2/24/2011
EL TERCER OJO
Abriendo el tercer ojo.
El canal principal del Tercer Ojo está ubicado un poco arriba del medio de las cejas (punto Shangen) y la glándula pineal. La forma como una persona común ve las cosas con sus ojos físicos, funciona de igual manera que una cámara fotográfica: A través de la regulación del lente o del tamaño de la pupila, una imagen es generada en el cuerpo pineal por medio del nervio óptico, de acuerdo a la distancia de un objeto y los diferentes espectros de luz.
La visión penetrativa, una capacidad sobrenatural, es lograda a través del cuerpo pineal mirando directamente hacia fuera por el Tercer Ojo. El Tercer Ojo de una persona común está obstruido, porque la apertura de su canal principal es muy estrecha y obscura, y no hay esencia de Qi ni luz en él. El Tercer Ojo de algunas personas no puede ver porque su canal principal está obstruido.
Por esta razon se utiliza la Tecnica Esenia, misma que si se rastrea se ha encontrado en codices mayas, asi como atlantes, en ruinas de los Balcanes, donde se presume hay una coneccion con tal civilizacion milenaria. . . En Otra explicacion se dara mas informacion. Para abrir el Tercer Ojo, primero el canal tiene que abrirse por fuerza externa o por medio de su propia cultivación. La forma del canal varía de persona a persona. Puede ser ovalada, redonda, romboidal o triangular. Cuanto mejor se cultive uno, tanto más redonda será su forma. Segundo, el Tercer Ojo es dado por el maestro de uno o es cultivado a través de su propio esfuerzo. Por último, tiene que haber esencia de Qi en el lugar donde está ubicado el Tercer Ojo.
Nosotros usualmente NO vemos con nuestros ojos físicos. Justamente son estos mismos ojos físicos sirven como una barrera que obstruye la vía a otras dimensiones. Nosotros podemos ver solamente lo que existe en nuestro mundo físico. La apertura del Tercer Ojo nos capacita para poder ver sin usar los dos ojos físicos. Después de alcanzar un nivel muy alto de cultivación, uno adquirirá un Ojo Verdadero y podrá ver con el Ojo Verdadero del Tercer Ojo o el que está en el cuerpo pineal. De acuerdo con la Escuela de Buda, cada poro en el cuerpo es un ojo y hay ojos por todo el cuerpo. De acuerdo con la Escuela Tao, cada punto de acupuntura es un ojo. Sin embargo, el canal principal radica en el Tercer Ojo, por eso tiene que ser abierto primero. En las sesiones de lectura sobre la Ley, se proveera' a cada alumno con lo que se necesita para abrir el Tercer Ojo. Debido a que la constitución de cada estudiante difiere, los resultados también varían de persona a persona.
Algunos ven un agujero oscuro, como un pozo profundo, lo cual significa que el canal del Tercer Ojo es oscuro. Algunos ven un pasillo blanco, lo cual indica que el canal de su Tercer Ojo está por abrirse, si es que con eso también ven algo enfrente de la apertura. Algunos ven algo girando, lo cual es lo que el maestro les ha implantado para abrir el Tercer Ojo. Después de que se abra el canal con el movimiento giratorio, podrán usar el Tercer Ojo. Algunos pueden ver un ojo grande, el cual muchas veces se cree que es el Ojo de Buda, pero en realidad es nuestro propio ojo. Esto les sucede frecuentemente a aquellos con buenas cualidades innatas.
Según nuestras estadísticas, (de Falun Dafa) más de la mitad de los alumnos en cada sesión han abierto su Tercer Ojo. Pero surge un problema asociado con lo que pasa después de la apertura. Una persona que no tiene un buen Xinxing está propensa a usar su Tercer Ojo para hacer el mal.(?) Para prevenir este problema, abriré su Tercer Ojo directamente al nivel del "Ojo de la Sabiduría," al plano elevado, para que puedan ver directamente las escenas en otras dimensiones. Eso aparecerá durante la práctica para convencerte e incrementar tu confianza en la cultivación.
Un principiante cuyo Xinxing no ha alcanzado la altura requerida de una persona con capacidades sobrenaturales, es capaz de cometer errores una vez que esté en posesión de estos poderes. Por ejemplo, por decir algo chistoso, esta persona va caminando por la calle y se detiene a comprar un boleto de lotería y escoge el premio mayor. Sólo uso este ejemplo para explicar lo que quiero decirles. Tal cosa no está permitida que suceda. Hay otra razón: Nosotros estamos aquí para abrir el Tercer Ojo en gran escala. Piensen, ¿sería normal para la sociedad humana si todos pudieran ver a través de una pared o a través del cuerpo de otra persona con su Tercer Ojo? Esto afectaría gravemente el estado normal de la sociedad humana. Por eso no se permite hacerlo, ni tampoco se debe hacer. Esto no te haría ningún bien sino que reforzaría tu apego como practicante. Esta es la razón del por qué abro el Tercer Ojo de ustedes directamente al plano alto, en vez de hacerlo en un plano bajo.
Planos del Tercer Ojo
El Tercer Ojo existe en muchos planos. Él ve diferentes dimensiones en diferentes planos. El Budismo distingue los siguientes cinco tipos de visión: La Visión del Ojo Físico, la Visión del Ojo Celestial, la Visión del Ojo de la Sabiduría, la Visión del Ojo de la Ley y la Visión del Ojo Buda. Cada plano se subdivide en tres niveles: superior, medio y bajo. Por debajo del plano de la Visión del Ojo Celestial, uno sólo puede ver cosas en este mundo físico.
Sólo por encima del plano de la Visión del Ojo de la Sabiduría, uno puede ver otras dimensiones. Algunas personas poseen la capacidad de la visión penetrativa. Ellos pueden ver cosas con precisión aún mejor que un escáner (T.A.C.). Pero lo que ellos perciben es aún nuestro mundo físico sin ir más allá del espacio en el que vivimos. Por tanto, su Tercer Ojo no puede considerarse estar en un plano alto.
