A seminal spiritual figure, introduced to the West an ancient yet unknown esoteric teaching of development and awakening, one that teaches how to creatively use the diverse impressions of ordinary life to come to real life.

Humanity, Gurdjieff realized, had entered a precarious new period in its evolution. The world would be destroyed, Gurdjieff warned, unless the 'wisdom' of the East and the 'energy' of the West were harnessed and used harmoniously. To effect this Harnelmiatznel, Gurdjieff gave the necessary shockhe introduced to the West a unique and powerful esoteric teaching of self-transformation. Gurdjieff called it The Fourth Way.

An original teaching, Fourth Way is neither a mixture of spiritual lines nor a modern eclectic concoction. It is, as Gurdjieff declared, "completely self-supporting and independent of other lines and it has been completely unknown up to the present time."

The teaching of The Fourth Way is the last esoteric message of the present cycle.

Link:
The Gurdjieff Legacy Foundation: George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff ...

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French Jesuit priest and scientist. He studied and practiced paleontology, theology, and philosophy.

Teilhard was also a supporter of a one-world government. Some call him TheFather of the New Age.i

According to one biographer, Teilhard spent the bulk of his life trying to integrate religious experience with natural science, most specifically Christian theology with theories of evolution. In this endeavor he became absolutely enthralled with the possibilities for humankind, which he saw as heading for an exciting convergence of systems, an 'Omega point' where the coalescence of consciousness will lead us to a new state of peace and planetary unity.ii

This meshing of evolution and religion inevitably resulted in the New Age thinking that Teilhard promoted throughout his life.

Here are some of the key phrases Teilhard developed:

One of Teilhards most widespread ideas is the Omega Point. According to Teilhard, the Omega Point is a level of consciousness and unity that the whole universe is evolving towards. To him the Omega is a personal, transcendent being that is not constrained by time or space. Teilhard writes this in his book On Love and Happiness:

The world would not function if there did not exist, somewhere ahead in time and space, a cosmic point Omega of total synthesis.iii

Along the same lines as the Omega Point is Teilhard de Chardins theory of Christ consciousness:

Christ Consciousness is the growing human recognition and blending of the human evolutionary (or ego) mind with the Divine Mind and the Divine Personality that is the source of human happiness and fulfillment.iv

According to Teilhard, humanity is evolving towards complete unity into a single organism, a completely unanimous super-humanity:

The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the entry into the super-humanThey will open only to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth.v

In On Love and Happiness, Teilhard writes this:

we human beings are already forming but one single bodyour thoughts are tending more and more to function like the cells of one and the same brain. This must inevitably mean that as the transformation follows its natural line of progress we can foresee the time when men will understand what it is, animated by one single heart, to be united together in wanting, hoping for, and loving the same things at the same time.

The mankind of tomorrow is emerging from the mists of the future, and we can actually see it taking shape: a "super-mankind," much more conscious, much more powerful, and much more unanimous than our own...what life ultimately calls upon us to do in order that we may be, is to incorporate ourselves into, and to subordinate ourselves to, an organic totality of which, cosmically speaking, we are no more than conscious particles.vi

Teilhard used the term noosphere to refer to his idea of the place where all this mental harmony and spiritual unity will occur. Tom Butler-Bowden describes the noosphere as the mental counterpart to the biosphere, or the invisible layer of thought around the earth that is the sum total of humankind's mental and spiritual states, all culture, love and knowledge.vii

Learn more about Teilhard's religious and political attitudes:

Teilhard de Chardin's scientific and theological work led to the promotion of several New Age doctrines.

Former UN official Robert Muller is a supporter of Teilhard's philosophies, and shows how the one-world government is not far off.

This article is adapted from Professor Veith's Total Onslaught DVD The U.N. & the Occult Agenda.

i. News Alert, The Berean Call (October 1992): 4.

ii. Anodea Judith, Teihard de Chardin (December, 1996).

iii. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, On Love and Happiness (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1817): 24.

iv. "What is Christ Consciousness?" Center for Christ Consciousness.

v. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (HarperPerennial, 1955): 244-245.

vi. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, On Love and Happiness (San Francisco: Harper& Row, 1817): 69-70.

vii. Tom Butler-Bowdon, 50 Self-Help Classics: 50 Inspirational Books To Transform Your Life (London & Boston: Nicholas Brealey, 2003): 279.

