Alchemy Event(s), Los Angeles (11:11:11)

AlchemyEvent.com

ALCHEMY EVENT METAMORPHOSIS 11:11:11

GLOBAL ASCENSION/TRANSFORMATION
Experience transformation as we cross the threshold into the Age of Aquarius! “11.11.11 is a celebration for Global Peace and Transformation.” Disclosure includes ETs, 2012, Mayan Calendar, Meditation, Yoga, Music, Ancient Aliens, Prophecy, Earth Changes, Exopolitics, Consciousness, Forbidden Archeology, UFOLOGY, Sound Healing, Dance, Banquet Party...

(trivedifoundation.org)

"The Quickening" (video)

Awakening As One

(MahaNomi, August, 2011) "The Quickening" was produced by Awakening As One.

All around the planet hundreds of millions of people are waiting for events to unfold in 2012. Many believe these events will bring either the birth of a harmonious new reality as the Age changes. Is it the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or the end of the world?

But what if those events were actually taking place THIS YEAR, 2011?

The new film "The Quickening" explains why so many people have been experiencing the sensation that "time is speeding up," particularly since the earthquake in Japan.

It shows the research that indicates that this accelerated experience of reality could peak sometime around October 28th, 2011, culminating in a global experience of unity consciousness, leading to the experience of a harmonious new way of being in the world.

The movie also looks at unfolding events directly relating to Hopi and Mayan prophecies. These indicate that we are on the cusp of great changes that mark the shifting of the Age and the birth of a new world.

Are you a reluctant healer? (eBook)

DavidElliott-healing.com

Healing by David Elliott, author of The Reluctant Healer

"My intention is to make Healing available to everyone. I believe in this book so much that I am offering it as a free PDF download. It is also available as a beautiful paperback and audio book."

Begin your Healing journey...

• What if you could heal yourself of any illness, addiction, or chronic condition?
• How much freedom would you experience if you were not dependent on health care?
• How empowered would you feel if you had the keys to healing, not only on the physical level, but on emotional, mental, and spiritual levels as well?
  

Healing, the second book by healer and author David Elliott, is a comprehensive and thorough exploration of the limitless potential within you to discover the healing you have been searching for.

• Download FREE PDF
  

Light Meditation (how to video)

Sri Sathya Sai Baba in Sathya Sai Speaks (Vol. X, pp. 348-350, Shivarathri, 1979); text edited by Wisdom Quarterly

There are many meditations and lots of different advice. This is a universal and usually effective form, a first step toward spiritual [= spirit = spiritus = breath] development.

It takes discipline but leads to joy. Practice before dawn when the body is refreshed after sleep before dealing with the day. Have a lamp or a candle before you with an open, steady, straight flame. Sit in front of the candle in the lotus posture or any other comfortable sitting position.

Mayo Clinic recommends this meditation

Look at the flame steadily for some time, closing eyes when the flame is firmly in the mind's eye. Let it slide down into the lotus of the heart, illuminating the path. When it enters the heart, imagine the petals open one by one, bathing every thought, sensation, and emotion in light removing darkness from them. There is no space for darkness to hide. The light of the flame becomes wider and brighter. Let it pervade all limbs.

Now those limbs will not indulge in dark, suspicious, or destructive activities; they have become instruments of light and love. As the light reaches the tongue, falsehoods vanish from it. Let it rise up to the eyes and ears and undo dark desires infesting them. The head is suffused with light dispelling dark thoughts. Imagine the light grows more and more intense. Let it shine all around and spread ever widening circles, encompassing loved ones, friends, companions, strangers, rivals, enemies, all living beings, the entire universe.

As the light daily illumines the senses, a time will soon come when one no longer relishes dark and disturbing sights and tales or crave for base, harmful, deadening toxic foods and drinks, demeaning things, places of ill-repute and injury, or frame harmful designs against anyone at any time. Stay with the thrill of everywhere witnessing the light [which may refer to the nimitta preceding jhana in serenity or Buddhist shamatha meditation].

If one adoring the good (for oneself, others, and both) in any form now, visualize that form in the all-pervasive light. Practice this meditation regularly every day. At other times rest the mind on the breath just under the nose like an uplifting fragrance.

• No time? Try the One Moment Meditation
  
• SaiDivineInspirations Blog
• Saidivineinspirations on Facebook
  

Ethan Nichtern comes to Los Angeles (video)

(Mark Molaro) Inspiring interview with Ethan Nichtern, founder and director of the Interdependence Project (The ID Project) in New York City and author of the new book One City: A Declaration of Interdependence. This is a fascinating and personal discussion of Nichtern's idea of interdependence, as well as an enlightening conversation about Eastern philosophies in general, such as Buddhism and meditation. Nichtern talks about a strong worldwide desire for a new social consciousness that properly balances inner peace with informed civic and social engagement and responsibility.

• The Mindful Social Network: Going Online Without Losing Your Mind
• 10-week Buddhism study course with Ethan Nichtern and Sharon Salzberg
• "Seeing Clearly in a City of Illusion" with
  
• Shastri Ethan Nichtern at Shambhala WLA
• Sunday, July 31, 2011 5:30 - 7:00 pm
• $15.00 general public, $10.00 (members, seniors, students)
• Public sitting at 4:00-5:00 pm, talk begins at 5:30 pm

"The Tree of Life" (2011 film)

Brad Pitt stars in a new film from Terrence Malick -- the acclaimed director of Badlands, Days of Heaven, and The Thin Red Line. The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern American family in the 1950's.

It follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn), through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years. He tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt).

Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world: He is seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

Through Malick's signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.

• Justin Bieber's Mexican girlfriend, Jewish tattoo
• War-weary lawmakers push Obama to end Afghan war
  
• Student finds universe's "missing mass"
• US crime is down, but media wants fear in these cities
• High school graduation rates are up in US
• Obama admin. still trying to illegally kill Gaddafi
• War Powers Act: Obama can now be Dictator
• "1984" in 2011: U.S. House votes for "Patriot Act"
  

The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to extend three key provisions of the Patriot Act until June 1, 2015. The Senate voted earlier in the day to approve the extension bill. The House vote was 250 in favor, with 153 opposed. Oppositions to the bill said it was an invasion of privacy and had hoped to add language providing for further oversight and audits of the activities the law permits. The three provisions are as follows: One would enable law enforcement officials to conduct surveillance on suspects without a warrant who switch communication devices, such as using disposable cellular phones. A second would let officials conduct warrant-less surveillance on suspects not currently linked to any known terrorist organization abroad. The third would enable officials access to suspects' business transactions without a warrant. Pres. Obama signed the bill using an auto pen machine from France. Source

Buddhism turns 2,600 years old

Dharmachari Seven (Wisdom Quarterly)

"Moon of the Buddha" by Albert Falzon (English overdubbed in Spanish)

May's full moon day (May 17, 2011) will officially mark the twenty-sixth century of Buddhism.

Two-thousand six-hundred years ago, Siddhartha Gautama culminated six years of renunciation, moral-restraint, meditation, and keen investigation of mental phenomena with a startling realization:

"Everything that is of a nature to arise is of a nature to cease." Having purified and balanced his mind by successive practice of the eight meditative absorptions (jhanas), he emerged and began to contemplate Dependent Origination.

The Path to Complete Freedom

This is a formula or technique that leads to insight into the true nature of things -- revealing their radical impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and impersonal nature. A glimpse of the Truth causes the mind/heart to pull back and away from the corruptions (lust, anger, delusion) like a feather dropped in fire. The mind thus freed perceives nirvana, touches it, enters the first stage of enlightenment.

This momentous step -- after an inconceivably long course of "wandering on" through birth and death (innumerable past lives and states of becoming) -- begins the process of full liberation from suffering.

Under the Bodhi Tree

We are often swept up with the misleading story of the Buddha's heroic effort, fighting temptation and fear: Siddhartha sat down, gritted his teeth, vowed not to stand until he attained his goal of enlightenment even if his blood and skin should shrivel up and turn to dust, in spite of Mara's fearsome attacks and his own self-doubt.

This is exactly the wrong notion that prevented enlightenment. It was not Siddhartha's fierce determination that ultimately allowed his heart/mind to find the Truth. Too much "efforting" fills the heart with yearning, strains the mind, and wearies the body. The breath ("spirit") is then anything but calm, subtle, soothing, or serene.

The Middle Way

In this way, no realization is possible. The Bodhisattva (the buddha-to-be) had for years failed in his efforts exactly because of this sort of strenuous striving and fierce determination. The "Middle Path" avoids extremes of striving/laziness, austerity/luxury, rigidity/limpness, or views. It invites balance and direct-knowledge.

In our world so filled with lust, greed, and lassitude, we need to hear the message of strong determination. But in a world of annoyance, hate, and drive, we need to hear the other side of the story -- the letting go, the letting be, the mindful (or non-thinking, non-striving, non-preference, non-judgmental) attention.

The meditative absorptions allowed Siddhartha to maintain equanimity in the face of keen investigation. He was observing, not "doing." He was practicing mindfulness (bare attention), not discursive thinking.

The purity of heart/mind cleansed by deep concentration/collectedness (samadhi) allowed his insight-practices (vipassana) to succeed. Indeed, two of the most important arms of the ennobling Eightfold Path are "right concentration" and "right mindfulness." "Right" simply means balanced, optimal, effective, not strenuous, dogmatic, or driven.

That First Vesak Day
For a long time (innumerable aeons) we have wandered on this weary trail of rebirth, lusting here, lusting there, ever in search of satisfaction, meaning, and peace. We do not find them for very long. Good states and situations pass away. When the mind is brightened by absorption and brought to bear on insight-practices -- nirvana. That's it! There it is! And finding it Siddhartha, now the Buddha, is reputed to have exclaimed:

"I who wept with all my brothers' tears, laugh and am glad, for there is liberty!"

What was it? What eternal truth did he rediscover? Nirvana, nirvana, what is this "nirvana"?

• Nirvana. nir-va, to blow out. According to ancient lore, complete freedom; according to Buddhist lore, liberation. The goal of Buddhism is the condition of [enlightened individual,] one who has achieved nirvana: a condition where there is neither earth nor water nor fire nor air; neither infinite space nor infinite consciousness; nor the sphere of void, nor the sphere of perception or non-perception. It is the end of woe. (Yoga Illustrated Dictionary, Kaye & Ward).