THE BRAIN WAVES.

The brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurons, which use electricity to communicate with each other. The combination of millions of neurons sending signals at once produces an enormous amount of electrical activity of synchronized electrical pulses, being the root of all thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Our brain profile and our daily experience of the world are inseparable.
Brain waves are detected using sensitive medical equipment placed over areas of the scalp. They are divided into bandwidths to describe their functions but are best thought of as a continuous spectrum of consciousness; from slow, loud and functional -to fast, subtle, and complex.
Brain waves can be compares as musical notes -the low frequency waves are like a deeply penetrating drum beat, while the higher frequency brain waves are more like subtle high pitched flute. Like a symphony, the higher and lower frequencies link and cohere with each other through harmonics.
Brain waves change according to what we are doing and feeling. When slower brain waves are dominant we can feel tired, slow, sluggish, or dreamy. When the higher frequencies are dominant we feel wired, or hyper-alert.
When the brain waves are out of balance, there will be a corresponding problems in our emotional or neuro-physical health. Research has identified brain wave patterns associated with all sorts of emotional and neurological conditions. Over-arousal in certain brain areas are linked with anxiety disorders, sleep problems, nightmares, hyper-vigilance, impulsive behavior, anger/aggression, agitated depression, chronic nerve pain and spasticity. Under-arousal leads to some types of depression, attention deficit, chronic pain and insomnia. A combination of both is seen in cases of anxiety, depression,and ADHD.
Instabilities in brain rhythms correlate with tics, obsessive-compulsive disorder, aggressive behavior, rage, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, migraines, narcolepsy, epilepsy, sleep apnea, vertigo, anorexia / bulimia, diabetes, hypoglycemia, and explosive behavior.
Brain wave speed is measured in Hertz (cycles per second) and they are divided into bands delineating slow, moderate, and fast waves.
INFRA-LOW (< . 5Hz), also known as Slow Cortical Potentials, are thought to be the basic cortical rhythms that underlie higher brain functions. Very little is known about it but appear to take a major role in brain timing and network function. The slow nature make them difficult to detect and accurately measured.
DELTA (. 5 to 3Hz) are slow, loud brain waves (low frequency and deeply penetrating, like a drum beat). They are generated in deepest meditation and dreamless sleep. They suspend external awareness and are the source of empathy (the power to enter into emotional harmony with a work of art and so derive aesthetic satisfaction, or the power to enter into the feeling of others). Healing and regeneration are stimulated in this state, and that is why deep restorative sleep is so essential to the healing process.
THETA (3 to 8Hz) occurs most often in sleep but are also dominant in deep meditation. It acts as a gateway to learning and memory. Our senses are withdrawn from the external world and focused on signals originating from within. It is that twilight state which we normally only experience fleetingly as we wake or drift off to sleep. In Theta we are in a dream; vivid imagery, intuition, and information beyond the normal conscious awareness. It is where fears, trouble history, and nightmares are stored.
ALPHA (8 to 12Hz) are dominant during quietly flowing thoughts, and in some meditative states. It is "the power of now," being her, in the present. It is the resting state for the brain. It aids overall mental coordination, calmness, alertness, mind/body integration and learning.
BETA (12 to 38Hz) dominate our normal waking state of consciousness when attention is directed toward cognitive tasks and the outside world. It is a "fast"activity, present when we are alert, attentive, engaged in problem solving, judgment, decision making, and engaged in focused mental activity.
Beta is further divided into 3 bands: -Lo-Beta (Beta1,12-15Hz) can be thought of as a "fast idle," or musing. -Beta(Beta2, 15-22Hz) is high engagement or actively figuring something out. -High-Beta (Beta3, 22-38Hz) is highly complex thought, integrating new experiences, high anxiety, or excitement.
Continual high frequency processing is not a very efficient way to run the brain, as it takes a tremendous amount of energy.
GAMMA (38 to 42) are the fastest (high frequency, like a flute) and relate to simultaneous processing information from different brain areas. It passes information rapidly, and as the most subtle of the frequencies, the mind has to be quiet to access it. It is highly active when in states of universal love, altruism (consideration for other people without any thought of self, unselfishness), and the higher virtues. It is also above the frequency of neuronal firing, so how it is generated remains a mystery. It is speculated that Gamma rhythms modulate perception and consciousness, and that a greater presence of Gamma related to expanded consciousness and spiritual emergence.