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin | French Jesuit priest and ...

To reach the Higher Self it is best to concentrate on the source of the "inner sound", leading to the "inner light" - a nucleus of the Higher Self, which initially seems infinitely far "at the other side of a long dark tunnel". When we get sufficiently close to our Higher Self, the inner light becomes much brighter than the Sun, and when we are allowed to join it, the bliss cannot be described in any human language. To get that far, we have to achieve a complete purity of the mind during meditation, have pure intentions, and then intensively concentrate for some time on the "inner sound" and "inner light".

The most important role of a spiritual teacher is to show everyone his/her individual way to the Higher Self. Then, it is up to the individual to practice and reach the Higher Self.

From the above, meditation seems to be an essential skill to attain the ultimate enlightenment. There are quite a few techniques for meditation. Most of them use so-called "mantra" composed from a few words or sounds. Mantra is repeated mentally to help us achieve and maintain a "blank" state of mind.

Contrary to popular belief, promoted by people who attract followers and/or charge money to teach meditation, mantra has no sacred "meaning" and no mantra is essentially better than any other. However, regardless of its content, mantra has two important functions, which may greatly assist us in achieving and maintaining a meditative state of a blank mind.

1. mantra is a very simple thought. It becomes very familiar to us when we repeat it in our mind. This thought is used to replace any thought that may come to our mind. Every time a thought comes during meditation, we use mantra to replace it.

2. When we practice meditation regularly using the same mantra (whatever it is), soon we train our mind to associate the mantra with a calm meditative state. This association is called an "anchor" by Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioners. After such self-training, even if we are agitated, a thought of mantra usually brings an immediate calm of the mind. This makes our mantra a very powerful tool to deal with stressful situations in our life, a tool which we can develop ourselves as a result of a regular meditation practice.

When we understand the above two functions of the mantra, it becomes clear that changing mantras may be not a very good idea. Changing mantras may be considered useful only in special situations, for example when we want to eliminate an undesirable meditation habit, preventing us from achieving a deep meditative state, and the existing mantra is identified as related to that habit.

Also it becomes logical that whatever mantra we use, we should keep it private and not tell it to other people. Otherwise we give others a way to control our subconscious mind by telepathically transmitting to us our own mantra. The best teachers will take time to give people individual mantras rather than teach everyone the same mantra.

Mantras are usually composed from alternative vowel and nasal sounds and may contain several words. The most widely known mantra is "ooohmmm" or "aaaaummm", but any other similar word will do when we extend vowel and nasal sounds (home, room, zoom, moon, zen, boom etc..). It is best if mantra is an exotic word or a series of words (syllables) not encountered in everyday conversation.

The posture during meditation is also important. The easiest posture is a comfortable sitting position, with your spine straight and erect. If you lay down you will most likely fall asleep. Joining your hands and crossing your legs is desirable, because you make the bio-energy field around you more compact and therefore more intensive. Sitting cross legged is another good position, but requires some fitness and training. Yet another good position, although rarely used today is a squatting position with your arms crossed over you knees, resembling position of a foetus in a womb.

If you have never tried any meditation, try to find a quiet place and try the following technique:1. take a comfortable meditation posture, one of the postures described above 2. close your eyes and relax all muscles in your body, including the face. A few alternate nostril yoga breaths is very helpful at the beginning of this stage - breathing in through one nostril and breathing out through another, closing nostrils with fingers and altering closed nostril with each breath. 3. disregard any thought as it comes - do not continue a kaleidoscope of thoughts - continue this for 20 minutes or so, maintaining your mind blank. You can use a mental sound "ooooohhmmm" (a mantra) every time you have a thought. Alternatively you may keep counting thoughts, discarding each one as it comes, without analysing it. When you go down to 2 or 3 thoughts in 5 minutes, you meditate successfully.

With practice you should be able to attain a blank mind anytime and anywhere, even in a crowd of people or a stressful situation with the help of your mantra. But do not use the mantra when stressed, until you are positive that you practice meditation long enough and the thought of mantra is firmly associated with your state of a calm mind.

One of many benefits of meditation is that it opens your mind to new ideas. When the bowl is full, trying to pour more water into it just causes an overflow. The same happens with our mind. When it is full of thoughts, there is no room for new ideas.

