Happy New Year - around the sun!

One of the Five Arts of Chinese Metaphysics is known as 'Feng Shui'. Feng Shui relied on astronomy to find correlations between humans and the universe before the invention of magnetic compasses. The purpose of Feng Shui is to create an environment with good qi. Qi in Chinese martial arts, refers to 'energy', in the sense of (positive and negative) 'life force'. When we have good design in our homes, our rooms are filled with vibrant energy.

'A traditional explanation of qi as it relates to Feng Shui would include the orientation of a structure, its age, and its interaction with the surrounding environment, including the local microclimates, the slope of the land, vegetation, and soil quality.' -excerpt from wikipedia

To begin creating this type of living space, it is always recommended to have a professional Feng Shui practitioner guide you in achieving this harmony effectively. However, here are a few ways to start putting some of these techniques into practice:

1. Find the room in your home or apartment where energy is strongest (such as where guests like to hang out in). This area would be used as a working space that will help bring you popularity, success and money.
2. Sleep against a solid wall, the headboard should be against the wall and the foot of the bed should never be in line with the door.
3. Place air cleaning plants around the home to reduce anxiety and remove toxins.
4. Clean the front entrance. The front door should be well maintained and solid and the front area of your home should be clean and not cluttered. Make it welcoming and from this focal point, you should have beautiful pieces of art and furniture that feels pleasing.

Happy New Year!

image source: http://www.decoist.com/2013-09-25/feng-shui-tips/

Information sources:
http://www.iol.co.za/lifestyle/home-garden/home/feng-shui-for-good-energy-1.1954611
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui
http://www.vogue.com/13383560/how-to-feng-shui-your-home-easy-ways-beginners-guide/

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The Interconnection Of New Ideas

 Youths and entrepreneurs are leading the way in developing ideas about environmental and sustainability issues that are vital for solving the current problems we are faced with. The Global Landscapes Forum recently held alongside COP21 in Paris, included a diverse group of people that discussed (technological) ideas for resolving these current issues of environment and health. Participants included 'The Nature Conservancy', who showcased the latest tools and technologies that were being used for increased production, improved livelihoods, protection of forests, landscapes, watersheds and for more biodiversity.

Other participants included 50 youth innovators that teamed up for 4 days in order to brainstorm ideas that would develop solutions to five real-world land-use challenges. Their ideas, which included an exchange program between smallholder farmers where they share resources, such as storage facilities and centralized distribution centers, can immediately be implemented to solve these land-use challenges. A speaker worth noting, named Salina Abraham said, " To us this wasn't just an exercise... These could be real-world solutions to real-world challenges. So, I want to ask from you two things: the first is to concretely integrate youth into the work that you do and the solutions we have to offer into your organizations; the second is to support our Youth in Landscapes initiative so that we can continue to grow and enable youth, so that we can become the leaders that we will have to be in the world."

 All over the world, discussions and actions are taking place, whether it be a group of people or a single individual, such as in the case of Samuel Malinga. He is a 26 year old from Uganda who recently received the Tony Elumelu Prize for Business at the Future Africa awards for his development of a full-cycle sanitation system. This sanitation system was built of local low-cost but highly hygienic toilets. In an effort to protect the environment through reducing and reusing waste, he also developed briquettes as an alternative source of energy to charcoal.

“The exposure we gain by traveling to other countries is also priceless. It widens our perspective, introduces us to new ideas and links us up with like minds from faraway lands.” - Samuel Malinga (interview with Onyedimmakachukwu Obiukwu)

Samuel is driven by "designing an effective marketing, distribution, and profitable business strategy that can be brought to scale." He cites Albert Einstein in saying, "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of minds to think." He says, "Agricultural Engineering has well packaged courses with design, business training, other engineering disciplines, agriculture, farm power and machinery, environment, water, energy and social fields. I had to apply the knowledge I acquired from university studies to develop technologies that are solving community problems. For sustainability, every good technology has to be accompanied with a decent business approach to enable people to buy it."

 Youth and entrepreneurs can provide different, innovative and new ideas that can help solve the problems we face today in addressing climate change and sustainability. These problems are interconnected and cannot be understood or resolved within our "academic disciplines and government agencies".

