I first learned about Transitions towns from a Yes!Magazine article in 2010. Now there is a conferene on the topic in Boulder. Interesting combination of local, prepared and green and spirit. (I got this article from Carolyn Baker's Speaking Trith to Power http://carolynbaker.net/

Michael

Boulder Prepares For Hard Times Ahead With Food Localization,
By Bob Wells
 

ORIGINAL HUFFINGTON POST

Like so many chirping miner’s canaries, about 400 people met last weekend in a Boulder church and hotel to talk about what might perhaps best be called “collapse preparedness.”

The occasion was a conference called “Our Local Economy in Transition: Exploring Food Localization as Economic Development,” organized by Transition Colorado, the local arm of the “Transition Towns” movement.

Heard of it? Well, it sprang up in England in 2005 and has since spawned more than 300 “Transition Towns” in North America, the UK, Europe and Australia.

The Transition people speak of “the three E’s,” an unhappy convergence of three global crises: environmental (climate change), energy (peak oil) and economic (real estate collapse, debt at all levels, global overcapacity and unemployment). Eschewing what they view as rampant denial of the fix we’re in, these particular people are preparing for it, mostly by going back to the land and preparing to help one another. (See “What is Transition?” for a nice overview.)

One focus of this preparation, and the focus of last weekend, is on massively expanding the production of food right here in Boulder County — on the assumption, alas, that things are going to get so rocky that planes and trucks bringing food from afar just may not be part of our future.

Said Michael Brownlee, a Transition Colorado leader and one of the conference’s organizers: “This local food and farming revolution is coming just in time because a great storm is coming on this planet. … We are living at the end of an era that most of us grew up with and that we have come to take for granted, but which will change quite radically in the next few years because our traditional, or conventional, food and farming system is already beginning to fail us.”

Enter the local farmer. According to figures presented at the conference, Boulder County now produces only about 2 percent of the almost $1 billion worth of food it consumes annually, and that’s despite having two nationally acclaimed Farmers’ Markets as well as numerous farmers selling produce locally, some through season-long community-supported agriculture (CSA) memberships. Arguably, there’s huge upside here — both for feeding the population and for bolstering the local economy (hence the inclusion of “economic development” in the conference’s title).

Some conference attendees were farmers and would-be farmers, eager to learn techniques for growing and selling their produce. Others were backyard gardeners wanting only to feed their loved ones. And some were people deeply involved with the slightly cult-like “transition movement.”

Their vision of the near-term future runs rather dark. Said Brownlee: “We’re learning that not only is our way of life unsustainable, but it’s now coming to an end. Of course not everybody is happy about having to make this inevitable transition, and many are doing their best to resist it.”

The weekend began with a Friday night screening at Unity of Boulder of a superb film, “The Economics of Happiness,” which poignantly contrasted the harmony and happiness that was present in a self-sustaining village of transplanted Tibetans, versus what happened when globalization hit their village, with the story expanded on with commentary from prominent experts about globalization’s effects on us all (view video trailer). Earnest small-group discussion among the 300-plus in attendance followed the film.

To kick off Saturday’s session at the Millennium Hotel, a leading figure of the collapse-preparedness movement, Nicole Foss, who writes prolifically under the pen-name Stoneleigh on the blog The Automatic Earth, gave a big-screen slide presentation followed by a video Q&A, magically Skyped-in from somewhere in Northern France. Foss sees sharp deflation (not inflation) in our economic future, and urged people to prepare for stormy days ahead by owning “hard goods” like hand tools, perhaps picking up some precious metals, and being wary of a banking system that “is functionally insolvent already.” After a barrage of charts and statistics, her concluding remarks:

“We’re facing a period of great change – first a shortage of money, and then of energy. Business as usual simply will not be an option. Our top-down life support systems…are failing even now. We need community-level systems to provide for essential goods and services for our future, and those local systems must be resilient. They must be tough. … And above all we need to resist the corrosive psychology of contraction and maintain our focus on positive, constructive activities for mutual benefit.”

(See a January 2011, 40-minute video of a talk by Nicole Foss from The Nation magazine’s excellent Video Nation series.)

Foss’s comments about mutual aid highlight the contrast between the transition movement’s viewpoint and the stereotyped “survivalist” ethic of retreating to Idaho and looking out for Number One, preferably at gunpoint. Transition’s flavor is all about cooperation: befriend your neighbors because you’re going to be needing one another.