El nivel de altura de nuestro Tercer Ojo depende de cuánta esencia de Qi él posee y a la vez de cuán amplio y brillante es su canal principal, así como el grado de obstrucción en aquel canal. La esencia de Qi en el canal es crucial para la completa apertura del Tercer Ojo. Es muy fácil abrir el Tercer Ojo de un niño menor de seis años. Ni siquiera tengo que usar mi mano para abrirlo. ( Palabras de Falun Dafa ) En el momento que yo hable, su Tercer Ojo se abrirá. Esto se debe a que las cualidades innatas de un niño están muy poco afectadas por lo malo de este mundo físico. Él tampoco ha hecho nada malo y su esencia de Qi innata está muy bien conservada. Sin embargo, el Tercer Ojo de un niño de más de seis años será cada vez más difícil de abrirse porque a medida que crece, él estará más influenciado por el mundo exterior. Esto se debe a que, mientras él crece, está expuesto a la mala educación, la indulgencia y malos actos, los cuales le podrían conducir a que se consuma su esencia de Qi. Toda la esencia de Qi se disipará al alcanzar cierto punto. Aquellos que han consumido toda su esencia de Qi podrán gradualmente recuperarla a través de la cultivación, pero tomará un período muy largo de tiempo y pasarán por muchos esfuerzos dolorosos. Por lo tanto, la esencia de Qi es extremadamente valiosa.
Estoy en contra de abrir el Tercer Ojo de uno al plano de la Visión del Ojo Celestial, ( dice Falun Dafa, en la Orden Sufi es diferente, se dara mas explicaciones en lo sucesivo ) porque cuando un cultivador no tiene gran Potencia de Energía, el uso de la visión penetrativa consume más energía de la que un practicante puede acumular a través de la práctica. Si demasiada esencia de Qi es consumida, su Tercer Ojo se cerrará otra vez. Una vez que se cierra, será muy difícil volver a abrirlo. Por lo tanto, prefiero abrir el Tercer Ojo de mis alumnos al plano de la Visión del Ojo de la Sabiduría. (Segun Falun Dafa) Esto les capacita ver cosas en otras dimensiones, sin importar que puedan ver claramente o no. Debido a las diferentes condiciones que trae uno al nacer, algunos ven claramente; algunos ven cosas que aparecen y enseguida desaparecen; otros ven cosas borrosamente. Pero como mínimo, podrán ver algo de luz. Esto les hará bien para promover su cultivación a un alto nivel. El no poder ver claramente puede ser mejorado a través de la cultivación.
Lo que una persona con insuficiente esencia de Qi ve a través de su Tercer Ojo está en blanco y negro. Una persona con más esencia de Qi percibe una visión en color y lo que ve es más claro. Entre más esencia de Qi uno tenga, más clara será la visión. Sin embargo varía de persona a persona. Algunas personas han nacido con su Tercer Ojo abierto. Otras tienen su Tercer Ojo bastante obstruido. La apertura del Tercer Ojo se ve como el florecimiento de una flor con sus pétalos expandiéndose en capas, una tras otra. Cuando uno está sentado con las piernas cruzadas, al comienzo verá una bola de luz, la cual no será tan brillante al principio, pero más tarde se volverá roja.
El Tercer Ojo de algunos está tan firmemente obstruido, que al abrirlo, puede causar una reacción violenta. Ellos sentirán que el canal principal y los músculos del cuerpo pineal se vuelven más y más apretados, como si los músculos se juntaran allí, empujando hacia adentro. También sentirán hinchazón y dolor en las sienes y en la frente. Todas estas son reacciones que uno experimenta al abrirse el Tercer Ojo. Una persona con su Tercer Ojo listo para abrirse podrá ver algo accidentalmente.
(Experiencias de Falun Dafa ) En una sesión de lectura, hubo un estudiante que vio mi Cuerpo Ley de forma accidental. Cuando intentó verlo de nuevo, no pudo lograrlo porque en realidad estaba usando sus ojos físicos. Si él llegara a ver algo con sus ojos cerrados y se mantiene haciéndolo así de principio a fin, poco a poco podrá percibir una imagen claramente. Sin embargo, si quiere verlo de cerca, él no verá nada, porque está usando sus ojos físicos y nervios ópticos.
Las dimensiones percibidas por el Tercer Ojo en diferentes planos son muy diferentes. Algunas instituciones de investigación científica no tienen conocimiento de esto. Consecuentemente, las pruebas de Qigong que diseñaron no lograron los resultados deseados o resultaron ser contrarios a sus expectativas. Por ejemplo, una institución diseñó un método para comprobar las capacidades sobrenaturales. Se requirió a los maestros de Qigong que vieran lo que había en una caja sellada herméticamente. Como los maestros de Qigong tenían su Tercer Ojo abierto en diferentes planos, dieron respuestas diferentes. Como resultado, los examinadores concluyeron que el Tercer Ojo era algo falso y engañoso. En dicha prueba, una persona con su Tercer Ojo abierto en un plano bajo, usualmente obtiene mejores resultados, porque su Tercer Ojo está solamente abierto al plano de la Visión del Ojo Celestial; un nivel apropiado para percibir objetos sólo en el mundo físico. Aquellos que no saben nada acerca del Tercer Ojo pueden pensar que estas personas poseen la capacidad sobrenatural más grandiosa. Cualquier objeto, sea orgánico o inorgánico, se manifiesta en diferentes formas en diferentes dimensiones.
