This trip was the next in a long series of ascents Aron Ralston and I have shared over the years. This one in particular to RMNP, was to return to where it all began 20 years ago when we summited Longs Peak, the fourteener that sparked our lifelong passion for mountaineering.

What I love about climbing in the high country is that the mountains are full of life lessons that are taught viscerally and dynamically as one foot is placed in front of the other with your head in the clouds. When you hit altitude, legs and lungs burning, the body wants to stop. That is when the mind pushes on, and when the present moment requires maximum focus.

Going with the flow

Plans for a 2 am departure for Longs Peak were derailed by heavy rain. Knowing this was a possibility we pushed the departure back to a relaxed 7 am, destined for Glacier Gorge around Black Lake between the towering Longs peak to the east and McHenry’s peak to the west. While there was no lightening in the morning we wanted to avoid at all costs getting caught at high altitude without a quick walk off.

From the trailhead we departed with plan B, meaning we didn’t know what the destination was but we’d find out how high in the peaks the weather would allow us to get. No expectations, only discovery and adventure.

We were deep in the clouds all morning, when mist transitioned to rain we donned what was initially a joke but is now the tried and true Mountaineering Umbrella. Not a good tool when electricity or wind are likely but in today’s east coast-style drizzle it was perfect—and hilarious!

#MountaineeringUmbrella photo by Aron Ralston

The Path Emerges

At about 11,000′ altitude and 5 miles into the ascent, Aron and I pulled over to intermit over coconut chocolate Pro Bars. We stopped about 500 feet above Black Lake amid a misty flower-filled run-off. Aron spotted the perfect perch across the stream and I endeavored to join him. The weather had been misting and raining all morning so I approached the rock perch round-aboutly to avoid walking through calf-deep grass that would soak my shoes with dew.

I made my route along some river stones while I patted myself on my back for being clever enough to find such a creative route—until I turned the corner and there was no more route, only running water. I hesitated, looking around at the prospect of getting myself back out of the streambed and seeing only soaking wet options all around me.

How many times does that happen in life? You’re going down a path and all of a sudden you don’t know where to go? Progress hits a standstill. What do you do?

About to give up and backtrack, I took one last step forward onto a small stone protruding just above the glassy meniscus. I looked around the bend and as if the universe was playing a joke on me, a big boulder appeared, previously just out of view when I was in my doubt state.

Where there was no path, a path appeared.

Ahh, I remember. Faith in the flow.

Avoiding the Krummholz

As we continued above tree line, the existing hiking trail came to an end at the base of a tundra marsh on the way towards the boulder field. We did our best to navigate on the wet slabs instead of the marshy grass to preserve what dryness remained in our shoes but at times we had to tally-ho through.

Krummholz is a type of tree that grows just at this subarctic zone that protects itself from the fierce freezing winds by clumping together behind rocks and in large groupings.

You do not want to get caught into a large batch of krummholz! It is a thick quagmire of branches just below the surface of fir needles. You can’t see your feet, there are tons of tripping hazards and you may or may not even be stepping on the ground depending on how deep you are.

As we traverse towards the most amicable route against the steepening ascent, Aron explains his experience once falling through what seemed like the ground, sinking in over his head and splayed in between branches in the darkness. It was a real mess to get out of.

Instead, he said, you have to look for the existing path through the krummholz. The elk and moose thankfully have the sense to cut through the most friendly patches of this knee timber so look for their path instead of forging your own.

Lesson in business and in life: If you can not avoid the krummholz find an existing path through it, else you may be stymied, potentially enough to jeopardize your whole ascent. Do not take such patches—proverbial or otherwise—for granted, they can be a resource-sucking quagmire.

SUMMITING

Just as we approached the col, where the ridge line breaks to a steep cliff, the cloud bank began to swirl and lift! After not seeing more than 50 feet all morning against the mist-ical clouds, the craggy arête appears! The fiercely exposed summit of The Spearhead emerges!

Spearhead emerges from the lifting clouds

The cloud cover swept out of the valley in a swift gust of clear air, seemingly just for us. Now with a window of increased visibility, no rain and the summit in sight, we reflected on the amazing timing of our arrival at the col during the only weather opening all day. I took that as a little wink from the universe.

Having the perspective now of 1000 feet below and 1000 above, I took in the magnitude of the alpine cirque all around me. The sight was totally overwhelming. At that moment I felt a deep fear about the exposure along the summit ridge.

Photo by Aron Ralston

It has been a long time since I’ve been that afraid, but I did not come this far to not attempt the summit—especially after the miraculous parting of the clouds.

Photo by Aron Ralston

Arriving at the peak, I see what Aron has been telling me about. The actual peak of Spearhead (12,575’) is what appears to be a pile of queen-bed sized boulders perched precariously above a straight 500 foot drop into the shadow of neighboring Longs Peak (14,259’) and Chiefs Head Peak (13,579’). “Ho-ly shit!”

Holding on, we looked over the edge to soak in the marrow of this alpine theatre. It was terrifying and exhilarating. I am a new man. I got what I needed. Hard reset—and a new appreciation for the magnitude of nature and this planet.

The energy at the peak was palpable. Before we left, I sat for a moment in my meditation where I ping love against my wife’s heart from wherever I am. When we do this it sends out ripples of love in every direction. My intention was to broadcast Love her and to Jung’s collective unconscious.

On the trip down I could not stop thinking about how amazing the summit was—but then I remembered it’s not about the past. It’s about right now.

The view from Spearhead and the cloud we had been in all day.

The high altitude puts me into a meditation where my very existence requires every ounce of mindfulness I have. The lack of oxygen, the tricky footwork through the boulder field, the wet, lichen-covered slabs—the path requires all of my energy and I don’t have time for all that mental chatter of life. And that is the point where I find complete silence. That is what I came here looking for: Absolute presence, mindfulness and silence.

Peaking–over and over again

Twenty years ago, when Aron and I first came up to this high country, we had no idea how life changing it would be. Mountaineering is not for everyone, it has to be in your blood. It is grueling, painful and dangerous but if you can stomach one step at a time, you gain the privilege of perspective from the highest peaks and bring those lessons back to life–the powerful practices of ascending, testing our limits, training our mindfulness and sharpening the sword.

- by Jon Heinrich

Now is the time when our decisions and choices in life start to catch up with us. Life is all cause and effect. Or as that famous Yogi in the Bible put it: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

We see this theme of cause/effect in nearly all religions in the world, in classic Newtonian physics and now more than ever, quantum physics has proved that “life is in the eye of the beholder.”

In short, “thoughts become things” so “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23)

One of my main goals in life is to spread Awareness. I am not perfect, but I try very hard to cultivate a very intentional, powerful, creative life and through those ventures, I have discovered a great deal of knowledge available to anyone with a library card. Seeking spirit or not, we are all human so inevitably we are all graced with life’s ups and downs, all the while, revealing the human experience.

As I’ve approached this milestone marker of my fortieth birthday and looked in the mirror, I’ve been thinking about what key decisions I have made that have contributed most to my healthy state of being.

That being the case, here are 11 lifestyle choices to help inspire tomorrow with healthful and wealthful giving to thyself today, as to reap that health and wealth tomorrow. The choices fall into three main categories: Body, Mind and Spirit:

Body:

#1 – Your body is your Temple, treat it with the greatest respect

In 2003 I interviewed acclaimed jazz pianist Brian Hass for Meniscus Magazine and he told me something that turned into a piece of my existence: Haas said:

“Jesus said, your body is a temple. If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you do is holy.

“The mind, body and soul are connected,” Haas continued. “If you don’t allow your body to operate at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my full potential..I want to be the best human I can be…We have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential.”

