I learned EFT tapping 8 years ago at a 5 day workshop in Florida. I use it every day and it is very helpful for release stuff believes, emotions and pain. So this final Wednesday Gathering at my house in Rockville is interesting to me.

The email I sent out last week that some of you got via Constant Contact was transcribed by a VA I use from a voice mail I left him and that was why it read a bit strange. Corrected version below. I did not have internet access because I was at the Kundalini yoga winter solstice event all week (http://www.3ho.org/ ). It was a transformative event which I started with a cold that I had after stressing out clearing my basement, getting ready to come and the plane flight to Florida. I think it was also sadness about letting go of my home and some general depression about Earth changes. I looked up cold in Louise Hayes book "You Can Heal Your Life" and it said that a cold represents:

hmmm sounds like my week prior to leaving for Florida!

the affirmations to clear this pattern is

I repeated the affirmation, did some EFT and yoga and talked with a therapist that worked at the event (it is common for people at this event to process through deep emotions so therapists and healers are on hand to help). Then went for a nap in my tent and did some crying too. I felt better afterwards.

So what is home when I travel? For me feeling safety, familiarity and connected with my environment. I find I can create my own safety through intend, and through how I behave and following my intuition on when a place has a good vibe or a bad one. For familiarity I have my clothing, some books and a piece of artwork on paper that helps to create home in a hotel room. I connect with my environment by being present to what I see and also by doing grounding exercises. Being able to connect with friends by email and Skype also helps me feel at home.

In effect when I travel the feeling of being home is in my heart and I can create this feeling where ever I am. How do you create home when you travel?

This entry was posted on December 23, 2011 at 7:17 PM and has received 943 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

As I get ready to sell my house I have noticed some people seemed disturbed by my change, and ask me several times Why are you going?, Where are you going to live? (A: My intuition said so, B: I don't know - I will travel and figure it out in the moment).

Peer pressure can be very strong. Many people don't like to change and if they see you changing they may want to stop you. Additonally groups of people have their own group consciousness or group think that affects every member of the group and 1) is hard to detect until you are outside of it 2) is deeply rooted in peoples belied systems. 3) creates a comfort zone where the ego feels safe.

Just think of families, religions, poltical parties, gender, businesses, nationalities. To be truely free I think it is necessary to be aware of these group pressures and to be independent of them. Ok to go in the same direction if that is what you want to do consciously, but not doing it unconsciously.

Simon Black of www.sovereignman.com has something to say on this topic, which is what inspired me to write this blog entry.

Cara asks, "Simon, I know you've been vocal about encouraging young people to look abroad for better opportunities. And I agree with you. I'm graduating in the spring and there doesn't seem to be anything for me here. But every time I talk about going overseas, my friends and family try to talk me out of it."

This is really common. Look, most people know that the situation in their town and country isn't so great. But few will actually take action to do anything about it. 

Hundreds, thousands of years ago, human survival depended on our willingness to take action. If Paleolithic hunter/gatherers didn't hunt or gather, they starved. Today we can just sit around on Facebook all day collecting food stamps and other entitlement benefits.

Moreover, there's a psychological tendency for people to feel threatened when anyone within their circle or peer group breaks away and does something different. Heading overseas to find better opportunity falls within this category. 

So first they'll try to talk you out of it. They'll tell you that you're crazy and try to explain how RISKY it is to go abroad. They'll tell you that [insert country name] is dangerous or unstable. Bear in mind they have no idea what they're talking about. 

Eventually they'll come to accept your decision, and then respect you for it. Then one day you'll start getting emails from people wondering how they too can follow in your footsteps.

Bottom line, if you really want to break free, most people will have to ignore their friends and family. Do what's right for you, not what's comfortable for everyone else.

This entry was posted on December 16, 2011 at 2:31 PM and has received 4800 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

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My house is a 1962 two level with a colorful interior and a wonderful garden. There are many places to cuddle up, great conversation circles, or to dance. There are 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, remodeled kitchen and beautifully landscaped front and back yards.