Tomemos un vaso por ejemplo. En el momento en que esté hecho, tiene una entidad inteligente correspondiente en otra dimensión. Esta entidad inteligente era otra cosa antes de esta existencia. Aquel que tiene el Tercer Ojo abierto en un plano más bajo, lo ve como un vaso. Aquel con el Tercer Ojo en un plano más alto, percibe su forma de entidad inteligente en otra dimensión. Aquel con el Tercer Ojo a un nivel mucho más alto, tiene la habilidad de observar la forma de esta materia antes que la entidad inteligente tomara su forma.
La Visión Remota
Con la apertura del Tercer Ojo, algunas personas pueden adquirir la Visión Remota, que los capacita para ver cosas a una distancia de 1.000 Li (millas chinas). Todos y cada uno de nosotros tenemos nuestro propio espacio, el cual es tan grande como el universo. En este espacio específico, delante de su frente hay un espejo, que no puede verse en nuestro espacio. El espejo está disponible para todos, pero el espejo de un no-practicante se encara a sí mismo. Cuando uno comienza a practicar, el espejo gradualmente empieza a darse la vuelta. Después de que el espejo se da la vuelta reflejará lo que la persona quiera ver. En este espacio específico, él es muy grande, su cuerpo es inmenso y el espejo también. Cualquier cosa que el cultivador quiera ver puede reflejarse en el espejo. Aunque la imagen haya sido capturada, él aún no puede verla, porque la imagen tiene que permanecer en el espejo por un momento.
El espejo se voltea y le muestra la imagen, luego rápidamente se voltea de nuevo. El espejo se mantiene girando una y otra vez rápidamente. Una película produce movimientos continuos que pueden ser vistos cuando se dan a la velocidad de veinticuatro imágenes por segundo. Como la velocidad de giro del espejo es más rápida que la de una película, el practicante puede obtener imágenes claras y en continuo movimiento. Esto es lo que llamamos Visión Remota. Este principio es tan simple, que yo lo he revelado en unas cuantas palabras. Todo esto es el secreto de los secretos.
http://www.gabitogrupos.com/elojodelaluz/template.php?nm=1274628296
Nine Ways to Spice Up Any Blog Post—Fast
This guest post is by Ali Luke of Aliventures.
Did your latest post get all the readers, comments and tweets that it deserved?
Probably not. You wrote a great piece, but somehow, it seemed bland. Your ideas were good, but the post lacks a little something. What you need is more spice.
Here are nine ways to add some heat to your post, and grab readers’ attention.
#1: Add a snappy title and subtitles
You know that posts need great headlines. Often, the headline is all that a potential reader can see before clicking through to read the whole post—on Twitter, for instance, or in a CommentLuv link.
When you’ve got a post ready to go, though, it’s easy to just hit the Publish button, leaving it with whatever title first came to mind. Don’t do that. Give yourself time to pause and rethink. Is every word in the headline pulling its weight?
Further reading: How to Craft Post Titles that Draw Readers Into Your Blog
#2: Introduce powerful images
You might think images don’t really matter. After all, you’ve written great content—surely no-one cares whether or not there’s a pretty picture with it?
The thing is, images are eye-catching. They can make your posts look more polished and professional. And a great image can even set up the mood or tone of a post.
You’ll want to include at least one image per post—probably at the top. But if you’ve got a longer piece, it’s often worth adding several images to help break up the text. You can see how I did this in a huge post, Freelance Writing: Ten Steps, Tons of Resources, with ten images, one for each step.
Further reading: Blogosphere Trends + Choosing and Using Images
#3: Tap into readers’ concerns
Your readers don’t just want interesting information. They want posts which solve a problem. That could be something simple and basic (“How do I hold my camera?”) or something huge, like “How do I get out of debt?”
If you know your readers well, you’ll know what their common worries and struggles are. You can use these in your post, by empathizing with how they feel and by showing them the way forwards.
Further reading: How to Create Reader Profiles/Personas to Inspire and Inform Your Blogging
#4: Add a personal anecdote
This isn’t a technique which you’ll want to use in every single post, but it’s very powerful when used sparingly.
Readers love stories, and they love to feel a sense of connection with another person. By telling a brief story from your own life, you hook the reader on an emotional level, not just an intellectual one.
My favourite example wasn’t originally a blog post at all. It was live, from Darren speaking on stage at BlogWorld Expo. He retells the story in the video post What My 4-Year-Old Son Taught Me About Successful Blogging.
Further reading: The Power of Being Personal on Your Blog (which also includes an anecdote!)
#5: Offer “take home” or “action” points
Sometimes, you’ll have a great post packed with useful content—but without anything for the reader to really grab hold of.
To help your reader engage, offer “take home” points, summing up the post, or “action” points: something that gets the reader thinking or some next step they can take. I’ve noticed that when I do this with posts, I get more comments and retweets than otherwise.
This is particularly crucial if you’ve written a post which is heavy on theory. There’s a great example here in Charlie Gilkey’s The Four Key Dimensions of Business, where he ends with four straightforward questions to help people start using what they’ve just read.
Further reading: How to Create Compelling Content by Inspiring Action
#6: Get readers to react
Sometimes, bloggers aim to use the power of reaction in quite a cynical way. They post rants—angry pieces which are just intended to start an argument or to get attention.
But when you encourage thoughtful reactions, you help readers to share their ideas—and to share your content. You turn them from passive consumers of your content into active engagers with it.
Getting readers to react might be as simple as asking “What do you think?” In most cases, though, you’ll want to pose a question or ask their opinion on something specific.
Further reading: 7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement
#7: Include quotes from other bloggers
When you’re reading blogs, you might come across a great quote—a sentence or a paragraph which really resonates. Why not share it with your readers?
Including quotes from other bloggers can help you to back up your own opinions and facts: it proves that other experts in your field are saying the same thing as you.
Plus, quotes help break up a long blog post. They allow you to introduce a different voice into your piece, and can provide a starting point for discussion.
