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Your Younger Self

6/29/2015

The photo on the home page is me in Hong Kong in 1976 after I got a Ph.D. and traveled to India with my Sanskritist.

I decided it’s okay to post photos of your younger selves because they are all photos of YOUR SOUL. Many of us look out through our eyes with the self of our 20s.

(Remember that people in some cultures forbid photos of them because they think the photo is "capturing their soul?")

Strangers visiting a website don't care. I think they want to see somebody, hopefully interesting.

A lot of accounts of departed spirits that "come thru" manifest in a younger version of themselves. Somebody is picking their favorite version!

There is a romance to our pasts. Many of us don't know what our later-life friends looked like as a young person. It's nice to get a view of the young, idealistic, hopeful self, embarking on adult life.

The photos are all our “self” and our SOUL. Quantum physics says time is not linear. We can be our early and late selves at the same time.

Maria Shriver, Ed -- The Shriver Report: a Woman’s Nation (2009 and 2014)

6/25/2015

Maria Shriver sponsored several reports on women. The first is subtitled “A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything” and the second “A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink.”

They both document the most significant societal trends and transformations in American life and the impact they have on women. For example, the rates of financial insecurity among American women and the children who depend on them.

They are full of short, pithy, authoritative snapshots of some aspect of women's lives.

The reports are now the foundation for a social action initiative called the Shriver Corps. There are documentaries deriving from the reports. It is a wonderful example of someone like Maria Shriver turning her formidable visibility and resources into a cause.

http://shriverreport.org/

The Divine & the nature of our being, Buddhism

6/25/2015

Someone asked me “What made you a Buddhist?”

I did not like the idea that we are all born sinners and need to be “saved” by an external God who is also Father. That we go to “heaven” when we die, if we are “good.” And never come back.

Rather, I think each of us is divine. We are a manifestation of the divine in the material world, which is but one plane of existence. Thus through meditation and experience, we evolve our souls to “realize” the true nature of things, which is that “this immediate material life is not the whole story.”

We are not sinners. We are born to evolve our souls through particular challenges that we choose. We have “spiritual contracts” with people to help us develop our souls. The cycle of rebirth and karma allow us to try again and again to gain understanding and act in the world in a way that re-creates the world to be better.

Many of my ideas come from experiences like the one below.

Lowell K. Smith, a spiritual and holy man, “channels” higher entities, who explain the nature of being, becoming, existence and reality (a.k.a. ontology). (“The channel” is what the higher entities call Lowell when they refer to him.)

Excerpts from the transcript of the Spontaneous Channeling Session June 24, 2015

“Blessing upon this gathering from the Council of [the] Most High. … Your responsibility as a sentient being expressing in your physical form, is to learn to unconditionally to love yourself, and as you [learn to] do so, begin to learn to unconditionally love everyone else. You do not have to demonstrate or actively reach out for but you have to energetically, [and] continuously send light and love to every other being who is also struggling through their process. Each of us – each of you, the channel included, are in [the] process of gaining understanding, and as being a part of this gathering, having the opportunity to express that understanding, and to question that understanding, and to gain insights about that understanding so that you grow in your own personal awareness of who you are. … You make choices in determining who you desire to become. For as you consciously become more aware of same, … knowing who you are and knowing who you desire to become, and then making the effortfulness through meditation, through listening to your dreams, through sharing your experiences, and your understandings with others, and allowing yourself to listen open mindedly to others as well. These are the things that will allow you to become more in alignment with the purpose for which you, as well as this channel, came into this earth plane.
…
With this we say a blessing upon each of thee, and a blessing upon this channel as he continues his processes … So with this we release the channel back to his normal processes and we say “We are through.”

You can learn more about “the channel” from his website: Rev. Lowell K. Smith

http://www.ReflectionsInLight.org

Regarding channeling: I am a fan of Madame Blavatsky (1831 – 1891), an occultist and spiritual medium who founded Theosophy and the spiritualist movement. She became one of the first Euro-Americans to officially convert to Buddhism. She also channeled and published “ancient wisdom” as told to her by spirits. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky for another great story.

Sue Rosser, Ed -- Women, Science, and Myth: Gender Beliefs from Antiquity to the Present (2008)

6/25/2015

The collection of papers examines the ways scientists have researched gender throughout history, the ways those results have affected society, and the impact they have had on the scientific community and on women, women scientists, and women's rights movements.

One theme is myths of gender in different scientific disciplines.

It unmasks the sources of a number of debilitating biases concerning women's intelligence and physical attributes.

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Science-Myth-Beliefs-Antiquity/dp/1598840959/

WHAT’S HERE?

Stupid unproven ideas about women made up by scientists in the 20th Century. Yes, it happens.

Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering(2007)

6/25/2015

A report prepared by the National Academies of Science and Engineering, particularly Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering

A classic policy report: women face barriers to success in every field of science and engineering; obstacles that deprive the country of an important source of talent. Without a transformation of academic institutions to tackle such barriers, the future vitality of the U.S. research base and economy are in jeopardy.

