Science of the SpiritS


Rose

Native American proverbs that will touch the soul

native american
Thinking of the past and all that transpired can prove disheartening, especially when it comes to Native Americans. Pondering what would have been, what could have been if these peaceful tribes had never been raided, their land and lives never taken, is a weighty task, because we know we cannot change history. We can only reflect on how it has shaped us, and how we can use that knowledge to move forward positively.

And yet, living in a world where many people find themselves attached to the idea of owning expensive homes, clothes, cars, and various other devices, and living on a planet constantly fighting to overcome the unnatural side of man-made production, it is hard not to wonder what life would be like if Native Americans had never been so wrongfully removed.

Comment: See also: 8 overlooked survival skills that kept the Native Americans alive in a once thriving culture


Bulb

The importance of 'the moment'

being in the moment
© belsebuub.com
What is a moment? How do we define such a place that we exist in momentarily and yet cannot really say that it is exists until it has happened. We cannot pinpoint it but yet we exist in it continuously. This now moment is the existence that is happening, it continues on in a line until we live out a sequence of moments that we then see and label as the past. The moments that are to come then are defined as the future.

We live our daily lives never really aware of how important the moment we are living in is to us, accepting it at face value. It could be seen to be taken for granted that we just live, without ever venturing into understanding how important such moments of now are to us.

Light Saber

Growth mindset: Your reaction to failure determines your potential for future success

failure breeds success
Our weaknesses are the source of our strengths; our failures are the roots of our successes.

This is not another motivational cliché, this is a fact of history and science. Evolutionary theorists long ago concluded that the power of the human species lay in its weaknesses. Aware of their bodies' fragility compared to that of other animals, human beings had to compensate for their powerlessness in order to survive. Individuals were too weak to hunt by themselves, so they collaborated and hunted in groups. Collective activity emerged, communication evolved, tools were built, and the human species ruled all others.

Charles Darwin supposedly said that "it is not the strongest of the species that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change." Humans survived because they could adapt to nature. The motivation to adapt came from their powerlessness: we only adapt to processes that we cannot change and that lie beyond our power. Through such adaptation, we develop new strengths. Humans could not change the laws of nature, but they successfully adapted to the laws of nature by developing new forms of organized activity.

History is rich with examples of individuals who demonstrated how strength emerges from weakness. Vygotsky lists some of these examples:
Having struggled with a speech defect, Demosthenes went on to become one of Greece's greatest orators. The stuttering Demulen was an outstanding orator; the blind, deaf-mute Helen Keller a famous writer and prophet of optimism (Vygotsky, Collected Works).

Ladybug

Depression is not a natural disease: Hunter-gatherers hold the key to the cure

depression
Depression is a global epidemic. It is the main driver behind suicide, which now claims more than a million lives per year worldwide. One in four Americans will suffer from clinical depression within their lifetimes, and the rate is increasing with every generation.

It robs people of sleep, energy, focus, memory, sex drive and their basic ability to experience the pleasures of life, says author of The Depression Cure Stephen Ildari. It can destroy people's desire to love, work, play and even their will to live. If left unchecked it can cause permanent brain damage.

Depression lights up the pain circuitry of the brain to such an extent that many of Ildari's psychiatric patients have called it torment, agony and torture. "Many begin to look to death as a welcome means of escape," he said in a Ted Talks presentation.

Comment: See also: Put down the pills & pick up a shovel: Gardening makes you happier & smarter


Galaxy

Lunar cycles - do they really influence us?

Lunar cycles
The moon has long been a source of wonder and inspiration to humans. Often associated with the mysterious feminine energy and the dreamy, irrational side of life, it has been held responsible for inspiring visions, revelations, and even madness.

Back in the days before artificial light, humans couldn't help but be directly affected by, and aware of, the varying stages of its cycles. When the moon was full, people could be more active as the light enabled them to engage in activities like hunting and celebrating, while the dark nights of the New Moon were more suited to quiet, more internally focused, reflective activities. Women especially experienced an intimate connection because our own body cycles closely mirrored those of the moon. Yet, as humanity has distanced itself from nature in general, living in increasingly artificial conditions, the synchronous relationship between humans and lunar cycles has diminshed.
"The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night." ~ Yasunari Kawabata, Palm-of-the-Hand Stories

Family

ESP and telepathy common in deaf people's dreams

ear in wall
© Getty Images
For certain members of the deaf community, dreams are a rare time when communication is easy.

From solar-powered hearing aids to sign language translation devices, today's deaf community have many tools and options that make communication much simpler than it once was. Nonetheless, during waking hours, being unable to hear in a world driven by sound remains a significant challenge. Lip reading is more difficult and less accurate than popularly believed. And while the use of American Sign Language (ASL) and cued speech has increased, they are still only used by a small fraction of the U.S. population.

