We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science or sink into that of sensation. Between these extremes is the equator of life, of thought, of spirit, of poetry.
Nature as we know her, is no saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos, and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favor. She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food, not punctually keep the commandments. If we be strong with her strength, we must not harbor such disconsolate consciences, borrowed too from the consciences of other nations. We must set up the strong present tense against all the rumors of wrath, past or to come.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay Experience bounces us off the walls of sanity and we find ourselves stumbling along our equator of life. We place one thought in front of another believing that we on the highway of righteousness and redemption only to discover that those preconceived notions are remnants of a ritualistic and ignorant past.
Our beliefs are so structure that our identity is solely dependant on our psychological and biological sexuality. We function using manmade laws and call them laws of God. Cooperation is paramount to our being so we push our bisexual nature away from our reality, and condemn those that bring it forth. Bisexual stereotypes shade our perceptions even though the larger pattern of human personhood demands a bisexual affiliation. That affiliation provides a framework where individuals can express feelings, and abilities that follow the natural incline of the personal psyche.
The distortion that results from our psyche blockage begins to accumulate in puberty. We are not educated to understand the nature of consciousness and our psyche. We believe the psyche is a contradictory instead of the foundation for our conscious unconsciousness. The psyche is a bank where all beliefs are drawn. There are no clear-cut characteristics that belong to one sex or another in that bank. That would lead to a pattern that is to rigid for the development of our species.
Some of our beliefs are built-in from infancy. They are biologically pertinent. They create some of our life experiences. Other beliefs are learned through associations and influences. Those beliefs along with our core beliefs create a psychic highway of experiences that move us toward unity. Unity is the place where present or past rumors of wrath don't exist. It is the place where great gifts thrive in the art of appreciating as well as giving.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
The Soul Circumscribes All Things
The Soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it contradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence of the senses has, in most men, overpowered the mind to that degree that the walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable; and to speak with levity of these limits is, in the world, the sign of insanity. Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul. The spirit sports with time.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay The Over-soul gives us the opportunity to examine the words we use to describe our reality as well as the self. It feels like we are locked in a moving capsule filled with time, space, and matter that vacillates with our vision of sanity. Sanity, like any other word, is a description or a symbol of how we perceive the self. Emerson thought we stuff eternity into an hour and stretch an hour into eternity, and we do achieve those feats and usually don’t accept them as real occurrences.
There are aspects of our consciousness that are beneath our usual awareness. These aspects are unknown channels of information. Those channels help us anticipate events and it enables us to experience our conscious goals and beliefs. When we allow the self the freedom to explore these shaded areas of the psyche we find other realities that are not restricted by time and space. We inhabit and interact in them in another form.
In that vacuum we realize that the psyche is not male or female; it is a repository of characteristics that operate in patterns with male and female elements. These patterns can be put together in a plethora of ways. Our personhood existed before our sex. Individuality gives meaning to our sex, not the other way around. The soul is both male and female in our terms, and it is the meeting place for innate consciousness. The spirit or the soul does sport time as the psyche cooperates with the physical elements of earth, and individualization occurs that is human as well as divine.
In those terms, lesbianism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are valid expression of man’s bisexual nature in this reality, since the psyche chooses what to experience in any point in time. If only man-female relationships operated in this time and space there would be no bond strong enough to forge families together. Antagonism between males would be too powerful and the competition between females would be too severe. Basic bisexuality gives the species the leeway necessary to prevent behavior that would restrict social commerce and creativity. The basic sexual nature of the soul allows us to experience our individual abilities, which lays the groundwork for the future. Sexual qualities are part of our nature, but they don’t define it. The soul circumscribes all beliefs including sexuality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay The Over-soul gives us the opportunity to examine the words we use to describe our reality as well as the self. It feels like we are locked in a moving capsule filled with time, space, and matter that vacillates with our vision of sanity. Sanity, like any other word, is a description or a symbol of how we perceive the self. Emerson thought we stuff eternity into an hour and stretch an hour into eternity, and we do achieve those feats and usually don’t accept them as real occurrences.
