Shamanism and Plant Medicines (audio)

Xochitl, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; Daniel Pinchbeck, Ian Punnit (Coast to Coast)

Is reality real? Don't be so sure. Things are not what they seem. (nuestroclima)

Equations Reveal Rebellious Rhythms At The Heart Of Nature Physicists are using equations to reveal the hidden complexities of the human body. From the beating of our hearts to the ... Full article Synchronized Brain Waves Enable Rapid Learning

Read More at www.earthchangesmedia.com/ © Earth Changes Media

Daniel Pinchbeck attempts to explain

(C2C) Cybernaut Pinchbeck discusses his books Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into Contemporary Shamanism and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. He was on the air again on June 14, 2014 talking about our carbon-free future with simple George Noory.

• VIDEO: Levitation and the Hutchinson Effect: On the 6/27/03 show with Art Bell, inventor John Hutchison explains his "Hutchison Effect" that causes the "jellification" of metal and the levitation of objects.

Equations Reveal Nature's Rebel Rhythms - Synchronized Brain Waves and Rapid Learning

Topanga Earth Day 2014 (April 19-20)

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Moonbeam, TopangaEarthDay.org

Saving "the Natives" in California

Xochitl and Orchid Black (Native Sanctuary), Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

If WQ saves the world, that's great; if it can only save LA, it's a start (Carren Jao/kcet.org).

Wisdom Quarterly's native Tongva harvest: wild cucumber, mushrooms, manzanita sparkling cider, tubers, chard, and rosemary overflow from our foraging basket, Hahamongna (WQ).

  

Protecting California’s Native Flora since 1965

Wisdom!

The California Native Plant Society works hard to protect California's native plant heritage and preserve it for future generations. Our nearly 10,000 members promote native plant appreciation, research, education, and conservation through our five statewide programs and 34 regional chapters in California. More

Think of seven generations.

The California Native Plant Wiki is an information resource created by the Foundation to help gardeners with California native plants.
 
The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use and understanding of California's extraordinary flora. Consider becoming a member or donating to support this service.

Native home garden tour April 5-6, 10 am-5 pm, $15 (nativeplantgardentour.org)

• California Native Plant Week: April 12-20, 2014
• CNPS Workshop Calendar / Sponsored
• Chapter-Based Sampling Workshops
• Upcoming Chapter Council meetings

Across California, invasive plants damage wildlands

This tincture is a foot rub (Arroyo Sage/ASF)

Invasives displace native plants and wildlife, increase wildfires and floods, consume valuable water, degrade recreational opportunities, and destroy productive range and timber lands. Cal-IPC works with land managers, researchers, policy makers, and concerned citizens to protect the state from invasive plants. More

Healing (Garcia & Adams)

Native Sanctuary expresses Orchid Black’s vision of a restored web of life in California starting with unique plants, which are among the most beautiful and ignored features of the Golden State. As a garden designer offering native plant consulting, habitat creation, and sustainable design services in the greater Los Angeles area, Orchid Black writes and lectures about native plants, water-saving strategies, and sustainable gardening.

 

Meanwhile, on the other coast, The New York Botanical Garden is always blooming!

 

Cowboys and Indians

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The Buddhist practices of "Dream Yoga" could awaken everyone (Dr. Michael Katz)

 

Read excerpts

Of course, this world -- this Eden -- is not just a garden. It is made of more than mycelium, flowers, plants, vines, and trees. This is the karmic playground of humans, faeries (bhumi-devas), giants (yakkhas), trolls (kumbhandas), ghouls (petas), many visitors (akasha-devas), and worse (maras). 

So we have to learn to get along, even if there was a genocide, and no one is saying there was, except maybe historians. 

Native funeral scaffold (Karl Bodmer)

Those poor cowboys were almost wiped out as the trickster Injuns tried to cross their barb wired properties -- for which they had papers saying the land suddenly belonged to them. Maybe it was the way Redskins got in the way when red-blooded British expats, now calling this land their land, started a mass slaughter of the buffalo, replacing hearty, well adapted bison with needy bovines and scavenging porcines. Or who can forget the way they gave us those free blankets that time?

