YouTube – NAKED BAR REFAELI.

via Ed and Deb Shapiro: Dinner With Monica Lewinsky — 6 Reasons To Forgive Yourself.

Holding on to past guilt or shame hurts us, not anyone else, and it doesn’t change what happened one iota. As we thought about this, so six different reasons to forgive ourselves came to mind.

1. We are not who we were yesterday
Within the space of seven years every cell in our body dies and is reformed, our thoughts are constantly changing and our feelings come and go. We are literally not the same person we were a minute ago, let alone a day, a month or a year ago. As we are no longer who we were when we did the deed, so we can bring forgiveness and hold our past self with kindness and compassion.

2. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting
Inside us is the equivalent of an airplane’s black box: everything we have been through is logged in, whether we are aware of it or not. So forgetting something is not really an option. No matter how hard we try, it will always be lurking around the corner, waiting to drag our emotions down again. On the other hand, forgiveness accepts the presence of the dreaded deed, it looks it full in the face and says, ‘Yes, I know you. Now let’s have tea together and get to know each other a bit better.’

3. We can learn so much from our mistakes
By getting to know who we were we have the chance to learn from what we did. We can become our own greatest teacher by seeing how mistaken we can be, even when we fully believe we are right. Mistakes show us we are human. If we do not acknowledge our blunders then we are not only blind to our own failings, but we are also much more likely to repeat them.

4. I am ok but I don’t always get it right
Forgiving ourselves is not the same as forgiving what we did. A bad or rotten act is just that, and no amount of forgiveness will change it. But nor does constantly blaming ourselves. For instance, Monica made some obvious mistakes – but to continually blame herself will get her nowhere fast. What we can do is to really accept what we did while forgiving that part of us that was unaware of what we were doing or how it would impact other people; the part that just doesn’t always get it right.

5. Accepting ourselves, warts and all
When we do something wrong or hurtful we tend to beat ourselves up, to try to find redemption through shame, remorse, and even self-hatred. “I am such an idiot,” “My stupidity ruined everything,” “I am a hopeless human being.” Forgiving ourselves is the opposite. It is a radical acceptance of ourselves just as we are, mistakes and all, so that we can know ourselves more deeply and honestly. And because, in the long run, it is only through such self-acceptance that we are free to love and laugh again. Remember: Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly!
6. Letting go of the drama queen
This is one of the hardest things to do, but holding onto the story and the details of that happened is actually like a smokescreen that clouds our mind and stops us from seeing that we are more than the event, that whatever we did is not the whole of us. We can put the story down. We do not have to hold on to it, or keep repeating it in our minds. We can say: “I made a mistake, but I am not the guilt, I am not the mistake, I am not the failure, it is not the whole of me.”

Hey check this out.  Are we all connected or what?

Global Consciousness Project — consciousness, group consciousness, mind

The Global Consciousness Project, also called the EGG Project, is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others. We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites around the world. The archive contains more than 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second.

Our purpose is to examine subtle correlations that may reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We predict structure in what should be random data, associated with major global events. When millions of us share intentions and emotions the GCP/EGG network shows small but meaningful differences from expectation.

This suggests that large scale group consciousness has effects in the physical world. We need to know about this, and learn to use our full capacities for creative movement toward a conscious future.

This here is the real deal folks, outa Princeton University.  This, below is from their bottom line page.  Check it out!

Graph of Accumulating Deviations: The Complete 10-Year Formal Database

This figure represents the history of our formal hypothesis testing. It displays the cumulative deviation of results from chance expectation (shown as the horizontal black line at 0 deviation). Truly random data would produce a jagged curve with no slope, wandering up and down around the horizontal. The dotted smooth curves show the 0.05 and 0.001 probability envelopes that help to define significant versus chance excursions.

The jagged red line shows the accumulating excess of the empirically normalized Z-scores relative to expectation for the complete dataset of rigorously defined events. The overall result is highly significant. The odds against chance are greater than a million to one.

The Incident at Walls

john shklov

Written April 06, 2009

When I was growing up during summer vacation almost everyday my gang of Bishop Tract Kalihi kids used to jump on the bus, clutching our “pipo” boards riding through Honolulu to the end of Waikiki ending at Kuhio beach, the surf spot known as “Walls.” At Walls we would eagerly disembark walking up the sidewalk straight out the pier, stashing our clothes and flip flops along the small 2 foot wall at the edge. After years of body surfing this spot, we knew exactly where the “hole” was when jumping off the 15ft cement structure into the water to avoid the coral and scrape or break a leg. You had to time it right too. Just when the wave peaked about 10 feet before it slapped the concrete you jumped. Timing in surfing, like in life is everything.

About 10 feet down, along the side of the major wall of the pier a dark gray cement abutment ran parallel to the surf line and the beach. If I got tired of body surfing sometimes I lay on the thin cool velvety green covering of sea weed that covered this solid concrete breakwater. If the tide was high you could lay on the top, your cheek pressed against the smooth seaweed and clutch the side as the waves washed over you.

One day at high tide, after getting bored with the small choppy waves I let a wave wash me back over the side to the protected section where the mothers with babies and the stewardesses and Waikiki characters and habitué’s hung out. In those days, Kuhio beach was a “peoples” beach. The nearby apartments housed workers and semi-permanent population of drifters who felt it a duty to sit on the beach and soak up the sun at least once a week. It was fun people watching. The girls were pretty in their bathing suits and the kids were always getting into mischief. When I was a keiki my mother God bless her, caught sight of a man watching the kids and masturbating under a towel. She got right up and went over to him standing close, her legs firmly anchored and fists on her hips and she asked him loudly what he was doing and to “please remove the towel so I can see what you are doing!” The man left the beach immediately. There was always something to see at Kuhio beach.

So, like I was saying, one day I was laying on the sand, drifting in and out, day dreaming a young man’s dreams and I noticed an old lady slip off the breakwater ,the wrong way, into the surge in front. Even though it was high tide, in between the sets you could set your feet down on the coral and I thought she would be okay. I put my head on the wet sand for awhile and watched a young mother in a green bathing suit herd her little blond boy.

When I looked up again,the old lady was much farther out to sea, now struggling to get back, her head much lower in the water. I realized that she was in real trouble. Back in the day, there were no lifeguards on this section of the beach and I figured pretty much I was it so got up and I walked over to the water and swam out in her direction through the left gap in the breakwater and now I could see her face. She was completely panicked and thrashing and flailing about. Her eyes locked on to me watching me. She reminded me of my grandmother. Then she disappeared under water as a wave washed over her. I swam out looking and she bobbed up even farther out. Another wave pushed her under.

She was drifting underwater the moment I finally reached her, and the terror had seized her completely. The old lady grabbed my head and pushed me under as she attempted to climb up my body out of the water with an amazing strength of purpose. I had to dive under away and come up behind her as my lifeguard training had taught and I yelled at her to calm down and I put her on her back, my arms around her chest and started to half paddle with one arm and kick us both to shore.

I reached the shore with the old lady in tow. The beach was calm. Nobody paid us any attention. The pretty mother in the green suit still walked after the little blond boy. I helped the old lady out of the water and to her feet. She had on a worn bathing suit with little yellow and blue flowers and sort of a chunky eastern European look, like my Jewish grandmother. Her bathing suit looked like a kitchen table pattern I thought. I gently turned her around as she got up so I could see into her eyes. I wondered what she would say.

Aside from me telling her to calm down we had not spoken. Only for a moment did I glimpse her contemptuous eyes, brown  like my own, then without a word she spun on her heel and walked away down the beach.

(All rights and Copyright reserved:  John Shklov March 06, 2009)