5 Strategies for Keeping Your Sanity in This Insane World

April 22, 2014 | By WakingTimes | 10 Replies

Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times

Some of us have achieved a balance of sorts in these dark times, and have grown to be able to view the world as it is, honestly acknowledging all of its suffering, yet somehow maintaining a healthy connection to happiness and inner peace. In part, that’s really what this website is about, developing the grace and strength to ride out that often times thin line between terror and joy in a world that held hostage by chaos, confusion, fear, destruction and madness.

The recent suicide of the renowned investigative reporter Michael C. Ruppert is a shocking reminder of just how thin that line can be at times. Michael Ruppert was a figure who, for decades, had tirelessly exposed the corruption in government, and the horrifying truths behind the environmental calamities we are facing. He was a person who helped to expose 9/11 truth, and someone who was compelled to gather a set of facts and not permit delusion color his interpretation of them. For this, he will be missed amongst the alternative media, and the fact that such a leader in the truth movement could crack under the pressure and take his own life is a reminder of just how devastating truth can be on the human psyche.

The earthly world is a cauldron for the soul, and the spiritual side of human kind is being sincerely put to the test these days. Some say these are the end times, others say this is the Kali Yuga, but, as people who feel concerned enough with truth and refuse to engage in denial, it is essential that we restructure and maintain our personal lives in such a way that inner peace is the norm, not the exception.

The last podcast that Michael Ruppert hosted, recorded just hours before he took his own life, can be listened to here. It is rather dark, in retrospect, as you can feel the despair in his words and in his voice. He says conceals his good-bye, offering his gratitude to many of the truth seekers that he had met on his path. He also speaks directly about how his life had absorbed so much ugly truth that he could no longer awaken each day without experiencing complete terror, and how he could no longer sit in public watching people go by without projecting onto them only all of the horrible things he had come to learn of the world.

He is not alone in his dark perceptions, and it is easy to forget how common it is for people to find themselves in similar frames of mind, filled with dread, doom, gloom, despair, sorrow, worry, fear, often just underneath a veil of feigned happiness.

For those out there who may be experiencing life in a similar manner these days, fully consumed with the bad news out there, seemingly completely disconnected from source, felling totally at the whims of dark and powerful forces, it is crucial to remember the value of life and the value of our precious personal time in this cauldron. As a practical matter of achieving this awareness, there are things that people can consider and focus on to alleviate the fear, anxiety, and concern of living in these interesting times.

1. Tune out, take a break – If things are seeming dark, unrelenting and hopeless, and all that you can see is the bad news happening in our world, take a break. Turn off the TV, the computer, stop talking about it all, and find something else entirely to occupy your attention, at least for a bit.

2. Re-connect with nature – Get outside, leave the city, take a vacation and visit some place beautiful. Mother nature, although she is under duress right now, still has plenty of beauty and joy to give, and there are many places still to get away and re-connect to the natural rhythms of the earth and the plant and animal kingdoms.

3. Re-build your routines – The mind is a creature of habit, and a persistent dark mood is as much a matter of habit as anything else. The mind can become addicted to negative thoughts and grim ideas, and what we think, we find, so when the mind is in a serious negative rut, one will attract news and sentiments that reflect and support this. Change your habits to give yourself some space to alter your routines. Take a break from hanging out with the same people, change your homepage on your internet browser, listen to new music, get up earlier than usual. Any way that you can shock the mind into having to adopt new patterns will help to overcome the despair and fear that our society encourages.

4. Practice inner peace – There are many tools one can quickly learn and play with in order to cultivate a sense of peace and overcome the darkness that can so easily overcome us. The best approach is to consider that each day is a new and unique opportunity to achieve peace, and as such, starting early with a practice before you do anything else has the power to affect your whole day. Give yourself at least a few minutes each morning to re-program your mind for inner peace. Find a simple meditation practice that you can do before you start your normal day, teach yourself how to express gratitude for life before you set off to your work, learn to give thanks for whatever you can think of, no matter how insignificant seeming. Doing this before setting about the business of this world will help you to attract an entirely different energy into your life.

5. Join a new positive group of people- The power of being around positive, honest, and hard-working people is unrivaled. In my case, joining a martial arts school completely healed me of the despair associated with constantly acknowledging the hard truths of our world. Yoga, meditation, or any other kind of interesting group of non-dramatic, positive, energetic people can help you to recalibrate your sense of well-being.

These are just a few things that came to mind when pondering the value of life, and the practice of life, after hearing the discouraging news about the fate of Michael Ruppert. Ideas have the power to change people’s lives, and these are just a few ideas I’m offering to the world with the hopes of helping someone to mitigate the pain and suffering of being in and of this insane, yet, breathtaking world.

I know there are many more things that can and should be added to this list, so, what do you recommend? Please leave your ideas in the comments section below.

A Unified Theory of Evolution – How Karma & Reincarnation Complete Darwinism & Intelligent Design

April 23, 2014 | By WakingTimes | 7 Replies

Image: Flickr

Frank Huguenard, Staff Writer
Waking Times

In 1859, when Charles Darwin published his landmark manuscript on the theory of evolution, On the Origin of Species, the book generated a firestorm of controversy and still today the debate between scientists and Creationists seems to be more contentious as ever. According to Darwin’s theory, the basic mechanism of evolution consists of two major components; random mutations and natural selections. And we’re led to believe that all of the magnificent beauty and wonder we see in nature is due to random mutations. The platypusnotwithstanding, Mother Nature’s exquisite precision and diversity would appear to be too fine and too staggeringly perfect to be simply relegated to random chance and survival of the fittest.