Further reading: Blogosphere Trends + Effectively Using Quotes
#8: Use an analogy
Maybe you’ve written a great post that explains exactly how something works, in painstaking detail. The problem is, your readers aren’t engaging with it—they’re not even reading it.
Can you come up with an analogy that helps the reader to understand?
A good analogy gives your reader a picture in their head, based on something familiar. It can give them that “Aha, I get it!” moment. It can help them look at something in a fresh way, like Starting a Successful Blog is Like Planning an Invasion. You can keep the analogy going as a running metaphor using language that relates to it (like “allies” and “skirmishes” in that post).
Further reading: Blogging is like…
#9: Make your language punchier
You’re a blogger—which means you’re a writer. You need to make every sentence and word work for you.
By “punchier”, I don’t mean you should be aggressive. I mean that your words need to be strong and engaging.
Cut out unnecessary words and phrases, like “it may be the case that” or “In my opinion” or “it’s quite probably true that”. You don’t need these wishy-washy qualifiers, and your sentences will reader more strongly without them.
Use everyday language. Short, simple words can convey your points far more effectively than grandiose, convoluted ones.
Further reading: Blogging is About Writing
I’ve given you nine ways to spice up your posts. Now it’s your turn! What’s your number 10?
Ali Luke is a writer, blogger and writing coach. She’s just launched The Blogger’s Guide to Freelancing, a fully updated and expanded version of her popular Staff Blogging Course. Grab your copy today for $29, and start using your blogging skills to make serious money.
Mariana Caplan, Ph.D.: 10 Spiritually Transmitted Diseases
It is a jungle out there, and it is no less true about spiritual life than any other aspect of life. Do we really think that just because someone has been meditating for five years, or doing 10 years of yoga practice, that they will be any less neurotic than the next person? At best, perhaps they will be a little bit more aware of it. A little bit.
It is for this reason that I spent the last 15 years of my life researching and writing books on cultivating discernment on the spiritual path in all the gritty areas--power, sex, enlightenment, gurus, scandals, psychology, neurosis -- as well as earnest, but just plain confused and unconscious, motivations on the path. My partner (author and teacher Marc Gafni) and I are developing a new series of books, courses and practices to bring further clarification to these issues.
Several years ago, I spent a summer living and working in South Africa. Upon my arrival I was instantly confronted by the visceral reality that I was in the country with the highest murder rate in the world, where rape was common and more than half the population was HIV-positive -- men and women, gays and straights alike.
As I have come to know hundreds of spiritual teachers and thousands of spiritual practitioners through my work and travels, I have been struck by the way in which our spiritual views, perspectives and experiences become similarly "infected" by "conceptual contaminants" -- comprising a confused and immature relationship to complex spiritual principles can seem as invisible and insidious as a sexually transmitted disease.
The following 10 categorizations are not intended to be definitive but are offered as a tool for becoming aware of some of the most common spiritually transmitted diseases.
1. Fast-Food Spirituality: Mix spirituality with a culture that celebrates speed, multitasking and instant gratification and the result is likely to be fast-food spirituality. Fast-food spirituality is a product of the common and understandable fantasy that relief from the suffering of our human condition can be quick and easy. One thing is clear, however: spiritual transformation cannot be had in a quick fix.
2. Faux Spirituality: Faux spirituality is the tendency to talk, dress and act as we imagine a spiritual person would. It is a kind of imitation spirituality that mimics spiritual realization in the way that leopard-skin fabric imitates the genuine skin of a leopard.
3. Confused Motivations: Although our desire to grow is genuine and pure, it often gets mixed with lesser motivations, including the wish to be loved, the desire to belong, the need to fill our internal emptiness, the belief that the spiritual path will remove our suffering and spiritual ambition, the wish to be special, to be better than, to be "the one."
4. Identifying with Spiritual Experiences: In this disease, the ego identifies with our spiritual experience and takes it as its own, and we begin to believe that we are embodying insights that have arisen within us at certain times. In most cases, it does not last indefinitely, although it tends to endure for longer periods of time in those who believe themselves to be enlightened and/or who function as spiritual teachers.
5. The Spiritualized Ego: This disease occurs when the very structure of the egoic personality becomes deeply embedded with spiritual concepts and ideas. The result is an egoic structure that is "bullet-proof." When the ego becomes spiritualized, we are invulnerable to help, new input, or constructive feedback. We become impenetrable human beings and are stunted in our spiritual growth, all in the name of spirituality.
6. Mass Production of Spiritual Teachers: There are a number of current trendy spiritual traditions that produce people who believe themselves to be at a level of spiritual enlightenment, or mastery, that is far beyond their actual level. This disease functions like a spiritual conveyor belt: put on this glow, get that insight, and -- bam! -- you're enlightened and ready to enlighten others in similar fashion. The problem is not that such teachers instruct but that they represent themselves as having achieved spiritual mastery.
7. Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of "spiritual superiority" is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that "I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual."
8. Group Mind: Also described as groupthink, cultic mentality or ashram disease, group mind is an insidious virus that contains many elements of traditional co-dependence. A spiritual group makes subtle and unconscious agreements regarding the correct ways to think, talk, dress, and act. Individuals and groups infected with "group mind" reject individuals, attitudes, and circumstances that do not conform to the often unwritten rules of the group.
9. The Chosen-People Complex: The chosen people complex is not limited to Jews. It is the belief that "Our group is more spiritually evolved, powerful, enlightened and, simply put, better than any other group." There is an important distinction between the recognition that one has found the right path, teacher or community for themselves, and having found The One.
10. The Deadly Virus: "I Have Arrived": This disease is so potent that it has the capacity to be terminal and deadly to our spiritual evolution. This is the belief that "I have arrived" at the final goal of the spiritual path. Our spiritual progress ends at the point where this belief becomes crystallized in our psyche, for the moment we begin to believe that we have reached the end of the path, further growth ceases.