There are aspects of our consciousness that are beneath our usual awareness. These aspects are unknown channels of information. Those channels help us anticipate events and it enables us to experience our conscious goals and beliefs. When we allow the self the freedom to explore these shaded areas of the psyche we find other realities that are not restricted by time and space. We inhabit and interact in them in another form.
In that vacuum we realize that the psyche is not male or female; it is a repository of characteristics that operate in patterns with male and female elements. These patterns can be put together in a plethora of ways. Our personhood existed before our sex. Individuality gives meaning to our sex, not the other way around. The soul is both male and female in our terms, and it is the meeting place for innate consciousness. The spirit or the soul does sport time as the psyche cooperates with the physical elements of earth, and individualization occurs that is human as well as divine.
In those terms, lesbianism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are valid expression of man’s bisexual nature in this reality, since the psyche chooses what to experience in any point in time. If only man-female relationships operated in this time and space there would be no bond strong enough to forge families together. Antagonism between males would be too powerful and the competition between females would be too severe. Basic bisexuality gives the species the leeway necessary to prevent behavior that would restrict social commerce and creativity. The basic sexual nature of the soul allows us to experience our individual abilities, which lays the groundwork for the future. Sexual qualities are part of our nature, but they don’t define it. The soul circumscribes all beliefs including sexuality.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Closed End Thinking
Hope is the only good god remaining among mankind;
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety.
Theognis of Megara, the 6th century BC elegiac poet, wrote those thoughts to dispel the myth that Pandora’s Box only contained all the evils in the world and all that was left in that jar-box was Hope. Theognis seemed to think that the jar contained blessings rather than evils. He said foolish men, not Pandora, opened the jar and all the blessings were lost forever. Hope did remained, and it promised all of us the good things that escaped from the box.
We tend to accentuate the negative and play down the positive. The ancient world was filled with negative thoughts about the nature of man, but within the cracks of those thoughts buds of positive energy kept blooming. Our myths are a foundation for our beliefs, and our belief in the nature of sexuality is our mark of distinction. Sexuality is a strong energy so it becomes the focal point for beliefs about the self. Sexuality is filled with evil according to some religions, but the evil we perceive within it is rooted in myths not in the psyche of man.
The Greeks liked to use myths to create a sense of good and evil, and the gods were the catalyst for these highly creative stories. Fear was and still is a control mechanism. Our beliefs about sexuality and evil reach into the depths of time and we are convinced that the self is evil. Weeding out thoughts of evil is an internal process; evil sits on the banks of time and muddies the water of goodness. Our association with good is based on merit, which means clearing the murky mud of negativity using external means rather than introspection, and that can be a difficult task.
We are scared to explore the inner territory of time. Fear is the captain of most of our inner exploration, and insanity seems to be the first mate. We put a lid on one aspect of consciousness, and only allow a trickle from the stream of awareness into our closed end thinking process. In that closed reality we believe it’s safe to make nuclear bomb for protection, but we discount our ability to use dreams as a method of manipulating daily life. We accept disasters, viruses, and wars, but we belief it is not right to be consciously aware of other portions of the self that have the potential to solve those issues.
New impulses are suggesting that we lift the lid from our normal consciousness, which is filled with myths and the distorted perceptions about a ribbon of evil that waits to tie us in a bow of despair. We are expanding and bringing other levels of reality into focus, and these realities can be inherently believed and utilized just like our ancient myths and rituals.
the others have left and gone to Olympus.
Trust, a mighty god has gone, Restraint has gone from men,
and the Graces, my friend, have abandoned the earth.
Men’s judicial oaths are no longer to be trusted, nor does anyone
revere the immortal gods; the race of pious men has perished and
men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of piety.
