~ Dread is dizziness unto freedom—freedom that gazes down into its own possibility. In this dizziness freedom succumbs. ~

An individual awakes as he usually does, uses the bathroom and brushes his teeth as he usually does, and goes to the kitchen for his usual bowl of Slurpy O’s cereal. But his new housekeeper has shopped for him the day before and unable to find Slurpy O’s has brought to his cupboard four different brands of oats and rices, hoping one will satisfy him until she can find his usual. When he reaches to open the cabinet and see the options of ….., he stops, stuck for thought, stuck for making a decision. He absolutely cannot wrap his brain around this early morning choice and so he eats nothing. [1] This is, in small part, what existentialism is.

A few doors down, a person deals with another conundrum. Six months ago he had succumbed to an offer made by a leading ISP to sign up for 45 days of free browser and email service. He had entered his credit card number on day one, knowing that though it was maxed-out, by the time a month and a half had passed he would have been paid and would then be able to pay off the $300.00 limit, so the ISP could charge the $30.00 per month from thereon in. But on day thirteen, he finds that the ISP has frozen his account. When he finds out why—because they attempted to charge his card and the card denied them billing—he becomes angry that the company has lied/defrauded him by giving him only 13 days free, and then has shut off his livelihood (he works online) when failing to successfully charge him 32 days prematurely.

He immediately writes a letter to ISP Godzilla, demanding it cancel his membership, a letter he faxes that same day. ISP Godzilla writes back, saying that this is not the way cancellation works, and would he please call 1-800-XXX-XXXX. He calls and first gets put on hold, a position that for five minutes keeps him riveted to a looped recording of a saccharine voice saying, “If you need further help with your computer repair needs, go to www.oursite.com.” When he gets a human he gets a person who informs him that the company “cannot find” him in their records. At the same time, he also has an answering service provided by the same company. When he dials the home base to retrieve his messages and punches in his password, a mechanical response tells him there is no such account. The messages are there, as his indicator shows 5, then 7, then 12 incoming messages…which he cannot access. The unreturned calls result in losing three clients, two friends, and a fiancé—all inferring he has shut them out.

Within the next few months he receives three threatening bills from Godzilla, which demand payment that if he does not pay will result in termination of his account. Then the bills are turned over to a hostile collection agency, bills which arrive with the rest of his mail—which also contains new CDs for start-up service with the same company. On the CDs are the words “Come back to Godzilla and we will give you 45 days free online access!” This, too, is existentialism.

And in another anywhotown on another part of this hurtling and rickety globe, a person is kidnapped. She is taken to the captor’s home, tied up, and used for the man’s pleasure. Every day for two weeks, she is made to submit, allowed to rise only to bathe, groom, and eat, and is then tied back to the bed to stay while the man goes off to work at a major everycorporation everysite downtown.

On day fifteen, the man leaves for work and the woman does all she can to free herself. She finally gets loose and leaves the house to shop, eat, drink café, and sit in the park feeding the birds. After a few hours, the woman returns to the house, puts herself back in the shackles and waits for him to return. [2] This is also existentialism.

In the same respect, though, existentialism involves much more. The umbrella concern of this social, atheistic, and/or theistic philosophical movement holds that the existential human, the solitary individual, lives an existence that is one composed of essence only when/if/after he/she defines him/herself—that the individual’s existence precedes his/her essence. [3] And the tenets of existentialism (though technically impossible to isolate and encapsulate in a few pages) consist of the understanding that one has freedom because one is nothing; that one must exert this freedom by accepting the moral responsibility of free will and by using this free will to choose (in good faith); that because each is an individual with individual approaches to existence, life is only subjective; and that life–even and especially to the rational human–is irrational, is absurd.

It is because existentialism as a whole philosophy is actually a set of philosophies that do not fit into neat, quiet categories but instead are reflexive, multi-dimensional, sometimes screaming, other times contrasting and conflicting contingencies—ironies and absurdities–that overlap and often collide like the parts of a freak of a fluke hybridized onion that I address here only one integral part of the whole.

It is because existentialism is absurd in its very understanding of the absurd (and points out its own absurdity), is paradoxical in its very understanding of paradox (and declares its own paradoxical nature) that I attempt to identify one single nature of existence. It is because of such a component–the characteristics (or symptoms) of the contingencies as they are and as they lead inevitably to despair–that I write.

And it is with all of the respect one can possibly have for the onion skins and layers initiated by Hegel and Heidegger, or first bred by Descartes, or developed by Sartre, de Beauvoir, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, or taken on and piece-by-piece dissected by Camus, Dostoyevsky, and Kafka that I write…again, to express understanding of one (subjective) human experience, and not to speak in any intellectual, all-encompassing way to a definitive discussion of every single cell of the most profound of philosophies.

First, existence. Existence first. Existence precedes essence. A human is first, nothing. A human makes him/herself something by defining him/herself. And he/she does this by accepting responsibility for self, which he/she does by acting, by choosing. What comes of this responsibility for the existentialist is angst, a combined and internalized anxiety, fear, forlornness, longing, desire, guilt, and [what Kierkegaard defined as] dread—as a fear of this freedom to make of oneself what one will. Add to this angst the notion that one is also responsible for humankind and must act, must choose, and a one is in a kind of living death agony—one is in despair.