There's also an enclosed flower garden with a goldfish pond. It's romantically lighted for a quiet, intimate place outside. It is a quiet and safe neighborhood with good schools. It is within minutes of I-270 and Red Line Metro. Driveway, plus pleny of free street parking.

Address and directions are here.

House flooring and upgrades:

First floor

• Hallway - tile floor replaced original linoleum
  
• Kitchen - tile floor replaced original linoleum, new granite counter tops, dishwasher, large fridge/freezer, gas stove top (replaced original electric stovetop), new electric oven (replaced original electric oven), new larger sink and top end garbage disposal, cabinets painted and new knobs, exhaust fan replaced, under sink water purifier added, added GFI outlets and new circuits and outlets for kitchen area
  
• Dining room - wooden floor refinished, removed original BBQ grill, added extra cabinets for kitchen storage
  
• Bathroom - new tile floor, new sink and vanity, new bath wall tile
  
• Master bedroom - wood floor refinished
  
• Master bathroom - new tile floor and shower tiling
  
• Bedroom 2 - original wooden floor
  
• Bedroom 3 - wood floor refinished
  
• Living room - wood floor refinished, sliding door to backyard and mini deck/steps added, projector TV mount and wiring added

Just repainted

Basement

• Basement - carpeted (replaced original tile), new wall panels, new ceiling, new electric wiring, new lighting, two windows replaced, 3 built in bookshelves, laundry shelf, washing machine and drier, built in storage shelfs
  
• Upgraded electric panel to larger size
  

• Repainted

This entry was posted on December 4, 2011 at 11:49 PM and has received 1375 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I am back in Rockville for two weeks, and I noticed the atmosphere of fear and control as soon as I arrived at Miami International airport, where US citizens are greeted by para-miltary police and large dogs as they deplane. The fear is even stronger in the DC area....

Imagine this: you are citizen a in country where the government controls what websites you can view. If only a single page on a website is said to be illegal (as defined by the government!) the whole domain can be taken down overnight using DNS blocking, even though thousands of other pages in the site are harmless. And DNS blocking means that where ever you are in the country, at home, work, internet cafe you can't even get to the website URL. And by law all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that you use to access the internet like Comcast, Verizon etc must block the sites too. It would be like if one person in a city like Washington DC was suspected of doing something illegal then the government would close down all communication with every resident of the city, no trial, overnight.

So what country is this you say? China, Iraq, some other place where the government censors their citizens’ internet viewing because of the fear that truly free information might be dangerous? Yes you would be right. But soon to join this "special" group of countries is the United States with the PROTECT IP act just passed in Congress. You might say that the act is only aimed at illegal copies of movies. But laws such as this that give wide powers of censorship and control to the government have a history of being stretched and abused. You only have to look at how the PATRIOT act has been stretched in the last 10 years to allow wiretapping and email eavesdropping of American citizens.

And most recently the Senate passed The National Defense Authorization Act to allow for the indefinite detention without trial at Gitmo of people including US citizens. And the government is asking the Supreme Court for the right to GPS track anyone without a warrant, which Justice Breyer described as "Orwellian government". Additionally these kinds of laws promote an atmosphere of fear in companies and individuals. People start to self censor. The clock is ticking back to 1984 as you read this...

More on the detention act from Mike Adams

The National Defense Authorization Act is being called the most traitorous act ever witnessed in the Senate, and the language of the bill is cleverly designed to make you think it doesn’t apply to Americans, but toward the end of the bill it essentially says it can apply to Americans ”if we want it to.”

This bill, passed late last night in a 93-7 vote, declares the entire USA to be a ”battleground” upon which U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, overriding Posse Comitatus and granting the military the unchecked power to arrest, detain, interrogate and even assassinate U.S. citizens with impunity.

