SPIRIT IN MATTERS: Taking a Higher View of Life on Earth
By Dianne Eppler Adams

Vol. 2, No 7 – May 1, 2004
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Read newsletter online - http://www.spiritinmatters.com/SIM-v2n7-50104.htm

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FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT...

         Maintaining boundaries, not erecting barriers

The issue of healthy boundaries is frequently written and talked about. But what is meant by healthy boundaries?

You have probably seen a child at play go over and take a toy out of another child’s hand. A young child doesn’t understand what is theirs and what belongs to someone else. However, by the time that child is a teenager, taking a classmate’s walkman from his desk would be seen as stealing. We are expected to grow up and learn the boundaries of what is ours and what is not.

Personal emotional boundaries are also necessary if we are going to mature into healthy, happy people. The childhood environment we grow up in should teach us about emotional boundaries, as well as physical boundaries. Unfortunately, some of us didn’t get good training possibly because those who raised us never learned about emotional boundaries either.

If you never had the right to your own thoughts (that didn’t have to agree with a parent’s opinion), your own feelings (that weren’t rejected as silly) or some sense of personal privacy, you may not have developed healthy emotional boundaries. The result is that some of us go through our adult lives seeking validation from others, never feeling okay with our own efforts. Or we may take on the feelings of others, always trying to please and soothe others. The result is we become good at paying attention to everyone else’s life and poor at caring for ourselves.

When I woke up to the realization that I had spent much of my life valuing others above myself, I decided to pull back and become self-protective. It felt strange...like I was being self-centered or selfish and perhaps I was for a while. However, it isn’t necessary to build a barrier to others as an over reaction – but that may happen for a time.

Eventually I woke up to the fact that by taking on responsibility for others, I’d not only over-burden myself, but I had also annoyed and diminished others. In pulling back and maintaining my boundaries, I began to feel happier within myself. The needy friends I once attracted – you know the ones that feel like they drain you – were replaced with friends who gave to me through the friendship as much as I gave or more.

You have healthy boundaries when you realize that your happiness and well-being ultimately come from taking care of yourself. You have healthy boundaries when you do not feel responsible for fixing other people’s problems. But healthy boundaries also mean you don’t need to keep people out. You can share and give with ease when you have cared for yourself first.

(Your comments are always welcome at SpiritInMatters@aol.com.)
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JUST 2 SLOTS OPEN!  Consider joining us!

Treasure Your Uniqueness
Sunday, May 16, 2004 - 10-5 PM
501 Slaters Lane #422, Alexandria, VA
Limited to 6 people - $85
Call to register (703-548-4553) and provide birth data by May 10.

Through a group astrological experience, we will explore each person’s unique attributes, confirming the importance of honoring who we are, and acknowledging our vital contribution to the wholeness of life. The goal is enhanced self-love, appreciation of diversity and recognition of our unity. 
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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION...

APOCALYPSE PLEASE
US policy towards the Middle East is driven by a rarefied form of madness. It’s time we took it seriously.
By George Monbiot, The Guardian, 20th April 2004
http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=648

[Dianne: I suggest you follow the link to the whole article.]

To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.

The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fistfights" began.

... But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.

In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "Biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the Antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to earth.

What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (i.e. those who believe what THEY believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.

The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000 three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there)4, sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/European Union/France or whoever the legions of the Antichrist turn out to be.  The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts.


EVOLVING TOWARDS TELEPATHY
By George Dyorsky, Staff writer, Betterhumans
http://www.betterhumans.com/Print/article.aspx?articleID=2004-04-26-4

I recently read with great interest of researcher Chuck Jorgensen's work at NASA's Ames Research Center. It was the kind of news item that made the rounds among the cognoscenti that day, only to be forgotten the next. But it stuck with me for days afterwards.

Jorgensen and his team developed a system that captures and converts nerve signals in the vocal chords into computerized speech. It is hoped that the technology will help those who have lost the ability to speak, as well as improve interface communications for people working in spacesuits and noisy environments.

The work is similar in principle to how cochlear implants work. These implants capture acoustic information for the hearing impaired. In Jorgensen's experiment the neural signals that tell the vocal chords how to move are intercepted and rerouted. Cochlear implants do it the other way round, by converting acoustic information into neural signals that the brain can process. Both methods capitalize on the fact that neural signals provide a link to the analog environment in which we live.

As I thought further about this similarity it occurred to me that the technology required to create a technologically endowed form of telepathy is all but upon us. By combining Jorgensen's device and a cochlear implant with a radio transmitter and a fancy neural data conversion device, we could create a form of communication that bypasses the acoustic realm altogether.


A QUITE DELIBERATE FAILURE: REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICS OF CRIME
By Tim Wise, ZNET, April 01, 2004
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-04/01wise.cfm

Though it is always difficult to predict the outcome of an election in the United States, it is quite a bit easier to make accurate pronouncements about the way in which an election campaign will unfold. No matter the candidates, certain things are virtually guaranteed to happen: from nasty campaign ads that attack the personal integrity of one's opponent, to lavish spending by the major parties in order to sway the public to their candidate.

And this too: in every election cycle, one can fairly predict that the two major candidates for President will fall over themselves to prove to the voters that they are the toughest on crime; which remains one of the hottest of hot-button issues in the U.S.

Yet in truth there is little reason to believe that any candidate claiming to be tough on crime is serious. After all, they almost never seem to propose the kinds of policies that we know from the available evidence would actually reduce the incidence of criminal victimization. While politicians love to be tough on criminals, being tough on crime is an entirely different matter.

There are several problems with the anti-crime rhetoric we are likely to hear between now and the November election: among them, the reality that crime rates are much lower than believed and have dropped dramatically in recent years; the equal reality that lock-'em-up strategies favored by most politicians seeking votes are actually either ineffective or counterproductive to crime control efforts; and finally, that the only way to truly lower crime rates in the long run is to address the structural conditions that give rise to it in the first place: those "root causes" about which no one seems anxious to speak, for fear they be branded "bleeding hearts."

But in fact, without a comprehensive policy to confront glaring economic inequalities and the conditions of extreme poverty, crime will never be adequately attacked in the United States, meaning that it is the "bleeding hearts," and not the crackdown crowd, who actually hold out the best hope for a safer nation.


WOMEN MARRY MEN WHO LOOK LIKE DAD
By Shaoni Bhattacharya, New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99994928

Women tend to choose husbands who look like their fathers - even if they are adopted, reveals a new study.

The research shows that women use their dads as a template for picking a mate by a process called "sexual imprinting", says Tamas Bereczkei at the University of Pécs in Hungary and colleagues.

Husbands and wives have long been suggested to look alike and this is known to occur in many animal species. Couples that look like each other are also more likely to share common genes, and having a degree of similarity is believed to beneficial.


GOOGLE PLANS FOUNDATION TO TAKE AIM AT GLOBAL ILLS
By Brendan Intindola, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=5004852