Joe Dispenza: "Rewiring Your Brain to a New Reality"

Christians might know it as "Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you," or perhaps "God takes care of those who take care of themselves."

Buddhists hear the refrain, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

Followers of mystical tradition may have learned that, "The lips of the teacher are sealed except to the lips of understanding."

Whichever path you follow, if you've reached a suitable point in your learning, you may enjoy this set of videos in which Joe Dispenza discusses how your brain can be re-trained and re-tuned to perform what some might see as miracles and others might just consider personal progress.

We often say things like, "I can't play the piano."

To me, this seems like a rather illogical statement. Unless we're quadriplegics or are missing the fingers of all hands, how can we be unable to play the piano?

I prefer to look at it like this: what people are actually trying to say is something more along the lines of, "I can't play the piano with great skill."

Now that, I think, makes a lot more sense. That thought is much less limiting than the potential-sapping finality of "I can't," isn't it? It says what someone means to say, with greater accuracy, whilst allowing them much more potential to change that situation.

My own piano teacher used to say, "There is no such thing as can't. There is only 'I don't want to'."

The reality is that virtually anybody can play the piano but few of us pop out of the womb bearing an innate ability to wow crowds with our keyboard skills.

So maybe, we can be more honest and helpful to ourselves by considering that we can play the piano but haven't yet reached the level of skill we would like.

What are the missing ingredients, then?

It seems like they should be practice and teaching (expert coaching). I'm willing to bet that people who can play the piano with great skill reached that point by putting in lots of practice and studying with expert teachers.

Even students who display incredible natural skill require years of hard work alongside the mentoring of established proponents of the craft and art (the people we call teachers) to harvest musical fruit from their native ability.

Now, it seem to make sense to me that mastery of our mental, emotional and spiritual skills might also benefit from a similar outlook.

And if we can learn and practice our way to piano-playing skill, shouldn't the same approach work with our brains generally?

Developing piano skills enhances related areas of the brain so why not try practicing a more skilled application of our other mental faculties?

Whatever your perspective on such things, can it hurt to try?

Here is one approach:

Rita Hayworth Is Stayin' Alive

A highly-entertaining compilation of classic Rita Hayworth dance clips set to the 1977 disco/movie hit Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees.

Karmic Moto Taxis Defy Physics

Not a crash but darned close.

Motorcyclists in Thailand ride as if they studied some pirated copy of a defensive driving course that accidentally inverted everything.

It's as if Thais took a canonical list of no-nos motorcyclists learn in the West so they can 'Ride to Survive' and then did the opposite.

Virtually everybody you'll see on two wheels in Thailand, including traffic cops, seems to be following this list of rules:

DO...

1. follow other vehicles at an unsafe distance. A good rule of thumb is that you should be nearly able to touch the back of the car in front with your hand or foot. Actually kissing the car in front comes a bit later, if he slams on the brakes.
2. sit in other drivers' blind spots. This is especially handy when riding next to large buses and trucks. Try to do this a lot, especially if you're carrying your wife and three small children (without helmets).
3. undertake ALWAYS, especially if a vehicle is signalling to turn in front of you.
4. accelerate if undertaking a vehicle that has begun to turn in front of you.
5. go around any large large truck that is reversing into the road. Your speed should be increased as the available gap behind the truck is reduced. Bonus points for doing this at night, in the rain, without any lights.
6. split lanes. You would be a moron not to do so as it's the only way to get past all the cars that can normally outrun (or  more typically, overrun) your 100cc 'steed of the road'. If traffic is moving, up your speed as you split lanes. And remember - just because all of the cars and buses are also splitting lanes doesn't mean you can't use the remaining 18 inches of space between a pickup truck laden with ice, a motorcycle carrying cylinders of cooking gas, and a forty-year-old truck with no brakes (or tread) to get to your destination.
7. change lanes without regard for other road users. If changing lanes means crossing the center line, into oncoming traffic, it is their job to avoid you.
8. pull out into heavy traffic without looking.

DO NOT...

1. ride solo if it can be avoided. Help the planet by carrying a minimum of two generations of your family. If one of your cousins, riding pillion behind your daughter, is carrying a new Sony LCD TV or a four-foot-wide plane of glass, so much the better.
2. maintain your motorcycle. A rusty chain is merely part of the normal ebb and flow of the universe. Don't anger the gods by trying to lubricate or adjust this chain.
3. replace missing parts. You wear flip-flops so you don't need shoelaces, which is awesome as an old shoelace will hold your clutch lever in place no problem! Split pins will only slow you down when you need to change a tire (Skinny, bald tires are okay but once rainy season arrives and you're splitting lanes riding on the white lines, even Thais reckon it's time for new-ish rubber), so leave them off the axle nuts.
4. bother with a helmet unless you're on a really big road where cops might demand a bribe for not wearing a helmet. They won't hassle you for speeding the wrong way down the road, occasionally using the sidewalk, without lights at night after a bottle of Thai whiskey but you best have that bright pink plastic colander balanced on your head because the chin strap is tied conveniently out of the way.
5. learn how to use your brakes properly. Just grab as much right lever as you can, as suddenly as you can, especially in the rain. It's so easy, a child can do it. In fact, a remarkable percentage of motorcyclists in Thailand ARE children, without licenses, insurance, or helmets.
6. wait to let oncoming vehicles through when traffic is snarled up by roadworks, weather and incompetent drivers. Your job is to keep pushing through, like the last few grains of sand filling up the remaining gaps between larger stones. This is Asia, after all, and that is a cool-sounding, rather 'mystical' parable to keep the silly foreigners confused by what seems like nothing more than thoughtlessness, intransigence and a lack of critical thinking. Murhahahaha, the fools!
7. miss phone calls or SMS messages while riding.
8. slow down in the rain. You're only going to be run over by that bus with no brakes...

