I am 16 years old male who grew up in a household with a bipolar alcoholic father. He left when I was 12 but he would come back some nights to scream at me and my mother and then I ended up in and out of mental hospitals for a time for wanting to take my own life at age 13 but I have made a great recovery over the past years but recently my father has been sending me abusive messages and he says that our relationship is over but I feel there is still hope so how do I go about dealing with him while I try to further my own recovery?
Anger and Justice
Is it healthy to suppress anger, a natural emotion, in order to be non-violent in our communication? Is it wrong to condemn an act/ crime in strong words, especially if one is a victim? What would be your advice to a person who has been a victim of physical, social, emotional and psychological abuse/ crime- forget the incident and carry on with your life for there’s a lot life has to offer or fight the culprit legally and socially and bring him to book (because for a fight the person must preserve one’s anger otherwise the fight just fizzles out, going by how our police and the legal system work)?Wouldn’t the first option lead to more crimes, for I’ve rarely seen ‘Gandhigiri’ work?
End-of-Life Brain Activity – A Sign of the Soul?
By Stuart Hameroff, MD and Deepak Chopra, MD
The idea that conscious awareness can exist after death, generally referred to as the ‘soul’, has been inherent in Eastern and Western religions for thousands of years. In addition to spiritual accounts, innumerable subjective reports of conscious awareness seemingly separated from the subject’s brain and physical body occur in conjunction with so-called near death experiences (NDEs) in patients resuscitated after cardiac arrest (1,2). Such patients describe remarkably consistent phenomenology including a white light, being in a tunnel, serenity, deceased loved ones, life review and, in some cases, floating out of the body (out-of-body experiences – OBEs). Comparable experiences have been reported in various types of meditative and altered states, traumatic psychological events, or seemingly without cause. A Gallup poll estimated some 10 million Americans have reported NDEs/OBEs (3). The drug ketamine, used as a ‘dissociative’ anesthetic, can produce subjective reports of conscious awareness outside the body (4), as can various other psychoactive drugs. (more…)
Daily Inspiration
Know that you are a miracle and you have a unique place in the cosmic plan. Spiritual power is yours for the asking. -Deepak Chopra
Breaking the Cycle of Anxiety (Part 1)
Fear is a natural reaction built into the mind-body system,. It is triggered by danger, and after the danger is past, so is the fear response. But when fear spreads out into a general condition, it becomes a mysterious thing: anxiety. Anxious people are afraid even though there is nothing “out there” to be afraid of. Others overreact to triggers that ordinarily should be fairly easy to handle, such as being left alone for a day on their own. Still others are nearly paralyzed by highly specific phobias such as fear of heights, open spaces, or insects. What is going on and what can we do about it? (more…)