Theognis of Megara, the 6th century BC elegiac poet, wrote those thoughts to dispel the myth that Pandora’s Box only contained all the evils in the world and all that was left in that jar-box was Hope. Theognis seemed to think that the jar contained blessings rather than evils. He said foolish men, not Pandora, opened the jar and all the blessings were lost forever. Hope did remained, and it promised all of us the good things that escaped from the box.
We tend to accentuate the negative and play down the positive. The ancient world was filled with negative thoughts about the nature of man, but within the cracks of those thoughts buds of positive energy kept blooming. Our myths are a foundation for our beliefs, and our belief in the nature of sexuality is our mark of distinction. Sexuality is a strong energy so it becomes the focal point for beliefs about the self. Sexuality is filled with evil according to some religions, but the evil we perceive within it is rooted in myths not in the psyche of man.
The Greeks liked to use myths to create a sense of good and evil, and the gods were the catalyst for these highly creative stories. Fear was and still is a control mechanism. Our beliefs about sexuality and evil reach into the depths of time and we are convinced that the self is evil. Weeding out thoughts of evil is an internal process; evil sits on the banks of time and muddies the water of goodness. Our association with good is based on merit, which means clearing the murky mud of negativity using external means rather than introspection, and that can be a difficult task.
We are scared to explore the inner territory of time. Fear is the captain of most of our inner exploration, and insanity seems to be the first mate. We put a lid on one aspect of consciousness, and only allow a trickle from the stream of awareness into our closed end thinking process. In that closed reality we believe it’s safe to make nuclear bomb for protection, but we discount our ability to use dreams as a method of manipulating daily life. We accept disasters, viruses, and wars, but we belief it is not right to be consciously aware of other portions of the self that have the potential to solve those issues.
New impulses are suggesting that we lift the lid from our normal consciousness, which is filled with myths and the distorted perceptions about a ribbon of evil that waits to tie us in a bow of despair. We are expanding and bringing other levels of reality into focus, and these realities can be inherently believed and utilized just like our ancient myths and rituals.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
A Little About The Book and Down Syndrome
A Natural Choice
It may be normal, darling, but I’d rather be natural.
Truman Capote wrote that thought in his book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The difference between normal and natural could be a matter of debate, but physical life is measured in normal not naturals, especially when it comes to human expression.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention one in every thirty-three babies is born with some sort of birth defect. The CDC also reports 1 in every 691 babies is born with Down syndrome. That means almost 7,000 babies are born every year with Trisomy 21, and we label them Down syndrome babies.
Over 350,000 people in the Unites States are living with Down syndrome and since they don’t fit into the norm we call ‘acceptable’ we label them disabled. Disabled means a lot of things. Webster’s dictionary defines it as a condition that weakens and destroys or it renders people legally incapable. The World English Dictionary defines it as lacking one or more physical powers that allows people to walk or coordinate movements as well as perform certain functions that require average mental performance.
The word disabled automatically sends a red flag up the pole of awareness in the minds of some folks. People are judged for what they can’t do rather than what they are capable of doing. Disabled people are put in a box of sympathy and wrapped with a bow of pity. Our sensitive emotions overrule natural common sense. We isolate them and build walls around them that only innately sensitive and natural people penetrate.
People living with different physical challenges are feared; we are not educated to understand why these brave souls chose to experience physical life in a truly unique way. Just like the masses, which we call normal, they are connected to a non-physical stream of consciousness that every religion describes in a plethora of ways. But, that connection becomes distorted by our egos that separate the self from the inner self.
In that natural inner stream there are no words that describe choices made by individual consciousness. There is only an assortment of connected aspects of consciousness that have the desire to express their awareness physically. When that awareness is manifested physically, we experience it in the massive explosion of unique forms that cover the surface of the planet.
All we have to do is look around us at this natural expression and we become aware that our consciousness is more than we believe it is. Some experts are discovering that Down syndrome, and other physical challenges are subjective choices, and those choices are manifested objectively.