"The essence of love is perception," according to the teachings of Marc Gafni, "Therefore the essence of self love is self perception. You can only fall in love with someone you can see clearly--including yourself. To love is to have eyes to see. It is only when you see yourself clearly that you can begin to love yourself."
It is in the spirit of Marc's teaching that I believe that a critical part of learning discernment on the spiritual path is discovering the pervasive illnesses of ego and self-deception that are in all of us. That is when we need a sense of humor and the support of real spiritual friends. As we face our obstacles to spiritual growth, there are times when it is easy to fall into a sense of despair and self-diminishment and lose our confidence on the path. We must keep the faith, in ourselves and in others, in order to really make a difference in this world.
Adapted from Eyes Wide Open: Cultivating Discernment on the Spiritual Path (Sounds True)
John Robbins: Chocolate's Startling Health Benefits
The food police may find this hard to take, but chocolate has gotten a bad rap. People say it causes acne, that you should eat carob instead, that it's junk food. But these accusations are not only undeserved and inaccurate, they falsely incriminate a delicious food that turns out to have profoundly important healing powers.
There is in fact a growing body of credible scientific evidence that chocolate contains a host of heart-healthy and mood-enhancing phytochemicals, with benefits to both body and mind.
For one, chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. These are substances that reduce the ongoing cellular and arterial damage caused by oxidative reactions.
You may have heard of a type of antioxidants called polyphenols. These are protective chemicals found in plant foods such as red wine and green tea. Chocolate, it turns out, is particularly rich in polyphenols. According to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the same antioxidant properties found in red wine that protect against heart disease are also found in comparable quantities in chocolate.
How does chocolate help to prevent heart disease? The oxidation of LDL cholesterol is considered a major factor in the promotion of coronary disease. When this waxy substance oxidizes, it tends to stick to artery walls, increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. But chocolate to the rescue! The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.
And there's more. One of the causes of atherosclerosis is blood platelets clumping together, a process called aggregation. The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit this clumping, reducing the risks of atherosclerosis.
High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart disease. It is also one of the most common causes of kidney failure, and a significant contributor to many kinds of dementia and cognitive impairment. Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate daily can reduce blood pressure in people with mild hypertension.
Why are people with risk factors for heart disease sometimes told to take a baby aspirin every day? The reason is that aspirin thins the blood and reduces the likelihood of clots forming (clots play a key role in many heart attacks and strokes). Research performed at the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, found that chocolate thins the blood and performs the same anti-clotting activity as aspirin. "Our work supports the concept that the chronic consumption of cocoa may be associated with improved cardiovascular health," said UC Davis researcher Carl Keen.
How much chocolate would you have to eat to obtain these benefits? Less than you might think. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase total antioxidant capacity 4 percent, and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.
Why, then, has chocolate gotten such a bum reputation? It's the ingredients we add to it. Nearly all of the calories in a typical chocolate bar are sugar and fat.
As far as fats go, it's the added fats that are the difficulty, not the natural fat (called cocoa butter) found in chocolate. Cocoa butter is high in saturated fat, so many people assume that it's not good for your cardiovascular system. But most of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.
Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And it has less antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than dark chocolate.
Does chocolate contribute to acne? Milk chocolate has been shown to do so, but I've never heard of any evidence incriminating dark chocolate.
Dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar. I'm sure you don't need another lecture on the dangers of excess sugar consumption. But if you want to become obese and dramatically raise your odds of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, foods high in sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) are just the ticket.
Are chocolate's benefits limited to the health of the body? Hardly. Chocolate has long been renown for its remarkable effects on human mood. We are now beginning to understand why.
Chocolate is the richest known source of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain small amounts of caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. The mood enhancement produced by chocolate may be primarily due to theobromine.
Chocolate also contains other substances with mood elevating effects. One is phenethylamine, which triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with sexual arousal and pleasure. Phenethylamine is released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.
Another substance found in chocolate is anandamide (from the Sanskrit word "ananda," which means peaceful bliss). A fatty substance that is naturally produced in the brain, anandamide has been isolated from chocolate by pharmacologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. It binds to the same receptor sites in the brain as cannabinoids -- the psychoactive constituents in marijuana -- and produces feelings of elation and exhilaration. (If this becomes more widely known, will they make chocolate illegal?)
If that weren't enough, chocolate also boosts brain levels of serotonin. Women typically have lower serotonin levels during PMS and menstruation, which may be one reason women typically experience stronger cravings for chocolate at these times in their cycles. People suffering from depression so characteristically have lower serotonin levels that an entire class of anti-depressive medications called serotonin uptake inhibitors (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zooloft) have been developed that raise brain levels of serotonin.
Since I am known as an advocate of healthy eating, I'm often asked about my food indulgences. One of my favorite desserts is a piece of dark organic chocolate, along with a glass of a fine red wine.
I do have a policy, though, to eat only organic and/or fair trade chocolate. This is because of what I have learned about child slavery in the cocoa trade.
May your life be full of healthy pleasures.
John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World," the classic "Diet For A New America," and "The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less." He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey's Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America's Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info
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Is Our Management System a Dead Man Walking? – Travis Robertson
Here we go again...My brilliant friend Travis, spelling like it is!!! Thanks Travis!
2/19/2011
2/18/2011
How can you dive 700 feet in one breath? - Holy Kaw!
First of all: What would possess anyone to dive deep into the ocean without an oxygen tank in the first place? If humans were meant for such activity, we'd have gills and finned extremities, wouldn't we? Well, what might seem like an impossible, watery nightmare to ordinary mortals is merely a challenge to an elite breed of aquatic athletes known as freedivers.
So how is it that freedivers are able to dive so deep and last so long without taking a breath? So, what's the science behind holding one's breath? Maybe we're really part dolphin...
