Holistic Feathers

Please take a moment out of your busy day to watch this stunning video about Turtles.

It has been made to highlight Tesco’s sickening decision to sell live turtles in supermarkets in China. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCwyojDoYOw

The final scenes (in the supermarket) really upset me & I burst into tears … if you’d like to sign the petition, it can be found here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/518761759

Thank you all very much

Callie x

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If you’re unsure of what cosmic ordering can actually do for you, this is a wonderful introduction to the wonders of the ‘Cosmic Kitchen’!

Cosmic Ordering – What’s it all about?
By Dr. Patricia Crane, PhD

Author of “Ordering from the Cosmic Kitchen: The Essential Guide to Powerful, Nourishing Affirmations”

First Noel Edmunds talked about cosmic ordering and how he got the TV show Deal or No Deal (Sunday Mirror, April 2nd) and now Jonathan Cainer, astrologer in the Daily Mail, has published a book on the subject. So what’s it all about?

Imagine that the Universe is like a Cosmic Kitchen, ready and willing to take your orders and fulfil them. The Cosmic Menu is Infinite, so you can order anything you want. The key is knowing what you want and how to place your order effectively using affirmations and visualizations.

What DO you want? While that sounds easy- of course, I want good health, a great job, financial abundance, a romantic relationship, and- you fill in the rest – it often isn’t! If you have conflicting thoughts and feelings about you want, the Kitchen doesn’t get a clear message. For example, if you want a better job, but you also feel that the ‘better job’ would mean longer hours and harder work, which you DON’T want, the Cosmic Kitchen can’t fulfil the order until you are clear that you can have the better job with more fun, less work, and the same or fewer hours as you are working now. Also, if you don’t feel you really deserve a better job, the order can’t be fulfilled. The Cosmic Kitchen receives your order from a combination of thoughts and feelings, and then fills it based on the Laws of Attraction and Allowing. When thoughts and feelings are clearly aligned, and you feel deserving of what you want, manifestations happen quickly.

Limiting beliefs from childhood may need to be cleared out as well to allow your order to manifest more easily. Even if you’ve done a lot of work, there is always more to do because the unconscious mind is like the part of the iceberg underneath the water- the part beneath the surface is large compared to that above the surface. Take time to talk to your Inner Child about any beliefs that may be limiting you, or use other clearing techniques you’ve experienced.

Stop for a moment right now and think about an area of your life where there is a challenge. What are the typical thoughts you have about that challenge during the day? Are you obsessing about it and thinking there’s no solution? Are you feeling hopeless about it? If so, your order to the Cosmic Kitchen is one that says ‘no solution’ and thus there is none. Create a positive, present tense affirmation that says the solution is already in Divine Mind and occurring to you quickly and easily, or that the resources you need to handle it appear. The more you focus on what you don’t want, the more strongly you are actually holding the challenge in your life. Today, every time you find yourself thinking about the ‘problem,’ refocus on sending an order for the solution to the Cosmic Kitchen. You could affirm, ‘All is working out in the best possible way for everyone concerned’ or ‘I am perfectly guided in the best way to resolve financial issues.’ When you meditate, FEEL that a resolution has happened.

One of the principles for placing your order with the Comic Kitchen is a willingness to trust the timing for the preparation of your order. Some dishes need only a few ingredients, while others need a lot. While you’re waiting for your orders to be fulfilled in career, prosperity, health, and relationships, enjoy yourself! Know that everything you need to be happy is in your life already. You are a precious child of the Universe and deserving of all good.

6 June 2007

Discovered on the Natural Matters newsletter, 12 June 2007

www.naturalmatters.net

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So, you’ve got yourself into a routine of running around your local park for half an hour a day … or go down the gym to push weights around the room 5 times a week. Yes, you are doing your body the power of good – generally, anyway!

But aren’t you forgetting something?

As well as your body burning up fat as you exercise, your body is also using up key nutrients. Mike Adams (Health Ranger) has just published this very interesting article (www.newstarget.com) …

* * * * *

Here’s an important tip for those of you who are either currently engaged in an exercise program or are considering beginning one. It’s a simple tip, but one that many people, unfortunately, forget. When we exercise, we use up more nutrients than if we were to avoid exercise. (Simply sweating, for example, causes a loss of minerals). People who engage in regular exercise, therefore, need more nutritional supplementation than those who don’t.

It is easy to think exercise itself is what makes people healthy, but that’s only half the picture. The exercise simulates your body, but it is the adaptation and recovery period after exercise that ultimately makes you healthier. You do not improve your health during the exercise experience, nor do you burn significant amounts of fat during exercise. Virtually all the health benefits associated with exercise are created during the recovery and adaptation period after exercise, which can take anywhere from 24 hours to several weeks, depending on the intensity of your exercise.

It is during that time your body is using nutrients to adapt and rebuild. If you do not have the proper nutrients available during that recovery period, then you are not going to recover fully, and you won’t get the full benefits of all the effort you put into exercise!

Why supplementation goes with exercise

Nutritional supplementation is extremely important during any kind of exercise regimen. Even if you only exercise three days a week, you need to supplement every day of the week. And I’m not talking about just supplementing with protein. This is where a lot of people who engage in exercise go wrong. They think protein is the only nutrient they need to supplement.

Even though proteins important to supplement if you are not already eating a high protein diet, it is far more important to supplement trace minerals, macro minerals like magnesium, zinc and calcium; various vitamins including all the B vitamins; plus vitamins C, D and K. In addition, you need to supplement numerous phytonutrients, which means the medicine that comes from plants. Those include various carotenoids like beta keratin or zeaxanthin, lutein, anthocyanidins, Proanthocyanidins like those found in grape seeds or even Resveratrol found in grape skin.