Other scholars believe that children and adults living with Down syndrome or other disabilities come into this physical world to teach us something we forgot about ourselves when the ego took control and said we are a ‘normal,’ and a separated consciousness. Everyone who spends time around a person living with Down syndrome and other challenges experiences an aspect of innate knowing that is hard to ignore. That knowing is natural and it is dipped in complete love.
But, why would a person choose to live with Down syndrome or other issues in a world that offers material luxuries to those that conform mentally and physically to our judgmental systems? The answer may lie in what Quantum physics is unraveling in this world of multiverses. We all may live separate but connected lives in more than one reality at a time, although that fact is hard to swallow when our ridged beliefs about religion and science are reinforced by our own ignorance.
Physicists explain that we actually do live in more than one reality at a time, and in each of those realities we appear and act differently. We are able and generally do communicate with these other selves, but we are trained to ignore the messages since we believe there is only one of us experiencing physical life.
The notion that children and adults living with Down syndrome and other disabilities may be closer and more connected to these counterparts and realities is gaining credence in the distorted world of normal. When disabled children and adults tune out the normal world they may be communicating with those counterparts with a portion of the mind that may not be registering in the normal brain since it’s overloaded with the desire for physical worth.
Some researchers believe that people living with disabilities are much more aware of their multiplicity, but can’t express it physically. They do however express that fact by their actions. There is a bubble of love surrounding disabled children and adults, and every time we interact with them tiny bubbles of that love permeate our own separatism so we can sense the connection we have with them and with all form of consciousness.
The nature of the self is like the nature of all other forms of consciousness. The self is non-physical energy before it becomes physical. Disabled humans don’t move as far away from that energy, but normal people do.
The New Zealand author Vincent O’Sullivan in his story, The Next Room summed up our normal actions this way:
If you’re different from the rest of the flock, they bite you.
What we fail to realize is we’re disabling another aspect of our self when we label another member of our flock as incapable. In more ways than one, they are much more capable than we remember, and innately more competent than our normal inflated egos.
My book, Living Behind The Beauty Shop is about a Middle Tennessee boy who understands that greater reality where the psyche is able to communicate with the self that is experiencing other dimensions. The boy, Mase Russell, is living with Down syndrome. He is considered disabled in our normal reality, but he is far more enabled and connected than we are to that stream of consciousness that flows through all of us. He is able to communicate with other aspects of the self while dreaming, and he accepts his dream experiences as real. He is even able to remember those experiences and express them in his own way. His family begins to sense that his disability is a challenging gift not a sentence of suffering.
His family is like any other family. They experience the typical dramas that we all create in our waking reality. His grandfather, Warren Russell is a wealthy business man that lives on his family’s 1000 acre farm in Leipers Fork, Tennessee. The farm was a land grant given to his triple great-grandfather after the American Revolution. Warren and his wife Claire considered the farm their right of passage until they both experienced a near-death experience on a trip to Florida in their Cessna. After the accident, Warren decides to donate 500 acres to a non-profit foundation he formed called Perception Farms. Perception Farms becomes a self-sufficient community off the grid that gives the homeless a fresh start.
His daughter Cindy realizes that she’s gay after she marries her college sweetheart. She returns home from California and finds an ex-nun, who is now called Margie, at one of Perception Farm’s fundraisers. Margie discovered her true sexuality when she was in the convent. They become partners and decide to have a child using the sperm of their friend Alan Sutton, a well educated and athletic individual who works in the shoe business. Baby Mase is born with DS and the story follows his life and the experiences of the family as he becomes an accomplished poet and artist.
Years later, Mase finds Mischa Eddington who is another Down syndrome artist, in a local college art class, and they develop a close relationship. Together they watch members of the family experience the pains of getting older. They offer the family another perspective about that aging process. The family realizes that Mase and Mischa chose to be born with Down syndrome in order to help them as well as the others that are familiar with them see that there are no boundaries or limits in physical life unless we put them there through our beliefs and perceptions. They show us that other realities are just as real as our waking reality.