Full article at HowStuffWorks.com.
Total aggregation of HowStuffWorks.com.
Photo credit: Fotolia
2/17/2011
Seth's Blog: On pricing power
If you’re not getting paid what you’re worth, there are only two possible reasons:
1. People don’t know what you’re worth, or
2. You’re not (currently) worth as much as you believeThe first situation can’t happen unless you permit it to. If you’re undervalued, then you have a communication problem, one that you can solve by telling accurate stories that resonate.
Far more likely, though, is the second problem. If there are reasonable substitutes for your work, and those substitutes are seen as cheaper, then you’re not going to get the work. 'Worth' in this case means, "what does it cost to get something like that if something like that is what I want?"
A cheaper substitute might mean buying nothing. Personal coaches, for example, usually sell against this alternative. It’s not a matter of finding a cheaper coach, it’s more about having no coach at all. Same with live music. People don't go to cheaper concerts, they just don't value the concert enough to go at all.
And so we often find ourselve stuck, matching the other guy's price, or worse, racing to the bottom to be cheaper. Cheaper is the last refuge of the marketer unable to invent a better product and tell a better story.
The goal, no matter what you sell, is to be seen as irreplaceable, essential and priceless. If you are all three, then you have pricing power. When the price charged is up to you, when you have the power to set the price, there is a line out the door and you can use pricing as a signaling mechanism, not merely a way to make a living.
Of course, the realization of what it takes to create value might break your heart, because it means you have to specialize, take risks, create art, leave a positive impact and adopt generosity in all you do. It means you have to develop extraordinary expertise and that you are almost always hanging way out of the boat, about to fall out.
The pricing power position in the market is coveted and valuable... The ability to have the power to set a price is at the heart of what it means to do business profitably, so of course there is a never-ending competition for pricing power.
The curse of the internet is that it provides competitive information, which makes pricing power ever more difficult to exercise. On the other hand, the benefit of the internet is that once you have it, the list of people who want to pay for your irreplaceable, essential and priceless contribution will get even longer.
2/16/2011
The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Storytelling is a revolutionary force for change
« Design thinking is a subset of radical management: cool vlsual summary | Main | No seed ever sees its own flower. We are here to do. »
November 27, 2010
Storytelling is a revolutionary force for change
When I’m discussing how to introduce leadership storytelling, I’m often asked: “Should I call it storytelling?” The reasons are twofold.
- It might be a business executive worrying that “storytelling” conveys an activity that isn’t serious or appropriate for a large organization to be wasting time and money on.
- Or it might be someone in the storytelling world wondering whether storytelling might have more success in the business world if it had a more business-like name, something that would link it more directly to the drivers of business.
It’s useful to begin thinking about the question from a historical perspective.
A historical shift
Shortly after I left the World Bank in December 2000 and began wandering around the world showing leaders in organizations, large and small, how to use the power of storytelling to inspire people to embrace change, I did indeed find some organizations that were embarrassed by the name. Early on, I would be engaged to conduct a workshop almost in the dark of night with a name like “Strategic Change Management” as if to ensure that the Chief Financial Officer would never find out that time and money was being wasted on something as irrelevant to business as storytelling.
Other organizations adopted a kind of middle ground and would use a euphemistic name like “business narrative”, which was not as misleading as “strategic change management” yet not as obviously unbusiness-like as “storytelling”. “Business narrative” implies that storytelling is a business activity.
Around 2005, as the leadership storytelling movement grew in scope around the world, and more and more articles and books about the use of storytelling in business, I noticed a change. When I would propose a workshop about “business narrative”, I would get a question: “Isn’t this about storytelling? Why don’t we call it what it is?”
Since then, storytelling has continued to gain recognition as a core competence of leadership. It is now standard practice to include a section on storytelling in books on leadership and change management, such as A Whole New Mind
(2006) by Dan Pink, The Leadership Challenge
(2008) by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, Made to Stick
(2008) by Chip and Dan Heath, and Getting Change Right
(2010) by Seth Kahan.
Linking storytelling to the drivers of business
Nevertheless, around 2008, I noticed that although storytelling initiatives would flourish for a period in large organizations, there was an issue of sustainability. Workshops would be held. Enthusiasm would grow. The CEO would endorse it. Plans would start to be developed to make storytelling a core leadership competence. But then something would happen. There would be a change in management. Or a merger. Or a cost-cutting drive. And suddenly the storytelling initiative would be sidelined, de-funded or de-emphasized or eliminated.
In effect, the apparent victories over the Chief Financial Officer that I was seeing in the storytelling workshops and initiatives tended to be temporary. I was winning battles. But I wasn’t winning the war. The Chief Financial Officer and his minions would be lurking in the shadows, waiting for the right moment when they could stomp on this storytelling nonsense, “trim the fat” that storytelling represented, get back to maximizing efficiency, and once again have the organization focused single-mindedly on maximizing the bottom line.
This has led some to wonder whether storytelling might do better if it had a name that was not obviously at odds with the business drivers of a traditional organization. Would it be possible to come up with a name for storytelling that made it more acceptable to the Chief Financial Officer mindset?
The problem here is that the issue is one of substance, not the name. The fact is that the human values of storytelling—openness, authenticity, deep listening, adult-to-adult conversation, treating people as people—are at odds with the drivers of the traditional business: maximizing efficiency, command and control, treating people as “human resources” and manipulating customers so as to enhance the bottom line. Attempting to link storytelling to the drivers of the traditional business inevitably results in a disconnect. The two activities are based on different values.
Moreover storytelling is a double-edged sword. Storytelling is a powerful communication tool that can be used to inspire people to embrace strange new ideas. But in the process, storytelling reveals very clearly the nature of those ideas. So if the ideas are unattractive or even unethical, storytelling will reveal that more powerfully than the meaning that the storyteller is hoping to convey. In effect, as often happens in leadership storytelling, the story that the listeners hear will end up being very different from the story that the leaders imagine themselves to be telling.