THE SIMPLE CURE FOR DISTRACTION.

Distraction is the process of diverting the attention from the desired area of focus and thereby blocking or diminishing the reception of the desired information.
One is expected to be behind the wheel free of distractions. A cognitive psychology at the University of Utah who specializes in attention, knows that our brains are prone to mistakes, especially when we are multitasking and dodging distractions. Among other things, his research has shown is that using a cell phone impairs most drivers as much as drinking alcohol does.
External distractions include factors such as social interactions, music, text messages, and phone calls. There are also internal distractions such as hunger, fatigue, illness, worrying, and daydreaming. Both external and internal distractions contribute to the interference of focus.
Do you realize how much the market values your attention? Billions of dollars are spent each year by companies to reach your eyes, your ears, and your mind. Thoughts result in decisions, behaviors, and habits. If an advertiser can get access to your mind, he can influence you and your purchases.
To stay effective you need to stay focused. And if you valued your own attention span, you need to be more vigilant as to what you let in.
The brain is not a tireless 3 pound machine; it easily get fatigued. What modern life does to us is exhaustion. Because of that, we cease to take into account the power that our brain has in every function that it performs physically and mentally, and just we follow a circle presented to us as a way of life. We ended up feeling that we are an insulated human being just designed to perform our circle, and who has nothing in common with the rest of nature.
When we slow down, stop the busywork, and feel the power to withdraw ourselves into a beautiful and natural surroundings, not only we feel our energy restored, but our mental performance improves too. It is a kind of boost that occurs when we have been immersed into the blossom of nature long enough. It produce a difference in qualitative thinking because the brain is exposed to different and natural frequencies of light, sound, vibration, and motion. Thus, nature exercises a great influence into brain's waves and allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain's commander center, to rest from the influence of the busy city life, like an overused muscle.
The brain is not an organ rigidly hardwired. Instead the brain's circuits can, through mental experience and activity, form, inform, and reform in new ways. Nature provides natural noninvasive avenues into the brain that pass through our senses and our bodies to awaken the brain's own healing capacities.
The internal sense of individual freedom acts only when no constraint forces are present around us. Being in contact with nature reduces anger, fear, and stress, and increases pleasant feelings that not only makes you feel better emotionally, but it contributes to the physical well being, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormone.
We are genetically programmed to find trees, plants, water, and other natural elements that make us forget our discomfort with the stressful life that the city present to our brain.
Own your attention span, nature makes you forget for a moment the action of the vampires that act behind the curtains of media. Your productivity depend upon your ability to control your cognitive attention. You can't give complete and equal cognitive attention to multiple thoughts simultaneously.
And whenever possible, turn off the digital devices and distractions when you are engaged in cognitive work.
Think of your mind as if it is a bank -the place where you store such valuable items as thoughts, dreams, skills, and experience. So naturally, you need to protect it. You can live a life of full control and focus.

THE MIND IS A WORLD OF ILLUSIONS.

