I rang the bell at 2.40 pm Sunday. No reply. I waited a couple of minutes and rang again. Still no reply. I phoned Joseph’s cell phone and a sleepy voice said he’d had a late night. We’d agreed I’d show at 2.30 pm. “So what do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Can you wait ten minutes?”

“Sure.”

The late November New York sun warmed me as I stood outside the apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue. A young Afro American woman approached the door laden down with clean laundry, pushed her apartment buzzer and was admitted. The buzzer rang again and I went in. I made my way to 3E and Joseph was standing outside the door in welcome.

The acrid, stench of urea, of cat urine greeted me as I stepped over the threshold into the overheated apartment. There was a long corridor, with papers on the floor, leading to Joseph’s black walled bedroom.  Half a dozen guitars and a few pentangles adorned the walls and on the floor, a couple of Marshall practice amps and a Peavey were stacked  beside a large Emerson monitor. There were several cheap bases, including a Fender Squier P bass and a large makeshift drum kit.

I walked in, put my coat and sweater on the bed and unzipped my guitar.

Joseph had said he had two Les Paul Specials, they turned out to be Epiphones, but hey, I’m no guitar snob which was just as well for when he started playing, it was immediately clear he was miles better than me. He played through a special metal pedal and had a fast technique even though he’s self taught, learned most of what he knows through youtube and has only been playing 18 months.

He was soon joined by two other guys, a bass player and a drummer. What amazes me is that in Europe many young white guys like black american music. Here, young Hispanic or Afro American guys like heavy metal! The other week I was in a school in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and a young woman said, when I told her I was Irish, “How exotic”. She looked dumbfounded when I told her that living in Ireland, Brooklyn sounded exotic to me. Black American music these days is, I suppose, gangsta rap. Perhaps some young American black people prefer heavy metal to that? These young guys neither smoke nor drink, they are upstanding and kind, so it’s understandable that the ethics of the prevalent music here wouldn’t appeal to them.

Anyway, we jammed for a couple of hours. The bass player was really good, and he drummed a little and played some mean lead guitar, but his bass riffs and technique were excellent. The drummer was more enthusiastic than good, and Joseph, after 18 months playing could hold his own. The weak link was me, and they didn’t ask me back. I could just about play pentatonic riffs, didn’t know any of their numbers, which hardly mattered because I could pick up the chords quite easily, it was all in Am or Dm. But I couldn’t really add to anything they were doing, except playing a few rhythmic riffs.

However, I really enjoyed it and I take my hat off to them for being so friendly and for being not remotely unkind.

I even learned something too, and this morning, as I practiced, I was noticeably more adventurous in what I was attempting and actually brought it off too.

ydigydig Awareness, Enjoyment, Knowledge, Understanding, human brain, ydig

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Dr. Vinay Goyal is an MBBS,DRM,DNB (Intensivist and Thyroid specialist) having clinical experience of over 20 years. He has worked in institutions like Hinduja Hospital , Bombay Hospital , Saifee Hospital , Tata Memorial etc. Presently, he is heading our Nuclear Medicine Department and Thyroid clinic at Riddhivinayak Cardiac and Critical Centre, Malad (W).

The following message given by him, I feel makes a lot of sense and is important for all to know

The only portals of entry are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature, it’s almost impossible to avoid coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

1. Frequent hand-washing (well highlighted in all official communications).

2. “Hands-off-the-face” approach. Resist all temptations to touch any part of face (unless you want to eat, bathe or slap).

3. Gargle twice a day with warm salt water (use Listerine if you don’t trust salt)… H1N1 takes 2-3 days after initial infection in the throat/nasal cavity to proliferate and show characteristic symptoms. Simple gargling prevents proliferation. In a way, gargling with salt water has the same effect on a healthy individual that Tamiflu has on an infected one. Don’t underestimate this simple, inexpensive and powerful preventative method.

4. Similar to 3 above, clean your nostrils at least once every day with warm salt water.. Not everybody may be good at Jala Neti or Sutra Neti (very good Yoga asanas to clean nasal cavities), but blowing the nose hard once a day and swabbing both nostrils with cotton buds dipped in warm salt water is very effective in bringing down viral population. Neti pots and sinus rinse kits are available at the drug store and relatively inexpensive….under $15.

5. *Boost your natural immunity with foods that are rich in Vitamin C (Amla and other citrus fruits). If you have to supplement with Vitamin C tablets, make sure that it also has Zinc to boost absorption.