"A resolution can be found only if the structure of the web itself changed, and this will involve profound transformations of our social institutions, values, and ideas. As we examine the sources of our cultural crisis it will become apparent that most of our leading thinkers are outdated conceptual models and irrelevant variables…The shift from the mechanistic to the ecological paradigm is not something that will happen sometime in the future. It is happening right now in our sciences, in our individual and collective attitudes and values, and in our patterns of social organization. The new paradigm is better understood by individuals and small communities than by large academic and social institutions...To facilitate the cultural transformation, it will therefore be necessary to restructure our system of information and education, so that the new knowledge can be presented and discussed appropriately. " - excerpt from The Turning Point 1982 by Fritjof Capra

"Government also has to create public awareness about the effects of deforestation and importance of environmental conservation. It can do this by encouraging the teaching of subjects on climate change in schools and also by funding research towards cleaner energy options." - Samuel Malinga

Image above taken from http://pure-consciousness.com/2012/11/30/the-thinking-universe-interconnected-consciousness/

Sources: 
http://venturesafrica.com/features/what-drives-the-young-african-entrepreneur/ 
http://blog.nature.org/conservancy/2015/12/09/civilization-without-destruction/ 
http://www.landscapes.org/salina-abraham-closing-keynote-way-forward-glf-2015/ 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pieter-van-de-sype/thinking-landscapes-and-t_b_8754710.html

Related:
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/09/02/generation-y-not-these-10-young-entrepreneurs-didnt-let-age-hold-them-back/ 

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History Repeats Itself

"If you view time as a wheel, all we have to do is figure out how long the wheels are, and then if there's a traumatic event that happens in the wheel, and then the wheel turns again, we're in the future.
Past, present and future do exist in one sense, but if something really bad happens in a previous wheel, it's going to happen again in the next one because it leaves a residue. It leaves a blue print. So that does very much relate to the cycles of history. Some of this stuff are archetypes and it's like a universal mind, but some of it is the result of things that happened before. And when the cycle comes around again those influences, we have to work off the trauma - and they will repeat." - David Wilcock.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kalachakra.jpg

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'We exist only as nonphysical units of individuated consciousness"

'In the physical world, in accordance with space-time rule set, our limited senses collect the data that define our physical reality. Our nervous system sends certain types and patterns of signals representing the collected sensory data to the brain, which interprets these patterns of signals to create the perceived physical reality within the context of past experience.
Sentient space-time beings such as us, for instance, though we exist only as nonphysical units of individuated consciousness, can interact experientially (experience physical reality) within the constraints of a space-time rule set, which provides the defining assumptions and physics for our interactive space-time virtual reality experience in the Physical Matter Reality consciousness evolution trainer.
Consciousness just is, while awareness ranges from very dim to very bright. Awareness collects data while intelligence is an attribute of awareness that processes, manipulates, evaluates, and interprets that collected data to produce original higher level understanding, organization or insight.
You have no massive body. Only the interactive experience of one. That virtual rock exists only in the simulation but because your body also exists in that same simulation, it can bonk you in the head and you will experience the trauma and suffer the consequences that the rule-set (science of energy transfers) computes.'  
- excerpts from My Big TOE, by Thomas W Campbell

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'To the Buddha or to the bomb'

“Scientists, therefore, are responsible for their research, not only intellectually but also morally. This responsibility has become an important issue in many of today's sciences, but especially so in physics, in which the results of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have opened up two very different paths for physicists to pursue. They may lead us - to put it in extreme terms - to the Buddha or to the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take. ” - Fritjof Capra

Image taken from mundonuevo.cl

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'A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus'

Quote by: Martin Luther king Jr.
Dave Meslin is a Toronto based artist and organizer involved in a variety of urban projects. I decided to write a post about his 'TED' talk because I felt it was similar to the issue of food and health - the public not being provided with accurate information about health and food labels, as well as the important role that the media plays in affecting our views about what healthy food really is, and how we are discouraged from being involved.

Dave Meslin believes most people don't lack interest or desire for a positive change in the world, but that the system we live in, actively discourages engagement. Our municipal government, for example, whose duty is to provide the public with local services, safety and infrastructure, discourages such behavior by failing to display accurate, visually appealing and clear information when a city project is proposed. It fails to peek the public's interest to engage in the project, by not asking to hear from the public and by providing 'unreadable' public notices - which limits understanding.

The media also plays a major role in our views and involvement towards political change. It discourages public engagement by focusing more attention on celebrities and scandals. In the media, political articles fail to provide any information, such as contact information or follow up stories, that can allow for the people to be politically involved in their community.