For a magician to fool his audience his deceit must go unseen, and to this end he crafts an illusion to avert attention from reality. While the audience is entranced, the deceptive act is committed, and for the fool, reality then becomes inexplicable built upon on a lie. That is, until the fool wakes up and recognizes the Truth in the fact that he has been duped.
However, it is more comforting to maintain the suspension of disbelief in the illusion than acknowledging the magician's secrets.
In the same way we live in a world of illusion. So many of the concerns that occupy the mind and the tasks that fill every day of our lives arise from planted impulses to become someone or something that we are not. This is not accident. We are indoctrinated into this consumer culture that now dominates the human race. We are trained to think that certain aspects of our society are untouchable truths, and because of that implantation in our thinking process, particular ways of being and behaving are preferred. It blind us with never ceasing barrages of suggestions and absolutes that are aimed at the shattering of our self-confidence and at the same time the confidence in what really is going to happen with us in the future.
Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg. When we look further we see that the overall organization of life is centered around the pursuit of illusions and automatic obedience to institutions and ideas which are not at all what they seem or pretend to be. We are in a very real sense, enslaved to an illusion of life in the material World.
Many call this an intangible feeling of oppression that comes from a system designed only to the purpose of obtain the total control of our minds, programming individuals to pattern themselves in accordance with a mainstream based on an extreme feeling of conformity with the version of reality presented to us, regardless how wicked it gets.
Law, Order, and Authority, is considered a moral obligation to many of us, and gladily we follow it, even though corruption, scandal, and wickedness repeatedly demonstrate that the law is flexible to those who has the muscle to bend it. When the law itself does not follow its nature, there is no law, there is no order, and there is no justice. It is just an illusion of it.
Prosperity and happiness is not just adorning ourselves in expensive clothes and amassing material possessions, it just is the substitute for genuine prosperity. Maintaining the illusion, though, is critical to our economy, because its foundation is built on consumption, fraud, credit, and debt. The banking system itself has been engineering to create this illusion for the benefit of a few while we are being taxed until the day we died. True prosperity is a vibrant environment and an abundance of blessings bringing thanksgiving, health, happiness, love, and good interrelationship between members of the communities. As much as people come to perceive the material goods as an illusion of wealthiness and self-identification, we will slip farther and farther away from the experience of true prosperity.
Freedom is about having choice. We are not free, because choice has come to mean a selection between available options, between the confines of a corrupt legal and taxation system and within the boundaries of culturally accepted and enforced norms. The illusion of choice and freedom is a powerful oppressor because it fools us into accepting chains and short leashes as though they represent the hallmarks of liberty.
Truth has become an illusion based on what we have been programmed to believe from the information that comes from the demigods of media, celebrity, and government. If the news declare something to be true, then we are heretics to believe otherwise.
Time is being said that represents money, but it is a lie. Time is our life in this material World. Looking beyond the 5 sense world, where we have been trained to move in accordance with the clock and calendar, we find the truth that our spirit is eternal and that each individual soul is part of this eternity.
The reinforcement of the idea that the present moment is of little or no value, that the past is something we cannot undo or forget, and the future is more important than the past and the present, carries our attention away from what is actually happening right now. Once we are completely focused on what is to come rather than what it is, we are easy prey to advertisers who muddy our vision of the future with every possible worry. Forfeiting the present moment in order to fantasize an illusion of the future is a trap.
We are happy when life does not box us in, when spontaneity and randomness gives us the chance to know more about ourselves. The immense, timeless moments of spiritual joy that are found in quiet meditation are proof that time is totally a construction of our mind as humans and not necessarily mandatory.
We are programmed to believe that as individuals we are in competition with everyone and everything around us, even mother nature, denying the truth that life on this planet is infinitely inter-connected.
Without clean air, clean water, healthy soil, and a global sense of community we are not able to survive.

ABNORMAL FEAR = CLAUSTROPHOBIA.

