Anger is an unpleasant feeling.
It is like a blazing flame that burns up our self-control and causes us to say and do things that we regret later.
When someone is angry, we can see clearly that he/she is abiding in hell.
Anger and hatred are the materials from which hell is made. A mind without anger is cool , fresh , and sane. The absence of anger is the basis of real happiness , the basis of love and compassion.

When our anger is placed under the lamp of mindfulness, it imediatly begins to lose some of its destructive nature.
We can say to ourselves, “breathing in, I know that anger is in me. Breathing out, I know that I am my anger”. If we follow our breathing closely while we identify and mindfully observe our anger, it can no longer monopolize our conciousness.

Awareness can be called upon to be a companion for our anger.
Our awareness of our anger does not suppress it or drive it out.
It just looks after it. This is a very important principle. Mindfulness is not a judge. It is more like an older sister looking after and comforting her younger sister in an affectionate and caring way. We can concentrate on our breathing in order to maintain this mindfulness and know ourselves fully.

When we are angry, we are not usually inclined to return to ourselves.
We want to think about the person who is making us angry, to think about his hateful aspects- his rudeness, dishonesty , cruely , maliciousness , and so on. The more we think about him, listen to him, or look at him, the more our anger flares. His dishonesty and hatefulness may be real, imaginary , or exaggerated, but in fact, the root of our problem is the anger itself, and we have to come back and look first of all inside ourselves. It is best if we do not listen or look at the person whom we consider to be the cause of our anger.
Like a fireman, we have to pour water on the blaze first and not waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire.
“Breathing in, I know that I am angry. Breathing out, I know that I must put all my energy into caring for my anger.”
So we avoid thinking about the other person, and we refrain from doing or saying anything as long as our anger persists. If we put all our mind into observing our anger, we will avoid doing any damage that we might regret later.

When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress it or chase it away is to suppress or chase away our very self. When we are joyful, we are the joy. When we are angry, we are the anger. When anger is born in us, we can be aware that the anger is an energy in us, and we can accept that energy in order to transform it into another kind of energy. When we have a compost bin filled with organic material which is decomposing and smelly, we know that we can transform the waste into beautiful flowers. At first, we may see the compost and the flowers as opposite, but when we look deeply, we see that the flowers already exist in the compost, and the compost already exist in the flowers. It only takes a couple of weeks for a flower to decompose.
When a good organic gardener looks into her compost, she can see that, and she does not feel sad or disgusted. Instead, she values the rotting material and does not discriminate against it. It takes only a few months for compost to give birth to flowers. We need the insight and non-dual vision of the organic gardener with regard to our anger.
We need not be afraid of it or reject it. We know that the anger can be a kind of compost, and that it is within its power to give birth to something beautiful. We need anger in the way that the organic gardener needs compost. If we know how to accept our anger, we already have some peace and joy.
Gradually we can transform anger completely into peace, love, and understanding.

Thich Nhat Hanh- Peace is every step

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There is no possibility in any man that is not in every man; but if they proceed naturally, no two men will grow into the same thing, or be alike. Every man comes into the world with a predisposition to grow along certain lines, and growth is easier for him along those lines than in any other way. This is a wise provision, for it gives endless variety. It is as if a gardener should throw all his bulbs into one basket; to the superficial observer they would look alike, but growth reveals a tremendous difference. So of men and women; they are like the basket of bulbs. One may be a rose and add brightness and color to some dark corner of the world; one may be a lily and teach a lesson of love and purity to every eye that sees; one may be a climbing vine and hide the rugged outlines of some dark rock; one may be a great oak among whose boughs the birds shall nest and sing, and beneath whose shade the flocks shall rest at noon, but every one will be something worth while, something rare, something perfect.

The Science of Being Great - Wallace Wattles

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Im talking about the kind of relationship so tight that your friend would back you up even if evidence were stacked against you.

Im talking tight, like if anyone breathed a sour word against you it was asking for a fight.

Tight, like if you pissed them off real good, they would still know that tomorow was a new day and that this too would pass?

I have experienced moments like this, but never more than a moment.
I remember when I was a teen, my girlfriend wanted to see the boyfriend she was told not to see, and when she came to visit me, asked him to meet her at my house and take her out.
I wasnt prepared …. I was furious.
Her mother would be comming to pick her up soon, and I alone would have to deal with her. My friend knew lying wasnt a gift I had.
I would screw this up.
I told her if she put me in this position , that we were done, but that I would say what she wanted me to say to her mom.

I kept my end of the deal, and I never spoke to her again.

She tried to reconcile our friendship, but I wanted invincible bonds.
At 16.
My loss, I forgave nothing.

Fast forward to my 30’s.