Expanse of rugged California flowers: desert senna and chaparral yucca in Western Mojave Desert (Amber Swanson/cnps.org)

We can dream

Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, James Valby (trans.), Dr. Michael Katz (ed.)

It has been nearly a decade since the publication of the first edition of Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light. Recently, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu proposed we enhance the original version with additional material from a profound and personal Dzogchen book he has been writing for years. It is a great honor to edit this material since no part of the new manuscript has previously been made public.

  

Pertinent material drawn from it has been translated by James Valby from the original Tibetan. It expands and deepens the first edition’s emphasis on specific exercises to develop awareness within the dream and sleep states.

Never too early for Midsummer Night's Dream

In the manuscript Chogyal Namkhai Norbu has included specific methods for training, transforming, dissolving, disordering, stabilizing, essentializing, holding, and reversing dreams. In addition, he has presented practices for maintaining one’s practice throughout all moments of the day and night. The revision also includes a practice to develop the illusory body, methods for transference of consciousness at the time of death, and profound clear light practices for developing contemplation. More

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Nirvana and psychedelics

Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, special thanks to Oliver Hockenhull

The Buddha smiling in stone (smiledesigners.co.in/osmanalar.girlshopes.com)

  

"Neurons to Nirvana"

Nirvana is a Sanskrit term (Pali nibbana). But the special meaning the Buddha gave to the word is confined to Buddhism. The word existed before the advent of Buddhism. The Buddha used it as a verb (action or occurrence), not as a noun (person, place, or thing). It means to liberate (moksha), the freedom following enlightenment (bodhi, "awakening").

Nirvana is also very technically called "the unconditioned element," indicating its special standing among all the myriad of conditioned (composite) elements that form heaps. The Buddha was taking particular aim at the illusion of "self" or "ego" that arises from clinging to the Five Aggregates (explained by Bhikkhu Bodhi).
 

Nirvana literally means "quenching" or "slaking" as of thirst or "blowing out" as of the painful fires of craving (tanha, literally "thirst"). The principal analogy spoken of is the "blowing out" of a dependently-originated candle flame.

 

In addition to "the end of suffering or disappointment," nirvana may also be defined technically as "the end of greed, hatred, and delusion." It is often confused, confounded, or misinterpreted with Brahminal/Hindu and even Mahayana notions of enlightenment as "pure or original consciousness."
 

It is in this sense that the makers of "Neurons to Nirvana" are using the term. Many ancient Indian philosophical/religious groups now loosely use the term nirvana, assigning to it their own definition. It is understood as being involved in yogic processes and may even be used as a synonym for the goal of Patanjali's "eight limbs" (ashtanga) of yoga, namely, moksha.
  

(zigzagzen.com

The makers of the film are understanding and placing the use of psychedelics in the arena of natural medicine, as ancient technologies of consciousness, as yogic and/or tantric practices.

Further information is available in the book ZigZag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, which provides a fuller discussion of the intersection of the two. The essay by Dokushô Villalba Sensei -- a Soto Zen master, the founder and spiritual director of the Spanish Soto Zen Buddhist Community and of the Luz Serena ("Serene Light") -- is particularly excellent.

 

Zig Zag Zen
[This book is] a treasure trove -- inspiring, frightening, powerful, funny, eye-opening, and a source of great wisdom on a subject that our society finds endlessly confusing. - Mark Epstein

"[It is] a must read for anyone who is concerned about the future of Buddhist practice." - Robert Thurman

"[It] touches all the high points... it is an important book." - Laura Huxley
 
"[It] challenges Western Buddhists to acknowledge their closeted psychedelic legacies, while confronting users with the troubling duality undermining any chemically dependent spiritual path." - Douglas Rushkoff

• READ NOW: FOREWORD by Stephen Batchelor, PREFACE by Huston Smith, INTRODUCTION by Allan Hunt Badiner.
• Edited by Allan Hunt Badiner; images edited by Alex Grey (30 color images, 240 pages). 

