10 Things to know about the Power of the Heart

As science looks more and more at the human body with greater technology, we have begun to come full circle in understanding what the ancients knew about the heart, the brain, and divine consciousness. What is the heart? Is it more than just a pump for blood? Or could the truth about its power be related to the essence of your entire being, and have a field of energy so great that it can transform not just your own being into that of light, love and happiness, but even those around you. What is the shining light of the heart, and how can you access it and gain the inner knowing of who you are and why you are here? (from Spirit Science)

Here are 10 things to know about the heart:

Did you know that...
1. Your heart emits electromagnetic fields that change according to your emotions.
2. The heart is 500 times electrically stronger than the brain and up to 5000 times magnetically stronger.
3. The human heart's magnetic field can be measured up to several feet away from the body.
4. The heart has a system of neurons that have both short and long term memory.
5. That signals sent to the brain by the heart neurons can affect emotional experiences.
6. The heart send more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart.
7. The electromagnetic signal produced by your heart is registered in the brain waves of people around you.
8. In the womb, the heart forms and starts to beat before the brain is developed.
9. A mother's brainwaves can synchronize to her baby's heartbeats.
10. Your physiological responses sync up with your mate's during empathetic interactions
This video from Spirit Science is a great overview on all aspects of the power of the heart:

The Heartmath Institute specializes in studying all aspects of the heart. Through their studies they show what healers have known for a long time, namely that negative emotions create a nervous system chaos, while positive emotions create coherence in the body and positive emotions boost the immune system. In a later post I'll talk more about how all of this fits into why I think energy healing works so effectively...

For more information check out heartmath.org

Three Amazing Nature Heros...

I read a really inspiring article about people who devoted their lives to preserving nature on Ian Lawton's lovely soulseeds.com blogsite.  Wonderful stories showing that we do so much good when we try, and even more importantly, when we are open and able to admit we are wrong we can change and we can redress the balance and put the past behind us..
Aldo Leopold, Paul Watson and Julia Butterfly Hill are three examples of people who became activists after significant experiences with nature.
Aldo Leopold was one of America’s most famous conservationists, but he wasn’t always an environmentalist. He was a hunter before he became he became passionate about conservation and ironically it was through hunting that it happened.  A profound experience up close and personal with nature changed his life, and his motivation.  Aldo was with a group of friends hunting wolves to clear the mountain in order to hunt deer.  Aldo shot one particular wolf. He looked into the eyes of the dying wolf and watched a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.  At that moment he realized that something in the mountain, something in him was also dying.  It could not ever be recaptured.  It was after looking at this fierce green fire dying that Aldo Leopold’s life was changed and he went on to become one of the most significant American environmentalists of the twentieth century.

http://www.cof.orst.edu/leopold

More recently, the activist, Paul Watson had a similar experience. It was in 1975 and he and one other were on a small boat, resting between Russian whalers and a pod of whales. They naively believed that the hunters would not shoot while they were in the firing line. This changed when the captain walked on to the deck, motioned with a thumb as if to slit his throat and shot a harpoon that narrowed passed over their heads and struck a whale behind them, a female. A male whale immediately launched itself at the Russian boat but was harpooned in the head. It fell back in agony. This is when Watson’s life was changed. He caught the eye of the whale just before it fell back on his boat. It would have crushed them. He saw in the whale’s eye what he described as “understanding”. The whale appeared to tense its muscles one last time to avoid landing on their boat, thereby saving their lives.

The experience changed Watson so deeply that he committed his life to saving whales. He continues to do this, despite criticism. The criticism comes from conservatives and it comes from progressives who say that he damages their reputation with his cavalier approach. His answer to that is, “So!” He’s not doing it for them, and he’s not doing it for the organization. The whales are his clients and his concern.
One last example comes from Julia Butterfly Hill who in the late 1990s lived for 738 days inside a 180 foot tall, 1500 year old Redwood tree to stop it from being cut down by loggers. She named the tree that she got up close and personal with “Luna”. The happy ending to this story is that her sit-in at the top of the Redwood worked. Luna lived on, as did other trees in the area.