I had this girlfriend I worked with.
We made lots of money together, and when someone so much as rolled their eyes behind my back, she called them out infront of everyone …. OUT LOUD …. until they left or a fight ensued.

I never experienced anyone having my back to that degree before.

It was as if she knew exactly what kind of person I was, and all information to the contrary was considered BS until she consulted with me.

Of course that didnt last.

Oh I have experienced having those friends and being those friends, but nothing for either that lasts forever.

What that did for me however was set a standard for what I would look for the rest of my life to duplicate .

There is just something about knowing that there is someone out there that would stand up for you even if it wasnt necessary…
I dont care who you are, it feels good.
Those are superfriends.

I have dated guys in my younger days that “protected their property” to the extent of posturing and threatening.
appealing being property …. isnt it?

Obviously not the same thing.

I think the evolution of a friendship goes towards that naturally, but that we have this filter of fear of looking like an ass if we back someone that either is wrong or isnt worth it.

I think its natural to want to protect the love you find in this world, nomatter what guise it comes in.

I could get philosophical and say no one needs protecting, like attracts like, all is really well…. and I do believe that to a big extent.

Ask me how much I believe it when Im pulling my son away from a moving vehicle that comes an inch from running him over after going through a stop sign …
I was ready to tell that person they just “attracted” a psycho mom about to rip the face from their skull.

All of that is in the moment, and passes.
Just like when you want to be the friend that has your buddy’s back but you miss the opportunity.
Your not a bad friend, just not a superfriend.

I figure what really chisels a masterpiece from the marble is going through many many missed opportunities until we become what we wish to see in others.

Wasnt it Ghandi that said be the change you wish to see in the world?

Im thinking about this because Im presently disenchanted with a friendship I thought was pretty tight.
Maybe Im not the friend I thought I was and this is somehow deserved. Im open to that.

So the question is, do you accept the insecurity and instability of a relationship that isnt what you thought because its teaching you or “chiseling the marble” , or do you walk away out of self-preservation?

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I personally know someone who has died on an operating table and was revived.
They dont remember a NDE, but did in fact come back different.

“The International Associatiation for Near-Death Studies”,
or IANDS as its called, has a fabulous site which people with all kinds of experiences are able to share them, for the most part briefly.

I found these to be comforting and distressing for different reasons, because it seems to imply that we are here with an agenda, when I always thought we were making this up as we went along.

One thing that confirms my personal theories on health is that in most stories, if someone was extremely sick (say cancer) prior to dying , thier new vibe due to a new perspective and feeling of complete peace and love kicked out anything that didnt resonate with it.

The energy they came back with no longer resonated with the energy required to maintain illness.

For many, recuperation was fast, and for some it was complete.

Visit IANDS at : http://www.iands.org/ 

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Severe pain
Hair loss
Memory loss
Muscle weakness, and uncontrollable muscle spasms
Hardening of the skin

Through a series of events, these symptoms were traced back to genetically modified strains of L-tryptophan. Up to 10,000 people were affected and some 100 of them died. Uncovered documents revealed that the FDA knew about these health problems for about five years prior to the “epidemic,” which only became known as an epidemic after the story was published in the New York Times, and people began coming out of the woodwork displaying these symptoms that no one had been able to diagnose before.

To illustrate this point – that GMO’s may very well be wreaking havoc with your health and you don’t even know it’s the source of your problems – is the fact that the toxic L-tryptophan was only discovered because its symptoms were acute, rare, and had a very fast onset. These things are what get doctors curious about unearthing the cause. But as Jeffrey Smith points out – what if the damage doesn’t occur overnight? What if the symptoms are milder?

Thousands of genetically modified products are now on the market, creating potentially life-threatening problems, but no one knows what to look out for.

Why?

Because no one knows the full extent of what happens to the end product when you splice in new genes. The only thing that is guaranteed is that it will create surprise side effects… However, according to Smith’s research, what we do know is that between 1994 and 2001 – at the same time as GMO’s flooded the market – food related illnesses DOUBLED.

GMO foods can be:

Allergenic
Toxic
Carcinogenic
Anti-nutritional
It may also create brand new diseases that we’ve never seen before, in addition to spurring on the disease rate of some we already have, such as cancer.

Although the major food giants are carrying on with their claim that GM foods are no different from conventionally grown varieties, the research begs to differ. Here is just a sampling of the unsavory findings associated with GM foods:

GM peas caused lung damage in mice
GM potatoes may cause cancer in rats
Bacteria in your gut can take up DNA from GM food
They may be spurring the creation of weed-killer-resistant superweeds
Smith mentions the superior work of Arpad Pusztai, PhD, a (formerly pro-biotech) scientist who was hired to evaluate the safety of GMO food, and then fired for his negative findings and his outspoken criticism of the industry’s shoddy science.