When we consider the fact that consciousness does not have a beginning or an end in the non-physical world we can better understand that the people we call disabled are actually teachers who choose to experience life in extraordinary ways. They teach us that putting limits, judgments, and sterilized beliefs in action is the art of separating one aspect of the self from other elements of the psyche.
When that happens, we find ourselves living in the beauty shop of life, which is filled with exterior self serving nothingness. Mase and Mischa live behind the beauty shop of life and they try to share and explain that aspect of life through their thoughts and deeds. They appreciate life as they know it and the life that all of us believe is only available through death. They show us that all there is, in this physical world, is the now and the eternal love that surrounds it.
It may be normal, darling, but I’d rather be natural.
Truman Capote wrote that thought in his book, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The difference between normal and natural could be a matter of debate, but physical life is measured in normal not naturals, especially when it comes to human expression.
According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention one in every thirty-three babies is born with some sort of birth defect. The CDC also reports 1 in every 691 babies is born with Down syndrome. That means almost 7,000 babies are born every year with Trisomy 21, and we label them Down syndrome babies.
Over 350,000 people in the Unites States are living with Down syndrome and since they don’t fit into the norm we call ‘acceptable’ we label them disabled. Disabled means a lot of things. Webster’s dictionary defines it as a condition that weakens and destroys or it renders people legally incapable. The World English Dictionary defines it as lacking one or more physical powers that allows people to walk or coordinate movements as well as perform certain functions that require average mental performance.
The word disabled automatically sends a red flag up the pole of awareness in the minds of some folks. People are judged for what they can’t do rather than what they are capable of doing. Disabled people are put in a box of sympathy and wrapped with a bow of pity. Our sensitive emotions overrule natural common sense. We isolate them and build walls around them that only innately sensitive and natural people penetrate.
People living with different physical challenges are feared; we are not educated to understand why these brave souls chose to experience physical life in a truly unique way. Just like the masses, which we call normal, they are connected to a non-physical stream of consciousness that every religion describes in a plethora of ways. But, that connection becomes distorted by our egos that separate the self from the inner self.
In that natural inner stream there are no words that describe choices made by individual consciousness. There is only an assortment of connected aspects of consciousness that have the desire to express their awareness physically. When that awareness is manifested physically, we experience it in the massive explosion of unique forms that cover the surface of the planet.
All we have to do is look around us at this natural expression and we become aware that our consciousness is more than we believe it is. Some experts are discovering that Down syndrome, and other physical challenges are subjective choices, and those choices are manifested objectively.
Other scholars believe that children and adults living with Down syndrome or other disabilities come into this physical world to teach us something we forgot about ourselves when the ego took control and said we are a ‘normal,’ and a separated consciousness. Everyone who spends time around a person living with Down syndrome and other challenges experiences an aspect of innate knowing that is hard to ignore. That knowing is natural and it is dipped in complete love.
But, why would a person choose to live with Down syndrome or other issues in a world that offers material luxuries to those that conform mentally and physically to our judgmental systems? The answer may lie in what Quantum physics is unraveling in this world of multiverses. We all may live separate but connected lives in more than one reality at a time, although that fact is hard to swallow when our ridged beliefs about religion and science are reinforced by our own ignorance.
Physicists explain that we actually do live in more than one reality at a time, and in each of those realities we appear and act differently. We are able and generally do communicate with these other selves, but we are trained to ignore the messages since we believe there is only one of us experiencing physical life.
The notion that children and adults living with Down syndrome and other disabilities may be closer and more connected to these counterparts and realities is gaining credence in the distorted world of normal. When disabled children and adults tune out the normal world they may be communicating with those counterparts with a portion of the mind that may not be registering in the normal brain since it’s overloaded with the desire for physical worth.
Some researchers believe that people living with disabilities are much more aware of their multiplicity, but can’t express it physically. They do however express that fact by their actions. There is a bubble of love surrounding disabled children and adults, and every time we interact with them tiny bubbles of that love permeate our own separatism so we can sense the connection we have with them and with all form of consciousness.
