Fear runs the world, don't let it run your life

Our Government want to make us fearful and we need to take steps to understand and protect ourselves from the hype and injury that buying into the collective fear can do to us.

"Fear runs much of the world, spurring on endless activity. Fear of enemies, of old age or death, of rejection, and a multitude of social fears are the basic motivators in most people's lives."

"From the viewpoint of this level, the world looks hazardous, full of traps and threats. Fear is the favored official tool for control by oppressive agencies."

"The proliferation of fears is as limitless as the human imagination; once Fear is one's focus, the endless worrisome The proliferation of fears is as limitless as the human imagination; once Fear is one's focus, the endless worrisome events of the world feed it.

Fearful thinking can balloon into paranoia or generate neurotic defensive structures and, because it's contagious, become a dominant social trend." David Hawkins in Power vs Force

Most of us have a set of unique fears that relate to our own lives, like concerns about loved ones, financial worries and so on; but there are also many “universal” fears – or perhaps you might call them “collective” fears – that are communicated to us through our environment.

These fears often relate to situations and events that leave us feeling vulnerable and defenseless, such as worldwide 'pandemics' (...and 'vaccines'), 'terrorist' attacks, economic and financial crises, and so on.

Not only do we see and hear constant references to these frightening scenarios in the media and from the people around us...the energy of collective fears also seeps into the very fabric of our reality (the quantum field) and continues to resonate around and within us.

Since we are all connected to the collective consciousness, we can actually absorb this “fear energy” as we go about our daily lives - even if we don’t pay attention to the media hype and mass hysteria.

In other words, if society's desire was to manipulate and control people by keeping them suppressed in a low vibratory state of fear ...this can affect everyone...

Have you ever felt nervous, edgy, tense, or vulnerable for no apparent reason? Even when everything in your own life was going fine, you may still have been affected by these collective fears and felt uncomfortable as a result...

...And to make it worse, the moment you begin focusing on these fearful feelings, the more you begin to magnify the collective fear energy without even knowing it

It is not easy to avoid absorbing these fearful messages, especially when you seem to be surrounded by endless examples of them every day. However, there are a few things you can do to minimize the impact that these fears have on your life.

An obvious first step is to limit your exposure to news broadcasts; especially when they always seem to pertain to frightening events that are beyond your control...

Focusing on this force-fed fear programming only makes you feel more vulnerable and adds to the energy of the collective fear. Certainly, you can stay informed about world events but it is advisable to seek independent, unbiased news sources on the internet, and then immediately start shifting your focus to something less fearsome.

Empower yourself by remembering that most of the things you fear will never happen. In fact, when you remember that giving your attention to anything only makes it seem bigger and more intimidating, you can surely see the wisdom in being more discerning about the things about which you are thinking.

Deliberately focusing more on positive things will help override the negative input you receive each day too. When you take greater control of your focus and place it decisively upon the creation of a joyful and positive reality, you contribute that same energy to the quantum field. This helps minimize some of the fearful energy being contributed by others around the world.

It is true that there are many horrible, scary things to worry about – but there are equally as many wonderful, joyful things to ponder. 

Spend time each day thinking about the people you love, happy memories, and the great experiences that may be waiting just around the corner for you. It may not make the scary possibilities go away completely but it will lighten your mood, leave you feeling happier and less fearful.

Child development and music part two

Young people learn to communicate effortlessly via conversation. music, and computers, but many in our society seemingly don't consider music an integral element of language. The reduction (and even elimination) of school music instruction is an enigma, given its ancient human roots and current cultural ubiquity.

It's even possible that music predated human language, since scientists have discovered 50,000-year-old flutes made from bear bones—and a flute is an advanced musical instrument. Further, adults universally interact with infants via a musical form called motherese—a high-pitched, exaggerated, repetitive, melodic format that engages the rapt attention and mimicked response of infants who cannot understand the words. Music thus introduces infants to speech by preparing their brain to process effectively its complexities and improvisations.

Two fascinating informative new books explain the ancient roots and underlying neurobiology of music and the key role it plays in human life and communication. They are thus a valuable resource for those who seek credible evidence that music has all but ben abandoned as a tool for communication because we live in a culture that does not understand it anymore.

In The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body , Steven Mithen leads readers through the considerable evidence from archeology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, and musicology that supports the growing belief that musical capabilities within early humans led to language (the opposing belief being that music is basically a pleasant evolutionary by-product of human language).

Mithen is an early pre-history scholar, and his book makes demands on readers with a limited background in the several research areas it explores. Notes and references comprise almost 100 pages of the 400-page book. Still, its breadth, passion, and conversational writing make it fascinating and informative.

For example, language and music are related in that both can be vocal (as in speech and song) and gestural (as in sign language, instrumental music, and dance), and both can exist in a written format. Music and language are both a product of body/head movements that transmit information from one brain to another. Both music and language are hierarchical in that acoustic elements (words, tones) combine into phrases (utterances, melodies) that can further combine into larger entities (stories, symphonies). These and other similarities are possible because of specific related brain properties that Mithen explains and explores to support his belief in the co-evolution of our music and language capabilities.

Daniel Levitin approaches the music/language issue from a career that led him from session musician to sound engineer to record producer to neuroscientist to his current position as a professor of the psychology of electronic communication. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (2006) is a marvelous book for folks with a reasonable understanding of music who want to understand its underlying neurobiology—what occurs within our brain when we're listening to or making music.

