Maxim Travel Warnings, The Alex Foundation, The God Particle, Movie This Week, Never back Down, The Ruins, Nostradamus and Vision-Inducing Plants?, The Passing of Reiki Master David Jarrell, and more…

 

Reiki Master David Jarrell. I was shocked and greatly saddened to find out that my Reiki teacher, Rev. David Jarrell, has passed away in 2002.

 

I received an astonishing Reiki treatment in Connecticut from Rev. David Jarrell after attending a free lecture he gave at The Wainwright House in Rye, New York in the early 1980’s. I then took Reiki Level 1 and then Reiki 2 on Martha’s Vineyard with David in 1982. Later, when my friend Chuck Walker took Reiki 1 initiation, I returned to do a Reiki 1 “tune-up” (see photo).  I received many spiritual treatments from David over the years and would often assist David’s Reiki colleague Rev. Lois O’Brien at Connecticut hospitals.

 

David was a very powerful Reiki Master.

 

David Jarrell, a Reiki Plus® Master, born August 1946 in North Carolina, was the originator and developer of the holistic modalities Reiki Plus® Natural Healing and PSEB^sm (Physio-Spiritual Etheric Body^sm) Healing.

On the 5^th day of February 1981 David received his spiritual Initiation into the mystical energy of Reiki from the Tibetan Master directing the Reiki Ray. Later the same year, after finishing his teacher training from Reiki Master Virginia Samdahl, on the 5th day of August 1981, he was initiated by Reiki Master Barbara McCullough and subsequently by Phyllis Furumoto, the granddaughter of Hawaya Takata, becoming the 24th Reiki Master in the lineage of Hawaya Takata (Initiated by Hayashi, Initiated by Usui).

David's involvement in the healing community began in 1971 and included being the founder, director, and a Teacher of the Reiki Plus® Institute and founder and Senior Minister of the Pyramids of Light, Inc. a church of Natural Healing. David was the founding president of the Professional Holistic Practitioners of Connecticut in 1984. He also owned and managed Reiki Plus® Publications, which produces and publishes internationally sold books on the natural healing modality of Reiki Plus®.

In addition to his teaching, writing and publishing, he was a holistic practitioner. He incorporated the multi-dimensional techniques he has developed to release and heal the psycho-physical imbalanced energy carried within the persons mind, body and emotions. http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Practitioners-Manual-Second-Degree/dp/0963469010

 

Flirting With Disaster. According to March’s Maxim magazine, “Last year 6,000 U.S. citizens traveling abroad died, 9,000 went missing, and 7,000 paid visits to local prisons.” In Southeast Asia the biggest danger was arrest; Latin America, the primary danger is kidnapping; Eastern Europe it is fraud; Africa its disease and in The Middle East the danger is evildoers. The article also offers “travel tips” to avoid mishaps.

 

National Geographic. The March cover story is on animal intelligence. I sent Irene Pepperberg of Brandeis University my September 2005 TDH item on Peter, the psychic macaw. Pepperberg runs The Alex Foundation named after her African Grey parrot Alex, who died at the age of 31 in 2007. Dr. Pepperberg’s (pictured) pioneering research resulted in Alex learning elements of English speech to identify 50 different objects, 7 colors, 5 shapes, quantities up to and including 6 and a zero-like concept. The Alex Foundation Home Page

 

Macaw Peter demonstrated to me that he was self-aware. A service bird, Peter provides his owner Grant Jenks with from 2 to 5 hours notice of pending medical emergencies.

 

Grant told me that Peter enjoys The Animal Channel, understands everything, initiates conversations, plays sophisticated games, gets emotional at sad movies, irritable at violence on TV, blushes, and doesn’t get along with his pre-teen daughter. One day Grant heard Peter “arguing” with his son Ashton. What were they arguing about? Ashton found a stray cat and Peter got attached to it. They were fighting over who the cat belonged to. I walked over to Peter, who was nestled protectively on Grant’s shoulder, and whispered: “Peter, who does “Sweetie the Cat” belong to?” He said: “It’s mine.”

 

Grant told me that Peter can sense “negative” people and gets riled up when he comes within 200 feet of someone with a dark aura. Grant’s daughter told me Peter has the run of their home, is messy, and is not house-trained but was learning how to use a toilet. She also said, “Don’t get one!”

 

The Government is now working with macaws since they are found to have very complex thought patterns and will be able to read in the future.

 

The God Particle. National Geographic magazine also had a fascinating article on The God Particle. It is better known as The Higgs Boson, named after, you guessed it, Peter Higgs, the man who thought it up. It hasn’t been found yet. But that hasn’t stopped thousands of particle scientists for looking for it and getting various governments to spend five or ten billion dollars trying to find it. The cost is a closely-guarded international secret.

 

The Higgs Boson, or The God Particle, (if you want to spend someone else’s ten billion dollars building a mammoth circular tunnel, you better give it a sexy name) has not been observed experimentally. Scientists have been looking for it for over ten years. They agree, it might not even exist, but that hasn’t deterred anybody. As of February 29^th, the last major construction was completed for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and is expected to be able to confirm or deny the existence of the Higgs Boson “in most circumstances”.

 

So it’s an “iffy” proposal that might not even exist.

 

ATLAS is the largest of four major experiments being installed at the LHC, which is slated to begin early operations this summer. ATLAS will look for signs of the Higgs particle.

 

---

 

Movies I Saw This Week

 

 “Sleepwalking”

 

 

 

---

 

“10,000 B.C." "

 

 

 

---

 

 

"College Road Trip”

 

 

 

 

---

 

“Funny Games”

 

 

 

---

 

“Horton Hears a Who”

 

 

 

---

 

 

Never Back Down Opens March 14. It’s High School Fight Club. See it and discover the new, taller Tom Cruise in young Sean Faris and sexy Cam Gigandet as the homoerotic snaky villain.