"Luna" The Redwood Tree Julia Butterfly Hill helped to save

She said: "I wake up in the morning asking myself what can I do today, how can I help the world today. I believe in what I do beyond a shadow of a doubt. I gave my word to this tree and to all the people that my feet would not touch the ground until I had done everything in my power to make the world aware of this problem and to stop the destruction."

Julia Butterfly Hill on protest!

What an inspiring group of people! As Ian comments: "That’s the sort of commitment we humans need to show. If you’re the sort of person who is motivated by getting up close and personal with nature, then create plenty of opportunities to do that. Remind yourself that your life is dependent on the life of the earth, and your life affects the earth in every moment."
Read more at www.soulseeds.com

Essenes and Cathars

This talk by Ted Nottingham is one of the best I've seen or heard on the Essenes. It's worth watching to get a sense of the real wisdom lineages, and where they may have originated. As Jesus also was an Essene, to know more about the very spiritual and far thinking group he emerged from gives a great perspective on what he was really all about.

What a different world we might be living in now had the Essene way been able to thrive and go forward as the "mainstream" christian church. Unfortunately the Roman way could not tolerate such a peaceful system, which emphasised direct experience of God within, a strict vegetarian diet, healing and meditative practice, and a complete disregard for power and position.  So it was with the Essenes and so it was with the Cathars. Both groups were rounded up and murdered and all but eliminated but not quite.

The origins of the Essenses goes very far back in time and spread in many directions. Egypt and India for one became home to what we could probably more aptly call mystery school teachings long before they had even spread to Qumran.  The Cathars living in Southern France were not all killed during the Inquisition and we have to believe or at least hope that some managed to flee and take their knowledge and wisdom with them.

Much of the Cathar information is lost or distorted by the fact that some of it was recorded by members of the Inquisition who were hardly unbiased. However with the finding of the copper scrolls at Qumran, the Essene way is opened to us again and, as ultimately the Essenses and the Cathars were of the same line, we can get a great insight on how the Cathars lived by knowing a little more about the Essene way. 

To summarise the core principles of the Essenes (and this really is a summary!) it would be: living a loving and peaceful life, respecting the earth as a living being and recognising the Divine by meditative practice that leads to an inner connection and teaching.  Living and sharing truth, doing work and worshiping or staying in disciplined practice through acts of work, not harming any living thing, vegetarian diet and no consumption of fermented drinks!

Does any of that sound familiar today? It sure does... Much of what we now see as the New Age movement is actually very old age and just a revival of a way of peace and healing and life of balance on the planet that is actually many thousands of years old.

When the Cathars were being hunted down and massacred in the thirteenth century they prophesied that in 700 years they would begin to incarnate again as that was when the planet would need a revival of their ways. Interestingly, that timeline fits exactly with when our current 'New Age" really took off. 

As a child, I was always drawn to Cathar stories but know little about the Cathars themselves. My own journey in healing and meditation followed a very synchronous path - very much one of when the student is ready the master appears. To date every time I need, or am ready, for new learning the right person (or sometimes guide or angel) just pops in.

The work I do with tone and sound came through a guided instruction and I am only now beginning to write about it so that I can pass it on. In yet another synchronicity, while doing a healing for someone very knowledgeable about what little is known of Cathar healing traditions, he commented at the end: "You do know that what you are doing is a very old and powerful form of Cathar healing don't you?" I didn't!! But what he said felt true and led me to study more about the Cathars, their origins and what other teachings they may have had that they are trying to reignite in us today.

And so that leads back to where I began this post -  to the Essenes.

Bear in mind also as you listen to this talk, that as this was very much a path of inner connection with the divine, not a fixed 'religion'. It is a living way and different groups can have different rules. The Qumran group were a stricter group than those at Mount Carmel (where Jesus came from) hence even in Jesus' teachings you'll hear a slightly more fluid take on living than you might from a Qumran resident. And a Cathar might have a different view again, but all will have the same core principle of love, peace, healing, meditation, service and truth.

Enjoy...