Meditation is a very effective technique for improving your creativity and problem solving capacity. "Talented" people do it naturally. Artists and poets call it "inspiration". Many famous people such as Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison were known to have practised various forms of meditation.

Meditation is sometimes described as "listening to the silence between thoughts". Our effort in meditation is directed towards consciously increasing the periods of such silence.

The ability to meditate is also a necessary condition to receive telepathic transmissions, including those from Higher Self and other people who may try to assist us. Without a true silence in your own thoughts, you cannot listen to thoughts of others.

Before meditation you may wish to define clearly what do you want to learn, what do you want to ask your Higher Self. During the meditation, do not expect an answer (although it is likely that it will come when your mind will be pure) - this is also a thought!

People who practice meditation on the regular basis look and feel typically 10 or even 15 years younger than other people at their age. Giving the mind a regular "break" and allowing our Nature to perform self-repairs everyday makes all the difference. Self-healing and rejuvenation seems to be within reach of everyone who is prepared to learn meditation and meditate regularly everyday.

Dr Tom J. Chalko 1997

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MEDITATION - Thiaoouba

Meditation, private devotion or mental exercise encompassing various techniques of concentration, contemplation, and abstraction, regarded as conducive to heightened spiritual awareness or somatic calm.

Meditation has been practiced throughout history by adherents of all the worlds religions. In Roman Catholicism, for example, meditation consists of active, voluntary, and systematic thinking about a biblical or theological topic. Mental images are cultivated and efforts are made to empathize with God or with figures from the Bible. Eastern religious practices that involve thinking in a controlled manner have been described as meditation in the West since the 19th century. The Hindu philosophical school of Yoga, for example, prescribes a highly elaborate process for the purification of body, mind, and soul. One aspect of Yoga practice, dhyana (Sanskrit: concentrated meditation), became the focus of the Buddhist school known as Chan in China and later as Zen in Japan. In the late 1960s the British rock group the Beatles sparked a vogue in the West for Hindu forms of meditation, and in the following decade Transcendental Meditation (TM) became the first of a variety of commercially successful South and East Asian meditative techniques imported by the West. Academic psychological studies of TM and other forms of meditation followed rapidly.

In numerous religions, spiritual purification may be sought through the verbal or mental repetition of a prescribed efficacious syllable, word, or text (e.g., the Hindu and Buddhist mantra, the Islamic dhikr, and the Eastern Christian Jesus Prayer). The focusing of attention upon a visual image (e.g., a flower or a distant mountain) is a common technique in informal contemplative practice and has been formalized in several traditions. Tibetan Buddhists, for example, regard the mandala (Sanskrit: circle) diagram as a collection point of universal forces, accessible to humans by meditation. Tactile and mechanical devices, such as the rosary and the prayer wheel, along with music, play a highly ritualized role in many contemplative traditions.

Most meditative practices concentrate attention in order to induce mystical experiences. Others are mindful of the mental character of all contents of consciousness and utilize this insight to detach the practitioner either from all thoughts or from a selected group of thoughtse.g., the ego (Buddhism) or the attractiveness of sin (Christianity). Meditation may also serve as a special, potent preparation for a physically demanding or otherwise strenuous activity, as in the case of the warrior before battle or the musician before performance.

Although the primary purpose of meditation is the realization of truth, the doctrinal and experiential truths claimed by different practices of meditation are often inconsistent with each other. Hinduism, for example, asserts that the self is divine, while other traditions claim that God alone exists (Sufism), that God is immediately present to the soul (Christianity and Judaism), and that all things are empty (Mahayana Buddhism).

In the West, scientific research on meditation from the 1970s focused on psychological and psychosomatic illnesses. Meditative techniques used by skilled practitioners proved to be effective in controlling pulse and respiratory rates and in alleviating symptoms of migraine headache, hypertension, and hemophilia, among other conditions.

Disenchantment with materialistic values led to an awakening of interest in Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophy and practice among primarily young people in many Western countries in the 1960s and 70s. The teaching and practice of numerous techniques of meditation, most based on Asian religious traditions, became a widespread phenomenon. For example, the practice of mindfulness meditation, an adaptation of Buddhist techniques, was popularized in the United States beginning in the 1980s. Its medical use as an adjunct to psychotherapy was widely embraced in the late 1990s, leading to its adoption in many psychiatric facilities.

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meditation | mental exercise | Britannica.com

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Meditation altar | Etsy

What Is MBSR?

