Soul Meets World
April 17, 2009
For more late breaking engaging posts by Alexys Fairfield please visit
Moving Day
January 28, 2008
Believe it or not this was several months in the making.
After what has seemed like forever; several days, weeks, and months of reorganizing, juggling numerous tasks at once, multitasking in my sleep and waiting for the timing to be just right, I have finally moved blog sites.
Don’t worry, the contents haven’t changed, they will still contain glimpses of your Soul through everyday occurrences. And you know as hard as I have worked to make the move as easy, stress-free and palatable as possible, I think it was all worth it.
I will be importing the archives slowly because Blogger doesn’t have an importing tool to merge two blogs into one yet.
I am sure that when the painstaking task is over in a few months, Blogger will announce the debut of their new import tool. It always happens.
Anyway, without further ado, you are all cordially invited to celebrate with me at my new blog,
Please change your links and subscriptions to reflect www.soulmeetsworld.com.
Thanks to all of you for making this place a lot of fun and giving me your undying support. It was really appeciated and it also gave me a great insight into who you are and what you care about.
I hope you will all come with me to my new home.
See you there.
Read more...
The Closed Door
January 23, 2008
I live across the street from a small post office that’s off the beaten path.
Like most government buildings, it is closed on holidays and weekends. On such days, a ‘CLOSED’ sign is posted on the glass doors as big as day.
Sometimes, I’ll step out on the balcony just to get some fresh air or observe people in their natural habitat.
Like a classic film, I will always find something watchable. The life actors are already in their scenes with their lines and motivations memorized to perfection.
They don’t even know that they are performing on the stage of life.
Human beings never cease to amaze me. We are so intricately entwined in our thoughts sometimes that I don’t know how some of us get from point A to point B.
The other day the post office was closed for the Martin Luther King holiday. I saw a few people drive into the empty lot of the post office. They would get out of their car and saunter to the front door.
When it didn’t open, they would try to push the door open and then pull on the handle. Remember there is a huge sign that reads, ‘CLOSED.’
One man even started knocking on the door and yelling,
“Hello? Open the door. Hello, anybody there? I need stamps.”
He must have thought that he was giving his order at a drive-thru.
He banged on the door again and looked inside the door as if someone was hiding in there.
He reluctantly walked away ten minutes, totally bewildered and looking back every few seconds as if someone was going to open the door and say, “Surprise!”
Though the sign was in full view, he never saw it, not once. Often the signs are right in front of us and we still can’t see them. They can be as plain as day.
The signs are not relegated to pieces of paper on doors. They can be in a message; something someone says out of the blue that makes us stand back, something in a newspaper, advertisement, television, etc.
They are signs from the universe and they are tangible.
The message that we need to see or hear is often in front of us. Anyway we look at it, no matter how hard we push a closed door it won't open.
No matter how strong our desire is to open the door, it is closed. No matter how alluring the other side is, it is closed.
It is closed for a reason. We are not meant to go inside. Even if somehow we get the door open, it still may slam shut. That is a sign. There is nothing there for us anymore.
It is time for our next experience. Time to move on. Time to open another door. Another chapter. Don’t deny yourself your true destiny to walk through as many open doors as possible.Read more...
The Dream
January 21, 2008
The last post was kind of long and I didn’t want to laden you guys with too many words today, but I want to leave you with something that I hope will take hold of your Soul.
Today in America, we celebrate Martin Luther King’s holiday.
"Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy."
"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
~Martin Luther King, Jr.
Read more...
Think Or Sink
January 18, 2008
When I graduated from school, I thought that learning was over. I thought that I would never have to read another text book, hear another lecture, do another essay, do another project, pass another test or do any more homework.
Boy was I wrong. I do more out of school than I did in school because now it really matters. In fact, my work load has tripled.
I have traded my text books for life experience. Many things that are written in text books are written for memorization.
There is no reason to know half the things except to give the brain a good workout and that’s not at all bad.
I am always learning something new everyday. Sometimes I think my head is going to explode, but I know that’s just my brain archiving information, storing my internal hard drive and making more room in my library of congress.
Did you know that the muscle of the brain can bench-press incredible weight? Theories. Emotions. Memories. Sensations. Pictures. Colors. Movement. Process senses. And still have power to move everything back and forth with proficiently like a well oiled machine.
Over 80% of the brain is water, and thus an incredible synchronized swimmer doing all kinds of feats if we let it. Though the brain is the captain of the body, we are the master of our fate. We have to think or sink.
The brain lets us know that we have a Soul. When the time is right, the brain hands over the keys to the Soul so the Soul can let us continue our journey.
So many people abuse their brains with inertia, drugs, misinformation, misinterpretation, and anything that kills brain cells.
Once we reach the age of 35, we start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. Those cells will never be replaced, but we don’t have to add to that number by abusing our mind or not using it’s potential.
We need our brains in tact. If we want something in life, our brain will get us there. If we can’t get there, then our brain will work on another route and another and another until we get to where we are going.
We must think of our brain as a fire that we never want to go out. Learning something new everyday keeps logs in the fire. Learning doesn’t stop at reading, writing or stretching our brain to it’s maximum, it never stops.
Though it starts with our brain, it doesn’t end there. Learning how to experience life to it's fullest and leaving people with love is what its all about.
Our brain needs five basic foods to survive; oxygen, a balanced and nutritious diet, new and varied knowledge, affection and love.
When we feed our brain, our life will be full.
More Brain Trivia
People who ride on roller coasters have a higher chance of having a blood clot in the brain.
The human brain has about 100 billion neurons.
Unconsciousness will occur after 8-10 seconds after loss of blood supply to the brain.
There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves and 31 pairs of spinal nerves.
There are about 13,500,00 neurons in the human spinal cord.