The best way to keep the temple clean, is to understand you have control, which leads us to step #2…

#2- Discipline the Robot

Your body is a robot and you have to make the choose whether you are going to tell it what to do, or it is going to tell you what to do.

There are terrible epidemics of obesity, cancer and heart disease in this country and much of it has to do with food addictions.

Most people are addicted to food. That few seconds of flavor from that bite of potato chip, bacon, corn bread, cup cake, doughnut, soda…all of that highly addictive junk food eventually will catch up to the body in the form of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer not to mention your body and mind will be clogged full of junk. “You are what you eat” so those who thrive on processed food will constantly be “over fed and under nourished” and will never reach their full potential.

So you have to make a choice: Am I going to let the robot control me via my tastebuds?

My choice has been to eat a macrobiotic diet consisting of vegetables, whole grains and a little fish; no meat or dairy. The stuff I eat is probably “earthy” to most people. However because I have trained my tastebuds to appreciate the nutrients and not the sugar, it is delicious. On the contrary, if I eat a Duncan Doughnut or God forbid a diet soda, all I can taste is the chemicals. I don’t taste any real food, and my body is trained to reject it.

#3 Fast and Detox your Temple

The best way to reset your control over the robot and cleanse the body is to fast. I know, this sounds crazy, “not eat for 3-6 days?! How is that possible,” you ask? “I get light headed after missing dinner for 1 hour!”

By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of diseases.

As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting, there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding Vital Force.

Aside from fasting, there are many ways to detox on a regular basis. One of my favorite, easy things to do is this: Each day upon waking, drink a pint of water in the morning with a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, one hour (or as long as possible) before your coffee or breakfast. (Make sure you use a straw and brush your teeth after the mixture! The acids can be bad for your tooth enamel.)

You can also find natural, herb-based cleanses on the market like this seven-day cleanse from Arbonne.

#4 Cultivate Awareness

Now that you’ve got your body cleaned out, you’ll start to see you have a very clear mind, which brings us to the next stage in the positive cause/effect cycle: Awareness. Actually, more specifically the best place to start here is awareness of awareness.

Now that you have control of the robot you can start taking control of other rituals that may or may not be spinning your cause/effect cycle in a positive direction.

- Exercise: There is no shortage of benefits to exercise, get yourself on a schedule and train the robot to get out there at least a few times a week.
- Negative people: Who in your life is it time to step away from? Your awareness will help you see the cause/effect they have on you.
- Emotional intelligence: Knowing that we are emotional creatures, when do you need to step away from a situation before it drives you to a regrettable outburst. (I.e. An “amygdala hijacking”)
- Career navigation: Once you have this awareness, you can start to see how other people’s robots react to professional situations. If you rise above and always make your moves from a very intentional, logical place, you’ll start to see you have more professional freedom than before—to get a raise, to move companies, or to move into new industries all together.
- Helping the whole planet: The best benefit comes when we all have a greater Awareness of how our daily choices affect the planet, and therefore every one of us, especially our future generations.

The benefits of Awareness are endless, and the next step is to start to refine how you incite Action into the universe to get what you want. The gateway to this manifestation is of course, the mind.

Mind:

Einstein proved that everything is made up of energy in his famous equation E=mC2. We also know the human mind can affect energy.

As far back as the early 1800’s, Quantum physics established that the behavior of particles actually changes depending the observer.

In 1803, Thomas Young discovered what would become the cornerstone of modern quantum physics. In his double-slit experiment, he shot a single particle of light towards two slits in a plate. He was trying to determine whether light traveled as a wave or as a particle. What he found is that when he changed his hypothesis, the particle would change its path.

This experiment opened up many questions. What the quantum physics community determined since then is that the physical world of matter and energy respond to our thinking on a subatomic level.

The mind is part of the robot. Most people think their mind is them, but it is actually just another organ running in the background like your liver, kidneys and heart. Now that we have a clean temple, and the power of Awareness, we can start crafting the mind to support our positive cause/effect cycle.

#5 Work with your subconscious mind

Florence Scovel Shinn, a pioneer of the New Thought movement, stated that “The imagination has been called, ‘The Scissors of the Mind,’ and it is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world.”

And to know what creations we should expect in our outer world, she reminds of us what the Greeks said: “Know Thyself.”

What we are creating in our imagination is not always a conscious decision. The subconscious mind is running in the background at all times. It is the operating system that you don’t even see. So if your operating system is running a poverty mantra, or a guilt complex, or a I-don’t-deserve-it paradigm, our power as creators will manifest that poverty, guilt and lack in our lives. However if we program our subconscious with positive mind treatments and acknowledge our place in the universe as acting with and as a part of God, then we can harness the creative power of the universe.

As Earnest Holmes said, “Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve.”

More on this topic soon, as a part of my new 40 goals, I am going to work on getting more of this information out, stay tuned.

#6 Know that God is within (and feel good about that!)

To truly bring divine power to your creative ability, know this:

There is one Divine power and presence in life. You can call It God, Infinite Intelligence, the Force, what ever you connect with. That Infinite Intelligence is operating in, around and through you. You are in a divine partnership with that Divine Intelligence and every part of your life is one with God. Embrace this Divine presence and know that the creative power of the universe is within you. Your job is to direct It’s creative potential in any way you would like. Just know that you direct that Divine Creative Power whether you are aware of that or not. So think good thoughts, and Good shall come.

I have never been all that religious. In fact, I don’t like organized religion at all. It started with good intentions many centuries ago, but now most world religions are loaded with dogma and limitation that does not serve our highest potential. That said, I do study the world religions to find the needles of wisdom among the haystack of the ages.

One of those great gems is this statement by JC, He said: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

For some reason, when I bring this up in conversations with Christians, they have a lot of resistance to that idea that the Kingdom was within man. To me, it is crystal clear: God is within, so instead of praying to some entity out there in the sky, we pray with every word we speak, every day: “By your words ye are justified and by your words ye are condemned.”

As Shinn pointed out, “There is always plenty on man’s pathway: but it can only be brought into manifestation by desire, faith or the spoken word. Jesus Christ brought out clearly that man must make the first move.”

“Ask, and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened you.” (Mat. 7:7)

#7 Meditate

So now that we know that the mind can literally affect the subatomic particles that make up everything around us, and we understand that the Infinite Divine power of creation is within, how do we clean out that subconscious mind and start churning out some positive cause/effect into our life?

One of my favorite yoga instructors, Yogi Charu, once said something that really stuck with me: “We brush our teeth, we wash our hair, but we never clean our mind.” Of all the important bodily functions, most of us do not consider our “mental hygiene.”

The only way to calm the mind down and actually see it for what it really is, is to meditate.

The most frequent response I get when talking about meditation is “I can’t do it—I can’t sit there and think about nothing for more than a few seconds.” What I would say to that is, it’s not about the result of having a clear mind, free from thoughts, it is about the practice of watching the mind in action and from there we’ll be able to start seeing the mind for what it is: another organ in our body.

We are not our mind.

The best analogy I’ve heard about meditation is to picture yourself laying on your back watching the clouds go by on a blue sky. Each cloud is a thought. Now ideally you sit down and focus on the breathe and try and just look at the blue sky, the silence, the breath. Only the breath. However as far as I know that is impossible. Inevitably there is a cloud that comes by, interrupting the azure above. That’s ok, a thought comes in, you watch it go across your purview, then it is gone, and back to blue sky.

The reason that is so powerful, is you start to realize there is something outside of your brain that is You. There is your mind and then there is You, which you start to get to know once your mind finally shuts the hell up for a moment. (Damn thing is running non-stop! Shut up brain!

In this way, there is nothing as powerful for understanding the mind than meditation.

This is such an important step in cultivating your super powers as a human being.