The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program was originally developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the late 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. It is an eight-week, evidence-based, highly experiential course that is currently offered at more than 250 hospitals, universities, and clinical settings in the United States and around the world and has been featured recently in Newsweek, Time Magazine, and 60 Minutes.

MBSR's primary aim is to develop skills that can be flexibly applied in everyday life to stress, pain, and illness. Through experiential learning and discussion during class, as well as through daily mindfulness practice at home, participants learn and refine a range of self-regulatory skills that involve finely tuned attention to thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations.

The MBSR Program Involves:

According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, up to two-thirds of all office visits to family doctors are for stress-related symptoms. Depression and anxiety disorders are associated with chronic illness and chronic pain and should be addressed as part of the overall management of health problems. MBSR may help reduce medical symptoms and psychological distress as well as the need for clinical services.

Mindfulness meditation has been researched in conjunction with:

MBSR courses are typically offered in the winter / early spring, summer, and fall. To receive updates about newly scheduled courses, please email mindfulness@upmc.edu.

The winter MBSR course is currently being scheduled. Please check back for winter course information.

Please email grecocm@upmc.edu to receive updates.

You may register at an Orientation Session.

Attendance at an Orientation Session is required for MBSR course registration.

Orientations are free of charge and held from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Center for Integrative Medicine. Orientation attendance can be applied to registration in any future MBSR course at the Center for Integrative Medicine.

Continuing education (CEU) credits will be offered for nurses, psychologists, social workers, and licensed counselors through Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC.

Orientation Sessions and MBSR Courses are led by Carol M. Greco, PhD. Dr. Greco has practiced meditation for 23 years and is certified as an MBSR teacher by the UMass Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. She has taught MBSR courses at the Center for Integrative Medicine at UPMC Shadyside since 2005.

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Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction/MBSR Clasees | UPMC

By Julian Young

In both style and content, Friedrich Nietzsche's works mark the end of the 19th century. His short, punchy aphorisms What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, Man does not pursue pleasure, only the Englishman does signal a departure from the florid, German prose of the Victorian era. His recognition of the death of God and of the will to power as a dominant human motive, as well as his anticipation of World War I, of the rise of dictatorships, and even of global warming, speak to the troubled realism of the 20th century. Apart from this, however, there is little agreement as to the character of Nietzsche's significance or indeed about his primary message.

Everyone democrats, fascists, feminists, antifeminists, Christians, atheists, analytic philosophers, anti-analytic deconstructionist philosophers has found Nietzsches work to contain precisely their message.

For some he is an authoritarian antidemocrat who believes that only the wellbeing of the superman, that exceptional individual such as Goethe, Shakespeare or Socrates, is of any value. Many who read him this way find it unsurprising that (notwithstanding his vociferous anti-anti-Semitism) the Nazis adopted him as their intellectual forerunner. For other readers, however, he is the father of postmodernism who discovered that there are no truths, only interpretations (except, perhaps, this truth), a believer in playfulness, dance, and individual free-spiritedness.

Largely unknown during his life, Nietzsche was a world star at the time of his death.

EARLY YEARS

Nietzsche was born in 1844 in the village of Rcken, near Leipzig, in Prussian Saxony. His father was a Lutheran pastor, as were both his grandfathers. Following the death of his father in 1849, the family he, his mother and his sister Elizabeth, two years younger than himself moved to nearby Naumburg. In 1858 he won a scholarship to Pforta, the best boarding school in Germany, about a two-hour walk from his home. At Pforta, he received a superb training in Greek and Latin. As a graduate student in Leipzig, he was regarded as the most gifted classicist of his generation, which resulted, in 1869, in his becoming a professor of Greek literature at the University of Basel in Switzerland at age 24. During Nietzsche's first three years in Basel, he paid 23 visits on the German composer, Richard Wagner, and his wife, Cosima (ne Liszt), who lived in Tribschen, Lucerne, three hours away by train. (Wagner was in political exile from Germany, having played a leading role in the failed socialist revolution of 1848.)