There are hundreds, actually thousands, of different phytonutrients found in foods and nutritional supplements. These are also very important to get into your body when you follow an intense physical exercise program. Eating raw nuts and seeds, I think, is also extremely important. It does not mean this has to be half of your diet, but it needs to be present in your diet at least once a day, if not more than once a day.

It is only through this superior supplementation that your body can adapt to the physical stresses you have placed upon it through exercise. In terms of bone density, for example, you already know that subjecting your bones to stress causes your body to build stronger bones. This does not happen in a matter of hours. It takes days, weeks, even months to rebuilt bones, especially if you start out with very low bone mineral density. During this adaptation period, your body is rebuilding bone mineral density by depositing nutrients, mostly minerals in this case, into the bone structure of your skeletal system.

Obviously, if you do not have excess nutrients available in your body at the time your body is attempting to make this adaptation, then you are not going to build strong bones. In other words, if you exercise and do not supplement with good nutrition, you are wasting most of your exercise effort. You could multiple your results if you were willing to add some good supplementation on top of your physical exercise.

Supplements that boost your health with exercise

What kind of supplements am I talking about? Superfood nutrients and high-quality nutritional supplements from the kind of companies I recommend here on NewsTarget. Aim for a combination of food-based and supplement-based nutrition. Personally, I start each morning with a superfood smoothie that contains a massive serving of various superfood concentrates. This preps my body for the day, allowing me to engage in intense exercise without entering into a nutritionally deficient state.

Remember when you exercise, you place a much higher nutritional demand on your biochemistry. If you do not supplement, then you are not going to get the results you expect from your exercise program.

On the other hand, if you choose to supplement with good nutritional products, then you can multiple the results of any exercise program and experience improved bone density, enhanced cardiovascular health, improved mood and emotional health, prevention of cancer and diabetes, natural reduction in stored body fat and many other phenomenal benefits. Exercise is the single most powerful medicine for enhancing your health, but if you exercise in a nutritionally deficient state, you’re only putting unnecessary biochemical stresses on your body.

Exercise all you want, but supplement your nutritional needs to compensate.

* * * * *

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies’ products. Known as the ‘Health Ranger,’ Adams’ personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org.

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Living in a “virtual” age, where we are bombarded with emails on a daily basis, it is so nice to receive an email that makes you sit still and smile.

A friend at work sent me a lovely document called Cuteness

Now this really did make me smile … so take time out of your busy day and have a few moments where you can relax, smile and go “awwww”!

Bright blessings, Callie x

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This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford.

I think it is astoundingly beautiful in its simplicity – and well worth reading anytime you sit and think “what the heck am I doing with my life?” (coz we all get those moments, don’t we?).

Enjoy the read …

With blessings
Moonpoppy x

I am honoured to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumour on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumour. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No-one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

(with thanks to these guys http://www.wiredatom.com/jobs_standford_speech/ for proving it in text form, transcribed from the original video format)

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The movie-documentary “The Secret” skillfully promotes the Law of Attraction and the idea that thoughts become things.The more you pay attention to things, the more they are encouraged to manifest.

Almost as an afterthought, near the end of “The Secret,” it is mentioned that – oh, by the way – you also have to work hard in order to make the grandest of dreams come true.

Much of the focus of “The Secret” is on financial abundance, which is one part of the complete principle of abundance. Abundance, in its natural, unrestricted state of flow, applies to everything in your life. Abundance in love, laughter, health, joy and material comfort is perfectly natural and desirable. If a person is financially poor when they could choose abundance, then they probably have some issue inside that is blocking the natural flow.

My own secret of material abundance recognizes that work is necessary, but it makes the work easy. Here it my secret:

If you spend your time doing work that you love, you will find such work absorbing. When you are absorbed by work that you love, it seems like no effort at all. As time passes, because your attention is absorbed by your work, you naturally become highly skilled, even adept, at what you do. Then, you become valuable to employers or, in business, to your own customers. You then, by default, become highly paid or highly rewarded.

“Follow your inner joy” may sound like an overused cliche, but it is actually the key to abundance. It all starts with this key question:

Ask yourself, “What is the most exciting thing that I could possibly be doing right now to enhance my long-term, inner joy?”

The state of regular, conscious thinking often contains self-limiting filters like skepticism, fears, or a lack of self-esteem. So, for the most inspired and imaginative results, ask that key question near the end of a deep, 20-minute meditation session. That way, your inner possibilities can come forward into your consciousness without being filtered.

Then, find a way to do that most exciting possibility. And, when you have finished doing that, ask yourself the same question again. Usually, the answer will be something in the same direction as your first act, although not always.

Inner joy is your barometer of natural flow. Use it to determine what action is the most important in developing your experience of life. Find ways to dissolve self-limiting barriers so that you can act upon that inner joy.

To follow your inner joy is to live holistically because you are acting with more of your complete self. It lightens up your spirit, allowing you to function at a higher frequency of consciousness.

If you are considering a career change, practical considerations do need to be considered. Will pursuing your inner joy earn you an adequate living? If you need to learn an entirely new skill, often the learning phase has to be a part-time endeavor while you earn a living using your existing skills.

The great thing about doing work you love is that everyone can sense the living joy within you. If you are employed, other employers want you to come and work for them. If you are self-employed, customers seek you out, based upon word-of-mouth recommendations.

Abundance flows because you are in the flow – the natural flow of giving service to help others through your favorite field of work.

This article was written by Owen Waters, author of “The Shift: The Revolution in Human Consciousness”

Available in hardcover or via immediate download at: http://www.infinitebeing.com/theshift

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I was sent this delightful clip by a friend last week … a cheeky cat “massaging” a puppy.

DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE CLIP

Do keep the sound up, their voices are so funny!!

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