Visiting Connor in Montreal

Connor doing what (one of this things) he does best.

Connor wrote this article in response to "Sharp-eyed youth"...{Article: 31/05/04} from the Calgary Herald.

"It's just that the NDP's idealized view of society continues its historical resonances with the young, until they ultimately realize there's little filling beneath that flaky crust."

No doubt another informed secondhand summary of the experience of young voters who choose to support the NDP. Reading this wisdom brought home to me the difference between using words and knowing what words mean. For example, in the context of a CanWest newspaper "NDP's idealized view of society" refers to one's meager understanding and intentionally disorganized mass of uninvestigated "socialist" thinking, such as weighing the merits of neo-conservative tax schemes that aid the affluent free up more finance capital, against the gross facts of urban poverty and increasing material separation of the rich and the poor.

These ideas are labelled Socialist or idealizations of reality because sagacious older voters have decided that the present historical current of Canadian politics will not include substantive reforms to its fundamental structures and practices. This attitude is that of the defeated, those true conservatives who turn off younger voters from participating in the electoral process because they and their representatives ensure that managers and business people take up seats in Ottawa so as to perpetuate the status quo and the present lacklustre course. Conservatives in this country are angry about a Liberal-party culture of patronage and overspending because they weren't included in the fun or invited to the festivities in Quebec city or Montreal.

The "NDP's idealized view of society" includes a wide variety of sharp shifts in policy designed to change government. It is these proposals and admittedly earnest or partially untested thoughts that threaten our wise elders because they offer the necessary counternarrative to what has become reified as the realistic view of society so commonly understood by those unwilling to revisit and define the terms of political debate. In sum, this realistic view means that your parents speak for you and tell you what it is legitimate to expect as they set the limits of your vision. Conservative indeed.

Connor Houlihan.

A Little About Jung, Dreams and Other Inner Workings.

From A Dictionary of Dream Symbols by E. Ackroyd:

Broadly speaking, one might say there are two kinds of people in this world. The first is the ‘self-made’ type of person, or those who want to be self-made, whose sole and consuming ambition is directed towards worldly success. The second kind is those who want, not to make themselves, but to find themselves. Dream interpretation is probably going to appeal more to the second type of person than to the first. But dream interpretation is important for everyone….

The second broad category of persons….are the people who are ready for what Jung calls the ‘individualization’ process, the journey into themselves that will lead them to a wealth or wisdom and joy, and eventually to the core of themselves which some people call God, a realization of their oneness with Life or Nature, or the Transcendent.

(What you call this ultimate thing-how you name it- doesn’t much matter. In fact, insistence on this or that name is sheer dogmatism, the same sort of dogmatism that has at times poisoned any number of organized religions. Interestingly, Jung rejected all forms of institutionalized religions because – he said – they took the symbolic poetry of myths and hardened it into intellectual dogma, which then became a substitute for the actual experiences of reality that were the starting point of religion and its raison d’etre….)


They say dreams are the windows of the soul--take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.
Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

Me and my Oma: May she be blessed in the afterlife (May 27, 1919 - May 29, 2004) Take a look at my other Blog, "My Oma" dedicated to her memory.

MAKING YOUR OWN NATURAL INSECT REPELLENT

With all the big bad mosquitos out there carrying more and more disease we need to protect ourselves. Using DEET is very dangerous to your health and the environment. Try this simple alternative:

Herbalist Debra Nuzzi-St. Claire suggests combining the following essential oils to make a natural insect repellent:
1/2 ounce citronella oil
1/4 ounce lavender oil
1/8 ounce pennyroyal oil
1/8 ounce tea tree oil
1/8 ounce jojoba oil
Do not use this blend undiluted on your skin. Follow these instructions for diluting:
To make an insect repellent oil that can be used on your body, add 16 ounces of jojoba or almond oil to the base oil mixture and blend thoroughly. For an insect repellent spray, add 16 ounces of vodka to the base oil mixture, pour into a spray bottle, and shake before using.

OM. An important universal sound. I can't wait for the OM festival in June (solstice)!

Crystal Healing and Reiki. Taken at the RAW Peace festival in Toronto.

Ananandha is my Rainbow/Ancient name

A real Monet, owned by my friend Barry Joule 

Some Information About Health Alternatives:

Holistic Health
by Amandha Vollmer

An individual’s well being involves the person in whole. The basis of all disease is a lack of maintaining this wholeness (we can think also of it in terms of an imbalance), with the aim to bring the body and the mind into harmony through attention to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs.

