The Rhythm of Biodynamic Farming

Biodynamic farming is a healthy and natural approach to farming that does not use pesticides. It focuses on the basic principles of nature - which is organic and self sufficient - to produce nutritious high quality foods. The "founder" of biodynamic farming was Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), a highly trained scientist and respected philosopher of his time. He was the first to expose the dangers of synthetic fertilizers, which were just appearing in his time. His perspective of farming was seeing it as "a single, self-sustaining organism that thrives through biodiversity, the integration of crops and livestock and the creation of a closed-loop system of fertility."

Rudolf was able to recognize the importance of the healthy interplay of cosmic and earthly influences. The cycle of the Earth is carried out in relation to the cosmos, in a kind of in-breathing and out-breathing. It has a daily exhalation in the morning and the daily inhalation in the evening. Biodynamic farmers spray preparation 500 (cow horn manure), which promotes reproduction and growth, root movement, soil stimulation and micro bacterial life. It also helps germinate seeds and regulates lime and nitrogen content in the late afternoon or evening during the "in breath", while some preparations and agricultural tasks are performed in the morning to compliment the "out breath".

Biodynamic agriculture, is needed at a time when it is well known that pesticides are harmful to our soil and food (ultimately our health). Farmers would be wise to put it into practice because of it's healthy self sustaining methods, which uses the earth's energy and focuses on the basic principles of nature. We are aware of the moon, the sun and the rotation of the earth playing a part in high tides. But earth rythyms as well as cosmic solar & lunar/moon rhythms are rhythms that sustain all life on Earth. Some feel we should value biodynamic farming's self sustaining methods as science and I agree.

There is a small percentage of farmers who currently use biodynamic farming methods. John Chester, a filmmaker-turned-farmer in Moorpark, is one of them. He focuses on biodynamic, or biomimicry, in which every aspect of the farm works in sync, feeding off of one another and using nature as a guide on what to do, and what not to do. His farm is surrounded by sheep, cattle, pigs, roosters, dogs, birds, and horses. He uses the animals to keep their lawns manicured and get an endless supply of manure. You can't get more simple and self sufficient than that. Learn more. Check out the links below and share with others!

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." - Albert Einstein

Image above taken from http://www.earthhaven.ca/

https://www.biodynamics.com/what-is-biodynamics
https://www.organicconsumers.org/categories/biodynamics
http://lexiconofsustainability.com/biodynamics/
http://www.quantumagriculture.com/node/257
http://www.windows2universe.org/sun/effect_on_earth.html
http://www.biodynamics.in/Rhythm.htm
http://www.agroliving.com/2014/04/29/biodynamic-cycles-the-in-and-out-breath-of-the-planet-earth/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eshachhabra/2016/02/24/why-one-farm-startup-is-filming-their-biodynamic-story-for-oprahs-own/#5c339a327ddc
https://biomimicry.org/what-is-biomimicry/#.VvLZuWQrJFQ Pin It

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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"Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened"

Quote by Anatole France
Ever notice how unhappy some of the zoo animals look? And why are some dying of cancer - that would be impossible in the wild. In the zoo they are fed and exposed to the same toxins that society is exposed to, causing cancer. It's definitely an eye opener. I know the zoo keepers are trying to help these animals but we have to rethink all our practices now that we are aware of the toxins in our air and food.

"Zoos represent an ethical dilemma, which each reader must resolve to the best of his or her individual ability. Zoological collections now assert that they serve an essential conservation role. Others dispute this, not least upon the grounds that animals in the wild outlive their captive counterparts. Whatever the rights and wrongs of keeping animals in zoos, the inmates can fall prey to disease and, when they do, they then require and deserve the best treatment available." - excerpt from http://www.alternativevet.org/zoo_animals.htm

"The modern zoos we know today are a far cry from those of the past but despite all that we have learned and all that has changed, AZA-accredited institutions are still keeping many of their animals in incredibly unnatural habitats with minimal space and minimal enrichment leading to a number of abnormal behaviours. - excerpt from http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/zoos-bringing-endangered-species-back-from-the-brink/

I loved going to the zoo to see the animals. I've seen elephants up close, but it's not worth seeing if they are unhappy and medicated half the time. Samantha, a 37-year-old Western Lowland Gorilla, was the eldest female at the Toronto Zoo. She died of a stroke. Strokes are not common among gorillas, yet three female gorillas have had strokes in North America in the past few years.
Read more about Samantha here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/gorilla-dies-at-toronto-zoo/article4388880/

