As I get older I appreciate silence more and more. To escape the noises of our culture brings me peace and contentment. I hope my search for silence will save my ears so I will have many years ahead of me for music production activities!

I found an article in Common Ground Magazine (August 2008) that expresses silence in a wonderful, transforming manner. I repost it here and the original posting is found at the following web page:

http://www.commonground.ca/iss/205/cg205_gwen.shtml

The language of silence

Common Ground Magazine - UNIVERSE WITHIN by Gwen Randall-Young

More than ever before, people seem to be searching for the way to “be” in this world. The power of the internet allows for large shifts in human consciousness, as millions of people are exposed to the same ideas and perspectives at the same time.

While the internet has certainly sped things up, groups of people subscribing to the same philosophy is not new. Have you noticed, though, that every couple of years a new path seems to enchant the masses? It seems a true shift in consciousness will occur. Within a couple of years or even months, however, that awareness seems to fade and something new comes along, with the hope that maybe this will be the answer.

Humans have been seeking for a long time and if there was an answer out there, we would have found it by now. It is the thinking mind that tries to figure it all out. The answers, however, are not “out there” and it is not the thinking mind that would lead us to them. The thinking mind rearranges ideas, which are the products of our own minds or the minds of others. It is basically our word processing program and it has limitations – the major one being language itself.

Think of the vastness of the universe and picture a tiny blue planet somewhere in the midst of it all. Humans have developed a way to communicate with each other and even speculate about things beyond our little world. Yet we no more possess the language to talk meaningfully about things “beyond the beyond” any more than ants can talk about the country they live in, much less the cosmos. Answers will not come from words, no matter how we rearrange them.

There is, however, another way of knowing. Because everything in our universe is connected, a part of us can tune in to all that is. It is a little like the oceans of the world. They are all connected. If we had the ability to “read” the energy in the water, we could dip our feet into the Pacific Ocean and “pick up” information from the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean.

The language of the universe is silence. An ocean of energy underlies everything. When we enter the silence, as in meditation, we can “tune in” to the larger frequencies. Energetically, we can “go” anywhere in the universe.

We are like drops of water that have separated out of the oneness to experience individuality. We developed our own separate ego selves to differentiate from the other drops. The problem arose when we identified with that ego self, thinking it was the real “us.” We forgot about the true essence. Ego is on a continuous quest to feel better, understand more, reduce suffering, be evolved, or to “get it.”

The truth is that what we yearn for is not answers or even understanding. It is connection. When we shed ego like a suit of clothing and go naked into the silent ocean, we merge back into the home from which we came. We experience our own soul – that drop of cosmic consciousness – that belongs to the whole. That is where we experience peace, contentment and even joy. When we re-enter the world, having tasted the sweetness of home, we realize nothing here need bother us. We see all the machinations of ego; how it creates dramas, polarities, unhappiness and stress and we can choose to no longer identify with that aspect of our being. When we cease to identify with it, it loses all power.

There is nothing to seek, nothing to find, no answers. It is all about where we choose to put our consciousness. Shall we let it energize ego and take us on a wild ride, or do we use it to maintain an open connection with the oneness and live our lives as our true soul selves?

Gwen Randall-Young is a psychotherapist in private practice and author of Growing Into Soul: The Next Step in Human Evolution. For articles and information about her books and “Deep Powerful Change” personal growth/hypnosis CDs, visit www.gwen.ca

Thanks to National Geographic for the original posting here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news

www.nationalgeographic.com

August 22, 2008—Greenland’s glaciers are breaking up at a worrisome pace, new satellite images show.

A gigantic, 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) chunk of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke off between July 10 and July 24.

The collapsed section is comparable in size to half of Manhattan Island (see the breakup in three images above).

Petermann covers 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers).

The broken chunk has led scientists to predict a section of Petermann, the Northern Hemisphere’s longest-floating glacier, will disappear by 2009.

But the most alarming sign, according to Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, is a huge 7-mile (11.3 kilometer) crack, seen above in the center right of the July 25 image, that has appeared farther back on the margin of the glacier.

The groove could create an imminent and even bigger breakup—up to a third of the ice field, he said in a statement.

“The pictures speak for themselves,” Box told the Associated Press. “This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It’s just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off … ”

more here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, myself again.. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming that I am a man.

Chuang-Tzu, 3rd century BC

http://solarcooking.org/plans/funnel.htm

“A few years ago, I woke up to the fact that half of the world’s peoples must burn wood or dried dung in order to cook their food. It came as quite a shock to me, especially as I learned of the illnesses caused by breathing smoke day in and day out, and the environmental impacts of deforestation -not to mention the time spent by people (mostly women) gathering sticks and dung to cook their food. And yet, many of these billions of people live near the equator, where sunshine is abundant and free. Ergo…

As a University Professor of Physics with a background in energy usage, I set out to develop a means of cooking food and sterilizing water using the free energy of the sun. First, I looked at existing methods.

The parabolic cooker involves a reflective dish that concentrates sunlight to a point where the food is cooked. This approach is very dangerous since the sun’s energy is focused to a point which is very hot, but which cannot be seen. (BYU students and I built one which will set paper on fire in about 3 seconds!) I learned that an altruistic group had offered reflecting parabolas to the people living at the Altiplano in Bolivia. But more than once the parabolas had been stored next to a shed — and the passing sun set the sheds on fire! The people did not want these dangerous, expensive devices, even though the Altiplano region has been stripped of fuel wood.