OLD POLICY REPORTS??

You might say, this is old. The findings are still valid. The report raised awareness of significant related research on discrimination and the status of women. It provided an authoritative, quotable source. Does a policy report change policy? It was a major brick.

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11741/beyond-bias-and-barriers-fulfilling-the-potential-of-women-in

AAUW --Tenure Denied: Cases of Sex Discrimination in Academia (2004)

6/25/2015

This report examines sex discrimination cases supported by the AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund during the previous 20 years and concludes with recommendations aimed at preventing future incidents of sex discrimination for female faculty and for higher education institutions.

AGAIN, WHY THIS?

Because it describes my generation. Blow by blow. The struggle for access to jobs, dignity and respect. Very depressing reading, but it’s like holocaust stories: people’s souls died here.

http://history.aauw.org/aauw-research/2004-tenure-denied

Vivian Gornick -- Women in Science: Then and Now (2009)

6/25/2015

From Amazon’s blurb: Writer and journalist Vivian Gornick interviews famous and lesser-known scientists, compares their experiences then and now, and shows that, although not much has changed in the world of science, what is different is women’s expectations that they can and will succeed.

Everything from the disparaging comments by Harvard’s then-president to government reports and media coverage has focused on the ways in which women supposedly can’t do science. Gornick’s original interviews show how deep and severe discrimination against women was back then in all scientific fields. Her new interviews, with some of the same women she spoke to twenty-five years ago, provide a fresh description of the hard times and great successes these women have experienced.

WHY PICK THIS?

She describes the experiences of female academics of my generation. It is hair-raising. Sad. Tragic. I personally know many women whose lives were ruined by blatant discrimination and very public harassment for simple things, like advocating equal rights for women. They had to be TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH. They are lost heroines – the wasted lives of people who were born female at a bad time.

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Science-Then-Vivian-Gornick/dp/1558615873/

Kim O'Neill, psychic and medium

6/25/2015

People ask me "How can you believe this stuff?" Because my experiences with it are unexplainable by science. How can someone who doesn't know you talk you on the phone (after hearing your name) and tell you things that no one else can know about you?

I had many such experiences in my 40's and asked myself: what do you think is going on? Is this person reading my subconscious? Are they really tapping into "higher intelligence" and "heavenly archives" and reading my records -- about my personal past and my personal future?

Are the dead people "coming through" really speaking through this person? It seems the messages are very personal. Many skeptics will say, "Oh, good guess -- your deceased mother really loves you." But they feel like the voice of that departed one.

My early experiences with this were so dramatic, I called it "therapy without talking." After hearing the "inside story" about relationships, I reflected: "Yes, that could be happening." The information calmed me down. Made me focus on positive things that MIGHT happen. REALLY RE-ALIGNED my attitude. Made me work harder for goals that I was told were indeed possible. Made me patient about frustrating people around me. That's therapeutic. And VERY DRAMATIC, I'm telling you!

I told my brother, before a reading, "Ask whatever you would ask God."

Kim O'Neill is not the only source, but her reading for me recently thoroughly "shook my tree." She does readings by telephone from Texas. http://kimoneillpsychic.com/

If you are near Fairfax and Vienna, VA, and like the idea of past lives, try Maureen Malloy-Clifford: http://www.past-life-therapy.com

Virginia Valian -- Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (1999)

6/25/2015

From Amazon's blurb: Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences -- gender schemas -- that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Those small imbalances accumulate to advantage men and disadvantage women. The most important consequence of gender schemas for professional life is that men tend to be overrated and women underrated.

Valian's goal is to make the invisible factors that retard women's progress visible, so that fair treatment of men and women will be possible. The book makes its case with experimental and observational data from laboratory and field studies

http://www.amazon.com/Why-So-Slow-Advancement-Women/dp/0262720310

This was one of my first books about discrimination and implicit bias. It explained the roots of inequality and why we need laws against discrimination to counter automatic behaviors of exclusion and putting women in subordinate roles.

Stephanie Coontz --The Way We Really Are: Coming To Terms With America's Changing Families (1998)

6/25/2015

Coontz addresses the mythology that surrounds today’s family—the demonizing of “untraditional” family forms and marriage and parenting issues. She argues that while it’s not crazy to miss the more hopeful economic trends of the 1950s and 1960s, few would want to go back to the gender roles and race relations of those years. Mothers are going to remain in the workforce, family diversity is here to stay, and the nuclear family can no longer handle all the responsibilities of elder care and childrearing.

http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Really-Are-Americas/dp/0465090923

WHY CARE?

If you feel like you were not in a "normal" family, get over it. There is a "new normal," and it is not two parents and two children, stable through everyone's life. The profile of families has changed a lot: single-parent, female-headed, unmarried with children, same-sex, blended after a divorce, and so on. Yet children are still feeling sorry for themselves for "not being normal." Another set of "myths about normal" that we need to revise.