3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

  TIME Steve Taylor (2009). Making time: Why time seems to pass at                                              different speeds and how to control it. T he first part of the book covers the 5 laws of psychological time (pp 1-182) while the shorter second part discusses methods for changing our perception of the speed of time , making it either faster or slower. The methods to change time include external methods (which Taylor suggests we don't really need if we are adept at the internal methods) and internal methods of mindfulness and meditation which are described below.  My opinion: clock time is an artificial human invention while nature time is a cyclical recurring rhythm that we need align with...all things grow/mature by their own nature with the seasons...in some sense we remain the same, in another sense we evolve...what we ultimately evolve into is an...

TIC TAC TOE Melinda H. Connor (2014). Resonance Modulation: Biofield Basics. There are warnings at the beginning of the book: content not meant for general public, only those enrolled in the Resonance Modulation Program through EarthSongs Holistic Health: https://earthsongs.com/  There are many instructions related to reading and balancing the human biofield (the area beyond the physical body), but without the proper context from the workshop and the guidance of a teacher, the instructions are not useful, except the last practice i found in the book on "unsticking trauma" described below. Unsticking trauma....create a large (8 x 8 inch) tic tac toe like grid with X's in each of the squares, have the person look at each X while thinking about the trauma, one square at a time. While they are gazing at a given X in a square, one should muscle test the arm (have them extend their arm horizontally and tell them to keep their arm rigid while you push down on the top of their ...

  NEROCYCLING Caroline Leaf (2021). Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple,                                      Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety,                                             Stress, and Toxic Thinking. Leaf is a neuroscientist with a clinical practice and has 38 years of research behind her method of coping with stresses of all kinds, including acute trauma, called neurocycling. She presents research of a clinical trial that shows, compared to the control, that neurocycling is good for our cells, brain activity, mental health and various blood markers--she goes into considerable detail on these later points for those interested. Suffice it to say that neurocycling is good for one's brain and health (physical and psychological). In ...

  FREQUENCY SPECIFIC MICROCURRENT Carolyn McMakin (2017). The resonance effect:                                                                            How frequency  specific microcurrent is                                                changing medicine. McMakin is a persuasive story teller, describing how she discovered a list of frequencies (electrical pulses per second measured as hertz) associated with particular health conditions based on Harry Van Gelder's frequencies who apparently found them with a medical machine (according to one science/skeptic website this machine was created by Abrams in 1922 and is a medical hoax, upon opening it, all wires and no con...

PLANT MIND Michael Pollan (2021). This is Your Mind on Plants. Journalist Pollan describes three molecules in plants that CHANGE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. Morphine in the opium poppy is a sedative, caffeine in coffee and tea is a stimulant, and mescaline in the peyote and San Pedro cacti is a hallucinogen. The first and the last of these are illegal in the United States as of this writing in 2022 even though both have been shown in clincial studies to be of benefit for a number of health related issues. Ironically, caffeine is the most addictive of the three according to Pollan, and his reasoning why it remains legal: it supports our business/economic model of productivity and efficiency by stimulating us to stay awaken and engage in work. Overall, Pollan is long on fascinating stories and short on the pragmatics of how to grow, process, and use these plants in our gardens probably because of the legal ramifications. It behooves us to find alternative plant medicines that can produce simi...

ZEN LISTENING Rebecca Shafir (2000). Zen of Listening:  Mindful Communication in                                       the Age of Distraction. What makes listening ZEN  is the mindful attention that we give to the speaker, focusing on them without judging in a curious way that allows us to learn. My view of listening is much broader than the International Listening Society Definition of listening used in the book. Listening is more than attending to spoken/nonverbal messages...listening includes the whole of life, the SONG of life where SONG is an acronym that stands for S = listening to self, O = listening to others, N = listening to nature, and G = listening to God/Goddess or more broadly the divine.  One of many practices based on Shafir's Zen listening is to approach our listening encounters with the same intention as we have w...

SYSTEMS Donella Meadows (2008). Thinking in systems. anything and everything can be modeled as a system(s)...a set of interconnected ideas/things with properties that guide its purposeful behavior...finding the lever(s) in a system is the key to changing a system...we do well to remember that systems are our creations, maps of reality, helpful for describing and understanding the interconnectedness of life. before we intervene in a system, we should inquire about the history of the system...study the beat of the system by plotting the behavior of the system over time, listen to what is working well and what is wrong, keep language concrete, meaningful, truthful, discover/develop feedback loops to keep learning more, embrace errors, enhance growth, stability, diversity, resilience, sustainability, and beauty... the future of the system can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being by discovering how its properties and our values work together...begin with small changes, constant mo...