawkins believes he has integrity, and that his motivation is for the greater good, but that of course does not mean that I accept what he proposes.

Another point that has to be made is that the level of truth of something is different for us at different times. If we suppress a lot of anger, then anger for us is not necessarily a low vibration, but a doorway that, when expressed harmlessly, will lead us to greater integration and wholeness. As Jung once stated, "I would rather be a whole person than a good person." Hawkins, on the other hand, would probably rather be a good person (good = a high vibratory rate) than a whole person (containing all vibrations). He has forgotten the power of perspective and context, and in his drive to set up an objective calibration of truth he closes the door to true soul work.

Hawkins wants to unite humankind in an absolute framework of truth. He wants to convince the world that HIS truth is THE objective truth, and he does this by presenting simple muscle-testing as the arbiter of all things. This makes him, by definition, a fundamentalist, and one that is driven by that same fundamentalist drive to convince all people of his reality — a one dimensional calibration of truth from 1 to 1000. (The calibration of God and the Angels goes much higher than this in his cosmology, but 1000 is the highest vibrational rate for this world.)

Fundamentalists often do have more energy or zeal than relativists because they are so driven to justify their reality above all others'. Hawkins confuses this fundamentalist zeal with "high spiritual energy", and uses it to further justify the "positive" impact of his work on the world. It is standard mid-West "bible thumping" — the call of the proselytizer. He mixes his calibration theory with standard motivational psychology (using the vernacular borrowed from chaos theory — the attractor) to flesh out a whole psychological system — after all, pure calibration and the diagnosis of all things would never quite be enough to hold its weight in a society obsessed by self-help books and workshops.

Hawkins makes a revealing statement in the Kindred Spirit article when he describes individuals of low consciousness saying, "People at this level love to be right and make everyone else wrong." But that is exactly what he is doing with his calibration. For someone to be right and another wrong, truth has to be absolute, not relative. Once again, that is the position of the religious fundamentalist — truth is always on his or her side. And from this perspective, because we know THE truth, we are no longer interested in finding the truths of others so we can build a bridge with them. We are sure of our position and the position of others because we hold the absolute rule by which all things are measured.

There are so many inconsistencies in Hawkins' work, words and conclusions that I am very surprised so few have brought them up (a couple are mentioned in the addendum to this article). Hawkins is no mystic, master or seer, but a spiritual fundamentalist, in every sense of the word, who has hijacked the therapeutic process of muscle testing as a means to justify his rigid beliefs. And his disguised fundamentalism seems to be evoking little resistance from the spiritual and New Age communities that now seem largely to champion him.

What happened to the wisdom of relativism? It should be fairly obvious for those who have looked below the surface of things that the future peace, integrity and spiritual evolution of humanity does not lie in fundamentalist positions but in relativism, for when we realize that there are no absolute scales and measures of things (such as Hawkins' contrived calibration system), we have no alternative but to listen to and respect each others' truth. And we no longer need to defend our own truth by trying to convince another because we understand that truth is relative. In this way we learn to open our hearts to others because we are not being blinded by certainty or ideology. (Nobody can be as short-sighted or as cruel as the fundamentalist, because he or she always puts ideology before people.)

Hawkins' view of reality is not only dependent upon several unjustified assumptions, even from a pragmatic point of view, it actually offers us very little, deluding us into thinking that an individual's level of truth and integrity is objectively measured, and has little to do with our interaction with that person. We all know that how we treat a person often determines their behaviour, so that even from a pragmatic point of view it is better not to calibrate — for calibration unequivocally leads to judgment. (An absolute calibration of truth, after all, is a judgment of truth by definition.)

A better understanding of the subconscious and the limits to its "truth" can be gleaned from the Huna spiritual philosophy of the Hawaiians. From their perspective, each of us is comprised of three parts: the lower, subconscious self or unihipili; the middle, conscious self or uhane; and the higher, superconscious self or Aumakua. Although the lower self is like a child, paradoxically it is generally better connected with the higher self than the conscious mind, which is why we can potentially find such wisdom and opportunity by examining the subconscious. But we can also find delusion and darkness in the subconscious too, which is also an integral part of ourselves. In the Huna philosophy, the idea is to ultimately make a direct connection between the conscious self and the higher self, rather than having to pick up scraps of truth through the subconscious. When that happens, we give up all conceptual frameworks like calibration and live entirely in the present.

So dowsing certainly has its place and is invaluable as a diagnostic tool. But anyone who tries to use it as an infallible method to determine absolute truth will quickly find himself mired in a world of delusion. And this is exactly where Dr. David Hawkins has put himself and his followers, as have other dowsers through the ages. The temptation to interpret the whisperings of the subconscious as the whisperings of God can be all too irresistible for many, especially those with a tendency for fundamentalism.