6. Drink as much of warm liquids (tea, coffee, etc) as you can. Drinking warm liquids has the same effect as gargling, but in the reverse direction. They wash off proliferating viruses from the throat into the stomach where they cannot survive, proliferate or do any harm.

admin Awareness, Knowledge, Truth, Understanding, human brain, ydig avoid Flu, Swine flu

Enjoy this beautiful work of art by Slava Reibin, a master from the Samara region of Russia. He digs the clay from three Ganesha swaymbhus in the Zhuiguli mountains and the semi precious stones at the base of the statue are from the same area.

The artist gave the statue gratis to the Australian yuva skaktis and it was presented as a gift to Shri Mataji on the occasion of the Shri Ganesha puja held at Palyanna in late 2009.

For those readers who can feel the divine cool breeze, the statue emanates that energy aplenty.

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, human brain, ydig Russian artist, Sahaja Yoga Festival, Shri Ganesha

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, God, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, ydig Russia, Sahaja Yoga Festivals, Shri Mataji

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, God, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, ydig Russia, Sahaja Yoga Festivals, Shri Mataji

Just saw this on http://holykaw.alltop.com/ten-ways-to-reduce-stress-for-free – what a lot of nonsense, I can think of a number of these ’solutions’ which would be potentially stressful. Try method number 11 – MEDITATION – I guarantee it works. http://www.freemeditation.ca/ You’ll experience thoughtless awareness, an experience as stress reducing aa anything on this earth.

10 Ways to Reduce Stress Without Spending a Dime

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, ydig 11 ways to reduce stress

As she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the first day of school, she told the children an untruth. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. However, that was impossible, because there in the front row, slumped in his seat, was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard. Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he did not play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. In addition, Teddy could be unpleasant. It got to the point where Mrs. Thompson would actually take delight in marking his papers with a broad red pen, making bold X’s and then putting a big ‘F’ at the top of his papers .

At the school where Mrs. Thompson taught, she was required to review each child’s past records and she put Teddy’s off until last. However, when she reviewed his file, she was in for a surprise.

Teddy’s first grade teacher wrote, ‘Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners… he is a joy to be around..’ His second grade teacher wrote, ‘Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates, but he is troubled because his mother has a terminal illness and life at home must be a struggle.’ His third grade teacher wrote, ‘His mother’s death has been hard on him. He tries to do his best, but his father doesn’t show much interest, and his home life will soon affect him if some steps aren’t taken.’ Teddy’s fourth grade teacher wrote, ‘Teddy is withdrawn and doesn’t show much interest in school. He doesn’t have many friends and he sometimes sleeps in class.’

By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful ribbons and bright paper, except for Teddy’s. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag. Mrs. Thompson took pains to open it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children started to laugh when she found a rhinestone bracelet with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one-quarter full of perfume.. But she stifled the children’s laughter when she exclaimed how pretty the bracelet was, putting it on, and dabbing some of the perfume on her wrist. Teddy Stoddard stayed after school that day just long enough to say, ‘Mrs. Thompson, today you smelled just like my Mom used to.’

After the children left, she cried for an hour. On that very day, she quit teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead, she began to teach children. Mrs. Thompson paid particular attention to Teddy. As she worked with him, his mind seemed to come alive. The more she encouraged him, the faster he responded. By the end of the year, Teddy had become one of the smartest children in the class and, despite her lie that she would love all the children the same, Teddy became one of her ‘teacher’s pets..’

A year later, she found a note under her door, from Teddy, telling her that she was the best teacher he ever had in his whole life. Six years went by before she got another note from Teddy. He then wrote that he had finished high school, third in his class, and she was still the best teacher he ever had in life. Four years after that, she got another letter, saying that while things had been tough at times, he’d stayed in school, had stuck with it, and would soon graduate from college with the highest of honours. He assured Mrs. Thompson that she was still the best and favorite teacher he had ever had in his whole life. Then four more years passed and yet another letter came. This time he explained that after he got his bachelor’s degree, he decided to go a little further. The letter explained that she was still the best and favorite teacher he ever had. But now his name was a little longer…. The letter was signed, Theodore F. Stoddard, MD.

The story does not end there. You see, there was yet another letter that spring. Teddy said he had met this girl and was going to be married. He explained that his father had died a couple of years ago and he was wondering if Mrs. Thompson might agree to sit at the wedding in the place that was usually reserved for the mother of the groom. Of course, Mrs. Thompson did. And guess what? She wore that bracelet, the one with several rhinestones missing. Moreover, she made sure she was wearing the perfume that Teddy remembered his mother wearing on their last Christmas together.