Spirit:

#8 Acknowledge the Spirit

The other cardinal cornerstone of the happy life is acknowledging and working with the spirit. About an arm’s length around our physical body is our spirit body. If you cleanse your body, purify your mind and spend enough time meditating, you can start to connect to the more subtle energies of the spirit realm. Ask me to define what that really means? I can’t. But I do know it is worthy of a lifetime of study.

Call it God, call it the Universe, the Force, what ever you will, it is the everything that is all, that is One, that is no thing. And if you follow Quantum Physics into it, you will see the mystics have been correct this whole time:

We are all connected by an unseen force.

Take some time each day to connect with that greater Source energy and greater synchronicity will start to unfold, allowing you to bring out the gifts that only you bring to the world.

#9 Beware of The Illusion

Now that we have Awareness of our power to control the body, purify the mind and work with the spirit, we can start to step out of the day-to-day distractions that constantly pull us back into mental chaos and drama.

There are a million things out there to distract us. Thousands of products vying for our dollars. We’ve got Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. Drama playing through people’s emotions that have little or nothing to do with what is happening right now. News media inciting fear and prejudice on a 24-hour cycle. Doctors prescribe drugs to dull the psyche, put us to sleep, or make us “normal.” Energy vampires seeking to suck your energy and pull you down.

Through the tools we’ve discussed, you now have the ability to see through what the Hindu mystics call the Illusion, or the Maha Maya. The more you use the tools of Awareness, Meditation and harnessing of the Divine within, the more your own intuition will heighten and it is in there, that you’ll discover the gifts you have to give to the world.

Think of the illusion as the flock of sheep being led off a cliff. All of the sheep think it is the cool thing to do because they are following the sheep in front of them. And it creates a great deal of effort to turn around and go against the flow. But so long as you stay part of that flock, the only footsteps you’ll tread are ones that have already been beaten down by minds before you.

#10 Don’t do what you’re told

From the moment we are born, people have an opinion about what they think is best for us. Growing up, our parents want us to follow a certain path, go to an in-state college (because they love us :), our friends encourage us to do what’s cool, we want to be accepted, society reinforces our existing paradigms, and marketers push trends.

If you are going to find out who you really are, you can’t blindly follow what other people expect of you. Do not obey. Don not do what you’re told. Do not stay in your comfort zone. Move out of state. Travel internationally. Don’t marry “in your tribe”. Read lots of books from people you agree with and disagree with. Do not discount anyone or any thought based on what “they” think.

No one who ever did anything revolutionary followed the rules. Some of the greatest minds of our time went against the grain and dropped out of school despite everyone telling them it was a bad idea. Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates all went against popular advice and dropped out of school.

Get out of conventional wisdom as much as possible and then you’ll start to welcome the insight from within, to be the best person you can be.

After all, if you do not bring your own gifts to the world, no one else will. Each one of us has something unique to bring to the planet, and no one finds that unique gift without a healthy sense of adventure and discontentment of how things are now.

#11 Love

The final, and perhaps most important trait to living a healthy, wealthy, joyus, blessed life is love. All of our decisions in life either come from a place of love or a place of fear.

My favorite Beatle Yogi said it best:

“That’s it really; it’s all love, whichever way you look at it, it’s all love. How much you can Get from each other and that’s determined by how much you’re Giving to each other… But it all starts Within our self and then it spreads to those around us, Good & Bad. But basically that’s it, I think it’s the Love that we can generate is = to the Love that we get back.
Amen”
― George Harrison, Cloud Nine

40 years, in conclusion

I have done my best to search out and follow these 11 approaches to life. I constantly work to cleanse the body, cultivate the mind and embrace the spirit and as I turn this grand milestone of 40 years old, I am enlivened by the thought of life. I want us all to be the superhumans that we were born to be.

Every birthday, just like every day, is a new opportunity to set new cause/effect into motion.
I wish you all the best of success in building a healthy, wealthy, joyous, blessed tomorrow by planting the seeds of body, mind and spirit today. I encourage you to harness your Divine partnership with the great Infinite Intelligence in the universe, to be present and live intentionally each and every day, to tap into the greater Spirit to find out who you truly are, and to give your unique gifts to the world.

God Bless and good luck!

- By Jon Heinrich

In the age of capitalism and convenience, the human animal encounters more toxicity and detrimental environmental conditions than ever. While you can break the core of survival down to four areas—food, shelter, heat and clothing—there are many more catastrophic elements to deal with now than ever. The age of profit margins has introduced nasty substances into our lifestyle, such as bovine growth hormones and DDT. Unless you either grow all your own food or buy it from an organic health food store, you consume these toxic substances everyday.

I didn’t fully realize the damaging potential of the disease until it hit close to home. John Hall, 25 year-old bass player for the band Addison Groove Project, lost his battle with cancer. He had been diagnosed with rectal cancer just 18 months prior but no one except his family and band-mates knew how bad it was. And no one at the funeral could understand how a 25 year-old could die of cancer.

I knew cancer was a problem in the nation, but John was only 25! This really is serious. John Hall’s story was the catalyst that drove me to investigate this epidemic. I’m thankful for the opportunity to share my findings with you, so we may all do our best to avoid the plague of the 21st century.

During my search for answers, I ran into Brian Haas, the esteemed piano player in the provocative jazz trio, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. Our paths crossed at the foot of Butternut Ski Basin among scorching sun and green grass at the Berkshire Mountain Music Festival in August of 2003. While most of the inhabitants of the festival were wrapped up in conversation about the musical lineup, Brian was deep into in a discussion on life and death.

Recently, Hass’ mom became one of 1.4 million people each year to be newly diagnosed with cancer in the United States. Fearing for her life, Mrs. Haas did what nearly everyone does, and enrolled in a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation treatment to counter the breast cancer. Her doctors emphasized that this was the best, most effective means of treatment, even though they gave her only a five percent chance of surviving the ordeal, with the “therapy”. A five percent chance of survival with the most cutting edge advances in western medicine! No wonder subconsciously she knew the MDs were wrong. “There was a ring of dishonesty in what the doctors were saying,” explained Brian Haas.

During this treatment, her body underwent high doses of chemicals and radiation that poisoned the cancer cells—along with her healthy cells. She became weaker and more emotionally destitute. There were no signs of regaining the vitality that once flowed through her body in abundance. Then she turned to Brian. After a few months of listening to his advice, she was on her way to full recovery. She had literally found the cure; it took her from deathbed, to full recovery. And that cure is available for everybody.

How do you treat your Temple?

Putting good food into your body does not end with physical benefits through healthy lifestyle. Spiritual health and physical health go hand in hand. “Like Sting said, ‘We’re just spirits in the material world,’” explains Haas. “This is the house of our spirit.” If you think of it in those terms, it makes sense. The body is the interface between your soul and the physical world. If that interface is clogged full of toxic residue, then you won’t be able to realize your full potential—neither mentally, physically, or spiritually.

Haas explains: “Jesus said your body is a temple. If you treat your body like a temple, it spreads into the rest of your life. Every aspect of your life becomes holy; everything you do is holy.”

“The mind, body and soul are connected,” Haas continues. “If you don’t allow your body to operate at its full potential, how do we even know what our minds are capable of? I’m all about living like a real human and realizing my full potential. I’m back here [on the earth] for some reason so I want to be the best human I can be. All of this is so simple.”

After hearing him behind the grand piano that night, I know why he’s here. But its even larger than spreading his consciousness expanding jazz. There is a larger purpose: All is One.

As Hass sat and talked to me before the show, eating his organic stew, he explained: “The reason we’re here right now is to help in the healing process of the earth. So, we have to turn ourselves into superheroes, we have to turn ourselves into ultra-humans. We have to find our true potential. Jesus said ‘Don’t you understand that you’re all Gods?’ Simple; we’re all Gods, we’re all creators. We create the world around us. And if we’re toxic, if we’re poisoning ourselves, we’re going to create an awful world. Look around, we made this. The way I look at it, if you only feed yourself goodness and love, you only create goodness and love.”