But in some dreams, deaf people find they don't need lip reading or have to worry whether people know sign language. In many of their dreams, everyone knows ASL or communicates through a sort of telepathy where everyone simply knows instantly what everyone else is trying to say.

Hearts

Oxford University study reveals: Friends provide better pain relief than morphine

Friends
Social bonding has played a key role in our survival as a species. Some of the noted benefits of friendship from an evolutionary perspective include reduced vulnerability to predators, greater access to food resources, and protection from harassment. Today, though most of us no longer worry about being mauled by a predator as we go about our daily business, a healthy network of friends is still extremely valuable, acting like a safety net in life. Bolstered by the support of good friends, we can bound to great heights and celebrate the joys of life, and know that if we fall there will be someone there to offer comfort and assistance, to share our deepest fears and disappointments, and help make the dark moments much more bearable.

Recent studies have explored the science behind friendships and discovered that there are actually measurable differences between people who have strong, healthy social networks and those who don't. In particular, people with strong friend connections were found to experience significantly better states of physical and mental health.

Comment: Social bonds improve physical and mental well-being at every stage of life


People

Consciousness shown to exist after death

life after death
© getty images
In a large scale study of more than 2,000 people, British boffins confirmed that thoughts DO carry on after the heart stops.

The shock research has also uncovered the most convincing evidence of an out of body experience for a patient declared dead.

It had been believed the brain stopped all activity 30 seconds after the heart had stopped pumping blood around the body, and that with that, awareness ceases too.

However, the study from the University of Southampton shows people still experience awareness for up to three minutes after they had been pronounced dead.

Comment: These researchers are a little late to the game. Never the less....


Cross

Death risk reduced for women who frequently attend religious services

woman praying
© unknownAttending religious services more than once a week was linked to reduced risk of death among women.
New research published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests frequently attending religious services may be associated with lower mortality among women.

Study co-author Tyler J. VanderWeele, Ph.D., of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, MA, and colleagues found that women who attended religious services at least once weekly were up to a third less likely to die from all causes, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and cancer during 16 years of follow-up.

In the United States, as in many other parts of the world, religious practice is widespread.

According to the authors, around 65 percent of Americans consider religion to be an important part of life, 83 percent report praying to God within the last week, while 43 percent report having attended a religious service in the past week.

But how do religious practices impact health? This is what VanderWeele and colleagues set out to investigate, noting that there is limited information in this field.

Comment: As our modern society loses its community and spiritual ties, social and family connections, cultural heritage, healthy self-expression and creativity replacing them with shallow, consumer-driven, materialistic, narcissistic isolation and self-obsession, the people living within it become more and more spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and physically sick. It would be naive to think that there wasn't a connection.

John F. Schumaker's latest article, Cultural insanity: Ponerized Western consumer culture is creating a demoralized man in psycho-spiritual crisis is an excellent introduction to the issue facing those in the West who no longer understand what it means to live an authentic existence.


V

The struggle of knowing things our society does not want us to know


Comment: The below text is taken from a very heartfelt message posted on the /r/conspiracy Reddit.

You can visit the original post here to read the many good comments.


truth path
© The IndependentThe path of truth. Scary, often lonely, but 100% worth walking.
I've been here for 8 years on reddit, and things sure have changed a lot. /r/conspiracy is one of the few remaining places on reddit for real news. This sub looks like what the front page of reddit looked like for the first 3 years of its existence. It was about exposing things, the real truth, and learning about the world. This is what Aaron Schwartz wanted, before they killed him and killed reddit.

All the uncomfortable truths are delegated to this ridiculous-sounding "/r/conspiracy" which drives people away who are on the fence. These things that are often talked about on this sub are conspiracies, but they're also news, they're speculation or facts about how the world actually works beyond the face of things as we see them. This label of "conspiracy" is a form of censorship in itself, it pushes all the big deal stories to this one small corner of reddit.

If you're newer to reddit, 4 years or less, I bet there was one day when you found this sub. I bet you went through the frontpage of this sub and couldn't believe what you were reading. You probably thought "Why aren't these things being discussed on the news subreddit or the politics subreddit, if they are true?" You may have looked in to a specific story or two, and started realizing that there is something to many of the things talked about here. So you subscribed to the sub, you started reading it regularly. Maybe you decided you don't care about this divisive label of "conspiracy theorist", that it means nothing to you. What idiot would be afraid of theorizing about potential conspiracies, given the endless lists of historical examples? What kind of sheep is so trained to be afraid of the truth that they run away from it thinking they're doing themselves a favor? You start to question things in a deeper way once the tricks of culture become more obvious