Soul's Code

The pscyhe of the world’s solo superpower not only boasts a ‘Morning in America’ ethos but a persistent streak of pessimism.

May 21, 2011 doomsday mania: A fundamentalist chain of bible-thumping radio stations taps into fears of the Apocalypse and the Big One

Doomsday church rolling in dough: Oakland, CA-based “Family Radio has received $80 million in donations

Moral of U.S. Marines plummets: According to a U.S. Army report released this week, 1 in 5 troops in Afghanistan suffer from acute stress, depression or other psychological disorder

Joseph S. Nye on American power after bin Laden: “Cultural pessimism is very American, extending back to the country’s Puritan roots.”

State of American mental health; women in politics; Bible school blunder; inhumane farming on Thanksgiving platters

Drudge discovers that 1 in 5 Americans are mentally ill: Diseases of the mind contribute to risk of unemployment, substance abuse and suicide

Soul’s Code “broke” the story two years ago: The latest research says fully one-fifth of all of us in the U.S. will suffer clinical depression at some point in our lives. Today’s cocktail of scioeconomic triggers could lead to depression in record numbers

Piety or delusion? A man who fell off a cliff in his SUV is suing his Bible school drinking buddies for praying instead of calling police.

No friends in high places: Why so few women in politics? For one thing they’re not mean enough.

Pretty Shaman: The spiritual facets of recent Hindu convert Julia Roberts.

The high cost of cheap turkey: The founder of Niman Ranch explains how inhumane farming, lax enforcement of environmental laws, and tax subsidies make the birds inexpensive.

A Stanford University neuroscientist and meditation instructor talks about the transformative power of Buddhism and why happiness is a trainable skill

Dr. Philippe Goldin, a psychologist who heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience Group at Stanford University, runs a National Institutes of Health-funded lab that studies adults with social anxiety disorder, and offers training in mindfulness meditation.

We caught up with Dr. Goldin, who spent six years in India and Nepal studying various languages and Buddhist philosophy.

Soul’s Code: What’s the appeal of Buddhism for you?

GOLDIN: Androgyny. The goal— the ultimate goal — of mental development is to become completely inclusive of all qualities, and I thought that was incredible . . .

Making Your Mind Your Friend: Reclaiming Your Personal Power

Saturday, April 24th 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Jack London Aquatic Center, Oakland, CA

Soul’s Code’s has celebrated the notion of female mystics, and how spiritual teachers who are women have emerged at the forefront of a pursuit that has been male-dominated since the Old Testament prophets. Okay . . . since the Buddha.

Here, two of the most prolific contributors on Soul’s Code, appear together at the same time and place.  Vaishali and Phyllis will teach you how to:

• Become fully aware of your life purpose
• Identify your ego-based dialog, and how it affects your abundance
• Receive readings from these experts on enlightenment on your most pressing questions
• De-oxidize your thought-patterns and recycle your psyche to a fresh start

Go to:  Vaishali and this event, and Phyllis, the common-sense psychic

Princeton hosts virtual “noosphere”; parallel universes and the “multiverse”; physicist Michio Kaku on the final season of LOST

An intriguing site at Einstein’s alma matter uses web nodes to illustrate: The Nature of Global Consciousness

Soul’s Code on Jesuit archeologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the meaning of his noosphere: “A history of consciousness, and how to live in presence”

The next What the Bleep do we Know? New science on YouTube

What is a parallel universe? Cosmologists dish to the BBC

The science behind LOST, Season 6: “the show is now diving head-first into multiverse theory” – physicist Michio Kaku

Why this existential edition of Spiritual Surf is good for you: “Talk deeply, be happy” - new study in the journal of Psychological Science

A doctor of life coaching for women discovers the art of letting go

GUEST COLUMN: DR. JEANINE AUSTIN — Part of my job as the Department Head of Social Services when I worked for a skilled nursing facility was to have regular client contact. One morning, I stopped by to see how Mr. and Mrs. Carol (not their real names) were doing.

As soon as I stepped in the room I felt I was entering into a combat zone.  The couple was sparring loudly about which television program they were going to watch:  People’s Court or Sally Jesse Raphael.

Not five seconds into the debate,  I watched in horror as a cup of hot tea, launched by Mr. Carol, flew past my head, only narrowly missing Mrs. Carol, his bride of more than 60 years.

All Souls’ Day

Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics this week celebrate the “Commemoration of the Faithful Departed” or “All Souls’ Day” (November 2). Prayerful attention is paid to the souls of the departed going through a purification (or purging) of past sins in Purgatory. Popular in Mexico as El Dia de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), families gather in cemeteries to pray for deceased friends and families.  A more macabre remembrance of the dead occurred last week: a member of 1 Mind Ministries has refused to plea guilty to starving a one year old boy to death because he refused to say “amen” after his meals.

During the last week of May, the most popular (emailed) article among online readers of the New York Times was a feature-length story debating the utility of meditation called, Lotus Therapy.

If you read sites like Soul’s Code, and others that we point to, about the only thing you’ll learn from it will be data points like:

The National Institutes of Health is financing more than 50 studies testing mindfulness techniques, up from 3 in 2000, to help relieve stress, soothe addictive cravings, improve attention, lift despair and reduce hot flashes.

If you embrace the New York Times as the free world’s newspaper of record, the other thing you might realize is the degree to which the mainstream media has embraced a reductionist, Cartesian view of reality — and how far behind they are. These guys make Oprah look like the Dalai Lama!

Researchers that once commercialized software to help kids overcome learning disorders have tackled an even bigger business: a homeopathic way of beating brain problems.

According to a recent story in Portfolio.com, a company called Posit Science “…hopes to develop programs that will tackle a wide array of problems previously treated with traditional medicine, ranging from traumatic brain injuries to neurological disorders like Parkinson’s to acquired movement disorders to pathological aging-even schizophrenia.“

What kind of software could one develop to stimulate spirituality or train the brain to be happy?

Are some actors a bit too convincingly psychopathic? Maybe they’ve studied with Robert Hare

Congratulations to Soul’s Code friend Robert Hare, whose work on psychopathy was highlighted in the penultimate episode of The Sopranos. It aired on Sunday, June 3,  and won the love of reviewers because its tightly-wound narrative resembled Act III of a Godfather movie.

The high point for us was not the shootout in the parking lot of the Bada Bing, witnessed by topless strippers. It was a dinner table conversation where Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist, Jennifer Melfi (the character standing in the top right of the image above), discusses studies into psychopathy with other psychs. Hare’s work is debated, and it becomes a catalyst for Melfi firing Tony as a patient in a later scene. The dramatic turn helps the series wind down in two ways: it exits a major character, and enables the audience to decathect from Tony by explicitly framing him as a clinical sociopath/psychopath.

At the dinner table, one of the doctors exclaims to Melfi: “Robert Hare suggested that sociopaths actually quite glibly engage on key issues like ‘mother,’ ‘family’ . . . .”

Hare’s book, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, delves into white-collar sociopaths as well as the criminal kind.