Uncategorized – Page 2

S.A.D.

It’s a thing. And Daylight Saving Time (DST) effects can mimic it or make it worse.

I experienced “seasonal affective disorder” (SAD) once. I was residing in the basement of a Minneapolis home by Lake Harriet. The dwelling had only one small ground level window and the weather was mostly gray for at least a month. I felt just as gray.

This was an unusual experience for me because as a physician of mine once said, “Sharon, you are one of the happiest people I’ve ever known – in a healthy way.”

But the lack of sunshine took a toll and I was in a depressed state that I couldn’t shake. Fortunately, the dwelling was temporary and I returned, racing ahead of a pervasive early snowstorm, to Texas, my home. Truth be told, I’m not particularly fond of heat and have never really adjusted to the Texas climate. In the summer, I avoid the ever-present, intense sun as if I were a vampire. So no one was more surprised than me when–as soon as I crossed the border from Oklahoma into Texas–I immediately jumped out of my car and actually kissed the ground because the sun was shining.

Fast forward to this morning, November 3, 2019, as I woke to the first day after we turn the clocks back. I was still lying in bed realizing that my internal clock and the external clocks in my home we’re in disagreement, and I began wondering what it would be like in the evening when darkness would settle in so early. That’s when I remembered the bout of seasonal affective disorder and the weariness of so much dark.

Curious, I searched the internet for Daylight Saving Time and seasonal affective disorder; and lo and behold, there was all lot of information on the subject. Not only had other people have the same thought, there was a good amount of genuine research.

To my surprise, DST is practiced by about 70 industrialized countries worldwide with the exception of India, China, and Japan. In South America it is observed by Paraguay and most of Chile. And this is despite evidence that observing Daylight Savings “appears to compromise the process of sleep by decreasing both sleep duration and sleep efficiency.”

Daylight Savings “appears to compromise the process of sleep by decreasing both sleep duration and sleep efficiency.”
[Neuroscience Letters, Volume 406, Issue 3, 9 October 2006, Pages 174-177]

Research indicates that DST (either springing forward or falling back) affects circadian rhythms which in turn affect cortisol levels, the possibility of acute myocardial infarction (especially in men), ischemic stroke for the first two days after the transition [Sleep Med . 2016 Nov – Dec;27-28:20-24. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2016.10.009. Epub 2016 Nov 2]. Fortunately, the negative physical health affects diminish quickly after the first days following transition.

Mood, however, may be adversely compromised for much longer. Because SAD is experienced as a result of loss of sunlight, autumn DST can exacerbate the problem. If you are experiencing temporary adjustment challenges, there are some ways to combat and lessen the effects:

Similar to dealing with jet lag, adjust your rhythm to the new time. For example, on the first day or two, if you are able, stay in bed the extra hour so that you are not fatigued at the end of the day.
If the weather is nice, go outside and walk or sit in the sun.
Stay hydrated.
If your sleep is disrupted, consider checking whether melatonin is a good choice for you. (Always best to consult a health care professional)
Eat well and exercise.
Engage in some form of meditation or mindfulness practice (proven to have numerous health benefits).
Use a “light box” (but be aware that light boxes may be ill advised for people with cataracts, bipolar disorder; and can have other “mildly adverse affects”) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3839957/]

— If your symptoms linger or worsen, understand that SAD can be a serious form of depression and consult your health care professional,

Sharon’s NDE presentation 2005 – Chicago IANDS

In May 2019 I visited Chicago IANDS again and became aware that there was a video of my presentation there. Although it is 14 years old, it stands the test of time.

……(but not sure so much about the dress)

Illumined Human (Part 2)

Becoming: Feet of Clay

Genesis 2 says that God created Adam out of the dust of the earth. World myths (Greek, Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Maori, Inca, etc.) depict people, male and/or female made from clay. Even Wonder Woman was sculpted out of clay by her mother Hyppolita! A Jewish Talmudic legend portrays Adam as a golem (clay figure–a body without a soul) for the first 12 hours of his existence.

Egyptian god Khum creating man from clay

It is safe to say that we all have proverbial “feet of clay” even before we left the Garden of Eden. If we were already clay or dust were we of heaven or of earth?

A long time ago I surmised that the reason we Earth beings left the Garden of Eden was because the divine actually wanted us to go—a reason and a purpose. Perhaps we had developed enough that it was time; or perhaps we hadn’t developed enough and needed a challenge course for growth.