Of despair’s forms—to not be conscious of having a self, the unwillingness to be own self to get rid of self and imbalanced relating to another, and to will to be one’s own self [4]—one paradoxically brings on more despair out of the despair itself. That is, out of despair one might be tempted to avoid responsibility. But to avoid is to be in what Sartre called “mauvaise foi,” or bad faith [5]…which leads to further despair.

We cannot know this, any more than we can know our own future self/our epoché, any more than we can control our own self, future, or destiny. This contributes to the conscious despair of the existentialist, one that contains, even the despair of hope.

We cannot control another, either, in our human drive to be know/think self, which is considered an effort to be God (or what Nietzsche would maintain we could be and are: Der Ubermunsch, The Overman/Superman). The impossibility of this creates a despair that parallels the dread of knowing we cannot know our own beingness—because such beingness is only recognizable/definable by its relation(ship) to other existing beings. As Hegel designed (or de-coded)it, we are in a constant dialectic of self and other. A human cannot exist unless he/she exists against the existence of another.

The best known analogy is that of the Master/slave, but to deny antiquity in favor of modernity, let’s go back to the woman in the open example who freed herself, only to re-shackle herself again.

At some point, she (consciously or unconsciously) identifies herself as submissive, or masochist, who does not exist as a masochist unless there is a sadist to bring out the masochistic nature of her. Once she is free, then, she is no longer “masochist,” and therefore no longer anything. She does not exist. She needs the other to “name” her, to give her existence…or beingness. This notion of the self being contingent on the other for meaning is one Sartre pointedly commented on from the place of his own despair, saying, “The other is the drainhole of my existence.”

Further, though we share this interdependency, this dialectical demandingness, we really only share one universal: that we are fundamentally free. Conversely, though existentialism is sometimes considered a social philosophy, it eludes the nomenclature as it individualizes us, stripping us of any universal identity. We are, in every sense, alone in our existence. As modern radical therapist R.D. Laing says, “I cannot experience your experience,” [6] emblematizing the very alienation of the human. Hence, the despair as it resurfaces in yet another multi-layered dimension.

In addition, since existence is subjective—since the only meaning/essence is that which we attach, that which we make or bring to the world—communication, also, is subjective. By the very act of communicating, one is attaching subjective meaning or subjective character to that communication. So by imposing meaning on the outside, one robs the outside of the ability to absorb one, which saps one to the point of death.

This brings us back to the internalization of alienation and the fear and at the same time the odd longing for and need of that very inevitable possibility of alienation necessary in order to be free. For the morning man to face cereal choices, this means to be an aesthete—and do nothing (or to be an animal making animal choices). To not choose is to not attach meaning, but to attach meaning is to be subjective. To separate and define is to be in good faith but to separate and define to any conscious degree is to attempt to control that which is uncontrollable, while to succumb like the woman to her shackledness is to embrace the freedom in the dialectic. To attempt objective communication as did the man with the ISP nightmare is to unconsciously (and therefore in bad faith) volunteer for the absurd which one consciously attempts to deny, though to attempt to change that which is adamant in its unchanging is to also be in bad faith.

So is it then only possible or only necessary to resort back to nothingness or death (to killing one’s self)? Maybe so. Or it is to be an existential thinker, which is to be a reflective thinker, which is to be in oneself, inward, presupposed as a being, achieved as a self? Is that possible, though, anywhere but in the dizzying blur of our own imagination?

End Notes

[1] Palmer, Dr. Donald. Analogy from lecture. College of Marin, Kentfield, CA. Oct., 1981.

[2] Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness. Citadel, 1956. 270.

[3] Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Victoria Abril and Antonio Banderas. Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1990.

[4] Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye. The Sickness Unto Death. New Jersey: Princeton University, 1980.

[5] Cumming, Robert Denoon. ed. The Philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre. New York: Vintage Books, 1965.

[6] Laing, R. D.. The Politics of Experience. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1967.

N.H.-born prize-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, memoirist, and award-winning Assoc. Prof. of English, Roxanne is also web content and freelance writer/founder of http://www.roxannewrites.com, a support site for academic, memoir, mental disability, and creative writers who need a nudge, a nod, or just ideas…of which Roxanne has 1,000s, so do stop in for a visit, as this sentence can’t possibly get any longer….

Amber, the gem of a stone that’s not really a gemstone at all, is actually fossilized pine sap. People have collected, traded, carved, and coveted amber for more than 10,000 years. Yet despite our fascination with it, much about the smoky yellow stone — the history of amber — remains a mystery.

The price for amber stones varies widely, in the right price range for Average Joe’s (and Joannas) who can spend as little as $20 for amber and silver jewelry, and also for high-rollers ready to spend $40,000 or more for a "slice of sunshine" in amber jewelry crafted in gold, platinum, and featuring other gemstones. And although it not an official "birthstone — a designation reserved for actual gemstones — amber is often presented to those born under the sign of Taurus (April 19-May 19).