Ensuing panel discussions included personal accounts by four people whose lives are already deeply influenced by transition planning, followed by another session with presentations by a foursome all of whom are working on mental and emotional preparation for turbulent days ahead.

For Carolyn Baker, the focus is on extending the transition movement into areas that she, a trained psychologist and former college teacher, calls “building your internal bunker.” To whit:

“People are increasingly discovering that awareness-raising, growing gardens, reskilling, storing food and water and so forth don’t help them cope emotionally and spiritually [with] the end of life as we know it.”

Baker is not alone among this group in referring to what’s coming our way soon as “collapse.” (See Baker’s detailed exploration of the psychological and emotional dimensions of what lies ahead in her just-published book, Navigating the Coming Chaos: A Handbook for Inner Transition,” and in her equally bluntly-titled earlier book, Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse.)

Panelist Teri Dillion, a psychologists who works with the Addiction Recovery Center in Boulder and in her own practice, Waking Heart Therapy, spoke of the addictive and compulsive behaviors by which people try to ward off anxiety and depression, and likened the addict’s avoidance mechanisms to society’s avoidance of the reality of what’s coming our way. In both cases, recovery is similar:

“It’s letting go of an old worldview, an old way of being that is destructive and unhealthy, greedy and selfish. And being willing to hang out in a middle zone where you’re kind of lost, you don’t know what’s going on, who you are or what to do. And then eventually moving into a new way of being that takes into account not only your own needs but the needs of the world around you and finds, ideally, some sort of sustainability in your behavior. … For a lot of people it’s a process of waking up to their own spiritual purpose, and to a sense of service.”

Panelist Margaret Emerson described how cultivating a contemplative relationship with nature can help people develop emotional resilience, something she discovered in a “peak experience” herself, and which inspired her to write a book, Contemplative Hiking Along the Colorado Front Range. Her book describes 26 hikes and suggested some heart-opening activities to go with each. Through hiking, said Emerson, “I realized that there is a source of beauty and spirituality that is accessible to me at any time.”

Michael Brownlee noted as he wrapped up the same panel: “There’s a revolution that’s beginning to unfold here. Right now it looks like local food, but that’s just the beginning. … We’re going to be going through all this together, whatever it looks like. We need to start now to build these bridges [between us].”

As the panel wound down, Margaret Emerson commented: “The people in this room represent the maybe 5 percent of the population that knows what’s going on.” Added Brownlee: “Or less.”

For more information

•Carolyn Baker will offer an online course, “Navigating the Coming Chaos of Unprecedented Transitions,” through the website Post Peak Living, for four weeks beginning in April.

•Teri Dillion is currently organizing a mindful transition group through her private practice Waking Heart Therapy, where she also works individually with people in transition.

•For more about Transition Colorado, browse their website.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2011 at 8:53 PM and has received 522 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Some interesting statistics on oil, food prices, water shortages and currency crisis in this article. Time to be prepared!

And if you haven' t seen the Truth to Power website it is worth checking out for other interesting articles. http://carolynbaker.net/

This entry was posted on March 8, 2011 at 8:37 PM and has received 410 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Lots of interesting info in this article on how US Big Brother is taking more control using high tech.

This entry was posted on March 8, 2011 at 3:16 PM and has received 414 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

If you wanted to know more background about the recent bills in VA and other states for alternative currencies to US Dollar  (I posted on last weeksee here if you missed it  ) and what to do about it you might find this webinar interesting.

I am in process of moving my assets, learning about wild foods and have a store of dry food to last a month. Even if there is a not a financial crisis wild weaather can knock out food access for several weeks. I encourage everyone to be prepared.

Michael

Interesting webcast on Sunday, March 20, 7-10 pm EST.....costs $19 before March 11 ($29 after).   Janice

http://www.naturalnews.com/z031548_financial_preparedness.html

Financial preparedness webcast event announced by Health Ranger, Robert Scott Bell

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) NaturalNews editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, is collaborating with radio host Robert Scott Bell to host a live webcast event on Sunday, March 20, to bring NaturalNews readers a collection of economic preparedness strategies. "The global economic storm is approaching," explained Adams. "And many people do not know the simple but extremely important strategies for preparing for it and protecting yourself from it. Our webcast event aims to teach people how to financially and economically prepare for the storm that's fast approaching."