A human brain generates more electrical impulses in a single day than all of the world's telephones put together.
Our bodies are recreating themselves constantly - we make a skeleton every 3 months, new skin every month.
We are capable of reversing the aging process. We have a a whole pharmacy within us. We can create any drug inside us.
The brain cannot process a negative command or statement? If you say to your child "be careful, don't spill your milk," as they carry the glass of milk across the kitchen, the child has to actually think of spilling the milk so that it can take the necessary action not to do it. We tend to get what we focus on, so by the child thinking of spilling milk that is what happens. So ask for what you want, not for what you don't want.
One of the biggest destroyers of memory is stress. When you are stressed you release high levels of cortisol into your bloodstream. One of the ways that cortisol affects you is that it destroys glucose - the brain's only source of food. So if your brain is not getting the nutrients it needs then it will not function as well.
All the literature that has ever been written in the modern English language consists of patterns of only 26 letters.
All the paintings ever made are patterns of only three primary colors.
All the music ever written consists of patterns of no more than 12 notes.
All the arithmetical expressions we know consists of only 10 symbols.
And for the vast computations of digital computers, everything is made up of patterns of only two components.
So whenever we speak of something as being "new," we are really talking about original patterns of already existing components.
On average we remember, 20% of what we read, 30% of what we hear, 40% of what we see, 50% of what we say, 60% of what we do, and 90% of what we see, hear, say and do.
The eyes can take in information in one five hundredth (1/500th) of a second. That means that if you read one word at a time you can read 500 in a second which gives you a reading speed of 30,000 words a minute! Now it is not quite as simple as that but whatever speed you are reading at now, you can do it much, much faster.
If you take a Cray Computer (one of the largest computers in the world) and measure its wiring, it has about 60,000 miles in total. If you take the brain and look at it in those terms, it has over 200,000 miles of wiring!
The brain is about the size of two clenched fists and weighs about 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms) and contains 1000 trillion trillion (yes trillion twice) protein molecules.
Baroque music (mainly composed 1700-1750) produces exactly the right frequency and sound to harmonize the functioning of the brain and produce a state of calm relaxed alertness. That is why accelerated learning techniques introduce music into the learning process.
When we create a memory, a pathway is created between our brain cells. It is like clearing a path through a dense forest. The first time that we do it, we have to fight our way through the undergrowth. If we don't travel that path again, very quickly it will become overgrown and we may not even realize that you have been down that path.
Successive journeys down that path mean that eventually our track will turn into a footpath, which will turn into a lane, which will turn into a road, and into a motor way and so on. It is the same with your memory: the more times that we repeat patterns of thought when learning new information, the more likely we will be able to recall that information. So repetition is a key part of learning.
It is only in the last 500 years or so that mankind has realized that the brain was located in the skull. Previously, it was thought that the brain was located in near the heart and stomach because that was where direct experience of the physical manifestation of mental activity was felt.
Usually there are no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes, a 2005 University of California, Irvine study has found significant differences in brain areas conducive to how men and women manifest their intelligence.
Different types of brain designs are capable of producing equivalent intellectual performances. The study shows that women possess more white matter, while men have more gray matter related to intellectual skill; revealing that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence.
Men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.
A 2005 University of Southern California study has found the first proof of structural brain abnormalities in people who habitually lie, cheat and manipulate others.
While previous research has shown that there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behavior – when normal people lie, this is the first study to provide evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.
Pathological liars can't always tell truth from falsehood and contradict themselves. They are manipulative, brazen and admit that they prey on people.
Aside from having histories of conning others or using aliases, the habitual liars also admitted to malingering, or telling falsehoods to obtain sickness benefits.
Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging to explore structural brain differences, the liars had significantly more "white matter" and slightly less "gray matter" than those they were measured against. More white matter – the wiring in the brain – may provide liars with the tools necessary to master the complex art of deceit.
Pathological liars have have highly verbal skills and are able to understand the mindset of the other person, while suppressing their own emotions to pull it off manipulation.
Though we lose brain cells from aging, even the aging brain is capable of generating new cells (neurogenesis.) This capacity for neurogenesis, when combined with the brain's proven ability to change its structure and function in response to external stimuli, leads to the significant finding that cognitive function can be improved at virtually any stage in life.
Improving your cognitive function increases your ability to; process information; quickly; complete more decision cycles per fixed unit of time; perform multiple tasks simultaneously (multi-tasking); retrieve old information more rapidly; learn new information more easily; concentrate in the presence of distractions; faster physical reflexes and sharper visual discrimination (the messages sent from our eyes are interpreted and assembled by the region of the brain called the visual cortex.)
Cherish your cognitive abilities by having a good diet and exercise habits to reduce the likelihood that you'll develop high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, all of which can decrease blood flow to your brain.
Using tobacco products generates free radicals that impair the message transfer process (neuron to neuron) within the brain. Abuse of alcohol not only impairs the message transfer process in the same manner as smoking, but also causes the destruction of brain cells.
Stress causes your body to pump out increased levels of the hormone cortisol. Excessive cortisol levels can lead to the destruction of neurons in the hippocampus (the learning and memory center of the brain.)
Recent studies have shown that there is a targeted and effective way to improve your brain processing speed - the use of highly interactive mental challenges called Elementary Cognitive Tasks (ECT.)
These ECTs, also known as Brain Speed Training Exercises, provide a vigorous brain workout by isolating the specific region of the brain that you are exercising.
By pushing yourself to respond as rapidly as you can to the random stimuli contained in the exercise, you increase the delivery of oxygen, blood flow, and various critical amino acids to that particular brain region. The end result is more neurons, more neural connections and increased brain processing speed.
Interesting suff isn't it? Have a braingasmic weekend everyone.
Learn something, do something great, make a memory that will last a lifetime. Read more...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)