NIETZSCHES WORKS

At Tribschen, Nietzsche wrote his first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1872), as his contribution to Wagner's project of building his own opera house in Bayreuth. In the book, he argued that Greek culture, the highest point of Western civilization, survived and thrived on account of the community-gathering effect of the Greek tragic festival. Wagner's music-dramas are a rebirth of Greek tragedy. Increasingly, though, Nietzsche became disillusioned by what he considered Wagners jingoistic anti-Semitism and cheap showmanship. In 1876, his objections to Wagner led him to walk out of the first of the Bayreuth Festivals, an annual event devoted to Wagners operas. Simultaneously his philosophy took a dramatic turn towards the positivist spirit of the age. The Birth of Tragedy had been based on a romantic idealism which Nietzsche inherited from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: since the natural world is ultimately merely a dream, science is superficial and the only route to reality is through art. Two years later, however, in Human, All-too-Human, Nietzsche asserted that only matter is real so that science alone can deliver knowledge of reality.

Human, All-too-Human was written in close collaboration with Nietzsche's then best friend, Paul Re, with whom he developed the practice of psychological observation based on the idea that human beings habitually deceive themselves as to the true motives of their actions, and that their real motives typically fall far short of what their morality says they should be. One prefers, Nietzsche observes, to save a drowning man when there is someone on hand to applaud the action. People give money to beggars because they enjoy displaying their superior status and power the first glimmering of the 'will to power' thesis.

In 1879 Nietzsche resigned his position at the University of Basel. For years he had struggled with deteriorating eyesight and bouts of headaches and vomiting that often lasted for days. In addition he had become ever more alienated from the life of a classics professor and wanted to devote himself entirely to the philosophical work he considered his life task. The university granted him a small pension from which he was (just) able to live for the rest of his life. For the next decade he led a nomadic existence. Believing that his health required permanent, mild winter he would spend the summers in the Swiss Alps Sils Maria, a village above St. Moritz, became his spiritual homeland and the winters on the Mediterranean, mainly in Genoa and later Nice.

It was in Sils Maria that what he considered his greatest thought came to him: the idea that if one were in perfect mental health and were to be told that one's exact life, down to the very last detail no matter how painful or shameful, was destined to return again and again throughout endless time, one would embrace this fact with ecstatic joy. He published this thought of the eternal return of the same in The Gay Science (probably his single most brilliant, comprehensive and delightful work) in 1882.

NIETZSCHE AND WOMEN

In April 1882, in Rome, Nietzsche met Lou Salom, an emancipated, beautiful and brilliant 20-year-old Russian. (She would later become the lover and friend of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, qualify as a psychoanalyst, and become a member of Freud's inner circle.) Lou was profoundly impressed by, and had a precocious grasp of, Nietzsche's philosophy. He, not surprisingly, fell in love. Unfortunately so, too, did Re, his best friend. The whole affair turned into a poisonous custard with both men seeking to undermine the other, while Nietzsches sister, Elizabeth, pathologically jealous of any women who threatened to become closer to her brother than herself, stirred the pot with lies and half-truths. Lou had no sexual interest in either man but in the end she went off to live (unbeknownst to Nietzsche, platonically) with Re, leaving Nietzsche to realize by the end of the year that he had been dumped. Traumatized, he retreated to Rapallo, a town near Genoa, to lick his wounds. Nietzsches romantic pursuits ended after the Salom affair. He became absorbed in his writing. It was in Rapallo that he completed Part I of Thus Spoke Zarathustra which was published in 1883. (In the course of the next two years it would acquire three further Parts. As a totality it is an exposition of his entire philosophy in poetic, allegorical form, the language often imitating that of the Bible.)

The first Part of Zarathustra is notable for its infamous remarks about women: A man should be brought up for war, a woman for the recreation of the warrior, Are you going to women? Then don't forget the whip,, and so on. Since prior to the Salom affair Nietzsche had been something of a supporter of the women's emancipation movement that was gathering strength around him - as dean of Humanities at the University of Basel in 1874 he had fought (unsuccessfully) for the admission of women - it is likely that his antifeminism, indeed misogyny, can be traced to the Salom trauma. Later on he more or less admits that his views on women, though an indelible part of his personality, are pathological and are not to be regarded as an intrinsic part of his philosophy. In Beyond Good and Evil (1886) he calls his views on women a great stupidity..

REVALUATION OF ALL VALUES

Though all of his books are polemical, Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's most deliberately shocking. In it he postulates that the world is will to power - and nothing besides a proposition he took to be an improved version of Darwinism: creatures, he claims, often risk life for the sake of an increase in power, so the drive to power, rather than the drive to survive, must be the fundamental one. The point of the work's deliberately lurid language life itself is essentially a process of appropriating, injuring, overpowering the alien and the weaker, oppressing exploiting is to force his age to wake up to the desperate need for a revaluation of all values.