How diet can affect your chances

First of all, there is no black-and-white cause to cancer, it is merely an accumulation of thousands of lifestyle and environmental factors over a person’s life that contribute to the degradation of the body’s cells. Of course there are certainly things that increase your chances such as smoking cigarettes, but regardless of your lifestyle, malignant cells exist in everyone.

Western medicine currently has about four main (and expensive) treatments to counter mutating cells spreading throughout the body. The first step in slowing reproduction of malignant cells, is to slow the hormone that commands them to replicate, estrogen. The most common drugs used for this include tamoxifen and raloxifene.

Chemotherapy is the most common cancer treatment. Chemicals are introduced to the system to kill the cancer cells. Unfortunately, instead of mimicking a “smart bomb” and killing only the malignant cells, the chemicals kill thousands of healthy cells in the process. These chemicals are so harmful to the body, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that increased chance of leukemia and ovarian cancer offset the benefits with greater risks. Chemotherapy also tends to reduce the number of blood platelets in the patient, called thrombocytopenia. Theoretically it’s similar to killing Saddam Hussein by nuking all of Iraq.

Speaking of, radiation treatment is also a very common therapy where the tumor is bombarded with high energy X-rays or radioactive isotopes in order to disable the replicating mechanism in the cancer cells, the chromosomes. As most of us know from getting X-rays at the dentist, radiation is not good for the body.

The final, and most drastic treatment is a radical mastectomy. The severity of this treatment speaks for itself.

The best way to avoid being in a place where you need to consider these severe treatments of course is to avoid cancer all together. Western medicine however, is focused on curing illness rather than preventing it.

A great place to begin your prevention regimen, is a vegetarian diet. Fill your body with vibrant vegetables, that collect vitality straight from the sun. You’ll also remove the most unhealthy ingredients in your diet and instantly upgrade your chances of not becoming one of the 42% that gets cancer. “Its so simple,” Haas emphasizes.

When Brian’s mom finally decided she had enough of the western method of poison and radiation, she began listening to what Brian was saying. She began to follow not only his advice, but also her instincts. She immediately stopped taking the chemotherapy drugs and going to radiation therapy. She began to pay careful attention to what she put into her body, but more importantly, what not to put into her body.

To begin the healing process, the first thing she did was take the following four items out of her diet completely: sugar, alcohol, dairy, and factory (non-organically raised) meat. She replaced these with regular doses of juiced wheat grass, and her recovery process began. It is as simple as that.

What’s wrong with my burger?

If there is one reason to consider a vegetarian lifestyle, it is the chemical buildup found in non-organically raised meats. As a product of the food chain, the cow that your Big Mac came from consumed hundreds of meals coated in dangerous pesticides. Unfortunately, it does not pass through the animal’s digestive tract, but rather accumulates in the tissues over time. When you consume that flesh, that lifetime of toxins are passed into your body, and the struggle of breaking them down is passed to your immune system.

There are four major groups of toxins found in factory meat that you should be aware of: pesticides, antibiotics, growth hormones, and saturated fat.

The advent of pesticide use in large-scale farming was introduced just after World War II to increase productivity and drive profits. Unfortunately, no long-term studies have been conducted to determine the ramifications of such use. And unfortunately we are still using such toxins today.

One such chemical present in our food chain today is dioxin, the contaminant in Agent Orange, a defoliant in the Vietnam War that was found to cause birth defects in children of exposed parents. As far back as 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) testified before congress that dioxin is “…by far the most toxic chemical known to mankind.” But this has not stopped its use even today. Just last year the EPA under the Bush administration, refused to enforce a new limit to the use of dioxin-laced sludge as a fertilizer on farms, forests, parks, and golf courses. Dioxin has been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and in the worst cases, death.

This has been accumulating in your chicken wings and its only the beginning.

Antibiotics are used in factory farms, to keep the animals healthy despite their rancid conditions. The New England Journal of Medicine pointed out that farmers are using the same antibiotics that are used to treat human infections. This is a problem because bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics in the medical arena.

In a 1999 study on the impact of agricultural antibiotics, analysts linked a rise, from 1 percent to 10 percent, in antibiotic resistance in bacteria, to the 1995 approval of antibiotics used in poultry. Researchers at UCS estimate that roughly 24 million pounds, or 70 percent of the antibiotics in the United States are fed to healthy livestock and contribute to the antibiotic-resistance of bacteria in humans.

The next additive to your Thanksgiving turkey is hormones. One reason why the European Union hasn’t bought meat produced in the U.S. for over 14 years, is the twenty-fold increase in estrogen levels. The British Medical Journal reported harmful effects of growth hormones in meat involve developmental, neurobiological, genetoxic, and carcinogenic repercussions, and that even small residues of such hormones increase the risk of cancer.

How do you like your steak, medium or well done?

The final element in meat that increases your risk of cancer is saturated fat. There are no shortage of scientific studies that connect animal fat with cancers of the lung, colon, rectum, breast, endometrium, and prostate. One such study done in Britain over 12 years found vegetarians to have cancer rates 40 percent lower than non-vegetarians. The study tested 6,000 vegetarians against a group of meat-eaters similar in body weight, social class, and smoking patterns.

A vegetarian diet is one way of ensuring only goodness gets into your body, by minimizing the toxic chemicals entering body. However, now beyond the industrial revolution, we live a poisonous lifestyle and no matter how much we try and avoid it, toxins still wind up in the body through the air we breathe and the water we drink. Because of this, it is a good idea to consider cleaning house once and a while to allow your body’s natural processes to combat enemy free radicals and malignant cells in the body.

One of the best ways to allow your body to clean house, is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of cancers.

The Cleansing Fast: Detox for your health

One of the best ways to allow your body to cleanse is by fasting. By abstaining from food for significant periods of time, your body has a chance to turn its immune attention towards breaking down toxins in the system that, if left unattended to, could manifest into any number of cancers.

Traditionally, fasting is viewed as a spiritual experience. By abstaining from all solid food, you are taking control of the robot that is your body, by not letting it control you. When this occurs, you begin to see through the cycles of everyday life and realize what is truly important in the world. By choosing to let the spirit guide us, and not the flesh, you break through materialism and realize the body’s addiction to food and harmful substances we consume everyday.

In the Essene Gospels, Jesus explains, “the body is the temple of the spirit, and the spirit is the temple of God. Purify, therefore, the temple, that the Lord of the temple may dwell therein and occupy a place that is worthy of him.

As Paul Bragg explains in The Miracle of Fasting, there is a Vital Force that is used every day of your life to maintain your body’s processes. In addition to pushing blood through millions of filters in your kidneys and exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide in your lungs, a large percentage of this energy goes towards digesting food through your 30-foot digestive tract. Once you stop eating, this Vital Force begins recharging and is freed up tove move throughout the body breaking down poisonous residues that have built up. Even after just 24 hours, the body is able to begin rebuilding Vital Force.

With the aid of lots of water and a herbal laxative, fasting also allows your body to pass the remaining food that has accumulated in the colon over years. The average person on a western diet has up to eight partially digested meals residing in their digestive tract at any time. Think about that! This undigested food does exactly the same thing it would if it weren’t in your body: it rots. If you’re wondering what that would look like, try taking a bowl of freshly cooked food and instead of eating it, put it in a moist 98.6 degree environment and check on it in three days.

Fasting is certainly one option among many, that allow your natural body to take care of itself. The most important thing to realize, is that your vessel has remarkable healing capabilities. Next time your doctor prescribes a pill for a common ailment, consider that the human race has not made it this far being dependent on pharmaceuticals. The flip side of the coin however, is that we have never been bombarded by such a health-caustic environment. Drastic measures may be required for such drastic environmental conditions—like pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics, and saturated fat.