Of course, Hawkins is not alone in his dowsing delusions: there are many people out there claiming objective truth on the back of a dowsing technique. For example, recently I spoke to a healer called Dez who uses the pendulum to diagnose his patients. Dez classifies his patients as to how many lifetimes they have so far lived — he believes that each of us need 21 lives before we gain enough wisdom and understanding to leave this plane of existence. If you ask him how he knows this he will tell you that he discovered it through his pendulum. Dez himself is, of course, on his final lifetime, just as Hawkins' work calibrates above that of almost every other human being: both have to have inflated opinions of their own spiritual development because they are setting themselves up as arbiters of truth. Dez will cure you of "a serious illness" without you even knowing that you had it in the first place, just as Hawkins will determine your level of truth without even needing to consult you. Is this fact or delusion? There is no way for us to tell… we either believe it and accept their opinions, or we don't.

What is most disconcerting about men like Hawkins and Dez is that to interact with them you are forced to acquiesce in their delusional reality. If you are a fundamentalist too, then you either share their belief systems or reject them and walk away. If, however, you are a relativist or peacemaker, then you reluctantly share their belief system for the purposes of trying to connect with them, all the while feeling more and more uncomfortable as they push you further into their closed world view. Dez, for example, interprets any event and any illness according to his world view corroborated by his pendulum, completely taking away his patients' power to define their own illness and what it means to them. Dez knows because Dez dowses for God. (Ultimately of course, we are responsible to not give our power to these sorts of people in the first place, although it is difficult if you are a "people person" and accept their delusion as a means of connection.)

Interestingly, Dez has not always been consistent with his world view because he does not write things down. So I have a friend who rang him on two different occasions during which he told her that she was on different life numbers, and to me he has given conflicting information on several occasions. However, as relativists, neither of us pointed out these inconsistencies for the purpose of maintaining a good relationship. (Relativists are instinctively aware of the conditional nature of a fundamentalist's acceptance of another.)

And that is the irony of Hawkins' Power vs Force: if you subscribe to his calibrated world then you give away your power to define your own reality and to determine your own meanings in life — a prerequisite on our journey to wholeness and integration. You end up polarizing experience into high and low calibrations, forgetting that both the light and the dark are needed for true integration and individuation. Nobody else can do this for us; nobody else can supply us with the symbols and meaning that we need, whether it is with their intuition, a pendulum or a muscle test. We have to have the courage to walk our own path.

Fundamentalists like Hawkins and Dez actually scupper our spiritual growth and our journey to wholeness because we allow them to take away our opportunity to learn that we create our own realities and that we assign all meaning to that reality. Instead, the gold of subjectivity is swapped for the base-metal of pseudo-objectivity, and in the process we unwittingly become accomplices in perpetrating fundamentalist delusions.

So we have a choice. We either take full responsibility for the reality we create, our relationship to that reality, and our interpretation of that reality… or we pussyfoot around in someone else's objective delusion — a delusion propped up merely by a dowsing technique. Only the first leads to true wisdom and wholeness. And only the first gives us the opportunity to reach spiritual maturity.




SELECTED FEEDBACK & ADDENDUM

19 Mar 06: This article still gets more feedback than almost any other article on EnergyGrid. Most of the emails are from Hawkins' supporters, incensed that someone should be so dismissive of their teacher and his philosophy. I firmly believe that Hawkins' calibration worldview is religious fundamentalism disguised as pseudo-science, and the nature of the criticisms I receive bear this out: specific points and objections are not discussed, but rather the disciple, in the spirit of his teacher, rants on about my ignorance and my low calibration… all classic fundamentalism.

Having learned the hard way that it is a complete waste of time trying to talk reason with a fundamentalist, I no longer bother to reply to emails from Hawkins' supporters, for their authors are almost invariably not after mutual understanding but symbolic annihilation of anything and anyone that opposes their ideology. Only one single Hawkins supporter has shown me any level of politeness, but by the time I received his email (just a month ago, thanks Jon) I had had so much time wasted that I declined the invitation for yet another "debate".

Here are a few of the many emails I receive on this topic:

Link recommendation received 01/Feb/07 - Thanks P

Check out this review of Hawkins' book Truth Versus Falsehood. Truth vs Falsehood Review


Email received on the 05/Apr/06 from S with thanks:

I thought you might be interested in this, too:

Dr. Carroll of Skeptic's Dictionary updated his applied kinesiology entry to include a more extensive reference of Hawkins. http://skepdic.com/akinesiology.html

Also worth checking out: http://forum.rickross.com/viewtopic.php?t=1972

* * *

From Dialogues on Consciousness and Spirituality:

"Y [interviewer]: About this part, I have a couple of questions. At that moment, did you have a family? Were they worried about you?