Levitin rejects the widespread belief that music is something experts do, and that the rest of us should simply appreciate their musical virtuosity. He argues rather that music is an innate human property that develops as easily in children as other forms of language. Preschool children playfully explore the elements of both music and language.

Levitin thus begins his book with an intriguing informative introduction to the elements of music (rhythm, pitch, melody, harmony, tempo, timbre, harmony) that most of us should have learned in school but did not. He connects these elements to specific well-known musical works from classical to jazz to hip-hop (and to almost everything in between).

He further connects these musical elements to the appropriate brain systems and functions—demonstrating in the process that music integrates our brain's emotional, rational, and movement systems in a way that no other activity does. Music is central to the development and maintenance of our brain.

These two persuasive books left me wondering how a supposedly enlightened culture like ours could consciously neglect the development of a definitive brain property. Spoken and written language are obviously superior to music in the transmission of information, but music trumps adjectives and adverbs in the transmission of qualities and feelings. Further, we began life with the music of motherese, and we often return to music when words alone fail us. We truly need to develop both forms of language to be fully human. Do folks really believe that knowing how to harmonize or play an oboe or improvise jazz or analyze a symphony is innate? Do such folks also believe that language is only about knowing, and not about feeling?

Source: http://brainconnection.positscience.com/content/262_4

http://brainconnection.positscience.com/content/237_1

Child development and music

Some interesting ideas on child development and music, written by Robert Sylwester should be of interest to parents and grandparents of toddlers.

Stamm and her collaborators in the book, Bright From the Start demystify the scientific base of early brain development and the effect of currently available computerized gadgets and programs. They place personal parental contact into the center of the early developmental period. Their major point is that direct constant parental care is the most important need of a birth to age three child.

The book is organized around Stamm's ABC's of parenting: Attention, Bonding, and Communication. The chapters provide relevant non-technical information on the underlying science of each of the three concepts and its related elements, and a wealth of practical advice on how to enhance the development of the relevant biological systems. This includes information on useful resources, and helpful critiques of various (often-computerized) commercial parenting aids.

Attention is a requisite for any receptive or responsive behavior, and so much of our attention system is innate. Parents and other caregivers thus need to understand how attention functions, how to enhance it. Enhancing attention is defined by the authors,  in terms of time span, distractions, and vacillations between active and passive attention. Many parents are currently concerned about the effects of electronic media on a child's attention capabilities.

Bonding is the strong emotional attachment that humans develop for selected others. Our species' survival requires innate and immediate bonding between infants and their parents, but the book also suggests deliberate tactile and other interactive activities that enhance the process. Many parents who work outside the home are concerned about the bonding issues implicit in the selection of an appropriate day care program.

Communication is the natural adjunct of bonding. The emergence of speech through the music of parents has been a delightful experience for parents throughout human history, and the joyful fascination we all have in observing language emerge in a child enhances the process. The discovery of mirror neurons provides us with an enhanced understanding and appreciation of the importance of modeling behavior in the early life of a child.

Communication and collaboration are essential in a social species. Humans use two basic forms of communication, (1) a personal intimate form called grooming or caressing that uses touch and body language to establish and maintain bonding and hierarchical relationships within the group, and (2) a more complex auditory signaling system that alerts others in the group to the nature, location, and importance of potential dangers and opportunities.

Human language appears to be the most extensive and complex of all these communication systems. Mastering one's native oral and written language is an extended major childhood task, and current school standards and assessment programs focus principally on the development of such skills. Unfortunately, we've narrowed our definition of language.

For example, most K-12 schools currently focus on mastering the sequence of letters that constitute a word but not also on the sequence of tones that constitute a melody, on the grammatical structure of language but not also on the structure of musical forms, on the ability to use writing and typing tools but not also on the ability to play a musical instrument.

It's not that music isn't ubiquitous in our culture—but it's become a one-sided message that emanates from stages, loudspeakers, and personal portable pods. We tend to listen to the music of others rather than create our own.

Music is important to children in all cultures and we need to embrace and celebrate the music in our lives and teach them music and a young age.

Living in pain hip and knee

Like most men, I tend to procrastinate when going to the doctor. I do go when I need my medication renewed or I am not feeling well for a couple of weeks. However my hip and knee have been bothering me for a while so before we went to Australia, I thought I should get them looked at. 

Realizing that wait lists are long and only start once you see the specialist (which in BC could be a year or more), I went early. I did not go as soon as I was in pain however; I lived with moderate pain (about a two or three out of ten,  on the pain scale) for about three years before I told the doctor that the pain level had moved to about a six on the scale. When I finally let him know the pain was so high he arranged for the X-rays and other tests needed and put out a call to the specialist. 

I was lucky; I saw a specialist in about seven months, which was in November of last year. After the initial examination, which showed the specialist that I was a candidate for both hip, and knee replacement I was asked which hurt more. I said my knee, and I was told that I might get knee replacement in February. 

When we returned from Australia, I was told by the receptionist at the Doctors  office that the Dr. did not have a clue about scheduling patients but that he was just trying to be positive when he told me I would get an operation in Feb. She told me I would more likely have my knee replaced in April (if I was lucky). She was very nice and very apologetic, I understand now that I should have confirmed with her rather than rely on the Dr. 

Now I do not mind the wait, as I have good pain control medication, which I take most of the time, which keeps the pain level about seven out of ten. I have great admiration for those of you who live with chronic pain and still have a wonderful bright outlook on life. I still look on life as wonderful, fun and exciting, but I sometimes get cross with people I love when the pain gets too intense. I also find that I am limited in my mobility but I am learning to use a cane and hope to get around more and April is only two months away.