So although some executives and writers argue that the power of storytelling can be combined with the values of the traditional organization, this overlooks the fact that the power of storytelling rests on people-centered values. By contrast, the values of the traditional organization are related to things: making money, maximizing efficiency, exploiting people as “human resources” and enhancing the bottom line. Joining storytelling to the drivers of the traditional organization is like mixing oil and water. They don’t go together.
Storytelling as a revolutionary force for change
From this perspective, it becomes clearer why the Chief Financial Officer and his minions should be so intent on removing storytelling from the organization: storytelling is a revolutionary force that can begin to stimulate questions as to whether making money and maximizing efficiency should really be the be-all and end-all of organizations and society. Storytelling can begin to reveal the de-humanizing results of running organizations in this way and so spur a quest to consider more human-based alternatives.
Of course, subordinating storytelling to the values of traditional management might be worth considering if traditional management was doing well. But it’s not. It’s a disaster. The rate of return on the assets of US firms is a quarter of what it was in 1965. The life expectancy of a firm in the Fortune 500 is down to 15 years and heading towards five years; only one in five workers is fully engaged in his or her work; traditional management has also shown itself incapable of handling disruptive innovation, of generating new jobs or of coping with the demands of social media. Overall, traditional management represents a set of economic, social and political problems of the first order.
As a result, trying to change the name of storytelling so as to align more closely with the drivers of the traditional management is heading in the wrong direction. Instead, one should be using storytelling to change the drivers of the traditional organization and reinventing management, so that the organization generates high productivity, continuous innovation, disciplined execution, greater job satisfaction and client delight.
Read my earlier post for a quick summary of what’s involved in reinventing management and read my new book The Leader's Guide to Radical Management
to get a detailed account of how to do it.
November 27, 2010 in HR, Innovation, Leadership, Radical Management | Permalink
Technorati Tags: business narrative, radical management, reinvention of management, storytelling
Comments
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Great post. A good story that needs telling from the rooftops (the ones over the C-suite).
Posted by: BrianSJ | November 27, 2010 at 02:11 PM
Very good points in your post,Steven. However, reinventing management sounds like a long-term transformational process. In the meantime, how about a short term compromise? Maybe it should be positioned as Financial Storytelling. That way, it's a first step towards aligning the drivers of the traditional management with the qualities of high productivity, continuous innovation, disciplined execution, greater job satisfaction and client delight.
Posted by: EBeancounter | November 28, 2010 at 02:34 PM
Hi EBeancounter
"Financial storytelling"? Interesting!
My experience has been that if we stick with "storytelling" as the frame of reference, then we remain vulnerable to the CFO and his minions. We can win battles with "storytelling", but I'm trying to win the war and get sustainable change. For that purpose, I think we need a broader frame than "storytelling".
Steve
Posted by: Steve Denning | November 28, 2010 at 03:15 PM
Yet another book on reinventing management? Egads that story has been told by so many (primarily white males) for so long now.
Posted by: JC | November 30, 2010 at 01:41 PM
Dear JC
Thanks for your comment. Yes, another book on reinventing management. You suggest that the story has been told by many times before. Well, if that is the case, I'm afraid that the problems still remain in a very serious form, as I explain here: http://bit.ly/bryJHX.
I spent several years trying to figure out why the problems hadn't been solved, despite those many books. I have tried in my new book to explain what I learned and what can be done about it. In fact, I discovered that there is a new story to be told and I have done my best to tell it.
I am hoping that people who are seriously concerned to understand the tragic state of the current workplace, how it has come about and what can be done about it, will take the time to read my story, consider it and ultimately decide whether it is helpful in dealing with those problems.
I am not surprised that some people might initially find implausible the idea that something new could be said about a subject on which so much has been written.
Some fourteen years ago, when I began telling people that storytelling might be relevant to leadership in organizations, many people scoffed at that idea too. Today storytelling is an accepted part of most leadership textbooks and curricula.
As Einstein said, "If at first an idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it."
So I hope you will at some point take the time to consider my "absurd idea" and reflect on whether it is relevant to the problems from which so many people today are suffering.
Steve
Posted by: Steve Denning | November 30, 2010 at 04:30 PM
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2/10/2011
2/07/2011
2/05/2011
The Millennial Revolution Update - Travis Robertson - StumbleUpon
This is a must read. For everybody, to understand the real historic moment we are experiencing in this planet. This beautiful planet we are destroying and denying it is happening. You have to be very blind not to see it.
What the F@*& is Wrong with You People?! | VIDEO | elephant journal
Bill Maher is the Magician of the truth. Got to love the guy.
2/04/2011
Tom Watson: Sat Dishes and Revolution: Why Al Jazeera Matters There -- and Here
You won't find it on Time Warner or FIOS or Cablevision, but Al Jazeera's English language television service is laying claim to the viewing loyalty of vast numbers of news-hungry, media-obsessed westerners following the incredible story of courage and revolution in Egypt.
More than any of the social media platforms we've come to worship with the ardent, almost physical hunger of Charlie Sheen expecting a delivery man, the humble satellite signal is rewriting the course of a region in which secular democracy is the dreamy contrast to the wakeful nightmare of dynastic strongmen or intolerant mullahs.
Al Jazeera. Television and a news network sympathetic to the cause of freedom -- a polished and professional network endemic to the ethnic, religious, and cultural characteristics of the region, not an import. Remember that ten years ago, the Bush Administration targeted Al Jazeera's journalists as enemies and bombed its bureau in Kabul. Now our State Department follows Al Jazeera as a matter of basic professional pratice, and you can bet it's in heavy rotation on the Situation Room flat screens. And among those who follow international news and politics closely, Al Jazeera has become the channel of first choice; traffic to the English-language stream online has grown by 2,500 percent since last Friday. And Mohamed Nanabhay, the head of online for the English language channel, told The New York Times' Brian Stelter that the site's live stream had been viewed over 4 million times since Friday, and that 1.6 million of those views have come from the United States. "It's just a testament to the fact that Americans do care about foreign news," he said.