They hugged each other, and Dr. Stoddard whispered in Mrs. Thompson’s ear, ‘Thank you Mrs. Thompson for believing in me.. Thank you so much for making me feel important and showing me that I could make a difference.’

Mrs. Thompson, with tears in her eyes, whispered back… She said, ‘Teddy, you have it all wrong. You were the one who taught me that I could make a difference. I didn’t know how to teach until I met you.’

Teddy Stoddard is now he Dr at Iowa Methodist in Des Moines that has the Stoddard Cancer Wing.

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, Knowledge, Spirit, Understanding, ydig teacher and pupil

They were four or five inches wide, over a foot long and made of a reddish brown leather. One of the tawse was serrated, the slits in the leather forming strands about nine inches long. Tawse, according to my Oxford American dictionary, were formerly used for punishing children in schools, except in my case. I never saw them in any school I attended, my father had them made in the shipyard where he worked and he brought them home to use on me, or maybe to scare me when I was about four of five.

I never saw him much for the first years of my life. As he put it himself, he worked all the hours God sent for the only time there is full employment under the capitalist system is when there’s a war on. Submarines would come into Belfast from the Atlantic fleet having been pounded and depth-charged by German warships and with men working night and day, they’d be refitted and back at sea within forty eight hours.

In my early years I was so unused to seeing my father that when I did see him, I cried. I was terrified of him. Later, when the tawse appeared, the terror reached new levels. He hung them on a nail he’d knocked into the wall beside the fireplace, so, as he said, they’d be in easy reach for him and my mother. The coal fire in our living room fire was the only source of heat and even the hot water for the house was heated by a boiler at the back of the fire. The fireplace in houses like ours was the focal point of the house, and my attention was never far from the tawse.

I couldn’t articulate much of what I felt at the time but there was an acute sense of betrayal, of injustice, and deep inside me I  knew something was very wrong – how could my father love me, his only child, if he needed to present me with the terror of this instrument in full view of everyone who came into the house? I can’t remember getting hit my them, but that seemed neither here nor there, and their presence slowly turned my fear to aversion, then to hate. My father was popular and well-respected, outside in the street people called him Mr. Wherry, whereas they mostly called each other by their first names. He was always joking with the young guys, a marked contrast to how he treated me.

One day the tawse disappeared. My father searched the house, looked in every cranny and cupboard, he raked through the ashes in the grate to see if I’d thrown them in the fire. There was no trace of them in the grate or anywhere else in the house. The disappearance of the tawse was a subject of conversation and speculation for years afterwards and the mystery of what I’d done with them was never solved. Indeed, It’s only now in writing of this that the truth of what happened to them is plain. If it wasn’t me who took them, it can only have been my mother. She must have gotten rid of them and too subtle to admit it to my father.

Many years later and long after I’d left home at 17 for good, I learned that my aunts and uncles used to tell my father that he was far too hard on me and furthermore, I wasn’t the sort of kid who was going to take it for any longer than I had to. I never realized at the time what a terrible blow it was to my mother when I went to live in England just weeks before my 18th birthday, but when she was dying and I told her I loved her, she said through her pain, “You couldn’t wait to leave me.” There was no denying the truth of this, and I wanted to ask her whose fault she thought that was, but for once in my life I kept my mouth shut and said nothing.

admin Awareness, Knowledge, Truth, Understanding, human brain, ydig Beating children, Domestic violence

Sahaja Meditation Meetings in Midtown Manhattan, New York City

When and Where Tuesdays 7:00 p.m. Wednesdays 7:00 p.m. The Center for Arts Education 225 West 34th Street 11th floor between 7th and 8th Avenue

Sahaja Meditation: What skills will I learn?

Sahaja Meditation – the human subtle system

There is no charge for these meetings – learn meditation from experts who come on a volunteer, pro bono basis.

Learn simple, natural techniques to:

1. Raise your own subtle energy

2. Keep yourself in balance

3. Enjoy mental silence

4. Free yourself of fear and anxiety

5. Experience deep satisfaction

6. Learn the location of the spiritual centers in your own body

7. Learn where these centers are on the hands

8. Experience being the drop that becomes the ocean

9. Know the joy that passes all understanding

10. Learn to use this knowledge to understand others better

11. Above all, appreciate the nature of subtle knowledge and how it differs from everyday gross knowledge

admin Awareness, Enjoyment, Knowledge, Meditation, Spirit, Truth, Understanding, human brain, ydig meditation in Man