The webcast is a 3-hour audio event with a live chat room and downloadable "action notes." Mike Adams and Robert Scott Bell will present a thoroughly researched and well-documented action plan for "economic preparedness" designed to help insulate people from the coming economic storm.

Many people are unaware of some of the simple things they can do right now to protect themselves. For example, nearly all Americans currently hold their checking and savings accounts in U.S. dollars. The thought of holding their savings in non-U.S. currencies has never occurred to most people. During the webcast, Mike Adams will reveal a simple way to hold assets in non-U.S. currencies using an FDIC-insured bank located right in the United States! There's nothing illegal or illicit about it. It's just a perfectly legal banking option that virtually no one knows about.

Beyond that, there is the question of whether banks are a safe place to hold money at all. That, too, will be discussed in detail, along with diversification strategies to help keep you financially safe even if the entire fractional reserve global banking system goes under.

The event is called Be Prepared, Not Scared! - Series 1 - Economic Survival.

For full details on what's covered in the webcast event, visit:
www.NaturalNews.com/EconomicSurviva...

What's ahead in 2011, 2012 and beyond

This "Be Prepared, Not Scared!" event was organized by Adams and Bell based on the widespread recognition that the current economic climate of the world is simply unsustainable. With riots and revolutions taking place throughout the Middle East, and even U.S. workers nearly revolting against the state in places like Madison, Wisconsin, Adams and Bell realized time was growing short for people to prepare for things like:

• Widespread job, salary and entitlement cuts
• A possible collapse (rapid value deflation) of the U.S. dollar
• An increase in financial desperation among the public
• Skyrocketing prices of gold and silver
• The possibility of government price controls on food
• The coming financial collapse of cities, states and nations

Most people are simply not yet prepared to protect themselves from these events which now seem increasingly realistic with each passing day.

"A typical American who follows the advice of President Obama or any mainstream media source will likely find themselves penniless in a dollar collapse scenario," explained Mike Adams. "Most people have bet their lives on the dollar or whatever their local currency happens to be. Very few people have taken the simple but necessary steps to insulate themselves from the financial storm and outbreaks of street violence that will undoubtedly occur in an economic collapse scenario," Adams explained. He points to Egypt, Libya, Iran and China as other examples of the rising storm of public discontent due, in large part, to failed economic policies and the global debt Ponzi scheme.

But the event is not focused on fear -- it's focused on solutions. That's why it's called "Be Prepared, Not Scared!" It isn't about creating fear in people but rather about creating confidence in the ability to face the unknown future with a sense of security. "This is about looking ahead at what might happen in our world and taking prudent steps right now to be better prepared for economic turmoil," explained Robert Scott Bell.

Learn more on the event announcement page at:
www.NaturalNews.com/EconomicSurviva...

Some of the financial preparedness strategies that will be unveiled during the live event include:

• What's likely to happen in the first 7 days following a global banking collapse.
• The inevitable collapse of Medicare and Social Security.
• What items you can acquire right now that are "more valuable than gold".
• How to survive and even thrive in a barter economy.
• Which skills will keep you employed in a deep economic depression.
• Why government price controls will lead to widespread food shortages.
• Ten things you should stop purchasing right now, and ten other things you should start buying instead.

The live webcast event promises to deliver considerably more information, too, in a practical, action-oriented format that's easy for people to follow.

Preparedness is smart to follow and easy to learn

While neither Adams nor Bell are licensed financial advisors, they are veterans of the preparedness movement ("preppers"), and they both have studied and practiced the principles of intelligent preparedness for more than fifteen years. The event does not offer personal financial or investment advice. Rather, it provides a set of uncensored, well-researched and non-traditional strategies for economic survival when the economic storm strikes.

Strategies of financial preparedness are rarely discussed in the mainstream media or even in regular social circles because nobody wants to admit the current system of runaway global debt is now approaching a catastrophic collapse.

"Many people are talking about the likelihood of a significant economic meltdown. But no one is talking realistically about what that meltdown might entail. I think that is partly because it is too scary to contemplate, partly because no one wants it to happen. I believe we will see an economic reset on a global scale. The current levels of insolvency among Westernized nations are unsustainable. We will see a reset that dissolves the rules currently governing international economics and forces a complete economic and social restructuring on the planet." - Damon Vickers, author, The Day After the Dollar Crashes.