"DH: Yes. And there was this miraculous change, but there was nothing I could say about it. There is nothing one can say about such things. They are so far-reaching and of such a dimension, and so far beyond originally human experience that there is nothing one can say. One could not just walk down the sidewalk and say, "Hey, by the way. I just got enlightened yesterday." And the other person would say, "Yeah, right, sure. Does it pay anything?"

"Now everything is transformed and there is absolutely nothing one can say about it. It was like the inner part of me - whatever had been my individual self - was struck dumb with awe. It was awesome beyond all meaning of the word - to be the witness of the presence of that which is in its naked expression as all of existence.

"Although the mind is stopped, one is at one with all that is known, so there is, in the instant, the experience of those attributes of God described as omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. The power is infinite. The knowingness is also infinite. All things are known. It does not mean that all things are denoted by the intellect because one would have to have an interest in such things. It is like, in the presence of omniscience, all things are knowable; therefore, one does not bother knowing about the specific.

"Once you know how to make gold, there is no point in collecting it any more. There is no point in collecting information. It is like you have the infinite computer of all possibility, so if there is anything you would want to know, all you would have to do is ask. And in that state, what do you suppose you ask? Nothing. There is nothing to ask! To ask a question is coming out of ignorance, is it not? In the presence of omniscience, there is no ignorance, so there is nothing to ask. So if you ask me what question would I like to know, there isn't any, to tell the truth. There isn't any answer I'm interested in, except to demonstrate [with applied kinesiology] for a viewer."

* * *

I forgot, I wanted to mention that on one of the interviews on Beyond the Ordinary with Hawkins, he says he used to believe in global warming, then he tested with AK (on his wife/partner, I'm sure) and discovered that in fact global warming is not true. Humans could never do anything to harm the earth, he says (or some similar statement). He believes rising temperature is due to solar flares, or something. Clearly I do not need to express how ludicrous this is with you. He mentions how people like to stand up to driving SUV's as a sort of ego mechanism. Lunacy at its finest.

He also claims to track Osama Bin Laden with AK (too bad he doesn't offer that info to the US government), and many other ridiculous things. Anyway, there is too much to mention. The environmental issue seems key though. Oh, another idiotic premise is that women cannot reach full enlightenment and need to reincarnate with a man's body! The energy is too powerful for a woman's body. I do not even know what he is talking about…Did he read Ramana Maharshi, or just reference him to look good? Further, the Buddha said enlightenment is available to women, of course, and Jesus' main follower was perhaps Mary Magdalene. Etc., etc., ad infinitum. If I ever had the time I could write a whole book on Hawkins' spiritual and scientific failings.


Email received on the 13/Nov/05 from S with thanks:

I wanted to send some links that also mention him from Dr. Robert Carroll of The Skeptic's Dictionary.

http://skepdic.com/akinesiology.html applied kinesiology

http://www.skepdic.com/news/newsletter58.html#3 "Dr. Doctor David Hawkins' AK Quakery" from the Skeptic's Dictionary Newsletter 58.

Info at wikipedia too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R_Hawkins (see the discussion page too)

He got his Ph.D. from a diploma mill.


Email received from N.B. on 27/Nov/05 with thanks:

I am concerned that this man is nothing more than a machiavellian disinformation merchant.

I have read most of this book (smelt a rat before completing), and listened to a number of interviews on his website. He ridicules the UFO phenomenon (which is sad due to the evidence of something very strange going on), is condescending to other spiritual commentators and sounds very smug and self centred in speaking. He does not appear at all spiritual or wise.

He also promotes right wing propaganda. He seems to suggest that all the inequities in our world are down to the low level of the masses. This ignores the truth about the oppression of the masses for millennia. In addition a system based on manipulations of the masses in so many ways throughout history and so a wicked legacy, thus is not actually a highly spiritual thing at all.

He also makes positive comment with ref to George Bush and Walmart. This man is not only ignorant, he is dangerous and I feel (calibrates at 1000 for me) that he is part of that dark side of our world that works (and has always been) hard to keep us all in chains.