Fortunately, he finally managed to get his animal feeding study published in the journal Lancet in 1999 (see the Lancet October 16, 1999;354(9187):1353-4 for the full PDF article).

Despite the efforts of concerned scientists like Pusztai, you may be surprised to learn that you have a 75 percent chance of picking a food with genetically modified ingredients in the United States. This is because at least seven out of every 10 items have been genetically modified!

Many of you probably try to avoid genetically modified foods, but very few know what they really are, since there are no labeling requirements identifying GMO ingredients. To get an idea of how widespread these ingredients are, I recommend taking a look at The GMO Food Guide I published a couple of months ago.

Jeffrey Smith’s website www.seedsofdeception.com also gives you a more in-depth overview of GMO laced products, but the four main culprits are:

Soy
Corn
Cottonseed
Canola
The offspring of these products include items such as maltodextrin, soy lecitin, and high fructose corn syrup. Other GMO products include:

Some varieties of zucchini, crookneck squash, and papayas from Hawaii
Milk containing rbGH
Rennet (containing genetically modified enzymes) used to make hard cheeses
Aspartame (NutraSweet)
What Can You Do?

Along with using the GMO Food Guide and avoiding the products mentioned above, there’s other tricks you that can use to figure out if something is genetically modified in your fresh produce aisles:

Examine produce stickers on the fruits and vegetables you buy. The PLU code for conventionally grown fruit consists of four numbers; organically grown fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number nine; and GM fruit has five numbers prefaced by the number eight.
Buy organic produce as often as you can. By definition, food that is certified organic must be free from all GM organisms.
Stay away from all processed foods, as most of these contain corn and soy ingredients.

Fortunately, as a consumer you do have power. You can choose not to be a victim of deception, and you can choose what you feed your family. Large portions of Europe have already succeeded in squashing GMO’s out of their food supply, forcing food manufacturers to use real ingredients in their European product lines. But here in the U.S. we’re still stuck with it to a very large degree.

You can be the change you want to see in America, by educating yourself, spreading the word, and refusing to buy GMO products.

-Dr Mercola

for instance…. genetically modified brands (and this only scratches the surface) :

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED INGREDIENTSGeneral Mills Cheerios Wheaties Total Corn Chex Lucky Charms Trix Kix Golden Grahams Cinnamon Grahams Count Chocula Honey Nut Chex Frosted Cheerios Apple Cinnamon Cheerios Multi-Grain Cheerios Frosted Wheaties Brown Sugar & Oat Total Basic 4 Reeses Puffs French Toast Crunch
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Corn Flakes Special K Raisin Bran Rice Krispies Corn Pops Product 19 Smacks Froot Loops Marshmallow Blasted Fruit Loops Apple Jacks Crispix Smart Start All-Bran Complete Wheat Bran Complete Oat Bran Just Right Fruit & Nut Honey Crunch Corn Flakes Raisin Bran Crunch Cracklin’ Oat Bran Country Inn Specialties
(all varieties)
Mothers Cereals
(Quaker) Toasted Oat Bran Peanut Butter Bumpers Groovy Grahams Harvest Oat Flakes Harvest Oat Flakes w/Apples & Almonds Honey Round Ups
Post
(Kraft-Phillip Morris) Raisin Bran Bran Flakes Grape Nut Flakes Grape Nut O’s Fruit & Fibre date, raisin and walnut Fruit & Fibre peach, raisin and almond Honey Bunch of Oats Honey Nut Shredded Wheat Honey Comb Golden Crisp Waffle Crisp Cocoa Pebbles Cinna-Crunch Pebbles Fruity Pebbles Alpha-Bits Post Selects Cranberry Almond Post Selects Banana Nut Crunch Post Selects Blueberry Morning Post Selects Great Grains
Quaker Life Cinnamon Life 100% Natural Granola Toasted Oatmeal Toasted Oatmeal Honey Nut Oat Bran Cap’n Crunch Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch Cap’n Crunch Crunchling Berries

Del Monte

(Nabisco/Phillip Morris) Ketchup
Heinz Ketchup
(regular & no salt) Chili Sauce Cocktail Sauce Heinz 57 Steak Sauce
Hellman’s
(Bestfoods) Real Mayonnaise Light Mayonnaise Low-Fat Mayonnaise Hunt’s
(ConAgra) Ketchup
(regular & no salt)

Chef Boyardee
(ConAgra) Beefaroni Macaroni & Cheese Mini Ravioli ABC’s & 123’s
Dinty Moore
(Hormel) Beef Stew Turkey Stew Chicken & Dumplings
Hormel Chili with Beans Chili No Beans Vegetarian Chili with Beans Kids’ Kitchen
(Hormel) Spaghetti Rings with Meatballs Macaroni & Cheese Pizza Wedges with 3 Cheese

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