History of Amber

Amber is found in Myanmar home to the largest piece of transparent amber in the world (33.5 pounds and 40-50 million years old), as well as Lebanon, Sicily, Mexico, Romania, Germany, and Canad. The two main sources of amber on the market today, however, are the Dominican Republic and the Baltic states.

Once highly regulated, Baltic amber has become more widely available due to more liberal economic policies in Eastern Europe. Today, the whole world enjoys amber minded from the Baltic region, where the largest mine is in Russia, west of Kaliningrad.

Baltic amber may also be found in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Russia. Baltic amber has even washed up on the shores of the Baltic Sea in Denmark, Norway, and England. Baltic amber is the oldest geological specimen to be used in jewelry. Archeologists digging near the Baltic Sea have found evidence of Baltic amber jewelry that is approximately 40,000 years old.

Green Amber is a completely natural variation of Baltic Amber. The green color is a result of plant interaction with the resin. While green is a more valuable color of amber than brown, the best quality of amber remains clear, transparent, and flawless.

Slightly softer than Baltic amber, Dominican amber is prized for its coloration, including yellow and deep red, as well as the distinctive (and rare) blue and smoky green hues that come exclusively from that area.

Shocking Information about Amber

The ancient name for amber was "electron," the root word of electricity. Around 600 B.C., it was discovered that if an amber stone was rugged vigorously, it became electrically charged. Believed to carry a negative electrical energy charge, amber was used to draw power and energy into its bearer.

In addition to its ability to attract energy and power, amber was believed to aid the intellect. It was prescribed for memory loss; eccentric behavior; anxiety, and indecisiveness.

The Joy of Amber

Amber jewelry is said to help one be joyful and happy. The cheery yellow stone is believed to lighten the burdens of life.

Healers say that amber activates our altruistic nature and helps us realize the full power of our spiritual intellect.

Learn How To Buy Jewelry And Gemstones Without Being Ripped Off. This informative Special Report reveals little-known facts and insider trade secrets that many jewelers would prefer you didn’t know. To get your FREE copy please go to http://www.morninglightjewelry.com.

There’s no doubt learning any foreign language requires effort, time and commitment. This holds true even more, especially when there’s a big difference between one’s native tongue and learning a new language.

On the other side, knowing the tips and techniques of learning a new language can make all the difference on how effective and successful you can achieve.

Based on personal learning experiences, along with others(either online or offline), here are some of the learning Chinese language tips and techniques on becoming successful in mastering the Chinese language.

By using one, or a combination of these tips and techniques, will maximize your effectiveness, minimize your time, and at the same time, make your learning fun and enjoyable.

Step I - Where to start?

Start from learning the Chinese pronunciation.

Learning Chinese Pinyin should be the first step of learning Chinese language. Pinyin contains all the Chinese phonetic alphabets where they are used in the pronunciation of Chinese characters. To distinguish the different tones, pay close attention to the four types by reading the Pinyin letters, initials, finals, and all possible combinations.

The objective of this phase is for you to be able to read any Chinese character with marked in Pinyin and also write a given pronunciation in Pinyin format. Be warned: learn the correct pronunciation from the start, do not build bad habits!

Step II - Listen, practice and memorize simple Chinese vocabulary and sentences

Tips:

Take a local community Chinese class, do the practice drills with your study partner. The more you speak, the easier it will be for you to learn.

Get a good dictionary and make sure it has the phonetic spellings of the words.

Find a native Chinese speaker to converse with, many Chinese students would like to practice their English as an exchange to teach you Chinese.

Visit a Chinese restaurant or Chinese community center where Chinese is spoken natively.

Read out loud, listen to and repeat after tape or online radio, watch Chinese movies and TV programs. Listen carefully to the new sounds. Repeat them as accurately as possible, try to forget the sounds of your native language.

Sing Chinese songs.

Borrow cassette tapes from the local library, review and listen to the tapes frequently until you’re able to speak the words and sentences all by yourself.

Review older vocabulary every so often to refresh your memory. Step III - Write Chinese Understand Chinese writing strokes and rules

Read our Writing Chinese section ( http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com/writing-chinese.html ) to understand Chinese writing strokes and rules. This will provide a good solid foundation on how Chinese characters are formed.

Tips:

Only way to learn Chinese characters is to memorize them, practice writing a character on paper until you remember it. Start from easy ones, which also include all the strokes, for example, 一(one), 十(ten), 中(middle), 山(mountain), 上(above), 火(fire), 河(river), 入(enter).

Rather than writing one word many times before doing the next one, write each word once or twice then go through the whole list again until you’ve done the required number of repetitions. This will reinforce the new words more firmly in your memory.

Read Chinese newspapers, booklets and books found at your local library or Chinese market

Watch movies or TV programs with Chinese subtitles, it is a great way to learn Chinese speaking and writing at the same time in a simulated real-life scenario.

Use post-it notepaper to write down the characters and stick them on the objects you are about to learn.

Write vocabulary words using index or flash cards on one side with the definition on the other side.

Use your imagination by linking the shape of the new word by first glancing to something you are familiar with. Play vocabulary by creating a 3-column vocabulary sheet with characters, pinyin, and English definitions. Fold the paper with only one or two columns showing and then take practice written tests.

After a while, you will notice that many characters have elements in common, either related to meaning or pronunciation. Note the common elements and use them to help you remember new characters.