Email received from J.D. on the 10/Oct/05 with thanks:

I am not a devotee of David Hawkins, but I have recently read some of his books. I am an intelligent and well read person and my opinion is well informed. Your blurb about him is not even close to the truth. He is equally critical of Religious Fundamentalism and New Age Flakiness. His positions on important issues are identical to those of the greatest teachers of the Great Tradition of Esoteric Spirituality. Whoever wrote your assessment could not have actually studied his teaching.

No need to respond.

Editor: I did respond to J.D. to see if there was any substance in his criticism of the article. But no matter how much I pushed him for specific points of criticism, he would completely ignore my questions and fall back on the "I'm really intelligent and evolved and I think the article is BS" routine. In his final email he came up with this classic paragraph:

I… really am well read and have been involved in serious spiritual practice and service for 30 years. …my worldview would be consistent with what has been called "The Great Tradition, The Perennial Philosophy, The Ageless Wisdom, The Primordial Tradition, The Unchanging Testament, which reveals an unprecedented Universally held worldview, agreed upon by most of those considered to be great teachers, masters, avatars, etc. such as The Buddha, Huang Po, Jesus, Krishna, Yogannanda, Krishnamurti, Meister Eckart, Sufi Masters, Ken Wilber, The Dali Lama, Plotinus, Kabir, Rumi, Lao Tzu, Echart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, and credible contemporary consciousness researchers, regression therapists, channelers, and reincarnation researchers such as Ian Stevenson at the U. of West Virginia, and Trutz Hardo in Germany. I have studied all of the above and hundreds more. I am convinced after reading Hawkins Trilogy that his worldview fits very comfortably within this Great Tradition and therefore if he is "bogus" then most of the above mentioned would have to be considered "ignorant" also.

Of course when I challenged him to tell me how Hawkins' absolute calibration fits in with the philosophy of just one of the the above teachers, he didn't reply. J.D.'s emails, which at first looked substantial and are typical of the criticims I have received, ended up full of hot air. Again I wasted my time trying to be reasonable to a fundamentalist.


Addendum

The above article is not there to dissuade individuals from using dowsing methods. Dowsing really does work and is extremely useful for making conscious unconscious information. Problems only arise when the information received is taken absolutely.

* * *

Like any fundamentalist, Hawkins seems completely naïve both philosophically and ecologically. Asked in Kindred Spirit magazine whether eating meat is okay, he states, "Every deer that has died for my life, I have sanctified, and it has sanctified itself." Forget the idealism of hunter and hunted that the Native American's once embodied and that many of us on the spiritual path can certainly respect, the meat we eat today is a product of modern slaughter houses, and you can be assured that there is nothing remotely noble or sanctifying about these modern killing factories. For him, killing is just an illusion because "Death is not possible." In other words, killing is not killing if you think it isn't. So you are free to kill if you realize the immortality of the soul, a position that comes wholly from ideology and not the heart. If you love, you will do everything you can to avoid causing the suffering of another; you will avoid it because suffering of another is your own suffering as love has bound you together.

Hawkins then tries to justify his diet by saying that, "Every time I eat a steak, I bring another steer into existence." In doing so he demonstrates blind ignorance of the global ecological impact of the meat industry. Forget calibration, we are talking about the future of the planet and minimising the suffering of all beings. Eating a steak is NOT a life-promoting act whatever way you look at it… in its production it destroys rainforest, uses up huge quantities of water, erodes top-soil, produces dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases, encourages the use of pesticides, hormones and GM technology, and is responsible for a host of modern degenerative diseases. Are we really to assume that the steer spirit is limited to our production lines for expression? (He already states that there is little difference between the living and the dead because we are all immortal anyway, so any steer's need to experience life shouldn't be confined to the here and now.)

These sort of naive absolute statements that Hawkins makes are typical of fundamentalists who have placed ideology before heart in the interests of their blind pseudo-objectivity. I am not saying that meat eating is indefensible or wrong, but I am saying that it is indefensible in this manner (there are plenty of vegetarians who are also fundamentalist in their beliefs). When questioned like this, Hawkins to me does not sound like a wise man, but a man trying to interpret the complexity of life with a simple and inadequate road map. It is time that all of us in the spiritual and New Age movements start seeing that this emperor really is wearing no clothes.

* * *

Numerous people have pointed out to me that Hawkins completely abuses the mathematics and physics in his book. He consistently refers to his calibration scale as "logarithmic" when it is in fact "exponential"; he uses the term "critical point" when referring to his exponential scales, when an exponential graph by definition cannot have a critical or "flat" point; and he uses leading-edge scientific terminology such as "chaos theory" and "attractors" in contexts that only demonstrate undeniable scientific and mathematical ignorance… which is rather strange considering that he calibrates his own books as the most "truthful" ever published.