In the case of charities, according to the 'Charitable Purpose, Advocacy and the Income Tax Act', Section 149.1, the common law prevents charities from engaging in 'political' activities. 'Judges have reasoned that by engaging in political activity, the charity enters into debate over a policy that may or may not be a public benefit, rather than working towards an accepted public benefit.' This is seen as a serious problem because Dave Meslin feels that the most passionate and informed voices in society will remain silent, especially during election time.

Dave presents circumstances that are backed up by the law, the people and spaces that are around us, and by the way we interact with each other and the government. In order to live in a better community, you have to be actively involved. Heroism/leadership is imperfect and voluntary. It comes from within, following your own dream, uninvited, and working with those who can make your dream a reality. You can check out his TED talk here. Enjoy!

Image taken from nsb.com

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Sustainability in the City

Sustainable Suburbia is a website that shares information about living sustainably, specifically in suburban and urban environments. Sustainable Suburbia’s editor, Kirsten McCulloch, lives in the suburbs with her family and has a background in writing and editing; she has had a life long interest in living sustainably. We wanted to be a part of their 'Sustainable, Simple, Slow Living Blogs' list, so we can also share our information with others who are trying to do the same. If you have a blog of your own about living sustainably, add yourself to their list. It's a great feeling coming across others who are trying to share information about the earth's abundance of food and resources that is available to us for living a more peaceful, productive and relaxing life. There are many creative ideas out there to share, including healthy eating, so be a part of it! For information about rain collection here, in Toronto, check out this link. For compost information, click here.

photo taken from robcooper.com, click on image to check out his post on building rain barrels.

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Pyramid Power/Earth Energy

It has been suggested that the structure of the Great Pyramid's primary base-line dimension, is harmonically integrated to the earth via a 1/14400 ratio. It's latitude placement has been shown to possess a most decisive association to the Earth tropical year frequency and there is significant support for this idea. Tesla's research, on earth harmonics, greatly advanced the technologies responsible for generating and distributing power, both of great magnitude and also over great distances.

Photo taken from Discovery News.com

Dr. Patrick Flanagan believes that the five angles of a pyramid, project a beam of radiation towards the centre. Flanagan calls this amplified life-giving force "bio-cosmic energy". Scientists and interested amateurs have performed experiments with plants, seeds, metals, food and liquids inside pyramids. In every case the seeds watered with the pyramid-charged water grew faster. Patrick Flanagan verified that seeds germinated more easily and plant growth was accelerated by pyramid power. Seeds kept beneath a pyramid will produce a richer yield, and plants sprouted with pyramid power are richer in vitamins, minerals and enzymes.

Christopher Dunn, engineer and author of 'The Giza Power Plant', revealed that the great pyramid was the power plant that fuelled an advanced civilization in ancient Egypt. 

The very first power station was built by Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls. When Nikola Tesla was six years old, he entered school where he had seen his first mechanical models, including water turbines. He built many of them and enjoyed operating them. He became fascinated by a description he had read of Niagara Falls. He imagined a big wheel running by cascading waters and he told his uncle that one day he would go to America and carry out his vision to build one. In October 1893, the Niagara Falls Commission awarded Westinghouse, whom Tesla worked for, the contract to build the first two generators at Niagara Falls. Rotating magnetic fields generate AC power. In the case of Niagara Falls, it was water that powered the spinning in the rotating fields.

Photo by Sarony of New York

Nikola Tesla was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer who was not credited for many of his great inventions. Please take the time to learn about him here.

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.” - Nikola Tesla

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A Village Hero

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness." - Henry David Thoreau

When you learn about sustainability, it brings you to a higher awareness of life. To survive, we need food, shelter and water. Many people around the world are suffering because they are dependent on a system of government to take care of them. Taking responsibility for our lives in some of the worst situations is admirable. This is the story of a boy who built a windmill from junkyard scraps in order to help feed his village. His name is William Kamkwamba.

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Efficient Earthships

Earthships are sustainable homes/buildings made with recycled materials.  Earthships can be built in any part of the world, in any climate. They provide electricity, portable water, contained sewage treatment and sustainable food production. Earthship biotecture is based on the work of principal architect, Michael Reynolds. You can learn more about these sustainable homes here.

Image taken from earthship.com

Image taken from earthship.com

A tour inside an earthship (sustainable) home:

 

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