Here is a very touching demonstration of how words are our friends.

The shakuhachi is a Japanese end-blown flute. It is traditionally made of bamboo, but versions now exist in ABS and hardwoods. It was used by the monks of the Fuke school of Zen Buddhism in the practice of suizen (blowing meditation). Its soulful sound made it popular in 1980s pop music in the English-speaking world. However, it is a very soothing sound that is perfect for meditation and stilling the mind.

From wikipedia.

Humans Trailer from Simon Sticker/ Flow Media on Vimeo.

This video is a Webby Award winner. Amnesty International supporters have used the power of words to demand freedom and justice for countless human rights defenders around the world. Our words are proof that when you stand up for human rights, you never stand alone.

When Vilele and his brothers lost both their mother and father to AIDS, they became what is commonly described as a “child headed household”. There are an estimated twelve million orphaned children like them living in Sub Saharan Africa.

Since their first encounter 2007, the SING Campaign has followed their story. And with help from SING and the Treatment Action Campaign, their lives have been been supported and changed for the better.

Watch the full story here.

One thing that stood out about little Vilele was his extraordinary talent for dancing. At the time this film clip was made, he was only four years old.

Someone very near to me once said that if I ever became bored, then I was probably not paying attention. I cannot say I’ve experienced boredom anytime recently. I’ve noticed that as time goes on, the opportunity to deepen one’s experience grows significantly; you notice things that were always there before but you missed them. (Somewhere hidden, in the dark, are the winning lottery numbers). The trees lining the streets down the block are different every time you see them, if only you take the time to look. Every day is a new canvas.

At no time in my life was this more apparent than my work with spiritual healers. I spent several years traveling with indigenous medicine men and healers. What began as a simple curiosity grew into a fulltime in-depth, independent study into the actual phenomenon of spiritual healing. I found myself playing the often conflicting roles of: skeptic, documentarian, guinea pig, and intentional eternal student, to name a few. There were contradictions everywhere I looked. And just when I thought I would walk away because it wasn’t “real,” something would happen to keep me there: like the blind woman who walked away seeing again, difficult as it was to believe. I loved that moment.

There were others, too. Perhaps the most memorable was a very spright 90-something Japanese woman with bouffant hair and a tiny poodle. She survived two husbands and a son, who died at age 9. Her most compelling story was about life in the Japanese internment camps in WWII. Listening to this very sweet woman tell her story made me want to demand an explanation of how anyone could hold her in captivity of any kind.

To be sure, there was unintentional humor along the way. I once met an older woman taxi driver with a very hoarse voice who drove up in a big yellow taxi covered in religious bumper stickers. They weren’t stickers on a taxi. It was little bits of her taxicab, peering through her own private sticker world. Contrasting her rough-around-the-edges feel was her very polite, quiet, selfless young gardener friend; the tailgate on his Ford truck read, simply, “L O R D”. Just when it couldn’t possibly get any stranger, a young beachcomber drove up in a beat up Toyota with the T-O-T-and-A painted out so it simply read, “YO”.

Perhaps one of the rarest of finds was a tiny fuzzy haired New Yorker woman who was a sanyasin – she even lived at the “ranch” in Oregon where her Indian guru, Osho, led an entire community of her fellow sanyasins. Just like her, all of her friends had Sanskrit names. Looking at the menu at an Indian restaurant, she smiled mischievously and said, “Oh, these are my friends’ names!” She had a habit of wearing giant homemade dinosaur slippers (they looked like dinosaur feet) to business meetings, even showing up at my doorstep wearing them. They may have been longer than she was tall.

What did it mean? Read the rest of this entry »

As the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico takes its place as the largest ecological disaster in US history, the brown pelican, state bird of Louisiana, is emerging as both its symbol and a hearbreaking reminder of how innocent wildlife often quietly pays the ultimate price for human mistakes.

Forming a silent backdrop to this story that is unfolding before our eyes on our television screens, these innocent creatures are left to die save a handful of organizations and agencies working to clean them up and reintroduce them into wetlands off the coast of Florida. Yet for every one that lives, there are countless more who perish.

I am inspired by the small gestures of kindness by unexpected philanthropists, like Olivia Bouler of Long Island, New York, an 11-year old girl who decided to do her part by selling her paintings of birds to raise money to help this cause – and she raised $100,000! [see video below]

Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research

A pioneering organization called Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research is leading the wildlife rescue efforts in the Gulf of Mexico, working in tandem with volunteers and other organizations such as the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to manage the rehabilitation of oiled wildlife who are on the verge of dying, with little or no change of surviving. These amazing volunteers are doing this brilliantly, and out of the kindness of their hearts, without asking for media exposure or instant gratification.

Therefore please join me in my efforts to help this organization to generate much needed awareness and monetary donation, in order to accomplish their goal of saving our ecosystem and making a difference on the planet.

I have decided to donate a percentage of my one-on-one consultations to this organization. I would be glad to include your name as one of the donors if you wish. Please go to my site www.januaryproject.com to schedule a reading. I will keep everyone posted on the amount of money we donate on a regular basis. Thank you.

It’s been said that we fall from “childhood grace”…that is to say we let life kick us down and then we get too serious, thereby limiting ourselves.  We start out believing anything is possible: the mermaid lives in a castle by the sea, the one we made in the sand on a cheerful sunny summer day. And we can fly, oh yes.   Every little red wagon is an airplane and we are the Red Barron, even if only for a fleeting moment.  After all, it says FLYER on the side.  No one has to doubt the signs.  It works fine just the same, on your way down the sliding board runway to the cheering crowd below. 

We have to keep dreaming, for it is in our thoughts that we begin things, and in our dreams that we plant the seeds.  If we can dream it, then we can live it.  Sometimes it comes down to quieting the “noise” that we have allowed to dilute our otherwise fertile minds, i.e. our “childhood grace”.

Here are some of our automatic friends, proving the point, through music. If your day brings you down, revisit this post and remember who you are!

(1) 9 year old girl sings "God Bless The Child". (2) 10 year old Jordan playing classical piano. (3) 8 year old virtuoso violinist plays Kreisler. (4) 5 year old Takuma’s second piano recital. (5) 7 year old boy plays Chopin – Fantasie impromptu Op.66   (6) 8 year old boy plays Bach – partita in C minor.  (7) 8 year old Rachel plays Ravel: Sonatine, Movement III. (8) Young guitarist plays Duke Ellington. (9) Child jazz trio, Japan. 

I am not defined without you. We are all in this together. Just as there is no night without the day, no light without the darkness… We need one another, for hope, for gratitude…for our own individual identity. We must see that the solutions available to the problems facing us are all bound up in one humankind. This is the message of the beautifully done documentary film, “I Am Because We Are”.

You can learn more at www.iambecauseweare.com. There you will find a link to watch the entire film.

Please watch it today. You will be so glad you did. Tell your friends about it. And leave your comments here for others to see.

Medical Animator David Bolinsky has created a breathtakingly beautiful depiction of the internalized view of a cell. The result has been set to music.

View the animation

More on David Bolinksy’s work