Even WIRED magazine was outraged at this bill, reporting:

Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial
…the detention mandate to use indefinite military detention in terrorism cases isn’t limited to foreigners. It’s confusing, because two different sections of the bill seem to contradict each other, but in the judgment of the University of Texas’ Robert Chesney — a nonpartisan authority on military detention — “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.” Source

The passage of this law is nothing less than an outright declaration of WAR against the American People by the military-connected power elite. If this is signed into law, it will shred the remaining tenants of the Bill of Rights and unleash upon America a total military dictatorship, complete with secret arrests, secret prisons, unlawful interrogations, indefinite detainment without ever being charged with a crime, the torture of Americans and even the ”legitimate assassination” of U.S. citizens on right here on American soil!

If you have not yet woken up to the reality of the police state we’ve been warning you about, I hope you realize we are fast running out of time. Once this becomes law, you have no rights whatsoever in America — no due process, no First Amendment speech rights, no right to remain silent, nothing.

This entry was posted on December 1, 2011 at 8:34 PM and has received 2108 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Mercury is retrograde (11/24 - 12/15/11) and want a great time to clean up old projects and clutter! I am planning on doing a major purge of my stuff before storing the remainder, selling, freecycling, gifting or trashing/recycling. Also planning on scanning my photos and paperwork. If anyone has any experience with any of this going digital proejcts let me know your experience!

I have found a good photo scanning place (www.scanyourentirelife.com 1000 photos for $64).

On business records I think they are required for 7 years. I have about 30 boxes in my basement (you may recall them from the last Yule party covered in pagan sheets!) If I scan them then I (and my VA) can access the records online when needed. I have been looking at www.shoeboxed.com which charges about 15c per document (not page) and also integrates with www.evernote.com which I use all the time for storing notes, webclippings, useful emails and even photos of handwritten notes - all of which are searchable (yes even the handwriting is searchable!). I am also looking at www.officedrop.com which also integrates with Evernote - they charge by the page scanned 6-12c each or less for volume over 5 boxes.

On books I will photograph the titles on the spines in the bookshelf and load into Evernote so it is easy to know what I have and where it is. Books I don't want to read again can then be sold to a used book store or for valuable ones on Amazon which makes is very easy to sell books.

I am also looking at a CD ripping service www.ripstyles.com to convert my CD collection (about 1000 CDs) to MP3 and load onto an iPod for me. That way no CDs to carry around my world travels.

My view is that the less stuff I have the more free I am. I can always buy or borrow stuff in the future if the need comes. 80/20 rule. I have been inspired in my travels by Tim Ferris of the 4 Hour Work Week and Tynan world nomad www.tynan.com - both of who sold/gave away most of their stuff before traveling. My goal is to only travels with a few things, most of which I could replaced easily if they were lost.

This entry was posted on November 25, 2011 at 6:28 PM and has received 815 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

Happy Thanksgiving! There will be no Wednesday Gathering in Rockville this week, back the week after with an intro to acupuncture.

Here in La Paz Bolivia I have been relaxing after all my travels, doing yoga and also got a general check up with a local doctor as I hadn't had one for two years. All is healthy I am glad to say. The check up cost $12 for the doctor and $45 for the full lab work. That is not copays - that is the full cost. And they did a great job and I didn't have to wait for an appointment - I just walked in and got the check up and lab test immediately. What a better experience to my last general check up in the States where it took weeks to get an appointment, had to wait in the waiting room for 30 minutes, and had to go to a separate place to get lab work done. And the doctor was in a hurry. Plus deal with the hassle of insurance reimbursement. I think it cost about $400 (plus my monthly insurance premium which works out to about $4000 per year). So here I got better service, cost less and the doctors are well trained and friendly. I am grateful I am getting medical care here! It doesn't surprise me that an increasing number of people with elective surgery and dentistry are outsourcing their care to other countries.