Take advantage of free learning Chinese resources online. If you can memorize about 1,000 - 2,000 characters, you will feel comfortable with reading and writing modern Chinese.

Step IV: Grammar?

Learn the basic grammar, but try not to worry and be constrained by the rules. After all, languages are spoken as a way to express meaning.

The basic grammar elements are almost identical with different languages; however, the sequence may be different. Pay particular attention to the differences and practice on them.

The most important points on learning new foreign languages:

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Being self-conscious can be an obstacle in learning a language. Remember, most people are willing to helping you rather than laughing at you.

Don’t be discouraged by the difficulties at first attempt. Practice, practice, and practice! you will be amazed by your own progress!

Be persistent. Allocate a set time on studying and follow the schedule. Studying a little every day is more effective than studying for a long period at once.

Rosie From Learn Chinese Language Online (http://www.learn-chinese-language-online.com)

The goal of Learn Chinese Language Online (LCLO) is to reduce the Mandarin Learning curve, promote and introduce the most efficient way to grasp the broad foundation of Chinese language.

Martius, the month of March, is named after him. So is the fourth planet from the sun and a bar of chocolate, but we know him mainly as the god of war.

If you lived in ancient Rome, his name would be as familiar to you as your own, especially at this time of year with all of the holidays and festivals dedicated to the City’s favourite son. You would be choosing your prettiest ribbons, studying the form of the newest racehorse or bargaining for the best seats at a track and field meet. Or perhaps preparing for war overseas, for Spring was the beginning of the Roman campaign season.

There is a common belief that depictions of Mars show him as a warrior, but look a little closer and you see that he is no savage attacker but a disicplined soldier in regulation battle dress bearing regulation arms. As Mars Gradivus, he was the patron of the legions and a fitting role model for the highly trained Roman infantryman. It is his Greek equivalent, Ares, who has the character traits of the wild warrior.

For Mars was also the father of Rome. It was believed he had dallied with a Vestal Virgin who subsequently gave birth to the twins Romulus and Remus, the founders of the Eternal City, and so he was known as Mars Pater, the father and protector of all the people who lived within the gates.

He is definitely a male god, we use the astrological sigil of the planet Mars to represent men and masculine energy. Prominently displaying the arrow of action, it symbolises the male essence, the energy of yang - active and expanding. As an earlier fertility god he was Mars Sylvanus, responsible for the shoots of grain which thrust from the soil after planting.

In astrology, Mars is the ruler of Aries and signals the season when everything awakens, grows, rises and sprouts after winter. This is the planetary time of energy and action, with the element of fire bringing the very spark of life

The reddish tinge of Mars in the night sky made our ancestors think of blood, and consequently war, but don’t for one moment believe that in modern times we are any more sophisticated. Even though we know the bloody appearance is caused by soil rich in iron oxide, (old-fashioned rust), the threat of invasion from the Red Planet plagued our imaginations only a couple of generations back.

Like all deities, certain animals are associated with him, in this case the wolf and the woodpecker, and his companions are Fuga and Timor, flight and fear. The moons of Mars are named in Greek for these companions, and before everyone becomes too confused about Phobos and Deimos, remember that Tuesday is also named for the god of war. The French have Mardi, the Spanish Martes, and it is Martedi in Italian. In English we call this day after Tyr, the boldest of the cold- climate gods, who inspires courage and heroism in battle, and is the Northern equivalent of Mars. Tyr has soldier-like qualities as well, he is noble and self-sacrificing. On the day of Ragnarok, he will kill Garm, the guardian of hell, but will himself die from his wounds.

So March is a month for action. Decorate your house with some red blooms and bring a little male energy into your everyday affairs.

Susanna Duffy is a Civil Celebrant and mythologist. She creates ceremonies and Rites of Passage for individual and civic functions using ancient myths in modern settings and produces an ezine of Legends and Lore for the general reader

Somewhere in the world, every eight seconds, a mother is throwing her hands in the air and declaring that her child is a little monster. But for Echidna it was the literal truth.

Echidna was called the mother of all monsters, although her children numbered no more than a dozen or so, and many were exemplary offspring and a pride to any parent. They may still roam the earth in the quiet unseen places, waiting the day when a new Hero will come to challenge them.

There are many arguments about Echidna’s exact lineage, but who amongst us can vouch for every union in our own background ? Suffice to say she was the daughter of powerful mythical beings. Sources agree, though, on her appearance…

" half fair-cheeked and bright-eyed nymph and half huge and monstrous snake, a snake that strikes swiftly and feeds on living flesh." (Hesiod, Theogony, 295-303)

As an arresting combination of beautiful woman and deadly serpent, it was to be expected that her children were also unusual. Her first born was Orthus, a hard-working cattle dog on an island beyond the pillars of Hercules. Orthus guarded these unique red cattle for Geryon, the strongest man alive at that time.

Cerberus, her next son and another fearsome dog, guarded the entrance to the Underworld and very sensibly kept the living from entering the world of the dead. This "brazen-voiced hound of Hades" had three heads of wild dogs abd the tail of a serpent.