The box cooker: Basically an insulated box with a glass or plastic lid, often with a reflecting lid to reflect sunlight into the box. Light enters through the top glass (or plastic), to slowly heat up the box. Problems: energy enters only through the top, while heat is escaping through all the other sides, which have a tendency to draw heat away from the food. When the box is opened to put food in or take it out, some of the heat escapes and is lost. Also, effective box cookers tend to be more complicated to build than the funnel cooker.”

read more of this article click here:

This is a great beach to go for a nice evening walk! Interesting wood always washes up on the shore and eagles are often seen soaring above!

Nora

Bamboo

family Poaceae

tribe Bambuseae

-woody perennial evergreen

symbolic of: adaptability, strength, longevity, and endurance

Bamboo is green throughout the year.
Green is often symbolic of love, nature, balance, and harmony.

I have recently acquired a small bamboo plant which in turn inspired this mandala!

Nora

photo credit: Kenny Maths

flickr.com/photos/kennymathieson/115042421/

I came across an interesting article on breathtaking Monasteries around the world! It is easy to understand how one can be enlightened surrounded by such beauty!

Great photos! Check out the article here:

www.oddee.com

I found an interesting article about some talking fish by Andrew H. Bass, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior. Below is an excerpt from the original article (please see link below for full article).

SEATTLE — It’s a problem faced by people joining noisy parties and by midshipman fish seeking mates: How to cut through the racket and find Mr. Right?

Now Cornell University biologists, who became underwater disc jockeys to study a homely fish that hums, say they have a clue as to how mate selection works. The auditory portion of the midbrain uses the acoustic qualities of all the noise to isolate one signal it is programmed to recognize as potentially interesting.

The biologists’ research applies only to midshipman fish, but it could, they say, also be relevant to people.

“Neuroscientists call this auditory scene analysis,” says Andrew H. Bass, Cornell professor of neurobiology and behavior who will present his group’s findings June 25 at the International Congress on Acoustics-Acoustical Society of America meeting in Seattle. “It’s really very similar to the cocktail party effect.”

In a way, midshipman fish have more problems than people at loud parties. Only some of the male midshipman hum (See “Humming Fish Facts,” attached), and those males are hiding in cavitylike nests they have excavated under rocks. All the humming males together sound like a huge hive of bees or a squadron of motor boats, and a female midshipman fish has to choose one nest in which to deposit her eggs. When a humming male succeeds in attracting a female, he fertilizes her eggs, which adhere to the rocky ceiling of his nest. The female leaves forever, and the male resumes humming in hopes of attracting another female with more eggs.

Wondering how the female fish find the right males, the Cornell biologists examined the structure and function of midshipman brains. From earlier studies with Robert Baker at the New York University Medical School, Bass knew that a part of the midshipman male brain, called the hindbrain, contains neurons that constitute a kind of vocal pacemaker. Like a rhythm generator, the pacemaker tells the sound-generating muscles on the male’s swim bladder to contract rhythmically and produce a hum averaging 100 Hz in frequency. In part of the midshipman female brain known as the midbrain (and humans have midbrains and hindbrains, too), Baker and Bass found neurons that respond to a 100-Hz hum.

Whenever the hums of two neighboring and competing males overlap, the Cornell biologists observed, the sounds form what is known as an acoustic beat. And because the tone of a midshipman’s hum is so pure and simple, computer synthesizers can easily reproduce it. That’s why the biologists were able to play disc jockey at a fish party, complete with underwater loudspeakers.

“Just as we expected, two or more synthesized fish hums played together produce the rhythmic, acoustic beats,” Bass reports. “And sure enough, the females were able to directly localize one of the humming speakers. Their midbrain neurons form a code of the beats that helps in their calculations to locate the hum of interest from all the rest.”

The brain side of the story recently was reported in the Journal of Neuroscience by Bass and by Deana Bodnar, a Cornell senior research associate in neurobiology and behavior. Details of the playback studies by Bass and by Jessica McKibben, a postdoctoral researcher in neurobiology and behavior at Cornell, will be published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

Meanwhile, experiments supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health continue with midshipman fish along the California and Washington state coasts as well as in Cornell laboratories. Field studies led by Margaret Marchaterre, a research associate in the Bass group, use hydrophones (underwater microphones) to eavesdrop on fish gossip at night. Together, the Cornell “midshipman crew” hopes to learn how courtship signals are encoded in the brain and what it is about one love hum that makes it more attractive than another.

“Midshipman are regarded as some of the ugliest fish in the sea and a nuisance because they hum almost incessantly,” Bass comments. “But they have thrived for hundreds of thousands of years, so they must be doing something right. We’d like to find out what.”

read more of this article here:

Humming Fish article click here!

Stanley Park is a beautiful oasis right next to the downtown. Vancouver has amazing green spaces but also suffers from urban-concrete sprawl like most large cities!

Kitsilano and the westside of Vancouver have beautiful sandy beaches. Here many people still enjoy an urban laid-back lifestyle that made it so popular in the 1970’s. Unfortunately the real estate has skyrocketed making owning a home in this area a challenge.

Frogs have always interested me! I use to keep them as pets until they started to escape and end up all over the house I am very concerned about this chytrid fungus that is killing many of the frogs on our planet. This fungus occurs naturally but because of habitat loss and the use of leopard frogs in pregnancy tests, frog survival is very much at risk! There is a bacteria that has been used to treat infected frogs but the task is monumental when it comes to the number of infections and how quickly frogs can die when infected!

The following articles go into much more frog detail and are very interesting:

FROG MATTERS

FROGBLOG1: Chytridiomycosis and global amphibian decline

FROGBLOG2:Origin and spread of the frog chytrid