I am currently doing a 5 day fast using Blessed herbs to clean out any toxins in my body and also to give my body the extra energy to heal any old injuries. I know it sounds weird to say that I have extra energy when I don't eat but the truth is that digesting food takes a lot of energy and fills the body with waste products to eliminate too. For two weeks after seeing John of God I was detoxing out of my sinuses - also I am using Copaiba Oil which comes from the Amazon and is good for detoxing and cleaning the body. So having cleaned the top part of my body I figured it was time to clean the bottom part too!

This entry was posted on November 21, 2011 at 5:37 PM and has received 738 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I have been doing yoga for years and I have found it always helps me if I am feeling depressed. As a yoga teacher I have also seed the positive effect on students who are depressed. So this week's gathering on yoga for depression is interesting to me.

I was in Sao Paulo Brazil last week and was amazed at how large a city it is - 19 million people - 4th largest metro areas in the world. The subway system rivals the one in NYC for size, different lines and number of passengers packed into the trains. But the system is much newer than New York's. Another similarity to NYC is the number of coffee shops and bars with tattooed tweens hanging out smoking wearing lots of black clothes! There is also a big art and high fashion scene here. And the cost of downtown apartments rivals Manhattan. But overall the city is more relaxed and happy than NY. Though I heard from a New Yorker that I met at John of God that New Yorks twin passions of success and pleasure have become a bit stale in the last year and that there is more searching for meaning. Perhaps that is partly why OWS started there.

I have found Brazilians to be very helpful to me and others. One example I was waiting in a bus for the airport (it was a 30 minute wait outside a hotel to pick up other passengers) and a guy asked if the bus could get him to the airport for a flight in a hour. The bus driver friendly said no, but offer to drive him (in the bus) to a taxi stand 4 blocks away so that he could make the flight. We then returned to the hotel to pick up the other passengers. Only in Brazil! :-)

This entry was posted on November 11, 2011 at 5:28 PM and has received 839 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.

I got spiritual surgery at John of God last week - and since then have been working on letting go old beliefs that no longer serve me. One of the ways I do this is with the Work of Byron Katie - this is very powerful stuff for breaking up old beliefs that are no longer useful or even true! So I am glad that Sandra is giving a workshop at this Wednesday Gathering on The Work (see below)

I was with about 50 other people getting spiritual surgery at the Casa last Friday morning - we all sat in a room near to John of God and the entities started working on us. I felt energy scanning across my body several times. I focused on staying in my heart space during the procedure which I think lasted about 20 minutes (but not sure to be honest as my eyes were closed and I was a bit spaced out afterwards!). Afterwards I bought some blessed water to drink for the next 8 days while recovering and carrying that hoe I felt my abdomen as though it had been cut open - perhaps not a good idea to carry items after surgery even if it is spiritual! Then 24 hours of rest - I slept a lot. I felt like I was detoxing. I felt much better the next day but still took it easy for the week. I worked on the issues that I had asked for help on myself too (eyesight, abundance, femininity, healing/manifesting skills).

I noticed my eyesight changing after a few days - then I decided to stop using my Opto-K contact lens - to act as if the healing woul fully work.
And my sight has got much better! I have using doing Carol Look's EFT eyesight MP3 http://www.attractingabundance.com/eft/improve-your-eyesight-with-eft/
and there is sure a lot of old emotional baggage I was carrying around in my eyes (and probably rest of my body too) - I recommend checking that out if you are interested as it is only $27 and clears a lot of stuff! I have also been re-reading The Secret book (which is much better than the movie if you saw that a few years ago) and reminding myself of all the Law of Attraction stuff. I have also been reading Peace is the Way by Deepak Chopra http://www.chopra.com/peace which is about creating world peace be transforming ourselves inside - he has some great insights on where violence comes from in our world and some challenging thoughts on 9/11 and the war on terror. Recommended.

This entry was posted on November 3, 2011 at 6:28 PM and has received 1104 views. There are currently 0 comments. Print this entry.