Another serpent was the nine-headed Hydra, who liked to sun herself on rocks overlooking the sacred wells in the swampy regions of Lerna. She was afflicted with bad breath from sulphurous water -it was said one exhalation could kill a man - and her blood was venomous.

The Chimaera was another marvelous combination, displaying the multi-headed family trait with three of them. Not only did she have the head of a lion, a goat, and a snake, her body was in three distinct parts. The top was leonine, the middle like a goat, and the whole ended in the long lashing tail of a serpent. Breathing fire, the Chimaera terrified all of Lycia, killing cattle and scorching the countryside until slain by the Hero Bellepheron.

Another of Echidna’s daughters was the fierce Crommyonian Sow, who played a leading role on the life of the Hero Theseus.

Echidna also produced the Caucasus Eagle (the one that keeps gnawing away at the liver of Prometheus) the Nemean Lion and the riddle-loving Sphinx. Perhaps her favourite child was the shining dragon that guarded the Golden Apples of Hesperos

Echidna may also have borne human children. It has been whispered that the Hero Hercules fell in love with her and engaged in an affair that produced three future kings but it seems doubtful that a mother would stoop to dalliance with the murderer of so many of her children.

Whatever the truth is, it’s now lost in time, but Zeus did decree that the children of Echidna would remain on earth for always, to test the mettle of future Heroes. A fitting task for such marvelous monsters and a credit to their long-maligned mother.

Susanna Duffy is a Civil Celebrant and mythologist. She creates ceremonies and Rites of Passage for individual and civic functions using ancient myths in modern settings and produces an ezine of Legends and Lore for the general reader

What does it mean to live “between the points?” What are the points? Are they science and religion? Are they conservative and liberal? Are they men and women? Are they childhood and old age? Are they intellectual and physical? Are they quantum physics and cosmology? Are they Freud and Jung? Are they the sacred and the profane? Are they nature and nurture? Are they light beer and stout?

To live between the points is to understand the nature of the human mind—where it begins and where it ends. The very structure of time is inherent in the process of thought—the ticking away of the clock in the song “Time” on the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon is the sound of the mind in movement. See, the mind is a function of the universe—much like Kepler’s laws of motion which keep planets swinging in elliptical orbits around a common center of gravitational mass.

The paired opposites described in the first paragraph are all addressed in the philosophy of living “Between the Points,” but more importantly they are surpassed for the ultimate pair of opposites—life and death.

When I was nineteen years old, I was enrolled as a Pre-Pre Med student meaning that my grades weren’t good enough to get me in Pre-Med and my patience for analytical science bounced me at about Chemistry 102. But in my study of the many fields of science, I developed a genuine respect for the scientific method and for the science of cosmology in general.

Cosmology is the study of the universe on a grand scale. Quantum physics is a study of the universe on a very small scale. I began studying the nature of the universe at a time when Cosmology and Quantum Physics were merging into a single vision of how the universe physically operates. That vision is still being defined to this day but there was something I learned in a book by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, that changed my life forever.

I learned about the nature of quantum singularities in space. Quantum singularities are events in space/time where the structure of the universe completely breaks down and the physics that operate everywhere else no longer function. The structure of the universe is space and time so time itself breaks down in these actual places out in the universe.

Well, what struck me about this was not the existence of singularities in outer space but it was the existence of singularities in inner-space and how they both were related to one another. See, I realized that time breaks down in the mind as well—in the form of memory. I can recall events that happened when I was three down to the sight, smell, texture, and even the emotions of vivid memories.

So, there is a point in outer space where time breaks down and there is a point in inner space where time breaks down. Beyond these points is the great unknown—death, birth, heaven, hell, whatever words you choose to use to describe it—the fact is that there is no direct human knowledge that can be quantified and proven through the scientific methodology that determined the edge of physical and mental existence.

So what is one to do with this insight? Well, it’s funny when I look back on these last ten years since I had this epiphany and it is almost as if some unseen hand were guiding me to the answers when I was able to ask the right questions. I’m sure it is the same for you if you were to examine it closely.

One day I found myself at a dead end fork in the road. There was no passion in my life. I had no interest in pursuing the college degree in my course of study. I quit school, got a job in a restaurant, and spent my days in the library chasing some kind of meaning for life. I came across a video series title Transformations of Myth through Time by Joseph Campbell. The answers to most of my questions lay within these twelve VHS tapes.

I came to understand that mankind had been dealing with this very same dilemma for thousands of years—ever since the first death was truly felt. One day, an ancient ancestor of man knew a friend, a wife, a child that was up and walking one day and then lay down and grew still, cold, and died. Something was gone that had just been there. It was at this point that the human spirit was born and it was at this point that art, philosophy, science, and even religion were born as well. These are all methodologies of attempting to discern the exact nature of what lies beyond the two points.

I also came to understand the nature of the metaphor. All words are symbols. The symbols T R E E are not great leafy carbon based life forms that take in Carbon Dioxide to produce oxygen. But we read the word TREE and immediately the letters conjure up an image in our minds. The problem with these symbols comes about when they are used to describe something that cannot be defined in terms of time and space, in other words when they are used to describe what is beyond the points.

Let us consider for a moment the supposed great conflict between science and religion.