Of course, Al Jazeera's English-language service is different than its main Arabic-language programming yet we can't help but marvel at the dead-straight reporting from Egypt (before the Mubarak government shut it down) and the fluff-free style. No studio talking heads, no all-star panels, no attempt to make the television experience look like an iPad app, with anchors pressing touch screens and sliding meaningless graphics around the viewing palette. Just waves of in-depth coverage, images backed by reporting. Yes, this is what big news television used to be -- a bit unfashionable perhaps among a crowd of digerati obsessed with smart phones and Quora, but what a joy.
And to use the technical journalism term, it's a hell of a story. What began with the slap of a protester's face in a remote part of Tunisia has spread quickly across the North African Arab countries and is leaking into the gulf states -- emboldened and knit together by digital communications tools, but mostly powered by a willingness to confront power and by the mass realization that what lies behind (powerless poverty) is far less compelling than a mysterious and dangerous future that may include self-determination.
We shouldn't undersell the digital communications portion of this. Yes, Twitter may be playing almost no role inside Egypt over the past week, and Facebook may be blacked out, but it's important to look back further into the roots of the revolt. And there, you'll find upper middle class Egpytians and Tunisians (and connected people in other parts of the Arab world) organizing in Facebook groups. They're only a part of the story, of course -- most of the anger comes from the poor and the middle class living with high prices, low wages, and no political power. Nancy Scola pulled this quote from the op-ed piece by novelist Mansoura Ez-Eldin in the Times, and I think it says quite a bit about the current among young Arabic people who yearn to be both free and upwardly mobile:
Clearly, the scent of Tunisia's 'jasmine revolution' has quickly reached Egypt. Following the successful expulsion in Tunis of the dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the call arose on Facebook for an Egyptian revolution, to begin on Jan. 25. Yet the public here mocked those young people who had taken to Twitter and Facebook to post calls for protest: Since when was the spark of revolution ignited on a pre-planned date? Had revolution become like a romantic rendezvous?
Facebook groups were a huge part of this; democratic activists have been using the platform for years to gather support and share information. Connected young Egyptians like citizen journalist Noha Atef have been chronicling human rights abuses in Egypt for years, and disseminating the information via Facebook and YouTube. And even though the term "Twitter revolution" has the smell of the discredited about it, short messaging over networks is also a part of this - whether it's texting or Twitter or the on-fly-invention allowing Egyptians to Tweet by phone, cobbled together in an unusual collaboration between Twitter and Google. Further, I do think there's something to Jeff Jarvis's suggestion that in the future, connectivity to the network of networks - ordinary people's ability to communicate -- should be considered a basic human right. Of course, this raises the spectre of the vast private ownership of most of what we consider "the Internet," and the inherent weakness of private companies interested in profit standing up to governments who demand censorship or monitoring, a topic covered in detail by Evgeny Morozov in his riveting challenge to cyber-utopians (and digital centrism), The Net Delusion.
Yet there is no debating two facts out of Egypt:
1. Mubarak shut down the Internet and digital life there is at a standstill.
2. The revolution not only continued under an Internet black-out, it picked up steam.
Some of it's economic. While cell phone usage has grown wildly in developing countries and places like Egypt, where almost half the population lives in poverty, those phones aren't fancy smart phones with Web access and social media apps; they're cheaper basic models with pre-paid voice service. So while more educated and wealthier elements of Egyptian society may miss their access and suffer from a major Facebook jones, the crowds jamming Tahrir Square are powered by two alternative technologies - their feet, and their voices.
Or as a friend of Parvez Sharma put it from inside Egypt:
Fuck the internet! I have not seen it since Thursday and I am not missing it. I don't need it. No one in Tahrir Square needs it. No one in Suez needs it or in Alex...Go tell Mubarak that the peoples revolution does not [need] his damn internet!
But it will, I think. It will when the job of building a more liberal civil society in Egypt replaces the job of taking down the dictator, when long-term organizing and creating progressive political parties is at hand. The networks of young organizers that relied on Facebook for years will be reactivated and empowered, and new voices will emerge.
That time is not now, however. Strangely enough, this is television's time - and it's clearly the cross-over moment for the news network that Bill O'Reilly bashed as "anti-America" just last week. No matter: the Drudge Report is now sending linky love Al Jazeera's way. And this is good for our society, not just for the Arab world. In embracing Al Jazeera's splendid coverage in large numbers over the past week, we're laying aside a good portion of fear -- and we're turning a page to a new chapter in the post-post-9/11 world. Al Jazeera is good for us.
Watching Al Jazeera break through this week, I was reminded of a conversation I had with Reese Schonfeld 10 years ago at the launch party for his memoir about helping Ted Turner create CNN. Schonfeld recalled how the CNN founders really saw themselves as revolutionaries -- and how they thought of the news network as a kind of social enterprise aimed at changing the nation's relationship to news and information, right down to Turner's famous banning of the word "foreign." And the conversation recalled how Ted Turner introduced CNN to the world in 1980:
"We won't be signing off until the world ends. We'll be on, and we will cover the end of the world, live, and that will be our last event... and when the end of the world comes, we'll play 'Nearer, My God, to Thee' before we sign off."
That commitment to meaty, unending television coverage lives again, and let's hope it spreads to our sets like democracy activism through the Middle East. With Al Jazeera, the tune may be a little different -- maybe they'll be singing Mawtini at the end - but the song remains the same.
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