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Negative Beliefs

Negative beliefs or negative energy that disassociates, segregates, compartmentalizes, rigidities and separates needs a larger bag of tricks to sustain itself. And so, it will go from an expanding circular structure that is positive and fluid, to the rigid crystallized non expanding structure. It will then contain several compartments, several bags of tricks that is uses to reinforce itself to make it seem like it's the thing you must keep choosing over and over again.
You have to recognize what those tricks are and then by recognizing them, by identifying them, catch yourself so that you are not then simply succumbing to the rationale that you have to keep creating and choosing to create that belief over and over again.
The positive and negative definition, both containing a perpetuation mechanism, also always brings with it the freedom to choose. It always allows you the ability to know you can change the belief. But when you operate from fear based beliefs, it is automatically keying into what you call your survival instinct. So one of the first differences that becomes evident between the positive and negative belief system, is that a negative belief (a fear based belief) locks into your survival instinct, your physical survival instinct, in such a manner as to first perpetuate the idea that if you don't follow this belief, if you don't perpetuate this belief, you will die. So it relies heavily on tricking you into believing that if you change that belief, there will be nothing left of you. That the belief is all consuming, that the belief is all representative of your true self and that if you change it, what you're doing is committing suicide.
The second thing that automatically happens, when that mechanism is engaged, when you flip into that idea of a negative fear based belief, is that it makes it seem as if it is not possible to change it. As if it simply doesn't have the ability to be changed and it traps you into a vicious circle. - Excerpt edited from 'Brick Walls Beliefs' video with Bashar

Fear based organizations and truth (related post)

image taken from: https://martysspiritualmanifesto.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/the-mechanism-of-beliefs/

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'To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light"

"To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle." - “Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology” (1959) Carl Jung

"We carry our past with us, to wit, the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden. If it comes to a neurosis, we invariably have to deal with a considerably intensified shadow. And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together." - “Answer to Job” (1952) Carl Jung

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'Red sky at night, sailors' delight'

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Photos from Wednesday night (balcony view) Enjoy!

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Sunday At The Lakeshore

"The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship." – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The weather has finally gotten warmer in the last couple days. I took a little trip down to Port Credit Lakeshore with a friend. Enjoy the pics below!

 

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How do we see ourselves?

Suffering that exists in this world is not something that we must go though. But as it is there, one must understand it and go beyond it. A mind that is incapable of suffering is religious in the true sense of the word. It becomes a passionate mind. A mind that is hurt, is not an innocent mind. An innocent mind is incapable of being hurt. From Latin innocent meaning 'not harming'. But the word has been misused.
From childhood, parents compare their child with another child. When we compare, we are hurting our child, yet we do it! Is it possible to educate a child without comparison, without images, so the child can never be hurt in that way? One is hurt because one has built an image about oneself. It's like placing a wall between you and others and if others extend upon that wall, you get hurt. A child can identify with a name, it does not need an image. Through education, through tradition, through propaganda, we have built an image of ourselves based on what others say. Can a child ever be educated to never get hurt? Professors and scholars say, a child must get hurt in order to live on the world. But when they are asked if they ever want their child to get hurt, they are silent.
Through education and the social structure of our society in which we live, we have been hurt. We have images about ourselves, made by comparison, which are inevitably going to be hurt. Is it possible to be rid of the image that has been created of ourselves and never to create one again?

Our higher mind is free of images and conditioning. Imagination is the key in the alignment of our physical and higher mind. It cannot be hurt. 'I' 'magi' 'nation' - we are a nation of magicians. Imagination is a powerful tool that can be used to allow and create the changes we prefer to create within our lives individually and/or collectively, globally.
Our imagination is the conduit between our physical and higher mind, through which our higher mind communicates with us in ways which are more reflective of our passion, our excitement and preference. If you are willing to use your imagination without filtering the communication from your higher mind through belief systems that contain fear (such as the image of ourselves placed by others of who we are and what our limited capabilities are), then you will find that the outcome can always be a positive one and you can always amplify and magnify that in any direction and area of your life. The higher mind can see all the pathways or possibilities we can take in life and it guides you towards the path of least resistance - the path that is most truly you. By following your excitement and true passion, you will always be completely and purely on the path that is most truly you - your core true natural self.
- excerpts from 2 videos, one with Jiddu Krishnamurti and the other on Imagination by Bashar. (see links below)
Video sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I54SH0IbpzQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM-FDqWkuAw

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We’ve been bamboozled long enough

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” - Carl Sagan

 Corporations will put the profit margin and will put making money from billionaires, over the lives and the quality of life of foreign citizens. And I don't think it's crazy for people to fight against that. In fact, you resemble the greatest amount of spirit that any American has ever had who fought for his rights and his dignity. It's ironic that here, in this country, the profit margin is put before people's lives, even in the food that we eat. GMOs (corporations) don't want their foods labeled. If you're so proud of it why don't you put your seal of approval on it? People are making too much money off this stage of evolution (capitalism), to stop and get off it and take us to the next level.
If we're still here in 100 years, then we've basically put the nail on the coffin for humanity, to the point where we can't speak about healthy food without being persecuted by the companies who sell food that is bad for you. They're making too much money selling processed stuff (that is going to be proven to give people cancer) in order to stop and be taken off the market."- Immortal Technique

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Your Heart Has Wisdom

'It doesn't need to be more complicated than just listening to your heart and following it. Because your heart has memory. Your heart has wisdom. Your heart has consciousness. Your heart actually thinks. And when you can develop a balanced dialogue between the heart mind and the head mind, that's when everything falls into alignment. The head needs to take it's queue from the heart, not contradict it and try to run everything… the heart is in the center of your being for a reason, not the head.' - Bashar

image by Gabriela © 2014

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