There are many natural methods to health, far superior and beyond our modern day medical system, which primarily aims to suppress symptoms with expensive pharmaceuticals. The conventional system tends to overlook simpler roads to health, such as diet and mental health, opting instead for immediate drug therapy and surgery. Surely any logical being can see the problems with this system.

Natural medicine may seem new to many people, but in actuality, these are the first medicines and pre-dates the allopathic idea of the “magic bullet”. This is the seek and destroy mission of pills, which was born out of erroneous 16th century ideas, stating that disease was merely an increase in toxic material matter, hence blood letting, massive doses of mercury, and other barbaric practices from our historic doctors, a line that can be traced to modern day.

Our current alternatives which, out of necessity have been re-born and unearthed, are listed below with short definitions. This is by far, not complete in many ways, but will give the reader an idea of the vast methods available, so that we as a people can become empowered to find those methods which speak to us.

Vibrational Medicines: There is much we cannot see, but we know exists.
Reiki and Magnified Healing: The laying on of hands; the focus of love energy and higher vibrations from the hands to the chakras/auras of the body; intuitive healing; harnessing earth energy and universe energy; psychic empathy, the practitioner can feel the other persons pain and direct appropriate energy; balancing of the ch’i or the life force; balancing the chakras using intent and help with crystals. Dowsing: using a tool as an aid to psychic awareness of disease state/balance within chakras.
Naturopathic Medicine: Using knowledge of nature to heal the body, we are nature, not separate from it; various methods used: herbs allopathically (meaning: to reduce symptoms, similar to modern day medicine, except gentler), herbs energetically (i.e. Traditional Chinese Medicine, herbs used for synergistic properties, to balance ch’i, using herbs to direct the body to heal itself), acupuncture to generate/move the life force; Homeopathy: treating like with like in small, energetically potent substances, mimics disease state in the body to ‘convince’ the life force to cure patient quickly and efficiently.
Colour, Sound and Aroma Therapies: We only see colour because our eyes are able to translate the vibrational frequency. Using directed colour energy (from a projector; sitting in a specific coloured room; staring at a specific colour plate) to enhance mood, increase vibrations in the body to invoke own healing; sound therapy, chanting, music, affecting the body with certain vibrations to induce a health state in mind and body. Aromatherapy: using the vibrations of smell to invoke mental reaction, using the chemical properties of essential oils to aid the body in its cure
Meditation and Yoga
Silencing the mind to awake the “second attention”; to be aware of self and to self-correct behaviour; our actions have ripple effects, affecting others and returning to us (karma), to cease the mind’s chatter and connect with the subconscious, Transcendental Meditation: a method to produce healing alpha waves in the body (we create alpha waves when we sleep), another method to help tap in to the collective unconscious; Yoga: exercise to balance the body, learn proper breathing techniques, the yogic breath, stretching the body.

Thought Forms: Creating our Own Reality

Affirmations: Practice to create more positive states in the mind, a tool to aid in the creation of our own realities; our beliefs form our internal and external realities; the daily repetition of writing down what we wish to see materialized in the world (as practice)

How we think affects how we act. How we act, in turn, puts out energy which forms how others respond/react to us. Since we do not live in a vacuum, we soon realize that our actions form chains of events, in turn forming our reality as we see it. We therefore create our own realities through our beliefs and hence, actions.
It is then empowering to know that we can change our beliefs through our mind in order to change our current circumstances. We soon realize that we have choice in every action. Therefore we choose our own reality. We have every resource within us to find the answers and create a state of bliss and love within us and radiate this outward to every living thing.

We are more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. The new age, of which we are embarking, is the awareness/awakening of this knowledge, so that we can be responsible for ourselves and live in true spirituality. Spirituality is not religion. Spirituality is the knowledge which every person can access within themselves, to learn that we are all interconnected and divine. It is “know thyself” and through this we can open up areas of knowledge that we attribute to only to genius.
When we unlock/tap into this awareness, we realize that all humans are the same regardless of race, colour, or creed. Hence, there is no need for war, hatred, or jealousy.

Our thought forms can not only create our reality by our physical actions, but also by the power of our mind and the energy we send out. There is more and more scientific evidence, for those who require it, that this is so. This leads us to the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto who provides us with factual evidence, that human vibrational energy, thoughts, words, ideas and music, affect the molecular structure of water. To see the photos check out www.wellnessgoods.com/messages.asp.

Water, this marvelous substance comprises over seventy percent of a mature human body and covers the same amount of our planet. Water is the very source of all life on this planet, its quality and integrity are vitally important to all forms of life. The quality of our life is directly connected to the quality of our water.
Let us come gently into our awakening.