The nature of the self is like the nature of all other forms of consciousness. The self is non-physical energy before it becomes physical. Disabled humans don’t move as far away from that energy, but normal people do.
The New Zealand author Vincent O’Sullivan in his story, The Next Room summed up our normal actions this way:
If you’re different from the rest of the flock, they bite you.
What we fail to realize is we’re disabling another aspect of our self when we label another member of our flock as incapable. In more ways than one, they are much more capable than we remember, and innately more competent than our normal inflated egos.
My book, Living Behind The Beauty Shop is about a Middle Tennessee boy who understands that greater reality where the psyche is able to communicate with the self that is experiencing other dimensions. The boy, Mase Russell, is living with Down syndrome. He is considered disabled in our normal reality, but he is far more enabled and connected than we are to that stream of consciousness that flows through all of us. He is able to communicate with other aspects of the self while dreaming, and he accepts his dream experiences as real. He is even able to remember those experiences and express them in his own way. His family begins to sense that his disability is a challenging gift not a sentence of suffering.
His family is like any other family. They experience the typical dramas that we all create in our waking reality. His grandfather, Warren Russell is a wealthy business man that lives on his family’s 1000 acre farm in Leipers Fork, Tennessee. The farm was a land grant given to his triple great-grandfather after the American Revolution. Warren and his wife Claire considered the farm their right of passage until they both experienced a near-death experience on a trip to Florida in their Cessna. After the accident, Warren decides to donate 500 acres to a non-profit foundation he formed called Perception Farms. Perception Farms becomes a self-sufficient community off the grid that gives the homeless a fresh start.
His daughter Cindy realizes that she’s gay after she marries her college sweetheart. She returns home from California and finds an ex-nun, who is now called Margie, at one of Perception Farm’s fundraisers. Margie discovered her true sexuality when she was in the convent. They become partners and decide to have a child using the sperm of their friend Alan Sutton, a well educated and athletic individual who works in the shoe business. Baby Mase is born with DS and the story follows his life and the experiences of the family as he becomes an accomplished poet and artist.
Years later, Mase finds Mischa Eddington who is another Down syndrome artist, in a local college art class, and they develop a close relationship. Together they watch members of the family experience the pains of getting older. They offer the family another perspective about that aging process. The family realizes that Mase and Mischa chose to be born with Down syndrome in order to help them as well as the others that are familiar with them see that there are no boundaries or limits in physical life unless we put them there through our beliefs and perceptions. They show us that other realities are just as real as our waking reality.
When we consider the fact that consciousness does not have a beginning or an end in the non-physical world we can better understand that the people we call disabled are actually teachers who choose to experience life in extraordinary ways. They teach us that putting limits, judgments, and sterilized beliefs in action is the art of separating one aspect of the self from other elements of the psyche.
When that happens, we find ourselves living in the beauty shop of life, which is filled with exterior self serving nothingness. Mase and Mischa live behind the beauty shop of life and they try to share and explain that aspect of life through their thoughts and deeds. They appreciate life as they know it and the life that all of us believe is only available through death. They show us that all there is, in this physical world, is the now and the eternal love that surrounds it.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Down syndrome Study
This week I'll be sharing thoughts about Down syndrome and my book. I'll return to posts about the nature of consciousness the week of the 10th.
Down syndrome Study Finds Families Are Happy
Having a child with Down syndrome may come as a surprise, but it’s a good experience, families are reporting in a trio of new surveys.
Researchers surveyed more than 3,000 family members and people with the chromosomal disorder across the country for what’s believed to be one of the largest looks at life with Down syndrome. The findings, which will be published in three articles in the October issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics, offer a rosy picture.
The vast majority of parents said they have a more positive outlook on life because of their child with Down syndrome. And, nearly 90 percent of siblings indicated that they feel like they are better people because of their brother or sister with the developmental disability.
Nearly all of the survey respondents with Down syndrome said they were happy with their lives, themselves and their appearance. Only 4 percent said they felt sad about their life.