There are many different phobias, like fear of clowns, fear of water, and come in all kinds and afflict all people. One of the most prevalent phobias in the World today is Claustrophobia, an abnormal fear of being in enclosed or narrow places.
Claustrophobia ranges from a mildly annoying problem to something that has potential to cause a great deal of stress, anxiety, and panic.
The word 'Claustrophobia' is derived from the root Latin words 'Claustrom' ('shut in place') and phobos ('fear'). It is typically triggered by a person's fear of being trapped in a small space, room, or vehicle. This fear of confined places can include elevators, windowless rooms, airplanes, or even tight clothing.
This type of phobia is typically filed under the umbrella term of 'anxiety disorder' though it seems much more severe in comparison. It can quickly begin to degenerate the quality of life for the person that suffers from it.
The difference between an anxiety attack and one brought on specifically by claustrophobia are the ways that they recur. Anxiety attacks may not always follow a pattern but feeling claustrophobic will always be triggered by similar events. Those who suffer from the fear of small spaces will almost react to them by sweating, feeling light headed, dry mouthed, and feeling the stomach like full of butterflies. This sweating is followed by visible shaking or trembling, minor numbness in the extremities, and the possible onset of nausea. In extreme cases someone faint or get sick.
The psychological reactions of claustrophobia, in full swing, begin with panic, dread, and eventual terror. The affected person become afraid of the consequences of being in a small room, or the space around, bringing an onset of confusion and disorientation.
The very nature of this phobia makes one acutely aware of their surroundings. The fear, as a resulting consequence, constantly hovers at the edge of awareness. The fear of confined spaces does not limit itself simply to rooms. People will also feel the same anxiety when they are in vehicles that do not have an immediate exit ability, like long rides in cars, on boats, or in airplanes. Also, when they get into elevators that are typically crowded, and small, because the box triggers and outright panic attack, feeling stuck into something that can stop working and consequently being trap in it. Dealing with tunnels and caves is also an issue, as a consequence, many individuals who suffer from claustrophobia, avoid the use of transportations that goes underground.
Many phobias originate somewhere during the childhood. There, events happened that we no longer remember, but they began the slippery slide to our own personal battle of timing our wild feelings. These phobias are prepared in our soul before birth as a way to help our physical and mental bodies to recognize potentially dangerous environments and situations, considered as part of the process of evolution into an eternal existence of the spiritual essence that reside inside us.
Physically, it manifests itself pointing to the amygdala as the cause of the problem. The admigdala is the smallest structure in the brain. Despite its size it is responsible for a large number of duties including your FIGHT OR FLIGHT response.
Patients with anxiety attacks frequently has smaller amygdala. Since the affected person had a great deal of trouble to overcome their own uneasy, and traumatic effects of their anxieties at a very early stage in their lives, it lead to the abnormal evolution of the amiygdala. The amygdala learned to behave conditionally every time the individual experiences the abnormal fear.
Events in the childhood that contributes to the development of an abnormal fear are:
-Being locked in a dark room without being able to find a door.
-An almost drowning experience.
-Being lost in a large crowd and has trouble finding familiar people.
-Being left alone and locked in a tight space like cars, closets, or other vehicles.
- Receiving a medical procedure at a very young age such as the MRI machine.
There are always ways to address the depth of these feelings insisting in the relearning how to deal with their own fears. Meditation and deep breath exercises help to settle the fear. Do not expect an overnight success over it because it does not work in that way.

THE NUDITY OF THE EGYPTIANS.

The Ancient Egyptians were not ashamed of nudity, and it was customary for children and servants to be naked.
Many people were unclothed during the hot summer months, and while several items of clothing have been discovered, it is known that the Egyptians generally wore very little, and those items that were worn were simply linen garments such as wrap-around kilts, skirts, and dresses.
Linen was produced from flax plants that grew along the banks of the Nile, and used to manufacture the clothes worn by everyone, regardless of their social status.
Colored dyes such as henna and saffron began to be used during the Old Kingdom, and the weaving of colored patterns was introduced with the vertical loom in the New Kingdom, following the Hyksos invasion. At this time, it also became common for garments to be more elaborated pleated.
Aside from linen, animal-skin loincloths were worn, and following the introduction of wool-bearing sheep during the Middle Kingdom, wool was used to manufacture shawls that were worn on cold nights. Silk arrived later with the Greeks, but cotton remained unknown until later times.
Most Egyptians went barefoot much of the time, but before of the introduction of shoes during the New Kingdom, open-toed sandals, made from reeds, leather, or a combination of the two, were also worn.
Children in Ancient Egypt wore their hair shaved except for a pigtail to one side, which was known as "the side-lock of youth." Adults, meanwhile, either shaved their heads (as well as facial and body hair), or grew their hair , short for men and longer for women.
It was also customary for both sexes to wear wigs, make-up, and scented oils, which apart from enhancing the appearance and providing pleasant odors, also offered protection from the sun, sand and insects, and were also believed to have medicinal and supernatural properties.
Smells were often given religious associations, and as bad smells were associated with sin and impurity, oils and incense were used to mask body odors.
Most of the oils and incense used by the Egyptians was imported from the Middle East, and after timber, was the main reason for trade.
Various minerals were used to produce make-up, including green malachite and ground black galena, or soot, which were used to produce 'kohl' for the eyes. Red ochre or iron oxide was used to make lipstick and rouge, and nails were also painted. Hair was often dyed with henna.