"Neurons to Nirvana" (video)

Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Pacifica, Los Angeles (KPFK.org), Berkeley (KPFA.org)

NEURONS TO NIRVANA: UNDERSTANDING PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINES looks at ancient medicinals, new molecules, interviews with researchers in neurochemistry, neurotheology, shamanism, and psychotherapy. Ayahuasca (daime, natema), LSD (acid), cannabis (marijuana), psilocybin (magic mushrooms), MDMA (ecstasy) are all potent tools for getting to know who we are, who we can be, and for healing the trauma of a society that is addicted to greed and consumerism. This DVD is being offered for a $120 support pledge to Pacifica Radio, the last free speech station (network) on the dial. 

This is a look at "ancient medicines" from researchers at universities such as John Hopkins, UCLA, and NYU. In this new age such a film can be powered by the people. See how astounding plants, alkaloids, and molecules can transform us and help liberate us from ignorance and repression. As a collective civilization and as individual persons, we can no longer afford to lose the lessons plant spirits (bhumi-devas) can reveal. "Neurons 2 Nirvana" dares to break the taboo surrounding ENTHEOGENS, psychedelics, and plant examining and revealing their potential to alleviate suffering and heal on a global scale.

Nirvana?

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

The Buddha reclining into final nirvana on a pyramid pillow, Thailand (Hezbunch/flickr)

 

Happy Hotei (Ericmichel_def/flickr.com)

The Sanskrit term nirvana is used here in its non-technical sense of "the best thing," ultimate bliss or unending happiness.

In fact, actual nirvana ("the end of all rebirth and suffering") cannot be brought about by any chemical (even exogenous DMT, the Spirit Molecule) but only by liberating-insight. Its realization comes about from the wisdom-and-compassion of a penetrating vision of things as they truly are: radically impermanent, impersonal, and unsatisfactory.

Be kind to your brain/mind/heart

This quickening is brought about -- not by chance, random epiphany, or drug experiences -- but through systematic meditative contemplation of the 12 links of Dependent Origination to bring about insight assisted by the deep serenity and purification that follow the meditative absorptions (zens, samadhis, dhyanas, or jhanas). 

 

Nirvana is much more than a blissful "trip." It is the joyful solution to all problems. Neurons, of course, are the physical base of our conscious experience, brain cells found throughout the gut, heart, and the mass of grey batter matter between the ears.

Marijuana versus Alcohol (radio)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kolhatkar, UprisingRadio.org

Alcoholic Homer Simpson tries a new "medicine." The moral of the story? Avoid booze, avoid pot, and learning to cope with stress is a beneficial habit to develop.

 
Which is worse, Weed or Alcohol?

Arrest photo: I'm not an alcoholic!

(Sept. 30, 2013) Uprising radio host Sonali Kolhatkar speaks to the lead author of a new book called Marijuana is Safer: So Why are We Driving People to Drink? If alcohol is worse, why are people pushed to resort to it and pressured to avoid a safer and more medicinal alternative? In the past year two states have legalized its recreational use. The financial infrastructure of legalization is in its infant stages with investors pouring in money and big banks agreeing to accept profits. Such steps were unthinkable a few years ago. Pot was thought far more dangerous as a vice than booze. The US is now closer than ever to legalizing cannabis. Even CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta recently changed his position on weed. Trying to overturn the legal ban on marijuana, activists and advocates have hit upon a winning formula: point out the fact that alcohol leads to far more public violence and that having the option to use marijuana instead could lead to a safer, less criminal society. Guest Steve Fox is Director of Government Relations at Marijuana Policy Project. AUDIO

Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, Mason Tvert

(AlterNet.org) A book explains how we are steering people away from cannabis and toward the use of a very harmful and deadly substance: alcohol. The following is an excerpt from the book: It’s Super Bowl Sunday and throughout the nation millions of Americans have stocked their shelves and refrigerators with alcohol for the big game. In living rooms across the country, guests will enjoy the libations and gawk at the humorous beer commercials sprinkled liberally throughout the telecast. Like the Fourth of July and fireworks, the Super Bowl and booze are an American tradition. There is no societal stigma associated with this excessive drinking. It is all part of the celebration. Like the old saying goes: “We don’t have a drinking problem. We drink. We get drunk. No problem.” More

DemocracyNow.org (Sept. 30, 2013)

 

Leading the legal fight against Government Surveillance

Sonali Kolhatkar

Cubicle criminality at the offices of the NSA

When I first met Reverend Rick Hoyt he said, “You don’t have to call me Reverend; just Rick is fine.” The First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles has taken a stand against the NSA surveillance program. The bespectacled and youthful pastor, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, certainly didn’t look like a conventional “man-of-God.” In fact, the Unitarian Universalist church to which Rick belongs is known for defying Christian theological convention. Rick’s home at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles also has a history of defying political convention. The church, according to Hoyt, has been a “fierce advocate for personal liberties.” Even before Edward Snowden became a household name, the First Unitarian Church of LA became a plaintiff named in a major lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) over privacy violations. Nineteen organizations have joined Hoyt’s church in an unusual coalition that includes the Marijuana legalization group, NORML, and gun rights groups like the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.

Fire Dog Lake: How Obama punishes Medical Marijuana patients

Troops swoop in on illegal growers (scpr.org)

(Aug. 22, 2013) Despite overwhelming support from the general public, significant backing from medical doctors, and even several prominent Republicans publicly acknowledging that cannabis has a legitimate medical use, the Obama administration officially insists it does not have one.The administration’s dodge when asked to explain this unpopular and scientifically unjustifiable position is to act as if it is a non-issue because they are not arresting medical marijuana patients. When Jessica Yellin asked why the administration refused to use its power to reschedule marijuana to make it legal for medical use, Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded: “the President and the administration believe that targeting individual marijuana users, especially those with serious illnesses and their caregivers, is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources.”

Cannabis is a safer plant? (hempsaves.net)

The administration pretends that since they are not arresting patients, rescheduling marijuana does not matter. The possibility of arrest, however, is only a small part of how legitimate medical marijuana patients are significantly punished because the Obama administration refuses to use its power to remove marijuana from Schedule I (an assignment shared by the worst drugs of abuse with no redeeming quality whatsoever). Over the years the legal tentacles of the so-called "War on Drugs" have been allowed to touch all parts of federal policy, from gun rights to education. According to Hoyt, some of these groups are not ones his church normally works with and “aren’t necessarily politically sympathetic with.” But the right to personal privacy is a Libertarian position deeply held by both ends of the political spectrum. Complete interview:

Why are we really fighting a war in Afghanistan, DRUGS? (TheRealNews.com)

• VIDEO: "Herman's House" - 42 years in solitary
• (Sept. 30, 2013) Cancer-stricken "Angola 3" prisoner Herman Wallace has been given just days to live after being in solitary confinement for 42 years His crime? Robbery then being falsely accused of participating in the killing of a Louisiana ("the incarceration capital of the world") prison guard. His actual crime was forming one of the first Black Panther chapters in prison, making him a political prisoner, which the US claims not to have. More
•  Climate Change protests heat up

  

  Host Amy Goodman

  Last week, far out in the Arctic Ocean, the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise approached a Russian oil-drilling platform and launched a nonviolent protest, with several protesters scaling the platform. They wanted to draw attention to a dangerous precedent being set. The platform, the Prirazlomnaya, owned by Russian gas giant Gazprom, is the first to begin oil production in the dangerous, delicate, ice-filled waters of the Arctic.
   
  

  KPFA FM - Pacifica Radio, Berkeley

  KPFK FM - Pacifica, Los Angeles

  Alternative News Sources (endthelie.com)