No Thought, Best Thought, and Science Agrees

All that thinking, mental wrestling and teeth gnashing is pointless?
Zen teaches wu-nien/no-thought, this does not mean do not think, but rather, understand the futility of thinking. When you see thinking as a habit of the mind, attachment to the thought disappears, and with it all the anxiety. Thoughts are allowed to come and go, but you have no desire to grasp, analyze or judge them. Zen* practice cultivates a calm mind, and with this comes stronger intuition and 'knowing'.
And now science is offering some support to this concept....


Wall Street Journal
Get Out of Your Own Way
Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking a Decision Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are aware of them ourselves.
The brain, they have found, appears to make up its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision -- an eternity at the speed of thought.

Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice. "We think our decisions are conscious," said neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who is pioneering this research. "But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. This doesn't rule out free will, but it does make it implausible." In ways we are only beginning to understand, the synapses and neurons in the human nervous system work in concert to perceive the world around them, to learn from their perceptions, to remember important experiences, to plan ahead, and to decide and act on incomplete information. In a rudimentary way, they predetermine our choices....

Is your freedom of choice an illusion? Your brain knows what you're going to do 10 seconds before you are aware of it, neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes and his colleagues reported recently in Nature Neuroscience. Last year In the journal Current Biology, the scientists reported they could use brain wave patterns to identify your intentions before you revealed them. Their work builds on a landmark 1983 paper in the journal Brain by the late Benjamin Libet and his colleagues at the University of California in San Francisco, who found out that the brain initiates free choices about a third of a second before we are aware of them.

Together, these findings support the importance of the unconscious in shaping decisions. Psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis and his co-workers at the University of Amsterdam reported in the journal Science that it is not always best to deliberate too much before making a choice. Nobel laureate Francis Crick -- co-discoverer of the structure of DNA -- tackled the implications of such cognitive science in his 1993 book The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. With co-author Giulio Tononi, Nobel laureate Gerald Edleman explores his biology-based theory of consciousness in A Universe Of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination...more from
Wall Street Journal

"The idea that conscious deliberation before making a decision is always good is simply one of those illusions consciousness creates for us," Dr. Dijksterhuis

Wall Street Journal
Science Journal
Robert Lee Hotz
June 27, 2008

History of the Girl/Girl Thing and Are all Women Bi?

Are all women Bisexual?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 16, 2008) — Bisexuality in women appears to be a distinctive sexual orientation and not an experimental or transitional stage that some women adopt "on their way" to lesbianism, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.....

The study of 79 non-heterosexual women over 10 years found that bisexual women maintained a stable pattern of attraction to both sexes. In addition, the research appears to have debunked the stereotype that bisexual women are uninterested in or unable to commit to long-term monogamous relationships.

"This provides further support for the notion that female sexuality is relatively fluid and that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is not a rigid one," Diamond wrote.

Journal article: "Female Bisexuality From Adolescence to Adulthood: Results From a 10-Year Longitudinal Study," Lisa M. Diamond, PhD, University of Utah, Developmental Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 1.

Take A Little Trip...

Awesome 7minute meditation of visual bliss....c'mon everyone has 7 minutes to spare
http://thenow.co.uk

Bhagwan on Boundaries

Mind can accept any boundary anywhere. But the reality is that, by its very nature, existence cannot have any boundary, because what will be beyond the boundary - again another sky. That's why I'm saying skies upon skies are available for your flight. Don't be content easily. Those who remain content easily remain small: small are their joys, small are their ecstasies, small are their silences, small is their being. But there is no need! This smallness is your own imposition upon your freedom, upon your unlimited possibilities, upon your unlimited potential.

Here Comes the Sun With George Harrison

George Harrison wrote 'Here Comes the Sun' after meeting Prabhupada in 1969, dedicating it to Prabhupada expressing his impression of this Personality.

Swami Prabhupada (September 1, 1896–November 14, 1977) was the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (popularly known as the "Hare Krishna's"

Rumi on Love

The Meaning of Love

Both light and shadow

are the dance of Love.

Love has no cause;

it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.

Lover and Loving are inseparable

and timeless.

Although I may try to describe Love

when I experience it I am speechless.

Although I may try to write about Love

I am rendered helpless;

my pen breaks and the paper slips away

at the ineffable place

where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious

by the light of Love.

Rumi

Yogini, Lilias Folan on Fear

Welcome all that comes to you this day, and feel welcomed by it

Lilias Folan, known as the "First Lady of Yoga" since her groundbreaking 1972 PBS series, Lilias, Yoga and You, is steeped in many different yoga traditions. She relies strongly on her own personal experience and intuition to influence her teaching.
She began her yoga practice in 1964 and has studied with some of the finest teachers from India, Europe, and the United States. Her practice and teaching has been influenced by T.K.V. Desikachar, Angela Farmer, and B.K.S. Iyengar. She is author of Lilias, Yoga and You; Lilias, Yoga, and Your Life, and the recently published Lilias! Yoga Gets Better with Age.
liliasyoga.com

Kriya of Liberation with Gurmukh

Nine minute, 40 day practice of renewal and happiness.....

This is a Kundalini, White Tantra practice.

Sat Nam, a sacred mantra for sikhs, meaning,"There is only one god"

Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa is co-founder and director of Golden Bridge Yoga, the premier Kundalini Yoga center and spiritual village in Los Angeles, red line Hollywood & Vine, and New York City.

Teachers, Troublemakers and the Spiritual Friend

"The job of the spiritual friend is to insult you"
Chogyam Rinpoche



Pema Chodron is an exceptional Buddhist teacher and nun of the Vajrayana tradition, her root guru is Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She is the author of, "The Wisdom of No Escape", "Start Where You Are", "When Things Fall Apart", "The Places that Scare You", "No Time to Lose" and "Practicing Peace in Times of War"

Tantric Philosophy, with Mae West

•Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly

•Love isn't an emotion or an instinct--it's an art

•I like restraint, if it doesn't go too far

•I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure

• When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before

Mae West