ARISTOTLE AND HIS ANCIENT SURROUNDINGS.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in the City of Stag'Ira, Chalk'Icide, a small town on the Northern Coast of Greece.
His father, Nico'Machus, was court physician to the Macedonian king Amyntas II. Although he died when Aristotle was just a young boy, Aristotle remained closely afiliated with and influenced by the Macedonian Court for the rest of his life. Pro'Xenus of At'Ar'Neus, who was married to Aristotle's older sister, Ar'Imne'Ste, became his guardian until he came of age.
Little is known about his mother, Phae'Stis; she is also believed to have died when leaving the young boy without parents. When he turned 17, Pro'Xenus sent him to Athens to pursue a higher education. At the time, Athens was considered the 'academic center of the universe.' In Athens, Aritotle enrolled in Plato's Academy, Greek's premier learning institution. Aristotle maintained a relationship with Plato, himself a student of Socrates, and his academy for 2 decades. Plato died in 347BC. Because Aristotle had disagreed with some Plato's philosophical treatises, Aristotle did not inherit the position of director of the academy.
Aristotle's friend Hermias, king of At'Ar'Neus and Ass'Os in Mysia, invited Aristotle to court. During his 3-year stay in Mysia, Aristotle met and married his first wife, Pythias, Hermias' niece. Together, the couple had a daughter, Pythias, named after her mother.
Stag'Ira, the birth place of Aristotle, was an ancient city, located in Central Macedonia, near the Eastern Coast of the Peninsula of Chalk'Idice. The name given to the peninsula is taken from a group of people native to this region, the Chalcideans, since the ancient times.
The peninsula, the easternmost 'finger' of the larger Chalk'Icide, hosts the Mount Athos with its densely forested slopes reaching up to 2,033 m/6,670fr. Though land-linked, the mountain is accessible only by ferry. Mount Cholomon covers almost all of the Central and East of Chalk'Icide. It resembles a hand with 3 fingers or peninsulas: Pallene (Kassandra), Sithonia, and Agion Oros (Acte) which contains Mount Athos.
Athos in Greek mythology is the name of one of the giants, a race of great strength and aggression, though not necessarily of great size, that challenged the Greek gods during the most important spiritual struggle between them. Athos threw a massive 'rock' against Poseidon which fell in the Aegean Sea and became Mount Athos.
The surroundings seas, especially at the end of the peninsula, are very dangerous. In ancient Greek history 2 fleet disasters in the area are recorded:- In 492BC Darius, the king of Persia, lost 300 ships and 20,000 men, by a strong North Wind while attempting to round the Coast near Mount Athos.  -In 411BC the Spartans lost a fleet of 50 ships.
Stag'Ira was founded in 655BC by Ionian settlers from Andros. The peninsula was on the invasion route of Xerxes I of Persia, who spent 3 years excavating a channel across the isthmus to allow the passage of his invasion fleet in 483BC. He occupied it in 480 BC. The city later joined the Delian League, an association of Greek city-states founded in 477BC, led by Athens, but left in 424BC. As a result, the Athenian demagogue Cleon laid siege to the city in 422BC. However, Cleon was a poor strategist and his conduct on the siege was very ineficient. He was satirised by Aristophanes in the play 'The Knights.' Cleo died in the same year, in the Battle of Amphipolis. Later Stag'Ira sided with Sparta against the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War.
In 384BC, Philip II of Macedon occupied and destroyed the city. In return for Aristotle's tutoring of his son Alexander, Philip later rebuilt the city and resettled the old city's inhabitants, who had been slaved. Many new structures were built at this time, including and aqueduct, 2 shrines to Demeter, and many houses.
In 338BC, Aristotle went home to Macedonia to start tutoring King Philip II's son, the then 13-year-old Alexander the Great. Philip and Alexander both held Aristotle in high esteem and ensured that the Macedonian court generously compensated him for his work.
In 335BC, after Alexander had succeeded his father as king and conquered Athens, Aristotle went back to the city. In Athens, Plato's academy, now run by Xeno'Crates, was still the leading influence on Greek thought. With Alexander's permission, Aristotle started his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. On and off, Aristotle spent most of the remainder of his life working as a teacher, researcher, and writer at the Lyceum in Athens until the death of his former student Alexander the Great.
In the same year that Aristotle opened the Lyceum, his wife Pythias died. Soon after, Aristotle embarked in a romance with a woman named Herp'Yllis, who hailed from his hometown of Stag'Ira. She bore Aristotle children, including one son named Nico'Machus, after Aristotle's father.
In 323BC, after the sudden death of Alexander, the pro-Macedonian government was overthrown, and in light of anti-Macedonian sentiment. Aristotle was charged with impiety for his association with his former student and the Macedonian court. To avoid being prosecuted and executed, he left Athens and fled to Chalcis in the Island of Eu'Boea, where he remained until his death a year later.