So, as the Genesis 2& 3 goes, an apple tree was planted in the midst of other fruit trees in Eden and the young’uns were told you can eat the fruit of any tree except the fruit of the tree of knowledge. As any parent knows, if you put something where the child will regularly encounter it and then say, “don’t touch”, the temptation is irresistible. But even then Adam and Eve didn’t eat the fruit, so a serpent had to be devised to seduce them. And, voila! Success! Humans who lived in an eternal state of BEING fell into BECOMING. Birth, biography, death.

“What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?”
A Course in Miracles

Not knowing its source, I kept that quote on my refrigerator for years so that I would see it often. And, because I am aware that BEING is “One”, I concluded that I was an integral part of the planning.

“Is willing to accept that she creates her own reality except for some of the parts where she can’t help but wonder what the hell she was thinking.”
Story People, Almost New Age

Is our world is a virtual reality of our own design? This idea is closely aligned with the ancient spiritual tradition of India that we are living in “maya” (roughly translated as “illusion”). There is the beautiful maya of the natural world that is there to appreciate it and to meditate on its many mysteries, to teach us and help us grow spiritually. But it is the human maya that becomes our role play—our charade–and leads us into believing that this Earth life is our only true identity. However, it is not. It is a merely temporary reality.

: “Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Albert Einstein

Any cursory exploration of quantum mechanics reveals that modern Western science has met ancient Eastern tradition.

Wordsworth captured this knowledge and the inevitable destiny of ego development in Ode on Intimations of Immortality. An excerpt:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

Upon the growing Boy,

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sees it in his joy;

The Youth, who daily farther from the east

Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

The Illumined Human (Part 1)

From Being to Becoming: Time & Space

“Being is always there; it is what we are in the most fundamental way”. –

A. H. Almaas,
The Pearl Beyond Price

I see no reason why spiritual awareness or self-realization must be incompatible with a personal human life or that being an ordinary human, flaws and all, must be a hindrance to self-realization as an illumined human. Embracing humanness may very well be essential to spiritual awakening.

There was three year old child who kept insisting that she had to be alone with her newborn sibling. The parents, concerned that the older child through sibling rivalry or just lacking awareness might harm the infant, refused the request. But the child kept asking, insisting over and over again on time alone with the infant. Finally, relenting, the parents stationed themselves outside the closed door, having set up video and sound monitors in the room. Not being a religious family, imagine their surprise when they saw their daughter lean over the crib, put her head close to the infant’s head, and say:

“Please tell me about God. I’m starting to forget.”

Most people cannot remember anything prior to age three. Sense of self, or self-concept, is something that develops with time and experience. Children become self-conscious (showing signs of embarrassment or shyness) around age two to three. Also until around the age of three the child often doesn’t understand the concept of “I” and speaks in the third person (e.g. “Sharon want toy”).

The splendid innocence of the infant is that physical birth marks only its bodily separateness but not its differentiated psychological self. Over time the personality evolves through enculturation, experience and increasing levels of choice into a separate sense of itself—a self-concept. Self is constructed. As that self continues to grow and become stronger, it creates a kind of amnesia of the Essential Being, its spiritual home. Veils descend that allow the ego to assert and sustain itself.

Time & Space: Relative Existence

Many who have experienced a near-death experience report that time does not seem to apply to reality. As one experiencer, Jeanie Dicus, put it, “Before we’re born, we have to take an oath that we will pretend time and space are real so we can come here and advance our spirit. If you don’t promise, you can’t be born.”

The tale of Er in Plato’s Republic gives us the image of souls returning to Earth drinking from the River Lethe (Lee-thee), the “River of Forgetfulness” that ran through the caves of Hypnos, so that they would forget from whence they came. The implication of the Greek myth is that we are hypnotized out of remembering our true nature so that we can adopt a new human identity. This would suggest that developing that identity is actually important.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explains that time is subjective. An amusing anecdote, wrongly attributed to him, is supposed to explain this theory:

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”

While this is relatable and generally subjectively true, in this case time has not changed at all, only the perception of it is different, as can be measured by a clock.

The actual theory is that in the space-time continuum time does not move or flow. All of time is now. Time just IS; and passage of time is a result of limited human awareness.

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”.

Albert Einstein, 1955

If the spiritual world is timeless, the physical world is not. Not only is time called into question but so is space or locality. We have an awareness of solidity, and yet we are both wave and particle. We occupy a location, but exist in a quantum state of non-local entanglement. Another way to say this is that we merely appear to be here. There are fundamental contradictions between what are scientifically understood as proven realities. The cognitive dissonance that this creates—that existence itself is a paradox—can only be resolved by accepting that two (or more) contradictory realities can and do exist simultaneously.