On the other hand, the original proponents of the Intelligent Design theory were typically theologians who understood that The Book of Genesis couldn’t be considered a scientifically viable explanation for the vast amount of life forms on Earth, but wanted to posit a viable Creationist’s alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

And while Darwinists use science to discredit the story of Adam and Eve and how God created the Universe six thousand years ago, Creationists also have a great deal of scientific evidence that discredits many of the main tenets of Darwin’s original theory. Debunkers of Darwin’s theories are quick to point out mistakes in his overall concept without taking into account that he was a pioneer in his field 165 years ago when he published his book, and, that advances in science have filled in some of those mistakes. But what if both theories are correct, and both are incorrect? In other words, what if there was a unifying theory of evolution that satisfied both camps of thought?

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which was published as an entire book under the title of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life  is significantly more comprehensive than just a discourse on natural selection and random mutations. Amongst the many chapters are theories on how microbial life originated on the planet billions of years ago, how land mammals could become whales and dolphins and discussions of a Universal power behind the marriage between science and religion and how The mystery of Mysteries, evolution, follows some sort of cosmic laws.

Of the many controversies surrounding both theories, one of the biggest lingering mysteries is something that neither theory adequately addresses, which is how does the mechanism of animal and plant instincts actually work? From the smallest single celled organism to human beings, there is obviously an incredible amount of intelligence passed along from one generation to the next. Is it possible that this is something that is simply stored in the life form’s DNA or is there something beyond the physical realm that is communicating information to the plant or animal?

One of the most amazing stories about animal instincts is the 7 generation lifespan of a Monarch Butterflyfamily. Each spring, Monarchs begin the annual migration pattern away from a small mountain range in Mexico and begin their journey up north. Each successive generation flies 400-500 miles, lays eggs and dies. The eggs are hatched, the caterpillars mature and become butterflies, only to carry on the northward flight. Approximately the 7^th generation however, eats differently and saves all of it’s energy for the 2500 mile flight back to the very exact same tree their great, great, great, great grandfather left many months earlier. How can this much information, with the precision of a GPS device, be retained after 7 generations of insects no larger than the size of a leaf?

Neither Darwinists nor Intelligent Design proponents can begin to explain the answer to this question using their respective theories. However, researchers like Bruce Lipton in the field of epigenetics and Rupert Sheldrake and his theory of morphogenic fields and many others are beginning to postulate that a component of consciousness is at play here. However, neither of these theories really begins to provide an explanation for how plants and animals have evolved on this planet. And Andre Linde, whose theories regarding the Big Bang were recently validated, has stated that he believes that consciousness will become part of Scientific Law within the next 100 years, paving the way for a unification between science and spirituality.

The bridge between Darwin’s theory of Evolution and the theory of Intelligent Design begins to be constructed when you incorporate the concepts of karma and reincarnation into the overall equation of evolution. Even if you are a non-believer in either karma or reincarnation, the inclusion of the two ideas into the overall mechanism for either theory of how life developed on this planet automatically begins to resolve the question marks. The mystery of how such an incredible amount of diverse and perfect life forms developed on this planet from primitive microbial life starts to be revealed.

According to the science of Vedanta, when a person is conceived, 50% of the impressions on their consciousness come from their parents and 50% come from their previous birth. This explains why children from the same mother and father can have such radically different physical and psychological traits. Of course, this type of equation could never be proven (or more to the point, disproven) using the Modern Scientific Method and so it’s difficult for westerners to move on from here. This intellectual obstacle could also be compared to the square root of negative one, otherwise known as an imaginary number: since no number multiplied by itself can result in a negative number, the square root of any negative number can’t exist, so they are called ‘imaginary’.

However, mathematicians and scientists commonly use imaginary numbers and irrational numbers to solve complex equations which couldn’t possibly be solved any other way. Coincidentally, Schrödinger’s famousWave Function, which is a centerpiece of Quantum Mechanics, was resolved using the square root of negative one. In much the same way, karma and reincarnation (which some scientists would argue as being irrational) can be used to resolve the complexity of the mechanism behind evolution.  Operating under the assumption that half of an organism’s instincts (or karma) comes from their parents and half comes from their previous birth, you can begin to formulate a model that explains how all of brilliantly diverse plant and animal species on Earth has come into existence.

When you stop to consider that it wasn’t random mutations that drove evolutionary change, but rather programmed DNA modifications coming from an epigenetic blueprint based on information stored in the consciousness of the organism from both its previous birth and its parents, you mold a new paradigm of evolution that incorporates some of the Intelligent Design concepts along with Darwin’s theories.

According to Vedanta, the design, the designer and the designed are all one, which implies that there is merit to the Intelligent Design theory but what advocates for the Intelligent Design theory are not factoring in to their position is the idea that the entire cosmic dance has not been an overall design created billions of years ago, but a vibrant and dynamic river of change that is an everlasting intermingling of the seen and the unseen. Between the manifest and the un-manifest.

About the Author

Frank Huguenard is an author, teacher and documentary film producer, specializing in films on Science and Spirituality. You can see all three of his films, Beyond Me, Beyond Belief and Beyond Reason at his website www.beyondmefilm.com.

Please tune in this weekend for an exclusive documentary film screening webcast and global meditation event, hosted by Frank Huguenard:

Boone, NC (April 24^th, 2014) – The Award Winning documentary film Beyond Me will be broadcast live during a Google Hangout event on Sunday April 27^th at 5:00 p.m. EST with Producer Frank Huguenardtaking live questions during intermission as well as after the film. Following the Q & A Frank will be guiding a 30 minute global meditation. Beyond Me is a film that draws a direct link between human suffering and the instinctive behaviors of plants and animals. Not only does this film provide an interesting new theory that bridges the gap between Intelligent Design and Darwinism, but it also offers a practical solution for helping people break out of their unwanted traits and tendencies.

For more details, see the event’s Facebook Page.

Read more articles by Frank Huguenard, here.