 

Its gritty and not your teen dance-off. In fact, it is quite bloody and vicious.

 

Jake Tyler (Sean Faris, pictured) is a hunky, emotionally scarred teenager who, with his father recently dead and his mother valiantly trying to raise a ten year old tennis prodigy, is forced to move to sun-kissed, bikini Florida. There’s not a wheelchair in sight. Jake does not get along with his mother.

 

Jake is so good looking you are amazed he needs a YouTude video to make his reputation as a heartthrob. In this school, its one prowess as a fighter that really sets girls hearts pounding and the respect of the wealthy boys.

 

Jake was a star football player who got thrown off the field for fighting. He’s got a hair-trigger temper when anyone mentions his dead father. It’s his Pavlov Dog Moment.

 

Instead of bonding quickly with the other street fighters at the school gym, the school’s tyrant bully, Ryan (Cam Gigandet, pictured), feels threatened. His girlfriend   takes an interest in Jake, as does the out-of-shape wannabe brawler Max. Brawling Fight Club-style – this means no-holds-barred, mixed martial arts and no head gear – has gone on without a teacher or parent noticing. The entire high school population in America holds these fights, called Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), among willing teens: the categories are girl on girl, ex’s going at each other, and boy on boy. There is even a competition called “Beat An Old Lady.”  Kids are eager to be plummeted by Ryan, the kingpin of dirty-fighting.

 

Its towel-snapping time, as Ryan challenges Jake and in Rocky fashion, kicks his ass. Now Jake has got to start doing some heavy duty training.     

 

Max takes Jake to his teacher, the streaming sweat mentor  (Djimon Hounsou), who runs and lives in a dojo like Clint Eastwood did in “Million Dollar Baby.”  He’s got rules and the number one rule is: No fighting outside.

 

What elevates this from the genre (As fellow critic Jeff Howard jokes, “Let’s write the screenplay on the way to the screening.”) is the gritty photography and the charisma of Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet. While it’s not “Top Gun” homoerotic, it’s damn close.

 

CBS is bringing mixed martial arts, known as "cage fighting," to prime-time television. Once branded as barbaric, mixed martial arts, has evolved into a more mainstream sport. CBS plans to broadcast four MMA events each year as two-hour live specials airing on Saturday nights, formerly regarded as the family fare programming slot.

One of its biggest stars, the bald, bearded Kimbo Slice, has become a YouTube.com sensation for video clips showing him punching his adversaries into submission within 30 seconds. The sport remains unsanctioned in more than a dozen states.

The Ruins. I was told the book was terrifying. Lent a copy, and putting aside my “Born To Shop: China” paperback, “Cinderalla’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding”, and “Sage Spirit: Salvia Divinorum and the Entheogenic Experience”, I read “The Ruins” non-stop for a day and a half. It is sensational and is going to make a terrific and terrifying movie. Written by Scott Smith, who also wrote the screenplay, “The Ruins” is the story of two young couples on vacation in Cancun. With a fellow Greek tourist, they decide to go with another tourist, a German, to find his brother who went off with a Dutch archaeologist to her dig. Having rendered a napkin map to the ruins site, the six of them take a bus to Coba for the day to see the ruins and bring back the brother.

 

They are warned to stay away from the area by a taxi driver. The poorly drawn map leads them to a Mayan village, where the inhabitants appear hostile to the foreigners. Further searching leads them to an almost-hidden trail that they follow to the ruins. Gun, rifle, and bow-and-arrow wielding Mayan villagers force them to climb onto a large hill covered in vines and red flowers, and block their path off the hill. The situation turns increasingly horrific as they find the German’s brother’s corpse and other corpses covered in the plant.

 

The movie, starring Jonathan Tucker (pictured) and Jena Malone opens in April.

 

Nostradamus and Vision-Inducing Plants? I was listening to the History International Channel’s program “Nostradamus: 500 Years Later” when I heard something very interesting. The program states that Nostradamus spent six years studying and collecting herbs. While Nostradamus websites refuse to even address the theory that Nostradamus used consciousness-expanding plants, I am sure he stumbled upon them. How could he not?

 

According to the Nostradamus.org website: “Given that his methodology, clearly, was mainly literary, it is doubtful whether Nostradamus used any particular methods for entering a trance state, other than contemplation, meditation and incubation (i.e. ritually 'sleeping on it'). Nostradamus.org

 

Nostradamus was fleeing arrest by the Spanish Inquisition. After traveling through Italy and France for six years, Nostradamus returned home. 

 

Nostradamus would grow his own herbs and would acquire herbs from different villages which he would then use to make his own medicines. Many people came to him because of his reputation as a healer and apothecary. Yet, after the Spanish Inquisition’s interest in him and the Catholic Church’s stand against witchcraft, even as a healer he had to be careful. Healers were often accused of consorting with the devil.

 

If Nostradamus did find a magic herb or concoct his own hallucinatory potion, he wisely kept it to himself.

 

On the History Channel message board I found a thread listing all the esoteric books Nostradamus used. Someone wrote: “Nostradamus had a secret mixture of herbs, that gave him or improved his visions. Probably the most important component was the plant THYMUS SERPILLUM (serpent's timus). Nostradamus suffered from gout (and died from a kidney failure). This means he went into an increase of nitrogen derivates (as uric acid) in the blood, giving as a result brain alpha and Theta Rhythms, in the frontal areas ... perfect for having visions!”