You Choose

Think of it this way: what if every morning, instead of having a cup of coffee, I banged my head against a brick wall to wake up. I would quickly begin to experience splitting headaches, scratches on my head, and soreness in my neck. If I went to my western doctor for a solution, he would listen to my symptoms, and probably prescribe Aspirin or a stronger pain killer to deal with the pain. After the pain did not go away, I would get X-rays, maybe a MRI scan and perhaps some stitches to deal with the laceration caused by my forehead smacking against the brick each day. If I went to my eastern medicine doctor, he would tell me to stop hitting my head on the wall.

This may sound ridiculous, but when you consider what we, as Americans, put into our body, it may not be that far-fetched. Consider that each year 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides are sprayed on American crops, and we feed 24 million pounds of antibiotics to farm animals to aid in meat production. Where do you think that goes? We are constantly bombarding our body with unnatural chemicals that can trigger DNA breakage, cell deterioration, and immune system suppression.

Luckily, you have a choice. You can begin reading the labels on your food and eliminating chemical-laden flesh from your diet. Remember, the choice is yours.

- by Jon Heinrich

Originally published 11/15/2013

Bibliography:

- Bragg, Paul ND, Ph.D, Patirica Bragg ND, Ph.D. The Miracle of Fasting. Santa Barbara, CA: Health Science.
- Gorbach, Sherwood. “Antimicrobial Use in Animal Feed—Time to Stop”. (Editorial). The New England Journal of Medicine, October 18, 2001. v345i16 p1202(2).
- Haas, Brian. Interview. October 16, 2003.
- Melina, Vesanto M.S., R.D. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. Healthy Eating for Life: To Prevent and Treat Cancer. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002.
- Nixon, Daniel W. M.D. The Cancer Recovery Eating Plan: The Right Foods to Help Fuel Your Recovery. Times Books, Random House, 1994.
- Pianin, Erik. “EPA Won’t Regulate Use of Dioxin-Laced Sludge as Fertilizer”. The Boston Globe, October 18, 2003.
- Quillen, Patirck Ph.D., RD. CNS. Beating Cancer with Nutrition. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Nutrition Times Press, Inc., 1994.
- Robbins, John. Diet for a New America. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint, 1987.
- Tagilaferri, Mary, Issac Cohen and Devu Tripathy. Breast Cancer Beyond Convention.
Vogin, Gary MD. WebMD, December, 2001.
- http://my.webmd.com/content/article/9/1811_50449.htm?lastselectedguid=%7B5FE84E90-BC77-4056-A91C-9531713CA348%7D
- Watson, Rory. “EU Says Growth Hormones Pose Health Risk”. British Medical Association, British Medical Journal, May 29, 1999. v318i7196 p1442.

Each Sunday in New York City’s Lincoln Center Film Society, Reverend Wade Adkisson along with the membership of ministers and practitioners participate in Science of Mind at the First Church of Religious Science. Here is a beautiful example of a monthly treatment you’ll hear from Rev. Adkisson:

“There is only One Power and Presence expressing throughout the universe. This Divine Presence of Love is expressing as me and through me at all times. I am an outlet by which God loves and creates. I am the way and means by which God experiences and celebrates life. There is only One Life, It is perfect, whole and complete and that LIfe is my Life right now.

“Today I celebrate this One Life and I let the One Mind guide and direct my own life. Every moment gives birth to fresh new creative ideas that unfold as new experiences in my world. My word is the law unto my life and will create for me what I desire because I am at one with the great Creative Action of the universe. I move from good to greater good because of the love and givingness of Spirit. And so it is.” – Rev. Wade Adkisson

The temple of God is within you

The philosophy of Earnest Holmes supports that true human selfhood is divine and by participating in spiritual mind treatments, we can program the subconscious to accept our divine thought as a force for good within our own life and for the greater good.

In his book, The Science of Mind, Ernest Holmes states “Religious Science is a correlation of laws of science, opinions of philosophy, and revelations of religion applied to human needs and the aspirations of man.”

He teaches that disease originates in the mind, and that “right thinking” can heal any of life’s afflictions.

Science of Mind: So what does it mean?

When participating in the Science of Mind, we are looking to understand our true spiritual self, that within us all is a divine spark. By speaking to our higher self through the mind treatments, we can achieve a realization of self.

Ideas are the building blocks of life

When we consciously move creative energy towards where we want, we take our lives into our own hands. We allow our spirit to know itself, to celebrate life and lift the consciousness of self.

We possess the ability to speak and initiate that great creative power of the universe through the law of cause and effect. We are always creating, because we are always thinking.

Consciousness = the cause
Experiences in life = the effect

As Rev. Adkisson explains, “You are the writer, the director and the actor of your own life,” he says “the only obstacle is your own imagination. The only thing that can prevent you from achieving anything, is you.”

I invite you to pick one of Earnest Holms books or visit a Center for Spiritual Living near you. And each day, remember that God is not something “out there” that you need to broker a conversation with. The Infinite Intelligence is all around us, waiting for your conscious right action to initiate the creative power and take your life from good to greater good—and anywhere you’d like.

“There is but one Life, one vitality, one energy and it is God. This is pure Mind, pure Love, pure Being.” – Dr. Raymond Charles Baker

- by Jon Heinrich

Some good books to check out:

The Science of Mind (Earnest Holmes)
This Thing Called You (Earnest Holmes)
Living the Science of Mind (Earnest Holmes)
The Science of Successful Living: The spiritual formula for a Joyous Life (Raymond Charles Barker)
Money is God in Action (Raymond Charles Barker)

Photo by Jon Heinrich © 2015

If you are tapped into social media, you have probably seen this hidden camera video of men checking out the girl in the yoga pants in New York City. It is hilarious, disgraceful, and a great topic to discuss towards being a modern evolved Gentlemen.

But first of all, give these men a break. I mean, come on, the term “red blooded male” exists for a reason.

We men appreciate beautiful things—especially in the form of God’s greatest gift to the planet, women.

But despite being red blooded men, there is a separation between gentlemen and dogs. For starters, let’s take Jerry Seinfeld’s advice to George about looking at woman’s cleavage, “Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun: You don’t stare at it, it’s too risky. You get a sense of it and you look away!”

Joking aside, let’s talk about it.

So what are the guidelines?

The important thing to realize is that you are writing your own book. So let’s talk about the underlying aspect of all of these videos: objectification.

First of all, being a Gentleman is all about integrity. And Integrity is doing the right thing even if no one is watching. Will you be graceful and respectable? Or are you just a dog?

Of course we can appreciate beautiful women. They go through a tremendous amount of effort to look good for us. But there is a fine line. As true gentlemen, we must embrace and empathize with the concept of objectification to truly know what goes on with women.

Objectification defined

Philosophically, objectification means treating a person as an inanimate material object, without regard to their dignity.

This is one of the most poignant topics that is rarely discussed, that modern evolved Gentleman must be aware of.

When watching the viral NYC yoga pants video keep in mind that even the guys that said something polite were still seen as creepers by a lot of women. The root cause is this: If someone is reduced to just what they look like, it leaves only a very small fragment of the whole person to appreciate.

Men that are only attracted to the bottom two chakras of a woman’s body are most likely only operating from those two chakras down themselves. If you’re looking to meet a more highly evolved lady, you’re going to have to operate on a higher plane yourself.

As a man, how would you feel if someone immediately judged you by what shoes you were wearing? Or what your hair looked like that day? Or what YOUR ass looks like?!

Walking a mile in women’s shoes

Despite reading about objectivism, it is very difficult for us men (myself included) to truly internalize what it means. Fashion designer Norma Kamali has an active effort called Stop Objectification that helps women get over the embarrassment and humiliation from being judged by their looks and getting cat calls on the street for their entire lives.