The material/spatial/temporal world is real. Deal with it. Study it. Understand its laws. Be in it, grow and learn with it. Embrace the experience of being fully human. Later, you will be mature enough to learn that it does not define you.
The spiritual/non-local/timeless world is real. Deal with it. Be with it. Understand that this is a larger, truer you. Your earthly biography, like a story, has a beginning and an end. Don’t believe that the story of you is you. But don’t allow that awareness to prevent you from having a human life.
Be at peace with both realities.

Resilience

Have you ever wondered something your whole life only to discover there’s a word that answers the question?

For me, that word is resilience and it answers the lifelong question, “Why do some people overcome all obstacles while others fall apart at the smallest stressor?

Are some people naturally resilient? My best guess is, yes.

Is there a resiliency gene? My best guess is, no.

Even raised in the same family with the same life lessons, some siblings are more resilient than others. Some see failures and challenges as opportunities for growth. Others see failures and challenges as a threat to their identity.

Can resiliency be learned? Probably.

Knowing a resilient person and watching her model resiliency does not guarantee that another will adopt resiliency as a lifestyle. However, knowing such a person who teaches a program that fosters resiliency increases the likelihood.

I have been blessed to know such a person, who has made it her life’s mission to “Choose Love” and to teach others how to do that through a proven step by step program of Social Emotional Learning.

Scarlett Lewis is the mother of Jesse Lewis who was one of 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012. I met her in February of 2013 when the trauma was freshly palpable. Over the years although her loss and pain will likely never pass, her resilience has increased manifold.

So, I present to you, Scarlett, the world servant.

I am

I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full;

For I am a fountain pouring forth your love, emptying.

Beneath this craggy mountain shell is cavernous magic.

I am countenance, only an image, as the leaf is of the tree.

I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full:

For I am a singing, starlit river carrying ecstatic rainbow fish.

Spilling into your vast, eternal ocean.

I am but an iridescent bubble, delicate and hollow,

Floating, shimmering, pretending to be knowable until I burst,

I dance in the breeze while I can, flit and spin myself

Into and out of being.

I am nothing. Empty. Without form.

I glisten and shimmer with dragonfly wings.

I hover and land then flit away on a moment’s inspiration.

Exhaling.

You breathe You into me, and I breathe You out.

I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full:

I am a hollow shell holding the roll of the ocean.

I am a cupped hand holding light.

I am nothing. I am.

©Sharon Heller,   (Yom Kippur)  September 18, 2018

Cells in “God’s Body”

Health & Wellness

HEALTH is what we are given.

WELLNESS is what we do with it.

Health conditions and tendencies are inherited from parents.In an ideal world, development from fertilized cell, to embryo, to fetus, through birth and ongoing growth results in a sound, well-functioning, comfortable system that naturally and easily sustains a thriving individual.

In the real world, health is rarely so straightforward. Life usually brings a blend of good and bad genetic fortune that is increased or decreased by how genes respond to environment. Genetic blessings or unfavorable genetic predispositions can be increased or diminished by internal and external exposure. Additionally, accidents that may occur before, during or after birth affect lifelong health. In any given life, there is little likelihood of avoiding at least some degree of pain or dysfunction.

Health is therefore relative–a range of physical and intellectual abilities and disabilities that are given and need mitigation, or maintenance. Health can sometimes be increased through a wellness lifestyle that takes what nature provides and nurtures it. Appreciating the variety of resources given and sustaining them in a balanced state is essential. That becomes the platform for designing greater health.

Wellness is something that happens only if it becomes conscious at some point in life—and for some that is earlier, for others later, and for some not at all. With consciousness comes the awareness that wellness is not just physical but also multidimensional. Wellness requires sufficient maturity for self-awareness and freedom. It is an active, lifelong process of learning ways to improve what is working and ways to either accept or to compensate for that which cannot be improved. Even when pain, discomfort or dysfunction cannot be avoided or changed, the perception and interpretation of such can be modifiable.

Wellness is a process in which change is always possible, whether it is moving inward towards personal physical, emotional, attitudinal, mental, intellectual, spiritual, and creative growth, or outward oriented toward environment, vocation, connection, community, compassion and service. To exercise options it is necessary to manage time well to find and use the appropriate guidance, methods and tools.

Wellness is a conscious choice, understanding that change includes both acquiring external knowledge and direct self-knowledge. In the learning process, it is important to remain aware of what can be known and what cannot. Acknowledging and accepting limitations, having both strength and vulnerability, are important aspects of wellness.

The state of “radical acceptance” is Grace. It is from this state of surrender to what IS, that it is possible to move forward in a meaningful and powerful way with choices that are realistic and authentic.

Authentic choice means that even when scope is limited there are a variety of options that can serve the highest and best good.