Contrary to popular scholarly debate, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. In fact, religion and science both have a warm history of expressing reality and invoking passion in the human mind. Religion is ultimately concerned with spirituality, with touching the center of man and transforming him or her from the crawling animal to the human being who strives to attain the unknowable, who mourns for dead relatives with established rituals and seeks to relieve the suffering of fellow human beings with compassionate acts.

It is the purpose of the institution of science to give humanity a vision of what the Universe actually is from moment to moment. Science as an institution is constantly in flux; there are no ultimate truths, only hypotheses that must be constantly tested.

Religion is a constellation of metaphors aimed at relating what is beyond the points to the human mind and it is the purpose of religion to penetrate the science of the day and allow the ultimate unknowable truth to shine through its metaphors. But this means that religion must also constantly be in flux and open to change.

The problem comes about when religions begin proposing to their constituents that the metaphors they use to describe the unknown are indeed the actual point of worship. This is the point where money becomes king. This is the point where murder becomes communication and when wars over words escalate so intensely that they threaten the existence of every human being on the planet. But this is also the point of ultimate redemption which can only take place in the mind of the individual for there is no such thing as freedom in a group.

Religious institutions are generally not concerned with spiritual breakthrough of the individual to a realization of the unknown but rather these institutions are supremely concerned with the social integration of their followers under specific teachings and morals. And let us not forget that all religious institutions are ultimately concerned with acquiring money and political power—often at the expense of the very ones they were established to protect and guide toward the sacred light.

The great religious texts that form the foundation of all major religions were composed millennia ago under different scientific laws. The Ancients, with the exception of the Egyptian astronomer Eratosthenes, believed that the Earth was flat. The Ancient Hebrews had never heard of or met the Chinese and if they did, it was never written about. Science changes and so must religious metaphors also change. The truths that all religions offer, however, those common human themes of justice, righteous living, and spiritual emancipation, are anthropic and therefore common to all human beings at all times.

Let us return to our points. So there is a point in outer space where time breaks down and there is a point in inner space where time breaks down; between these points is where the phenomenal world rests. This is the realm of linear motion, of birth and death, of social interaction, scientific investigation, and the worshipping of ideas and dates of historical significance. This is the phenomenal world, broken into pairs of opposites that can be neatly divided and classified under specific categories according to the laws of logic and structure of human existence itself. This is the realm of comparison in which science, religion, and art ultimately guide the human animal to becoming a human being. These institutions accomplish this by guiding the individual to these outer and inner points and ultimately laying the challenge down to go beyond while leaving the temporal and phenomenal world of the individual and collective ego behind.

To live between the points is to live in the realm of death. To understand that no thought or concept can go beyond those two points is the beginning of intelligence and not the intelligence brought about through time and study, but an eternal intelligence that is only present when the mind is quiet–silent. This intelligence is vast, all encompassing and all-powerful. When one has reached this precipice you have come to the realm of the sacred in the heart and mind of man and defining this moment as the boundary between Heaven and the phenomenonal world.

Intelligent human beings, the humble among us, understand that what lies beyond the two points is unknowable to the mind of man which has been composed by knowledge of the in-between. The intelligent understand this limitation, what thought is capable of and what it is not, and put thought aside in areas of life where it is not applicable. The in-between will never relate to what is beyond the points and the true mystic and quiet observer of this fact will come to understand that the two points are really the same point—the alpha and the omega—the beginning and the end. It is the still point upon which the Buddha sat and struck illumination.

The reference that religious metaphors refer to is the still point and to know the still point is to understand the nature of death in the moment. Once the understanding of the complete cessation of psychological movement is understood, not as a theory but as clearly as one looks up to the night sky and recognizes the Moon, a glorious palace of pure energy rises from the wasteland to replenish what was once a weary spirit. This is the shining city on a hill that is the beacon of liberty for all of mankind to take part in because they are human mortals who share this spinning globe adrift in an elliptical orbit around an average yellow star in one of many long arms of gas and dust that orbit a massive galactic core set adrift in a sea of other galaxies all moping around the greatest point of gravity known to the mind.

But there is only one mind of man and inside the mind of the individual is a point of infinity just as there is in the farthest reaches of space, past the 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang barrier that our senses and our science cannot see beyond. There is an alpha and omega of liberty and it begins in the mind of the individual and ends at the farthest point the mind can stretch toward and conceive. The distance traveled between these two points is that of time and history and we bring this experience into the present moment to create the world we each live in. Each human mind is the totality of the Universe and the Universe itself exists distinctly in the mind of each individual. E Pluribus Unum.

This world is a collective product of all minds active in the present moment, each bringing their own experience to shape reality which ultimately shapes the reality of human society. What would the world be like with ten, twenty, a hundred individuals who were capable of grasping the still point and losing themselves at any moment? The answer is that the entire world would eventually be composed of artists; every politician, auto mechanic, lawyer, check out clerk, writer, singer, actor and painter would be capable of shedding their ego and stepping outside of time to bask in eternity. The sun fire is hot on the sandy beaches outside the river of time. The solar rays of eternity shine deep and warm as the vicissitudes of time evaporate from one’s skin and the sand of creative energy hugs and sustains the artistic vision that has inspired mankind to crawl from the muck as slugs to become rulers of this insignificant yet beautiful planet. The energy is eternal; it is the individual who falls into darkness without it. There is only one truth, yet the sages speak of it with many names.