The Genealogy of Morals, which appeared in 1887, provides a clue as to how one is to revalue values, what alternative morality should be adopted. The first moralities were 'master moralities': feeling good about themselves, the successful warrior bands, the Vikings for instance, elevated to the status of virtues those qualities which facilitated their success: self-confidence, lust for war, courage, resoluteness, intelligence, strength, and so on. Graeco-Roman antiquity valued these same qualities, primarily, however, not in their crude expression but in a 'spiritualised', sublimated, form. The greatness of Greece was based on agon, the sublimation of warfare into 'competition'. No less than the Olympic Games, the great Greek tragedies were the product of intense competition between playwrights. But then, during the Roman Empire, a new form of morality grew up, the morality of the underclass, slave morality. Experiencing intense ressentiment against their oppressive masters, the slaves invented the new morality of Christian (so-called) love. This was the product of 'spin', a transformation of the virtues of the masters into vices: self-confidence became 'arrogance', resoluteness 'cruelty', courage 'aggression' and so on. And the characteristics which the slaves, as slaves, had to exhibit--timidity, fawning friendliness, self-effacement became, under new names, virtues: peacefulness, love and humility. And so one arrived at the morality of the present, the morality which leads inexorably to self-hatred and nihilism. The solution to the problem, the way to bring morality into line with what is known to be the nature of reality, is to return to a master morality, to the sublimated master morality of the Greeks, updated, of course, so as to make sense in the current context.

BRILLIANCE AND MADNESS

For much of 1888, Nietzsche struggled to complete The Will to Power: a Revaluation of all Values, the vast and systematic masterwork designed to gain him entry into the pantheon of truly great German philosophers. But eventually he gave up, realizing the implausibility of claiming the will to power as the only human motive and the even greater implausibility of extending the idea to non-human nature. Much of the material, however, he was able to recycle in a final flourish of creative genius: in the closing months of the year he completed Twilight of the Idols (a distillation of his philosophy into his most sublime aphorisms), The Wagner Case (an assassination of Wagner as man and artist, The Antichrist (subtitled A Curse on Christianity) and Ecce Homo, his spiritual autobiography.

These final months of 1888 were spent in Turin in a state of almost constant euphoria. By December, however, he was exhibiting unmistakable sighs of mental derangement. In a series of crazy letters he expressed the belief he had deposed both the German Emperor and the Pope, had arranged for all anti-Semites to be shot, and that he was, in fact, 'God'. At the beginning of January 1889 he flung his arms around a horse being beaten by a coachman in a Turin piazza, collapsed into tears, and was taken to an asylum, first in Basel then in Jena. Though he did not die until 1900 his final years were spent in a vegetative state. Among doctors who have taken an interest in the question of why, at age 44, Nietzsche went mad, the traditional diagnosis of syphilis is now largely discredited. Though there is speculation that he had a slow-developing brain-tumor, it is more likely he suffered from a bi-polar disorder that eventually developed schizophrenia-like symptoms. ( He saw rifles pointing at him through windows in Jena.)

For most of his life, Nietzsche's work was largely unknown. In 1888, however, lectures in Copenhagen by Georg Brandes, the Danish literary critic, brought Nietzsches work to a wider public. By the mid-1890s the comatose Nietzsche was a world star. His sister moved him and his huge collection of unpublished notebooks and letters to Weimar which, as Goethe's city and the home of the Goethe-Schiller Archive, was the seat of German Kultur. People came from far and wide, among them Richard Strauss, Rudolf Steiner, and Isadora Duncan, to pay homage to the silent philosopher who, many felt, was not mad but rather ascended. Elizabeth's shrewd commercial sense encouraged Nietzsche's transformation into guru and saint. Her control and manipulation often involving outright forgery of his writings, both published and unpublished, enabled her to present him as sympathetic to her own nationalistic and anti-Semitic outlook, to turn him into a forerunner of Nazism. Hitler was one of those who visited the shrine in Weimar and when Elizabeth died in 1935 he attended her funeral. It has taken 60 years of patient work by scholars to overcome the perverted image of Nietzsche that she presented to the world.