Think we've gone a little bit overboard with our comical look at the rules of motorcycling in Thailand?

Then you might like to watch this video.

 

(remember to breathe) - Breath-Taking Travel Alberta Video

You definitely want to see this. Full-screen. In full HD, if you can.

It really is breath-takingly beautiful.

And remember to breathe.
 

Jim Rohn - The Set of The Sail

Fab Photos of Fab Clean Room are Fab

Hungarian photographer Gyuri Szabo has been shortlisted for the final round of the PDN Photo Annual 2012 awards.

Gyuri gained access to an aerospace clean room before the machinery was installed. This series also includes photographs of other parts of the facility, such as walkways and cubicles.

Thanks to his excellent lensmanship, we get to enjoy the awesome results.

Our small images here really do his work little justice so check out these tasty images and then head over to F in Foto by Gyuri Szabo to see more photos with more pixels in more glorious surroundings. His blog has other photos from this series, as well as some of his other great work.

Thanks to F in Foto by Gyuri for letting us share some of his wonderful work here.

Clyde Stubblefield - The Funky Drummer

Here's a cat who's right up there with Bernard "Pretty" Purdie.

 

Al Kooper/Mike Bloomfield: Season of the Witch (Live)

Epic 1930s Jazz is Epic

It's one of my favorite recipes for sweet, swinging success.

Take one heaping of Django Reinhardt, mix in a good amount of Stéphane Grappelli, sauté over a low but steady Parisian heat et voila, you have a nicely baked Quintette du Hot Club de France!

Neil deGrasse Tyson - We Stopped Dreaming

Neil deGrasse Tyson argues passionately for the pittance it would take to revive the agency that inspires the dreams, hopes and economy of tomorrow.

 

Tungsten Trick Hits Market for 1kg Gold Bars

There has been a raft of reports about 400oz gold bars in Hong Kong discovered to have been tainted with tungsten. Now, however, the scam seems to have migrated to the bigger 1kg gold bars.

Not only is tungsten extremely dense it is also not ferro-magnetic, making it an ideal ingredient for fraudsters looking to cook up a batch of modern fool's gold, as it won't be discovered with a simple magnet test. That leaves the use of XRF scanners as the only secure, straightforward method for ensuring you're actually buying pure gold.

Except that this scientific security seems now to have been erased from the success formula. Judging by the latest reports, XRF (x-ray fluoresence) scanners may not offer an adequate defense against this particular form of hoodwinkery.

This modern alchemists' stew seems to be based on a fairly simple recipe: take one bar of certified provenance, drill out some gold plugs, feed in tungsten rods and - unless a buyer is exceedingly careful - you've got yourself a gold sale at 'market value' PLUS a handy pile of surplus gold.

Leftovers have never tasted so raw for dealers in precious metals.

Anybody buying gold has for several years had to worry about the risks of a bubble in the AU market Given that the use of expensive high-tech scanners to determine the gold content of the material in question won't necessarily protect buyers from this form of criminal enterprise, does the gold market face a loss of confidence similar to that seen recently in global interbank lending?

ABC Bullion in Australia has the details of these shenanigans. Story via the SilverDoctors blog.

Image licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Life=Love=Dream Talk by Terence McKenna

A fine talk by thinker Terrance McKenna is now available on YouTube.

'Kemp' discusses reality, what it might mean to be 'awake', and other aspects of the human voyage. The talk includes a Jungian take on history as "the collective dream of humanity".

Government Explained to an Alien

The X21 Flashlight. Ideal UFO Beacon?

Okay, so it's likely to take millions of years for your Morse code to reach the gang at Alpha Centauri but if there's an alien mothership lurking behind its invisibility shields, visitors from another planet/galaxy/plane/time should be able to read you loud and clear, as long as you're deploying the 1100 lumens of LED candlepower in your fist.

Produced by LED Lenser, this bad-boy isn't cheap but if you're looking for a seriously powerful electric torch that you can still slip inside a jacket, you may want to save up 500 bucks and get this one.

via Wired

Prometheus - Official Full HD Trailer

It's been awhile in the making but Ridley Scott has just let loose the HD trailer for his latest sci-fi epic and it looks like a real whopper.

Not only that but it sounds like Prometheus is likely to have at least one follow-up release.

The film, which should be awesome in 3D, brings some well-known stars, including Charlize Theron and Guy Pearce, plus the rapidly-rising Michael Fassbender to the surround-screen fun of an interstellar horror mystery show that tells us yet again, to beware the unknown.

This looks to be no mere alien terror  - our brazen heroes are faced with the horrifying truth of how mankind faces a tragic destiny... unless they can slay their truly gigantic foe..

So, sounds like terrific fun, then!

Our sister blog, gearheads, has some videos of Michael Fassbinder on the BBC's Top Gear program.

More info on Prometheus at imdb.com, wikipedia, and the movie's website (which was down when we wrote this).

Update: those incredible visual effects? That's MPC. Check out their site for more of this company's superb VFX.