Kamali also has this film short called Hey Baby bringing awareness to the fact that a lot of the gorgeous women you see walking down the street have a lot more going for them than just a hot body.

So Gentlemen, if you want to distinguish yourself, realize this: It is not if you check out a beautiful figure walking down the street or not. It is about what chakras are you connecting to. Skin deep or the whole self? We are all complex, multi-faceted human beings, not to be judged by the cover.

Appreciate EVERY woman, no matter what she looks like (or if she shops at Lululemon or not.) With your kindness and generosity, you will rise up with distinction from the pack of dogs that rule the planet. Women and fellow Gentlemen will thank you alike.

- By Jon Heinrich

Photo by Jon Heinrich,
Model is Darja Schabad (Case-in-point, here is her bio on Wikipedia.)

tanya-b urban legend, Jamie Lugo.

Thus, the modern yogi is a brave seeking-spirit who is willing to try and fall, over and over again. As a labor of love, with each step on the mat, we grow and remind ourselves to love each and every day, moment by moment. Yoga is the practice of NOW.

Introducing tanya-b

As each yogi on the path will tell you, feeling good about your yoga instructor is very important. Meniscus had a chance to sit down with one such yogi whom a whole lot of people resonate with. Pure Yoga instructor Tanya Bolton’s intention is simple: To guide her students to stay present in their experiences—both on and off the mat. Looking at Pure Yoga NYC’s roster of instructors, you will find an incredibly deep portfolio, with each instructor having their own divine flair. Tanya holds down a very special corner of that tapestry of yogis.

Extending her creativity off the mat, Tanya is now unveiling her new line of yoga wear called tanya-b, an authentic, well-designed activewear collection for the modern woman looking for a unique way to express themselves.

When we asked why she started her new yoga line, Tanya explained “It was a purposeful calling, to bring in everything my heart and soul desired from the community, creativity, and connectivity. I wanted women to feel sexy and feminine in the clothes while keeping the brand and yoga accessible to everyone.”

It did not come without its challenges however.

“Starting a business is about getting over your doubts, fear, and shame…TRULY believing in yourself.”

Sound familiar?

Challenges, on and off the mat

The idea originally came to Tanya when she was living and teaching yoga in Hong Kong. She discovered that it was a long process of research and connecting with the right people that enabled her to bring the idea to fruition. She had a very specific sensation around what the brand was about. “It needed to FEEL right,” she remembers.

Once Tanya’s father passed away, she found herself with a greater sense of resolve and focus to make it happen.

“In trying moments, there can be great inspiration,” she explained.

With this new tanya-b yoga line, she is encouraging a paradigm shift away from yogawear brands that are mass-produced, to brands that are more personal and connected. “I believe people are craving community and connectivity, which is why many people are drawn to doing yoga in the first place,” she said.

Here are a few selects from the current tanya-b collection.

Students of Tanya’s Hot Power Vinyasa classes at Pure Yoga NYC can certainly feel her energetic state, which is why her classes are constantly packed. Tanya feels the reciprocal energy and the cycle continues.

Doing Good

One of our favorite topics at Meniscus is prosumerism, which in short, is supporting brands you believe in with your wallet instead of corporate behemoths that do not align with your personal ethics. The idea is that we can change the world in a truly capitalistic manner by supporting brands that support our own philosophy and ideals. Tanya-b is one of those brands that we feel aligned with and it is in a large part, due to that reciprocal relationship with people. She is she is leaving the planet with more positivity and wellness than when she found it.

“There’s a responsibility to stay connected to your customer,” Tany explains, “to find ways to share with others so they feel invested, and truly a part of it.”

If you are in the New York City area, please join cofounders Tanya Bolton and Anna Chung for the debut of the Tanya-b line at Pure Yoga on Tuesday Feb 24th at 6:15 where Tanya and urban legend Kay Kay Clivio will co-teach a hot power vinyasa class to officially kick it off.

Please check out the line at tanya-b.com and stay connected with her on Facebook here.

- Interview with Tanya Boulton
- By Jon Heinrich

I am here now. I am present.

“The wonderful thing about an opportunity like this is the ability to connect with people real time. So many people have this concept of Yeshua being in the past because they first became familiar with me in the Bible. But its important to know, given that time does not exist, that I am here now. I am present. Its very important to tell people that, because people are aware that something is happening, things are changing, things feel different. Maybe there is a different way of moving and acting in this world, they will think “oh, Jesus did that but it was so long ago, it does not relate, Jesus was in the past, I need something now..”

Jesus is now, Yeshua is now.

Being able to connect with people in the now is a wonderful way to have people open up and listen, and even have new ears when they’re reading the old text.

The beautiful thing is the message really is the same, but the wording will be different. Because, during this period of ascension, everyone is being combined, everyone’s brains are being rewired to our true divine original state, so you’re able to hear things differently. Its the same thing, but you’re able to grasp it on different levels. And so you can look in the Bible, you can look at the writings of Lao Tsu, you can look at Buddha.. There are so many things that are going to be very similar and it’s literally about getting the message in enough times, until the the tipping point is reached, [and you say] “oh wait, yes, I get it!”

My message really is very simple: You are divine. Period.

You are divine. You may believe otherwise, because of your experiences—and so many people are working on releasing their prior programming which is wonderful—but the truth I would like everyone to embrace is for everyone to sit down in a meditative pose, some place that feels very peaceful, where you can just sit in your room and have peaceful music and just contemplate: I. AM. DIVINE. I am divine. I am a divine being. I am divine. And really just move around in that space for at least a half an hour.

If your thoughts start wavering…and you mind starts thinking of ways how you are not divine and going back into your current situation, just say, “that’s okay, my mind’s going there for a second but I’m going to bring it back to ‘I am divine.’”

The more you can contemplate that the more you find yourself aligning with that. The beauty is, that the universe is always the how. You do not have to use your mind to figure out how you are divine or what that means, or how you have to act.

Its literally about giving your consciousness to the truth that you are divine, rather than anything that seems to be requiring your attention outside of you.

Of course if there’s an emergency you should deal with it. But if there’s something on television you can turn the television off. You can wait a few more minutes to eat if you’re not starving. You can hang up your clothes a little bit later.

Really, as much as you can, devote your consciousness to Truth. This one simple powerful [statement] is going to help you align with the truth, and from there you’re just going to find things unfolding so majestically. Things are going to start making sense, things are going to start clicking. You’re going to find yourself in the flow…because, like we said, its already true.

It’s already in you. You are divine.

But that nugget of truth has been buried under concrete after so many lifetimes of having to deal with just being on the physical plane and just dealing with survival, with whatever the next emergency is. [As] you align with [this divine truth] its breaking through all these layers. Eventually you allow the light to shining forth to be your main truth, the main being that you are. It sounds very simple, it is very powerful if you commit to doing this, you really will find just so many wonderful things in your life.

And the other beauty is that, We the ascended masters, on the other side of the realm, the other side of the veil, we all see you as this already. We know this as who you are. We love how you radiate in that wholeness of who you are. But when YOU start knowing who you are, start radiating as who you are, it’s really a different ball game, dear one, its really quite magnificent.

Your Divine self interacting with others

When you interact with others from this space of Truth, its of great assistance. One positive thought can counteract hundreds or thousands of negative ones. And its really the same if one person is aligned with their truth, and they encounter others, its going to be interesting.. It’ll actually be fun especially if you can stay in your divine observant state and just see how people are reacting in front of you.

You will find some people are very happy just to be in your space. It makes perfect sense when you radiate the space of Truth, there’s an unconditional love that is inherent in that. And people feel wonderful around that.