THE CAROB TREE AND ITS HUMBLE PURPOSE.

The medium sized evergreen Carob tree has been in cultivation for at least 5000 years. The trees themselves are ancient having survived the last ice age and flourished throughout harsh climates and poor soils. It is now widely cultivated and well suited to dry infertile environments.
Because of its reliability as a food and fuel resource even during times of drought, the tree has been and still is a life giver continuing its long journey along the ages.
Evidence of the use of Carob products by humans date back to ancient Egypt and Greece. The ancient Egyptians used Carob to make the resinous adhesive used in mummification, and both pods and seeds have been found in Egyptian tombs. The ancient Greeks planted the seeds of this plant in Greece and Italy and was used as a source of food. Later, the Arabs planted the crop in Northern Africa, Spain and Portugal. During the Spanish Civil War and World Wars I and II, thousands of people credit their survival to the nutritious Carob pod. It is also believed that the fruit of the Carob was used to feed Mohammed's armies.
The name "Carob" comes from the Arabic "Kharoub" meaning "pod." The Greek word for "Carob" is "Keras" meaning "horn," in reference to its arc shaped pods. It is also known as "St. John's bread" and, according to the Scripture, sustained John the Baptist in the Wilderness. (Mark 1:16). Another Biblical reference to "Carob" is as the "locust bean" which tempted the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:16).
The Hebrew word for "Carob" is "Charub" and the dried fruity pods are eaten on the Jewish Holiday, Tu Bishvat.
The term "carat" is derived from the ancient practice of using the seeds from the Carob pods as a measurement of weight equal to one diamond or gemstone, because of their consistence in size and weight. It is said that the carob bean weighs a little over 200 milligrams, which is about the same weight as most small cut diamonds. Thus a diamond weighing the same as one carob bean was said to be one carat, two carob beans equals two carats, and so on. This system of measurement was used from 500 BC up until the 20th century.
The large, much branched evergreen Carob tree has a slow growing. It begins producing about 5 pounds of pods 6 to 8 years after planting and continues bearing fruit for 80 to 100 years. By the time the tree is 12 years old it produces approximately 100 pounds of bean pods per year, while older trees produce up to 250 pounds. In September and October the trees blossom and then take a further 11 months to develop thick, flat, green pods 15 to 30 centimeters in length. The flowers and clusters of bean pods are born directly from old growth twigs, branches and the trunk of the female trees. When mature the pods turn a glossy dark brown and become very hard. The curved, leathery pods contains about 10 hard seeds.
The Carob is a member of the legume family which includes such familiar plants as peas, beans, etc. But unlike most legumes, the flowers of the Carob are very small, inconspicuous and unisexual.
The pods are edible and rich in sucrose (40% plus other sugars) and protein (up to 8%), and contain vitamin A, B, and several important minerals.
The Carob has a slightly different taste than chocolate, and it has only 1/3 of the calories, compared to the ones contained in a pound of chocolate.  Yet unlike chocolate, carob is caffeine and theobromine free.The pods are ground into flour and used as a cocoa substitute. It is virtually fat-free and rich in pectin. Also the pods are non-allergenic because they do not contain oxalic acid, which interferes with the absorption of calcium.
Carob pods were the most widely used source of sugar for centuries before sugarcane and sugar beets became popular.
Carob pods now are being used as natural cocoa substitutes. The seeds yield a "gum" also known as "locust bean gum," which is used as a thickening agent, emulsifier, and stabilizer in beverages, candy, desserts, ice cream, salad dressings, cheeses, jelly, baked goods and other products.