Joshua Minton is a father and husband as well as a writer. He is co-developer, along with his wife, of the Video Scrapbook Diva DVD system (http://www.videoscrapbookdiva.com) which teaches mothers and fathers how to take their family films, transfer them to the PC and turn them into fantastic movies that can be shared with family and loved ones.

Josh has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University. He has won several awards for his poetry and fiction, including the BGSU Alumni Book Award and was included in the 1999 edition of Who’s Who in College America.

Josh’s professional background is in the health insurance industry where he has spent the last two years serving as Executive Business Analyst for the Executive Director of the nation’s largest health insurer. He currently serves as President of Family Bliss Enterprise, Inc. (http://www.familyblissenterprises.com) and is webmaster of joshuaminton.com where you can view samples of his essays, poetry, fiction and much more.

You can contact Josh at josh@joshuaminton.com

Ever walked into a house that felt like home? Ever reminisced about the best year of your life, and wondered why everything came together for you? It could be Feng Shui.

Simply put, Feng Shui is about creating a harmonious environment. It’s the ancient Chinese Science and Art of placement, intended to improve our health, harmony, longevity, career and wealth.

Pronounced, “Fung Shway”, it was a jealously guarded secret for thousands of years. Now, the benefits of Feng Shui can be enjoyed by anyone. In fact, Feng Shui is a part of everyday life for many Australian businesses, home owners, decorators, and architects.

June from June Turner Designs and Lifestyles has been an expert Feng Shui practitioner for 13 years. “Feng Shui can be simple or involved – whatever you’re comfortable with. Decorate a room or buy a home that is perfect for your family.”

The key is energy (or Qi “Chee”). June offers ten quick tips that can improve the flow, transformation, and containment of Qi in your life:

1) Remove shoes before entering a home. Don’t take your problems in with you.

2) Cook at least one meal a day and eat at the table as a family.

3) Never have knives on show – even in a block.

4) Always sit or stand facing the door (or its reflection).

5) Keep the toilet lid down and bathroom and laundry doors closed.

6) Don’t sleep under white blankets or doonas.

7) Don’t sleep with your feet facing the bedroom door.

8) Don’t sleep next to the wall that has the metre box on it.

9) If your front door is in line with a tree or the door of the house opposite, place a Ba Gua mirror above the outside of the door.

10) Never have a Ba Gua mirror in the house. They are far too powerful.

It’s no coincidence that some of these tips are just common sense. You’ve probably been practising Feng Shui for years without even knowing it!

According to June, “this is just the tip of the iceberg. Just a few little changes can make the world of difference. But most solutions are specific to the individual.”

For more information, contact June Turner Designs and Lifestyles on Sydney (02)43992018.

* Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company, Article PR, and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.

Drawing a face isn’t as hard as it looks. To draw a realistic human face, it takes mapping out the face correctly before you fill in the finer detail. If you would like to get the most out of this article, I recommend sitting down with a pad and paper and drawing each step as you read it.

To begin, start with an egg shaped oval. Draw a line down the center of this egg. This line will give you a midpoint for measuring eye separation, nose width, etc.

Next, separate the egg shape into 3 equal portions (horizontal lines) with 2 lines. The top of the egg will be be the top of the hairline and the bottom of that segment will be the eyebrows. The second segment goes from the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose. The third segment goes from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin.

Two of these segments turned sideways will give you the measurement sideways from cheek to cheek.

The measurement of one eye should be equal to the distance between the two eyes. The corner of each eye should line up with the wings of the nose.

If you divide the third segment (under the nose) in half, with a horizontal line, you have the line for the bottom of the bottom lip. The corners of the mouth should line up with the middle of the pupil of the eye.

The ears should be visible from a front view as they do not sit flat on the side of your head. These points can be found by finding the middle segment from the eyebrow to the bottom of the nose. The ears should only stick out about as far as from the center line of the head to the wing of the nose.

The hair can be drawn by drawing the hair from the edge of the ear up. The top of the hair is ¾ of one of the segment lengths up from the hair line.

This is only a basic face layout. A lot of the shapes on the human face are defined by underlying bones and musculature. In order to learn how to draw a face more accurately, it is necessary to understand some of the anatomy. The eye, the nose and mouth are the main structures that must be more closely examined in order to draw a face correctly.

Adam Reeder has been an artist for 15 years. He has been a professional portrait artist and sculptor for the last seven years. His work is well respected and has compiled great techniques to help artists create lifelike work. He maintains a website, Learn To Draw Like A Pro, where a downloadable step-by-step human figure drawing guide is available.

Success is often viewed as a magic potion. Market demand has always been there, but no-one has worked out the recipe or how to bottle it.

On further investigation the ingredients are not that easy to replicate and include: determination, enthusiasm, perseverance, stamina, hard work and a focus bordering on obsession. Yet there is often one other ingredient that successful people in all walks of life mention - being in the right place at the right time. Sometimes this alone is enough; sometimes without this single ingredient none of the other qualities will count.