“As international discussion is mounting over the new prenatal tests, family members have now had their say about life with Down syndrome,” said Susan Levine from the disability nonprofit Family Resource Associates, who worked on the study alongside researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “And, more importantly, the people with Down syndrome themselves have clearly stated that they consider their lives valuable.”
Researchers did acknowledge that the survey population could be a slightly biased one since all respondents came from families that are members of nonprofit Down syndrome groups. Nonetheless, they say the findings are valuable since they offer the “largest and most comprehensive portrait of life with Down syndrome to date.”
Original article was written By Shaun Heasley for Disability Scoop (www.disabilityscoop.com) on September 22,2011.
Down syndrome Study Finds Families Are Happy
Having a child with Down syndrome may come as a surprise, but it’s a good experience, families are reporting in a trio of new surveys.
Researchers surveyed more than 3,000 family members and people with the chromosomal disorder across the country for what’s believed to be one of the largest looks at life with Down syndrome. The findings, which will be published in three articles in the October issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics, offer a rosy picture.
The vast majority of parents said they have a more positive outlook on life because of their child with Down syndrome. And, nearly 90 percent of siblings indicated that they feel like they are better people because of their brother or sister with the developmental disability.
Nearly all of the survey respondents with Down syndrome said they were happy with their lives, themselves and their appearance. Only 4 percent said they felt sad about their life.
“As international discussion is mounting over the new prenatal tests, family members have now had their say about life with Down syndrome,” said Susan Levine from the disability nonprofit Family Resource Associates, who worked on the study alongside researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “And, more importantly, the people with Down syndrome themselves have clearly stated that they consider their lives valuable.”
Researchers did acknowledge that the survey population could be a slightly biased one since all respondents came from families that are members of nonprofit Down syndrome groups. Nonetheless, they say the findings are valuable since they offer the “largest and most comprehensive portrait of life with Down syndrome to date.”
Original article was written By Shaun Heasley for Disability Scoop (www.disabilityscoop.com) on September 22,2011.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Shackles Of Fallen Men
It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but meditatively, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorted lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us.
Nature, art, persons, letters, religion,—objects, successfully tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait on his guest at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shoppers or barkeepers in hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threaten-able and insult-able in us.
Tis the same with idolatries. People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name hero or saint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1844 essay, Experience opens a door of awareness and the light of self responsibility comes crashing through our colored lenses of ritualistic beliefs and judgmental tomfoolery. We are the creators of our reality not the Fallen men who believed that some perverse God picks and chooses good over evil. We do the picking and we create the evil as well as the good. As Emerson mentions God is an idea. God is a thought that serves our purpose. We measure God in a world of measurability, but there is nothing to measure. Our religious beliefs create a God worthy to kill for so we battle to overcome the our own creations. We believe we must be disciplined and reconfigured into a ritualistic fiend in order to be saved.
We are never lost. We are never disconnected from the portion of the conscious mind that is not connected to the brain. That portion of the self may not be obvious, but it exists. That portion exists in a creative brew that overflows with energy.
Beneath our usual awareness the unconscious mind’s eye sees a horizon where the self dances without believing in the shackles of Fallen Men.
Nature, art, persons, letters, religion,—objects, successfully tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast. The street is full of humiliations to the proud. As the fop contrived to dress his bailiffs in his livery, and make them wait on his guest at table, so the chagrins which the bad heart gives off as bubbles, at once take form as ladies and gentlemen in the street, shoppers or barkeepers in hotels, and threaten or insult whatever is threaten-able and insult-able in us.
Tis the same with idolatries. People forget that it is the eye which makes the horizon, and the rounding mind’s eye which makes this or that man a type or representative of humanity with the name hero or saint.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1844 essay, Experience opens a door of awareness and the light of self responsibility comes crashing through our colored lenses of ritualistic beliefs and judgmental tomfoolery. We are the creators of our reality not the Fallen men who believed that some perverse God picks and chooses good over evil. We do the picking and we create the evil as well as the good. As Emerson mentions God is an idea. God is a thought that serves our purpose. We measure God in a world of measurability, but there is nothing to measure. Our religious beliefs create a God worthy to kill for so we battle to overcome the our own creations. We believe we must be disciplined and reconfigured into a ritualistic fiend in order to be saved.