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Friedrich Nietzsche - The New York Times

The older I get, the more Im hearing people complain of a lack of joy and fulfillment in their lives. Personally, I think this is often caused by an imbalance in physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs. In other words, people are not allowing themselves the right amount of sleep, nutrition, exercise, work, security, intellectual stimulation, attention, sense of achievement, socialization, fun, time alone and so on.

While exploring ways to increase happiness, many people identify a lack of spiritual satisfaction which often leads them on a journey of gratitude.

Robert Emmons is recognized as the worlds leading scientific expert on gratitude. He describes gratitude as a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life and explains it as an acknowledgement and an appreciation of things that are given to or done for someone. He goes on to say that the good feelings associated with gratitude inspire people to create the same feelings for others.

Most people learn basic gratitude as children when theyre taught to say thank you, show respect and help others. But in this busy and disposable world, it seems many have developed a sense of entitlement, feeling its their right to live their lives a particular way, instantly have the best instead of working and saving for itand taking so much of their lives for granted.

Positive psychology research proves that gratitude is strongly associated with the emotions that help people enjoy greater health and happiness. It can also play an important role in nurturing relationships and can even inspire people to take better care of themselves.

A study conducted by scientists Ken Sheldon, David Schkade and Sonja Lyubomirsky discovered that the components affecting happiness can be divided into three sections:

1) A natural Set Point that you are born with (50%),2) Life Circumstances (10%), and3) Intentional Activity (40%).

In simple terms, its our behaviour thats most likely to increase our level of happiness.

People who incorporate gratitude into their daily lives have a more optimistic outlook and are more appreciative of everyday things. As they are less likely to take things for granted, they are more inclined to be moved by the little things that can seem quite mundane to others. And because their attitude towards life may be more easy going, feeling that whatever comes their way is a blessing, disappointment may not be a factor that greatly affects their mood. Being able to see the bright side of life rather than focusing on a lack, is a major factor in improving happiness.

Grateful people tend to be less materialistic and more hopeful. Theyre also likely to be more resilient and less likely to feel theyre a victim when things dont go their way. Being better able to cope with tragedies and crisis, helps improve the quality and experiences they have in life.

Its proven that people who live with gratitude are less likely to suffer from anxiety or depression. Its been shown that grateful people are more optimistic and apart from an increase in energy, optimism has a number of health benefits. And its not just mental health thats positively impacted, but physical health too. Gratitude has a positive effect on immunity, blood pressure, heart disease, cancer outcomes, pain tolerance and even pregnancy.

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.William Arthur Ward

People experiencing heartfelt gratitude and high levels of happiness have far greater self-esteem and confidence than those with an attitude of doom and gloom. Being grateful focuses our attention on happier, more positive thoughts which helps them feel better about themselves and banishes negative self-talk. Being appreciative of the things people have done for them can help them see just how much theyre cherished and valued, hence increasing their self-worth in their own mind.

Its been shown that people with a grateful disposition are more likely to reach their goals faster. Those in managerial positions report that thanking their colleagues and showing genuine appreciation for their efforts, improves productivity and motivates enthusiasm and loyalty.

A study conducted by Psychologist Jeffrey Froh showed students who regularly practised gratitude were more optimistic, more satisfied in life and more positive about school.

Another study suggested that grateful adolescents form stronger friendships, are more satisfied at home and less materialistic. Theyre also likely to have greater self-esteem, give more emotional support to others, be more engaged in schoolwork and achieve higher grades.

People with an attitude of gratitude are more likely to recover faster from a setback. Seeing the brighter side of negative situations allows them to find the lesson and move on to count their blessings in other aspects of life.

People who express their gratitude for their friends, partner or loved ones are rewarded with more positive feelings and given more trust and respect. One study showed that expressing gratitude to a partner allowed a couple to feel more comfortable talking about relationship concerns and made them more forgiving and responsive to each others needs.

Being grateful isnt always easy. Attitude towards life can greatly depend on the environment in which people live, the people they associate with and the experiences theyve had. Stress also plays a major part in people feeling ungrateful for what they have or the situation theyre in.

But as Robert Emmons explains, Without gratitude, life can be lonely, depressing and impoverished. Gratitude enriches human life. It elevates, energizes, inspires and transforms. People are moved, opened and humbled through expressions of gratitude.

As gratitude is a chosen attitude, lets explore the ways in which it can most successfully incorporate into daily life.