"America is on the brink of financial collapse. Decades of political overpromising and underfunding have created a wave of debt that could swamp our already feeble economy." - Tom Woods, author, Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse.

Attendance is strictly limited for this upcoming event because it is steamed live, in real time. It all begins Sunday, March 20 at 7pm Eastern / 4pm Pacific. International listeners are welcome to join, although most of the information and resources delivered in the event will cater to North Americans.

The event includes the ability to listen to the audio archive after the live broadcast so that you can hear it again or play the event for a friend or family member who also needs to learn about economic preparedness.

Learn more at this page:
www.NaturalNews.com/EconomicSurviva...

In the mean time, be safe! Invest widely. And don't put all your eggs in one basket... especially if that basket is the U.S. dollar.

This entry was posted on March 4, 2011 at 12:10 AM and has received 822 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This resonates with me - we experience what we believe. I saw a Joe Dispensa (sp?)video yesterday at Vicki's spiritual group on "Changing your mind" and how hard that can be do do when much of our habits are in the subconscious mind (aka body) and are "hardwired. Perhaps that is our job now - to clear the old habits and hardwiring

Michael

We only see what we believe... Experience creates belief, belief creates
thought, thought creates action (production of chemicals eg, peptides in the
body) which we interpret as a feeling. A thought combined with a feeling in the
body creates an internal experience. Experience validates belief, which in turn
creates a positive mind/body feedback system...

We then create external experiences to validate our beliefs and to cause the
production of more peptides (which are the molecules of our emotions), hence the
human drama of life patterning and addiction.

The re-creating of the past in the present is what becomes our perceived Œnormal
or usual¹, what we focus on. Simply, this is because the more we have a
particular experience the more a particular peptide is produced and the more our
bodies build cell receptors to receive the most frequently produced peptide from
the hypothalamus and from other areas of the body (Mastering the Art of
Observation, 2005).

The more cell receptors, the more we need to create experiences that cause our
body to produce more peptides to fit those cell receptors, this is the mind/body
emotional feedback system. This is the physical basis of addiction and of why
people perceive some things to be Œnormal¹ (its what we become used to
chemically in our bodies) and other things to not be normal and why focus on
particular things and not others.

In her book Molecules of Emotion Dr Candace Pert writes:

³Emotions are constantly regulating what we experience as ³reality². The
decisions about what sensory information travels to your brain and what gets
filtered out depends on what signals the receptors are receiving from the
peptides. There is a plethora of elegant neurophysiological data suggesting that
the nervous system is not capable of taking in everything, but can only scan the
outer world for material that it is prepared to find by virtue of its wiring
hookups, its own internal patterns, and its past experience. The superior
colliculus in the midbrain, another nodal point of neuropeptide receptors,
controls the muscles that direct the eyeball, and effects which images are
permitted to fall on the retina and hence to be seen² (1997, pp. 147 & 148).

So what we are seeing and looking at in everyday life, and what controls the
steering of the eyeballs is governed by what peptides our cells are needing, or
in other words what emotional state we are addicted to. Hence, we will
only see what we believe... Andrew

This entry was posted on March 2, 2011 at 1:54 PM and has received 480 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I liked this. I have been working on eliminating "I will miss you" from
my vocabulary and instead focus on what is here now. Missing is an
emotion of lack for me and I chose to focus on what I do have.
love
M/M

[email protected] wrote:

> A reply from some time ago…
>
> --------------------------------------
>
> Your addiction to your partner...
>
> When you base your feeling of happiness on something outside of yourself
> it does not work ?- you will never feel fully fulfilled.
> Your feeling of well-being is dependant on something that is not under
> your control.
> If they were to die, or leave, you would have a choice: curl up and be
> depressed; find another partner - with whom to depend upon for happiness;
> be with yourself and feel what you are feeling.
>
> If you look to the past, or the future, you are not here.
> The depth of the state of well-being is in this moment. Only this moment.
> If you look back you are not here; if you look forward you are not here.
> Life/living is here now. Now.
> Missing something is not here; looking forward to something is not here.
> And there is only here. Missing something equals not being here; looking
> forward to something equals not being here.
>
> When your partner is not there, be where you are, in each moment.
> When the mind goes one nanosecond to the past, or future, you will not be
> here now, and you will feel missing. Be in each moment ? just each moment,
> and be with how it is, or take responsibility, and change it.
>
> Either be here, and feel what you are feeling, or go there, but not here
> complaining about not being there. Be responsible.
> If you have decided to be where you are, and your partner is not there (or
> even if they are there) just be with who you are, in that very moment.
>
> Do not listen to the addictive process of the mind. Be where you are,
> exactly as you are. If you are away, and missing them, and you have
> decided to stay away, just feel exactly what you are feeling, and accept
> it. 
> Don’t complain it is not intelligent.
>
> (In the film What the Bleep one scientist keeps saying that when you look
> at
> an object, say, a chair, a certain part of the brain is activated. If you
> are blindfolded and asked to think of the chair, the same part of the brain
> is activated in exactly the same way. So when we look ? do we see a chair,
> or our brain activation? When we see our partner, do we see out partner,
> or our brain simulation?)