We are never lost. We are never disconnected from the portion of the conscious mind that is not connected to the brain. That portion of the self may not be obvious, but it exists. That portion exists in a creative brew that overflows with energy.
Beneath our usual awareness the unconscious mind’s eye sees a horizon where the self dances without believing in the shackles of Fallen Men.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Psychic Patterns
Nature is full of a sublime family likeness throughout her works; and delights in startling us with resemblances in the most unexpected quarters. I have seen the head of an old sachem of the forest, which at once reminded the eye of a bald mountain summit, and the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art. And there are compositions of the same strain to be found in the books of all age
If anyone will but take pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, History reminds us that nature manifests physically in order to teach us something about the self. The consciousness of nature has incredible beauty and an awesome imagination that keeps creating new examples of what our inner world is like. It shows us our multiplicity as well as our innate beauty. The delicacy, strength, and expansion found in nature are expressions of a quality of consciousness that has the desire to be physical without restrictions.
When we are in touch with our psyche we experience direct knowledge. Direct knowledge is comprehension. In dreams we experience direct knowledge in a different way, and that way is much more similar to nature’s way of expressing the self.But our indirect knowledge may or may not lead to physical comprehension. The psyche functions using associative processes and those associations are tied together with emotional experiences, which defy time. Nature does not express emotion the way we do physically, but it does express it through an innate associative process. In our psychic areas all patterns of knowledge, civilizations, cultures, sciences, religions, personal and mass accomplishments, and arts and technologies exist in a timeless emotional pattern that run counter to many of our accepted core beliefs so they may appear super-normal to us.
At birth there is a pattern for a complete adult body in place, and in nature a similar pattern exists. The private psyche is aware of that pattern so there are certain probabilities and inclinations present in our biological structure, which are triggered by our intents and desires. We usually believe that this information comes from outside of the self, but just like an rose or a hibiscus, our beauty comes from the psychic patterns that express themselves as they move through different regions of consciousness. We are more like that young dogwood sapling, or the blooming lotus than we realize, and we are much more transparent than amoebas that enjoy the essence of a single cell.
If anyone will but take pains to observe the variety of actions to which he is equally inclined in certain moods of mind, and those to which he is averse, he will see how deep is the chain of affinity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, History reminds us that nature manifests physically in order to teach us something about the self. The consciousness of nature has incredible beauty and an awesome imagination that keeps creating new examples of what our inner world is like. It shows us our multiplicity as well as our innate beauty. The delicacy, strength, and expansion found in nature are expressions of a quality of consciousness that has the desire to be physical without restrictions.
When we are in touch with our psyche we experience direct knowledge. Direct knowledge is comprehension. In dreams we experience direct knowledge in a different way, and that way is much more similar to nature’s way of expressing the self.But our indirect knowledge may or may not lead to physical comprehension. The psyche functions using associative processes and those associations are tied together with emotional experiences, which defy time. Nature does not express emotion the way we do physically, but it does express it through an innate associative process. In our psychic areas all patterns of knowledge, civilizations, cultures, sciences, religions, personal and mass accomplishments, and arts and technologies exist in a timeless emotional pattern that run counter to many of our accepted core beliefs so they may appear super-normal to us.
At birth there is a pattern for a complete adult body in place, and in nature a similar pattern exists. The private psyche is aware of that pattern so there are certain probabilities and inclinations present in our biological structure, which are triggered by our intents and desires. We usually believe that this information comes from outside of the self, but just like an rose or a hibiscus, our beauty comes from the psychic patterns that express themselves as they move through different regions of consciousness. We are more like that young dogwood sapling, or the blooming lotus than we realize, and we are much more transparent than amoebas that enjoy the essence of a single cell.
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