Given the importance of this ingredient, how can it be bottled and handed out for the benefit of us all? Whilst success can never be guaranteed, there are tools which can significantly increase the possibility of being in the right place at the right time. Astrology is one of them.

Astrology? What, horoscopes? Is this some kind of joke? No, not at all. Ask yourself why millions of people read their horoscopes, even though the advice they contain is highly generalised and not especially useful. Somewhere deep inside we know that having advance knowledge of the future will enable us to be more effective and to have ‘the edge’. Forewarned as they say, is forearmed.

So what is it that astrology can predict and how can it enable you to be in the right place at the right time? Firstly it is a great predictor of trends. The growth of computing, the impact of technology on the film and music industries and the expansion of international travel could all be predicted by astrology. If you can spot a trend in advance, you are well placed to take advantage of it.

Knowing your time, date and place of birth allows you to understand and predict cycles that are unique to you. The natal chart will also reveal the areas of life in which you are most likely to achieve success. This can help ensure that energy is focussed into areas where it will produce the most effective results.

We all spend time developing skills and expertise in our line of work. If motivated, we may also try to develop ourselves in other ways. In the age of the self-help book, there is no shortage of advice and it can be hard to know what to do first and what will be most beneficial. Nothing works for everyone, but spending time wisely is essential. It is your most valuable resource.

Reading your horoscope is not really going to help you, but understanding the underlying principles and learning some basic astrology could be more useful than you think. If time is your most valuable asset and timing is the secret of success, don’t dismiss astrology out of hand. It has been used by people in positions of power for centuries.

Whenever a famous person, be they a President or a member of the Royal Family, is known to have consulted an astrologer, the popular press turns them into a laughing stock. All kinds of jokes are made in the media, but the people who use astrology don’t really mind. The less people who use it, the more of an advantage they have. When you hold the magic potion in your hand, you really don’t mind whether other people believe it or not.

About The Author

Elizabeth White has been practising Astrology for over 15 years and is the author of an introductory Astrology course.

http://www.horoscope-master.com

Here I am again sitting at my computer, my job is to write about the positive aspects of the Internet. I’d like to think of myself as a bit of a novice philosopher as well as writer. The other day in poetry class at university my lecturer mentioned a quote from a guy who I had already read and enjoyed, Baruch/Benedictus Spinoza. The quote mentioned was quite a simple one, and in my opinion simplicity is the best form of communication (and everything else for that matter). Spinoza once said, “Reality is perfection.” I feel this idea is quite a powerful one indeed, in relation to all aspects of life, including the Internet.

Where do you go these days when you want to find out about anything? Church? School? Parents? No, you go to the Internet. The Internet is the collective pool of unconscious, sub consciousness, and conscious ideas, beliefs, knowledge and wisdom of humanity from the past to the present. There has never been such a tool available for us. Of course there is a perfectly imperfect amount of crap out there to sift through as well, but that is intrinsic in this perfectly balanced reality that has always existed.

So, if reality has always been perfect, why is the existence of the Internet anything special? The truth is, it is only as special as anything else in life. Now, you have to ask yourself, “Is life special?” I think you know the answer to that one…then again there’s that perfect paradoxical balance. Why the Internet then? Well, my younger brother once said, and I don’t know where he pulled this little tidbit of wisdom, “The only constant in the Universe is that everything is in constant transition.” The Internet exists because of a natural progression in human thinking; it’s an evolution of our collective minds. It is a constructed idea formed through the process of eternal change.

Human beings have a huge history spanning at least half a million years. As well as the magic feeling of love there has always been the balancing emotion of fear. It seems that over time societies go through different stages where one of these feelings dominates and then permeates general actions by the community. At the moment many people would find it hard to disagree with the fact that we are in a period of fear. With war, hatred and segregation prevalent in reality as well as the ‘reality’ presented by the media news and TV/film, fear is reigning supreme in many of our daily interactions.

This relates to the use of the Internet because it looks as though people are afraid to get on the Web. I used to be afraid for Pete’s sake! To tell you the truth I still have some irrational fears when it comes to researching a paper for school. I often think, “Will I find the ‘right’ information?” The answer of course is that there is always a possibility of things going wrong, that’s this perfection of reality. Life would be stale, stagnant and sterile otherwise. The key lies in our belief in this perfection. The Internet has eliminated the need to go to libraries and carry around huge books just to read small sections of each. There is also less need to get to a science library and then sociology, mathematics etc. So much information is now available to people in our own homes.

Whether you are researching seventeenth century philosophers’ ways of thinking for personal or professional reasons, or even just looking up information on how to make your own chai tea, or on how to change the oil on your car; the Internet is a source for so many areas of interest it is simply mind boggling. It is truly the most perfect form of reality’s perfection in modern contemporary society. That’s why they call this the Information age right? The only problem has to deal with the perfectly imperfect amount of pornography that constitutes more than half of all websites on the Web. What does this say about our current moral disposition in our changing perception’s construct of reality? I’ll leave you with that one to ponder…

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer

M6.Net

http://www.m6.net

Jesse S. Somer is a novice writer and philosopher thinking about the real meaning behind the existence of the World Wide Web.