You may find that some people are uncomfortable in the light. They’re uncomfortable in the powerful Truth. Even that can be a wonderful view because you are literally waking [them] up, you’re calling out that nugget of truth, that light within them to move around. And they’re not sure about the way it feels. It can feel uncomfortable but you’re helping it to wake up within them. They may never cross your path again but at a later date, you can be sure that they’re really going to be waking up to who they are as well, because one lit candle can light all the other candles in the darkness.

Commitment and Consistency

Your priority and your greatest gift to all of life is for you to realize that you are divine….the important thing in this is the COMMITMENT and the CONSISTENCY. These two things are extremely powerful because when you say to yourself, when you contemplate “I AM DIVINE” daily, you are telling the universe that you are serious, you are telling yourself that that you are serious. You may find things coming up that may challenge that belief, that is very natural. On the path when you are growing, when you are pushing against something, it’s very natural that you may find challenges.

But the beautiful thing…is that you’ll find yourself, even in those challenges, falling back into that place faster: “Oh yes, I am divine.” Seeing through the challenges faster. Saying “Yes, Yeshua said this would come. This is just something for me to see through to remember that I am divine.”

It’s a beautiful thing to do and one of the other benefits of consistency and commitment is that when you are doing the same thing over and over and over again, you’re really forming a beautiful habit of getting in the space of light, getting in the space of truth. You’re letting that part of your mind that had a preconceived idea of who you are. You’re letting it know who you are. “I am Divine. I am Divine. I am Divine. I am Divine.”

At first there may be some self sabotaging experiences but then [you’re] going to realize, “but wait, I AM Divine! I am Divine.” Then its going to work for You. Because the…true rule of the brain is also to be your servant. And when we say “You” we mean your divine essence that is clothed in form at this time. Every part of you is to work for You, it should be your vehicle for enjoying life, for growing, your skin, your heart, your muscles, your eyes, your brain, all of it is here to work for You. When you learn how to get it to work for You, then that’s when you find your existence on this plane is nothing short of bliss and joy.

Louise Hay wrote a beautiful book called You Can Heal Your Life, its talking about, in short, how your body—parts of your body—respond to whatever messages you have on autopilot. And so when you begin to contemplate Truth you can imagine what that does to your body. So a natural consequence in addition to bliss, will be health.

Other consequences of this commitment and consistency to the Truth that you are divine, is going to be amazing relationships, abundance and you’re going to [find insights in the work that you are doing].

You’re going to be ready to follow the guidance of the Universe easier, and it’s going to be clearer for you to understand, its going to be clearer for you to make out. When you are sleeping, the result of [you being in Truth, play out as] beauty, purity, love, light, joy, bliss and wonder in every area of your life. Which is why We are recommending this. Its very simple.

This does not mean it may not be challenging to people because, for so long, people have been told…”you are a loser, you are a winner, you’re very strong, you’re very weak, you hurt people, you lift people up..” And the reality is, in the totality, you are all of these things, but at your very core, you are Source. You are Source. You encompass everything. And when you are able to contemplate the fact that you are divine, that you are one with Source, this becomes something that radiates from your core, up to your heart, down through your feet, it radiates out from your heart, its truly truly wonderful. Its truly wonderful.

Its worth the effort, it’s worth setting aside the time, its worth making your password on your computer “I am divine”, its worth writing “I am Divine” on pieces of paper around you. Its worth it to wear mala beads around your wrist so when you look down they remind you of that, you can even say “I am Divine, I am Divine,” 108 times, once for each bead. You really can not devote too much time to that, because like we said at this time, during this ascension process, your body is already experiencing the pull of being in the physical and remembering in certain areas where there’s not as much resistance, its remembering that it is divine. And so it can feel awkward, but the more that you contemplate how Divine you are, that you are Divine, that you are one with Source, the more harmonious your experience is going to be.

Grounding

Grounding is extremely important in this situation. Sitting with your feet on the ground, sitting with the base of your spine, your coccyx on the ground, sitting just on the floor, on the grass. If you are in the city and you’re not near any grass, and you only have concrete available, really just closing your eyes and sitting down and seeing yourself as a tree and feeling yourself as a tree.

Feel your legs and your feet as roots in the earth. Just feel the earth and how its supporting you, really this is wonderful. Because the more that you do this, the more the natural increase of light will be supported as a result of you knowing that you are Divine. And that is also very important. Because you are here to ground the light down to the earth.

Your energetic make up is literally a beautiful tube of light and the tube of light connects them to the earth’s core and it goes up to the central sun to Source. This beautiful, beautiful, beautiful tube of light is why its very important to ground.

Imagine those roots going down to the center of earth’s core and then just feel how wonderful it feels to be so so supported. Because the earth is here to support you, it’s literally a support to your experience as a human. That is what the earth has chosen to do in this lifetime. Gaia is a powerful powerful force and chose to be this and chose to house all these wonderful human lights. So the more that you connect with this beautiful power, the more that you find you are supported and so when you do this beautiful exercise, remembering that you are Divine, and that you connect with source, you will feel just this beautiful harmonious beam of energy going up.

It will be very subtle at first, but the more that you do it, the more you will feel it, and the more comfortable you will feel holding large amounts of light, because that is also a job of beings that are consciously on the path of growth in this lifetime. You’re here to enhance the light. And you do that by holding greater and greater and greater amounts of light. When you have a strong solid base you can hold more light, you can radiate more light, you are more light. So its just very important to ground.

Different methods of grounding

One of Chernise’s clients put some soil in her socks when she went to sleep and found herself feeling much much more grounded the following few days afterwards. That is something also that you can do, it seems very simple but the energy of the earth is the core of yours, its in every grain of sand. Source is in every being, so the energy of the earth’s core, that beautiful support, that wonderful life system, that energy is in every grain of sand and every drop of soil and so we would say soil particularly for grounding. Sand has a lot more ocean energy which is extremely wonderful and powerful but for the grounding we think it would be very good to have soil in your socks if you choose to go that route.

And plants in the home are wonderful. Its a conscious passive way to help you with grounding, especially if you find yourself—if you think of yourself as someone who connects to the light and connects to the energies of the upper three chakras very easily.

So this is the message we have for you this evening. Does this make sense?

JH: Thank you, I will put this together and spread it to as many people as I can!

It has been an honor and a gift and a pleasure to speak with you. I send you so much love, I am always always with you, please know this, I am always with you.

Interview with Chernise Spurell
by Jon Heinrich

For more information, and to connect with Chernise, visit her website here: chernisespruell.com

You are not alone. In this interview with Prosumer Coach, Jon Connors, we explore how that is all changing.

Fortunately for all of us, there is a new economic system generating momentum that represents an evolution of the knowledge and technology we have created as a human race.

Introducing Prosumerism: the combination of the Producer and Consumer

Prosumerism was first coined by futurist Alvin Toffler in the late 1970’s but the history goes much farther back. In what Toffler refers to as First Wave, timed in the Agricultural Era, people produced what they consumed.

In Toffler’s Second Wave, the era of Industrialization, we saw a split from the producer and the consumer. Now fast forward 60 years and this is where we are at right now, where the majority of the world are consumers. Unfortunately, it is not sustainable and most money and resources are centralized to a few mega-corporations and banks.

Right now with the Information Era upon us, we have the opportunity to evolve—to once again combine the producer and consumer while bringing a new level of actualization because of humanity’s great technological innovations. Prosumerism is how we capitalize on all progress we have made as mankind and will usher in a new era of abundance for everyone who participates. This is our chance for an industrial leap forward!

Here is Prosumer Coach Jon Connors on Prosumerism Defined:

Moving forward, Meniscus will be working with Mr. Connors to dissect the different components of this philosophy and you are invited to join the journey forward, out of the current crumbling political economic era of the Second Wave—where we are forced through our distribution system to support companies that we may not believe in. Instead we are moving to an economy where people only support with their wallets, companies and people they resonate with.

