What if you were carefree? If you can foster the idea that you are laden with cares, can you not also cultivate the idea that you are without cares and worries? Which would you prefer? What if you could throw off the illusion of carrying a heavy load? What if you could? What if you carry a heavy load when you could carry a light load or no load at all?
 
Who says you have to drag along heavy burdens, and, in effect, owe a debt that has to be paid? What if you threw off the so-called burdens? What if you would turn over the oxcart you have been carrying and declare weight null and void? Who is it exactly who says that a sense of burden is your due? The last time I looked, you were human being, not an ox. Carry around My thoughts instead of heaviness. My thoughts are light. My thoughts are, indeed, made of light, bright light shining. Your thoughts can be, as well, the lightness of light, and the lightness of air.
 
You are not made of heavy iron. You are made of elements, none of which weigh much. Where did the idea of heaviness come from? Why has this idea lasted? Heaven is your due, not heaviness. Certainly, there is gravity on Earth. Gravity can take care of itself. You don’t have to carry it.
 

How did I not hear of this experiment sooner? This is one in a series of rather startling studies conducted at the University of California at Berkeley that finds that wealthier people tend to behave more unethically than people of more modest means. Even when wealth is accumulated by means outside of their control, the wealthy considered themselves to be entitled to their advantages, more so than anyone else would be.

From PBS:

Paul Solman (PBS) : But the simple Darwinian story is if I have more resources than you, I can have more kids than you; my kids will pass on my DNA, which is the resource-hoarding DNA.

Dacher Keltner (Psychologist, UCB): That was sort of an older view of how we evolved as the particular social species we are, but what we’re learning through a lot of new advances in evolutionary biology is that we really had to cooperate to make it as a species.

We had to cooperate in terms of food gathering, defending against predators and so on. And human cultures evolved particular tendencies to reward the generous — to ensure that there weren’t people hoarding resources and that the resources were more equally distributed.

Just because the vacuum of space doesn’t allow for the passage of sound, that doesn’t mean that space isn’t a noisy place. Sound exists in space as electromagnetic vibrations. Through specially designed instruments, we’re able to record the vibrations within the range of human hearing and listen to what the universe is saying.

These recorded sounds are the complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind, ionosphere, and planetary magnetosphere. These are, in a sense, sounds from heaven; radio waves coming to us from celestial bodies elsewhere. And it’s pretty fucking cool, isn’t it?

For a 24/7 live recording of space sounds, visit: http://www.radio-astronomy.net/

This is such a visually awe-inspiring video. Very cool. The question posed is: what would Nebulae look like if they were totally visible in our night sky?

Truth be told, it’s getting harder and harder to see the night sky. I’m almost 27 years old as of this writing, and it wasn’t until last year that I even saw the milky way galaxy in person, or at least as it looks in photographs. I understood where the term “backbone of the night” came from.

So what would our night sky look like if all of the nebulae were visible? Probably a lot like what the above video depicts. Enjoy.

This clip comes from the BBC Horizon documentary, The Hunt for AI and is absolutely incredible. In it, these two robots learn how to move their own bodies by observing their movements in a mirror. Then, it moves on to the two robots teaching each other their own new, unique language. The scientists featured, from the Neurobotics Research Laboratory, believe that a truly artificial intelligence is one that is allowed to develop on its own, as young children do. So this research project’s focus was to explore how “complex grammatical systems and behaviors can emerge in populations of robotic agents.”

Artwork by Pablo Amaringo

Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

As an alternative path to wellness, shamanism has become a topic of great interest to Westerners in recent years, largely fueled by a rising curiosity in the Amazonian shamanic brew, ayahuasca. Stories of the profound and positively life-changing effects of ayahuasca are to be found in all corners of popular media, and due the acclaim and attention this medicine is receiving, even major news organizations are comparing ayahuasca to medical cannabis.

HJ: Happiness has been decoded.  We know what produces it in spades. The only thing left to do is adopt the principles that lead to happiness.  To do the things that remove any barriers and obstacles to experiencing it in our day to day life.  The hard part, however, is undoing the patterns and habits we have.  But even that can be easy if someone is ready and willing to change.  It’s only hard for people who say they want it but are not willing to make any changes to get it.  Like anything in life, it’s what you make of it.  But regardless of whether you want to go slow or fast in realigning yourself with these and other foundational principles, alas, here they are for your knowledge and integration.

- Truth

Four Surprising Principles To Secure Happiness

We all want to be happy. So why don’t people do what it takes to get there?

By Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D., ABPP | Psychology Today | Thomas Plante

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