Patients who underwent brain surgery for tumor removal in the posterior parietal cortex experienced increased states of self-transcendence, which is identified as an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical world and sense of self and helps one to feel more at one with the universe as a whole.

The posterior parietal cortex is the part of the brain that maintains a sense of one's physical body and it's also been linked to meditation and prayer. Removal of tumors in this particular area of the brain caused patients to experience selective damage, which reduces activity and disrupts the sense of self, subsequently leading to increased feelings of transcendence from the reality of the here and now.

To investigate the neural basis of spirituality, Cosimo Urgesi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Udine, and his colleagues turned to people with brain tumors to assess the feeling before and after surgery. Three to seven days after the removal of tumors from the posterior part of the brain, in the parietal cortex, patients reported feeling a greater sense of self-transcendence. This was not the case for patients with tumors removed from the frontal regions of the brain. [Nature] Urgesi also notes that electrically stimulating the temporoparietal junction — an area near the posterior parietal cortex — is known to induce out-of-body experiences, which also involve a breakdown in someone's representation of their physical self and their environment. [NewScientist]

"Self-transcendence used to be considered just by philosophers and crank new age people," says co-author Salvatore Aglioti, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Sapienza University of Rome. "This is the first really close-up study on spirituality. We're dealing with a complex phenomenon that's close to the essence of being human." [Nature]

As is the case in many aspects of life, "popular" astrology—with its zodiac signs, houses, cusps and retrograde planets—is a facile, and easily understood, system hinting at a deeper reality. Like religion, it seeks to reduce the infinite and unknowable to a set of simple rules and principles by which humanity might live in harmony with the cosmos. Rather than assembling a pantheon of gods—or a God—to influence human affairs, astrology proposes that planets, stars, and other celestial bodies determine personality traits at birth and sketch the likely events unfolding in the future. Thus popular astrology is imbued with a certain fatalism both as to personal psychology (your birth sign locks you into certain characteristics) and life events (which are foretold by the stars).

Natal Influences

The importance of the moment of birth has been vastly overstated in popular astrology. Since you swim in the cosmic soup from conception to death, choosing one particular moment as the "defining" one which marks you for life is simplistic at best. Still, the moment of conception and the time of birth can be pivotal points at which cosmic influences carry disproportionate effect.

Conception is significant because it is the moment when two cells—egg and sperm—fuse to forge potential new life. Until that moment, gametes are merely cast-off cells within their parent body; "cast-off" in the sense that they play no essential role in maintaining health. Their purpose is to beget the next generation, not to sustain the current one. Read the rest of this entry »

As I very slowly make my way up in the Twitter numbers game (shamefully through no effort of my own), I can't help but wonder the significance of this popular Short Message Service (SMS) toward the progress of our virtual culture.

There are the obvious, but perhaps unanswerable, questions that are worthy of asking about Twitter, such as:

• Can you, most of the time, say what you really want, or say anything meaningful, in 140 characters or less?
• How can one person read tweets from hundreds of Twitterers, let alone hundreds of thousands?
• Or why would somebody want to follow a Twitterer who sends on average 50 tweets per hour…every hour? Read the rest of this entry »

Steven Lane Taylor's exceptional article (Being in the Flow is "No Sweat") reminded me of a specific chapter in the classic book, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. John (Fire) Lame Deer was a Lakota Sioux holy man who lived between 1900 – 1976, and his book depicts the rich history and culture of the Lakota people, as well as an autobiographical account of his remarkable life.

In his book, Lame Deer spoke of the old traditional tale of the inipi, or sweat bath — what we currently call the sweat lodge. The ancient purification ceremony in the inipi was the first sacred rite of the Lakotans and many times is used as the opening ceremony for many other traditional Lakotan rites.