This entry was posted on March 2, 2011 at 12:57 PM and has received 1008 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have read Druvalo's Flower of Life books (interesting info on human history and UFOs) and watch some of his videos - good stuff. Now a look at were we might be going and a reminder to clear. I have been clearing since I came to Bolivia. Just learned Ana B'Koach meditation and boy is it clearing me more!

This entry was posted on March 2, 2011 at 12:47 PM and has received 408 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

This could cause major food shortages in 2011...and provides yet another reason not to eat soy and corn products or animals grown on them. And to avoid GMO foods too.

Michael

This entry was posted on February 25, 2011 at 3:54 PM and has received 686 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

VA looking at alternative currencies. I heard Georgia, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have bills pending too. And there is our local B-Note in Baltimore ... (more back story on local currency in Baltimire in Reality Sandwich)

Feb. 23, 2011  "In what may one day be heralded as the formal proposal that proverbially started it all, the Commonwealth of Virginia introduced House Resolution No. 557 to establish a joint subcommittee to "to study whether the Commonwealth should adopt a currency to serve as an alternative to the currency distributed by the Federal Reserve System in the event of a major breakdown of the Federal Reserve System."
  lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HJ557

And interesting article on US Federal governemnt taking IRA/401Ks
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=8481
As the global economy prepares to spiral into hyperinflation and the collapse of the now-nearly-worthless dollar, the United States Government is going through a step by step process to steal your retirement. Their plan? To “protect” your hard-earned IRA and 401 money, leaving you with a “guaranteed” annuity paying you a whopping 3% – backed, you will be delighted and relieved to know, by the strength of the US dollar and the impeccable honesty of the US Department of Treasury.
[snip]

If the Following indicators are Right.. Things will get worse BEFORE they can get any better.

* Unsustainable U.S. Debt
* Unsuccessful Treasury Bond Auctions
* Credit/lending Crunch
* Our Dependence on China
* Feeble Housing Market
* Real Unemployment continues to rise
* Out Sourcing Jobs overseas
* Bank Crisis (2-7 Banks fail every week)

The same reasoning applies to your private savings, trust funds or other assets. The ball is in your court…

This entry was posted on February 24, 2011 at 12:39 PM and has received 851 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

In the last 5 weeks I have experiences many energy clearings and downloads like the ones in the Matrix seminars. Physically I sometimes feel low energy or have stomach problems/diarrhea. Or stuck energy around my head shoulders like many of us did last summer. Is anyone else experiencing clearings at this time? I think is is part of our accention process

Also I did a big energy clearing around money last Thursday (my birthday) with a Matrix Energetics person from New Jersey Elyse Hope Killoran - cleared a lot of toxic emotions around money such as fear, grief, procrastination. I am now working on staying in the pink/red/peach energy/light of abundance, joy and freedom every day. And noticing when a morphic field (either mine or larger) is cutting into my energy field then removing it with love and Matrix and Mark Dunn method.

Prosperity comes from within - it is my job to clear my energy and staying in that space of abundance/love and take inspired actions from that space. (As opposed to manipulating the outside world in order to feel better). Very interesting! And with the possible coming financial crisis in US it is helpful that us many of us are able to take a stand for love, abundance, health and peace while the outside indicators show something else. This will help others to shift into a space of love or transition from this plane in peace.

Is anyone else in the group working on clearing to a space of love within? and what are your experiences?
 

I think the same method applies to health, relationships, peace etc. This is related to the work of Abrams-Hicks and the new book Love for No Reason by Marci Shimhoff. (Both recommended reading)

This entry was posted on February 14, 2011 at 1:15 PM and has received 816 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.