Our expert on gratitude, Robert Emmons strongly believes that keeping a gratitude journal is one of the best ways of changing attitudes. He shares some research-based tips to help people benefit the most from their journal.

No need to get a fancy journal. Something as simple as an exercise book is fine, but if purchasing one specifically designed for gratitude, there are a number of great options below (affiliate links):

Jack Canfields Gratitude Journal: The Companion to Jack Canfields Key to Living the Law of AttractionGratitude Journal: Positive Thoughts & Vibration by You Daily Gratitude JournalGratitude Journal: 100 Days of Gratitude Will Change Your Life

Martin Seligman, the founding father of positive psychology, developed a simple, but highly effective exercise known as the gratitude visit. This exercise, found in his highly acclaimed book Flourish (affiliate link), promises to enhance well-being and reduce depression.

Martin Seligmans exercise:

Close your eyes. Call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone who you never properly thanked; someone you could meet face-to-face next week. Got a face?

Gratitude can make your life happier and more satisfying. When we feel gratitude, we benefit from the pleasant memory of a positive event in our life. Also, when we express our gratitude to others, we strengthen our relationship with them. But sometimes our thank you is said so casually or quickly that it is nearly meaningless. In this exercise you will have the opportunity to experience what it is like to express your gratitude in a thoughtful, purposeful manner.

Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did. Make it sing! Once you have written the testimonial, call the person and tell her youd like to visit her, but be vague about the purpose of the meeting; this exercise is much more fun when it is a surprise. When you meet her, take your time reading your letter.

You can read more about this exercise here.

Complaining seems to be a natural part of most peoples character, something many do several times a day without really noticing. Though it enables them to get things off their chest, complaining usually causes more harm than good and rarely yields a positive result. When people complain, theyre reinforcing negative emotions, re-living stress and frustration, and impacting their mood and self-esteem.

People can practice mindfulness and STOP when a negative thought presents or spiteful words start tumbling out their mouth and replace the negative dialogue with positive thoughts or words about the good things that have happened and things theyre (or should be) grateful for.

Visual reminders are great when first starting out. Magnets, posters and notes around the house are great ways to lose the negative attitude and refocus on the positives.

Giving or doing for others creates feelings of gratitude for the recipient and a sense of pride and happiness for the giver. Apart from the good feelings that are created when volunteering time or giving a gift, its also a way of seeing how fortunate we are compared to those being helping. People who experience someone elses misfortune often come away with strong feelings of gratitude for the things and people in their own lives.

Most people are conditioned to react negatively or question why me when something bad happens. But, people who practice gratitude are more likely to find the positives in a negative situation. Just because its not something that was planned or it causes unhappiness doesnt mean theres nothing good to be taken from it.

So, as you can see, a little time savouring the good things in life can lead us all to a much more positive state of mind with very powerful and life-changing outcomes.

Whats your favourite way to practise gratitude?

Author: Lisa Currie, Ripple Kindness ProjectLisa is the founder of Ripple Kindness Project, a community program andschool curriculum that aims to improve social, emotional and mental health, and reduce bullying by teaching and inspiring kindness.The ongoing, whole school primary curriculum teaches children about their emotions and the impact their words and actions have on others. It provides opportunities for children to be part of kindness activities, allowing them to experience the feel-good emotions kindness produces.

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An Attitude of Gratitude for Positive Mental Health and ...

Why does organic cost more?

While organic food is sometimes more expensive than non-organic, there are ways to keep costs down. In an ideal world, organic wouldnt need to be more expensive. A big part of the problem is that the true cost of our food isnt reflected in the price, both the positives and the negatives. So food that is produced in ways that may contaminate our water, or lead to antibiotic resistance in people, may seem cheap in the store, but the real cost can be very high indeed.

Where there is a price difference, you are paying for the special care organic farmers place on protecting the environment andimproving animal welfare.As the costs of farming with oil-based fertilisers and chemicals increase, the price gap between organic and non-organic is closing.

Going organic is easier than youd think. Food, health, beauty and textile products that hold the Soil Association organic symbol have been produced to the highest possible animal welfare and environmental standards. Look for the logo!

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organic food - Soil Association

Get Off The Scale!

You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance.

Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life.

Its true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. Thats it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Dont give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful! Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

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Quotes About Self Empowerment (245 quotes) - Goodreads