Jon Connors walks through the foundations of Prosumerism, in the first video in the series above. Next, stay tuned for the next installments, “Why ‘The Third Wave’ is Coming and No One Can Stop It” and “‘The Lean Startup’- Innovation Accounting to Build ‘The Third Wave.’”

As for now, take note how you are prosuming right now—on social media! Think about it, we share stories, spread the ideas of others, and sometimes we directly prosume products and services from our friends. Your homework is to think about what ‘best practices’ we use in social media that we should employ to create a new prosumption marketplace. We can all contribute and benefit from this new way of thinking, please join us!

-An interview with Jon Connors by Jon Heinrich

Get in touch with Jon Connors on Linkedin, Facebook or Vimeo.

- Photo by Jon Heinrich

Taking the floor, Kiril Ravensong and Jon Connors posted a question to the crowd: “Who here believes that the government and corporations are going to take care of everything and it will all be fine?” The room burst out in absurd laughter. The truth is, we all have to take care of ourselves, or even better, each other.

Prosumerism is proactive consumerism, utilizing the “master mind” group to create a conscious economy where we only give money to people and organizations we believe in. After all, how many of us claim to be against big energy companies or Monsanto but still give them our hard-earned money? Does that make sense? No, of course not, but the distribution channels makes it very difficult to choose otherwise. And that is where Prosumerism comes in.

“We are here to help you,” says Jon Connors with intense conviction. “We are a team supporting this new paradigm.” This is not something that will happen overnight, but the seeds have been planted and a community exists to plug into when you are ready.

Emotional Intelligence in the cards

After introducing the concept, it was time to dive deep into some tools and introduce some team members here to spread insight. Alexander Dunlop stepped into the limelight next, introducing foundational concepts about what it takes to succeed in this prosumer economy. In order to embrace the concept, there are a few key things to understand.

First of all, the prosumer community is largely capitalistic—quite the contrast to the perception that “prosumer” means “commune.” They are very different.

Second, one must embrace the entrepreneurial approach. To be successful, one needs to understand all aspects of business administration, specifically marketing, since everyone needs to get their own message out there.

This is where emotional intelligence comes in.

Marketing in a freelance entrepreneurial environment means being very present in all interactions to recognize when an opportunity presents itself. Then be empathetic enough to read how to best approach the situation without sounding “salesy” or being pushy.

Alexander led the group through some excellent advice on nurturing your EI, or Emotional Intelligence. He talked in depth about his mystical card reading practice, to help each of his clients find their most powerful virtues. (Highly recommend checking out his site for more info at spiritualnutrition.org/

Conscious Marketplace

While there are many facets of Prosumerism emerging, the quickest way to get involved is by going to a marketplace to buy your products, curated based on prosumer principles. Ascention Marketplace, also presenting that evening, is dedicated to providing products that support a higher state of living for not only the producer, but also the consumer. Their site is in process right now, and it will be a great resource for those looking to start feeding this positive new economy.

Charmaine Waldrop, the other co-founding pillar of Convergence, presented her gift to the world as well, CoCreate Sacred Scents. She uses her knowledge of integrated health and aromatherapy to custom blend essential oils specifically for each wearer. Charmaine not only participates in the marketplace but is integral in organizing the group.

How to make a difference right now

It can be frustrating as an awakened soul, navigating life in today’s consumerist, materialist society. It is hard knowing the economy we participate in is run by giant chemical, energy and pharmaceutical corporations with values that may not resonate with our own.

Right now, it is time to stop feeding companies that do not share your values. The philosophy of prosumerism is about using your dollars to support organizations & people that you believe in. And it is about finding our own individual craft to contribute to the prosumers out there.

If you would like to learn more, events are taking place in New York City starting this week (December 4, 2014). For more information, check out the flier below, their Facebook page or you can call 646.535.0325.

- By Jon Heinrich

Incidentally, this particular workshop was a fortuitous one to be a part of. In the middle of one of the meditations, Mas received what he describes as an “energetic upgrade”. In the middle of the Seven Deadly Sins workshop, Mas dropped to his knees and dropped into a deep state. Source energy was working on him to bring him up to a new state.

This is the first time an upgrade like this has happened in public, normally it happens in the middle of the night when he’s doing one of his 3 AM meditations. The process is typically the same, he falls to his knees or falls down because he can’t even control what is happening.

Mas explains that when we connect to Pure Source, at those levels it is difficult to control your body because you are so high up into your spirit level that your body starts to disappear. The spirit does not want to be in your body, it is so expansive outside it.

The amount of information coming in during an upgrade is like being plugged into a massive transformer with much higher voltage than you are used to. The energy went out like a sonic boom, going through the room bringing the energy not just to Mas, but everyone in attendance.

He likened the higher realms of consciousness to an upside down pyramid, where the level of information you can access expands the higher you get. Most people on the planet are not even at the very tip in terms of conscious awareness, but Mas continues to go higher and higher with every upgrade.

Back—twice—for a reason

When Mas came back to life after his second near death experience, he came back to do what no other person on the planet is doing right now. Mas connects with Pure Source in a way that has never happened before in any other realm in any other individual. It is a different process than what was previously on the planet like Jesus or Buddha. It is difficult to describe exactly what that means and is out of scope for a conversation based in physical reality.

In a recent interview with Alan Steinfeld, Mas was asked why he was chosen for this path. “Good question,” said Mas. “This has been my life purpose,” he explained. From his ability to see a more omnipotent perspective of life and the universe, he is able to see that ever since he came into the physical plane as a being human, he wanted to get back to the spirit plane. In past lives he knows that he was around Jesus and was a sage. It has been his life’s purpose for many lifetimes.

With the upgrade comes powerful detoxing

As mentioned in our first Meniscus article about Mas, detoxing is an important part of the healing process. Now after the upgrade, people are detoxing more rapidly, more intensely than before. Because of the more powerful frequencies Mas is bringing down now, it facilitates shifting from A to Z a lot faster.

To stay in that space, you have to let go of all the heaviness all the frequencies that can not exist in that space. You have to let go on emotional, spiritual, physical levels. Now the healing that used to take place over 1 ½ hours, now takes 5 minutes.

Awakening the spirit

Even beyond our physical existence, the spirit comes with ideological and habitual baggage like we do on this plane of existence and that is what the detox is—awakening the spirit to its truer form, where you let go of everything to be at that level.

Among other areas of your life, the detox can play out in relationships. If the people around you can not handle the higher vibration you are at, they will disappear from your life. It could be your best friend or your spouse if there is not a good frequency match. However others who are vibrating on a similar level will come into your life.

You will let go of old notions and ideologies, and there will be newer thoughts and people in your life to help you ascend higher.

Experience your upgrade

Mas Sajady came back from two near death experiences to share a gift, a new frequency for those of us who choose to venture towards their higher path. It is not an easy journey, it requires letting go of issues that are too heavy for the higher realms of physical consciousness. But the more people who venture out as pioneers with Mas, to face their issues, and accept the detoxing that comes with it, they will pave the way for the planet to move further towards a kinder, brighter future.

If you are near New York City, you have the opportunity to experience the energy of Mas Sajady in person at the New Life Expo on October 17-20th where you can listen to Mas and other intelligent experts on how we got here and where we are going, and also see if this man can change your life in 30 minutes or less.

If you ask me, I’d vote for yes, with my own life being a testament of a massive transformation since I originally experienced Mas and his upgrade in June of 2014. I invite you to join us to continue the transformation whether joining in person or remotely in NYC next week. Or as Mas says: “Change your frequency, change your life!”

-by Jon Heinrich

massajadyevents.com/nyc-oct/