Every part of the bringing together of materials for the construction of the inipi has a deep and holy significance for those holding the ceremony — from the selection of the willow branches to form the frame, the type of wood for the fire, the choice of rocks and the importance of their initial location and then their placement within the inipi, to the direction of the opening of the structure. For the sun-dance sweat lodge, the best blankets from the village were always chosen to cover the frame. Read the rest of this entry »

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

- William Wordsworth

Regular contact with nature helps humanize us. We can know a sense of unity with all life by way of the sights and sounds of the natural world. This important spiritual element is often left out of discussions of why protecting the environment is a critical issue for our time.

If your hometown and home state are anything like mine, you know how much things have been changing. National parks are wonderful and important places of inspiration and heritage, but we don't live there. We are crowding nature out of our daily lives. Yet I believe that it is precisely here, at the borderlands and interchanges of our ordinary human activities with the natural landscape, that nature affects us most profoundly. Read the rest of this entry »

Every night, in the dream state, your soul communes with your higher self and probable/reincarnational brethren, and carries guidance and advice back from its nocturnal sojourn. Given the choice, most people would readily say they welcome such guidance, yet they struggle to hear but the faintest echoes flowing from the higher realms. What tools are available to loosen the barrier between waking self and higher self?

First, one must recognize a cold truth: the higher self's plan for a lifetime may horrify the ego. The ego's wants are simple: shelter, food, love, sex, health, money: as much and as often as possible. There is nothing wrong with desiring any of these; they all contribute to a stable, comfortable life. But here lies the challenge to even the most evolved ego: the higher self may consider fulfillment of these wants an impediment to its life plan.
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Every culture, from aboriginal tribe to complex civilization, recognizes the significance and esoteric mystery of dreams. History, literature, and poetry swarm with dreams' prophetic and symbolic power. Modern western thought, its vision narrowed by the blinders of materialism, struggles to make sense of dreams. In one view, the purpose of sleep is to allow the body time to rest and heal, with dreaming a mysterious byproduct. Dreams are variously explained as the random static of neurological chaos; a means of emotionally processing the day's events; or the symbolic patina on material rising from the deeper strata of the psyche. Whatever one's view, all agree that the realm of sleep and dreaming remains a dark mystery.
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The sun has essentially been doing nothing. And it makes the news.

Because our sun tends to have fairly regular cycles of sunspots (dark regions on the sun that indicate intense magnetic activity), whenever it deviates from normal it can adversely affect some of our earthly systems. Solar storms with extremely powerful sunspot activity can disrupt our satellites and electrical systems.

But lately, the sun has been unusually quiet with a noticeable lack of more regular sunspot activity since 2007, when it started a new 11-year cycle. The sun is the quietest — and dimmest — it's been in 100 years. Scientists have been stumped by this unpredictable behavior, but it may recently be explained by sluggish solar jet streams that flow near its poles beneath the surface, and they now note that sunspots may slowly be increasing.
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In my message a couple of weeks ago, I told a story that perfectly illustrated the point I wanted to make that day—the point that the divine flow is not always about you.

As I wrote, "Sometimes you are being divinely guided to say something or do something that will help someone else fulfill his or her dream . . . not necessarily yours. You may be guided to simply help another person live life more abundantly. Or, you may be guided to help another person live, period." (To review the entire message, click here.)

After reading that story, Chris of Payson, Arizona, wrote to me and told me about his own experience with this particular aspect of the divine flow.  And today I would like to share his example with you.
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Last week I ended my message with this statement: "If you are feeling divinely inspired to take a certain action, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with accomplishing a particular goal that you have in mind . . . do it anyway!"

The context for that statement was the idea that your next divinely guided step may not appear to be related to any specific desire that you have, but in a way that you simply cannot see, it is. And it will help you fulfill that desire in a remarkable effortless manner.

Today I want to give you another good reason to "do it anyway." That reason is based on the fact that we accomplish very little in life all by ourselves. In almost every case, what you want to manifest in your life will require — to one degree or another — the assistance and cooperation of others. Read the rest of this entry »