LOVE ANGELES

Love is My Religion (Video)

Falling Whistles

Falling Whistles began as a small story exposing our world's largest war. It has become a campaign for peace in Congo.

Less than a year ago, laying in Titu Prison, 5 boy-prisoners spoke of the whistleblowers.

Abducted in Congo and too small to carry a gun, boys were given merely a whistle and sent to the front lines of battle.

The sound of their whistles calling together was meant to frighten the enemy away. Failing that, their sole duty was to receive the bullets with their bodies.

With falling whistles, their only choice was to feign death, or face it.

The world is changed by those who speak up. Whistleblowers. Rarely understood in their time, history looks back and calls them courageous.

Make their weapon your voice and be a whistleblower for peace.

Proceeds from whistles sales help restore the lives of war-affected children.

Buy a whistle, support the movement: www.fallingwhistles.com/

Falling Whistles - Be a Whistleblower for Peace in Congo from Falling Whistles on Vimeo.

Love Generation

Source: Intent - Today marks the end of the National Human Trafficking Awareness Month  that President Obama declared on the 11th January.

Intent's call for content this week has been centered around the theme of Love: how to think, act and speak with more Love.

Who doesn't know that this weekend is a time to express love in a way we might otherwise not.

Even science, for tonight, is all about Love: I'm writing this in between breaks from a work project where neuroscience have 100 people have gathered to talk about the role of oxtytocin as a neurotransmitter in the experience of love. 

My favorite part of the evening so far has been to hear a neuroscientist who started off talking about the effect ecstasty has on the neurotransmitter seratonin in the simulation of love - put the neurochemistry aside and say that to really love another person we have to first know how to love ourselves.

People have  been listening enraptured. Asking questions about what love is. How love works.

Even neuroscientists are  holding chocolate hearts covered with jellies. Thinking of people they're going home to, or would like to be going home to. Smiling.

I'm happy that this campaign to raise awareness on human trafficking is ending here. Like this - in Love.

Sometimes this month as I learned about the victims of trafficking, it felt hard to know for sure what I wholly believed to be a meaningful response from me as a single individual in the face of  what felt like a pathology that's spread all over the world.

It's been hard at times to keep reading, to keep learning, keep hearing more stories:

The children who were exchanged by adults as slaves in domestic households, or chained to factory floors for their labour; thirteen year old American girls living with 32 year old American men who are sold for sex to other men; adult victims - individuals and groups - who find themselves sold by other adults to work as drugs traffickers, gun traffickers; who are forced to sell their bodies for sex, or to work in factories or growing fields that do not pay them enough to eat, or a place to sleep.

As well as the victims, I got to thinking about the perpetrators of this violence.

And the more I've thought of them, the more I think I that Love is the answer. The only answer.

And what I have to do - what we have to do - is be the Love generation.

Traffickers are not dropped in to our communities isolated and independent from the fabric of society - they are part of our families, our communities - tragically, they are our fathers and sons and brothers and our husbands. Sometimes they are even our mothers, and sisters.

At the most fundamental level what makes a person able to traffic another is a breakdown in love. In the state of Love, I think our every impulse is to honor, cherish, protect and support. It's only in its absence that damaging, coercive, manipulative, exploitative, and ultimately pathological behaviors can exist.

If some members of our families - and all human traffickers  are born in to families - have grown in to adults who are have lost their connection to love to the extent that they can can starve, beat, sell, and imprison others, then I think we ought to look at ourselves as much as we look at them.

I think the tragedy is not just theirs - it's all of ours.

And I keep thinking the first thing we can do as individuals to play a part in healing this type of tragedy is to each make a commitment to avoid at all costs repeating it in another generation: a commitment to meeting all people with love at all times - to complete non violence in all thought, action and speech.

We can be the love generation.

The sensation of love is the most powerful, potent, healing experience we have as humans.

In the presence of Love,  no person can harm another.

Being in love is being in reverence. You revere the people that you love. And you feel when you are loved that you are revered.

Both states make you aware of your responsibility to others and to yourself: to protect, to honour, to support not just your Beloved, not just yourself, but all Life.

This is Love.

I like that National Human Awareness Trafficking Month is ending today when people all over the world will be remembering Love.

Because living from a place of Love is choosing to Be The Change.

Click here to watch the Be the Love Generation Music Video!

LA Conscious Life Expo 2010

Source: Los Angeles Conscious Life Expo - The 8th Annual Conscious Life Expo, February 12-16, 2010 at at the LAX Hilton - As this new decade begins, we reaffirm our common commitment to radical personal and planetary transformation. We are all working arduously to bring into form this next stage in human evolution. We find ourselves in the middle of a miraculous explosion of knowledge, creativity, compassion…and possibility. This is our destiny. Let us come together to celebrate and witness the emergence of this new consciousness.

The Conscious Life Expo is a four-day multi-dimensional event presenting illustrious visionaries and influential thinkers of the 21st Century. The Expo is abundant with opportunity for inspiration, empowerment, creativity amidst a global community environment. Drawing people from all walks of life, the Expo lives up to its name, creating an environment of heightened consciousness that allows attendees to be open to the experience of creating new possibilities for living an inspired way of life - more important than ever, as we navigate the unpredictable avenues of the ‘new decade’ upon us.

The Expo draws together influential speakers, best-selling authors, award-winning films, renowned educators, artists, and visionaries built into an exciting four days of provocative panel discussions, participative workshops, film screenings, book signings, live performances and many other events. This year, The Expo is proud to debut a special Latino program featuring lectures and workshops in Spanish. The Exhibit Hall features over 200 exhibitors displaying products and services to heal and inspire, from the latest health technologies to ancient healing modalities, from superfoods to spiritual books and music. Something for everyone in this visionary gathering place.

2010 Keynote Speakers include: Ram Dass, Susan Miller, Zecharia Sitchin , Gregg Braden, Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Judith Orlaff, Dannion Brinkley, Debbie Ford, Dr. Jean Houston, Arielle Ford, George Noory, Robert C. Hoagland, Eric Pearl, Dick Sutphen, David Wolcott and many more!!

Entertainment Events include:

Conscious Film Festival $20 Advance / $25 Door (no Day Pass required)
Saturn Return Salsa Dance $10 (no Day Pass required)
Dance of the Tiger $20 Advance/ $25 Door (no Day Pass required

Special Events
Ram Dass $50 Advance/ $60 Door
Zecharia Sitchin - The End of Days $75 Advance / $95 Door
2012 Panel hosted by George Noory $10 Advance / $15 Door

Reception with Debbie Ford $85 Advance (Includes Keynote Workshop)
Reception with Susan Miller $85 Advance (Includes Keynote Workshop)

Post-Conference Events – Monday, Feb. 15:

Show Information: Feb.12 -2pm-10pm; Feb.13 9am-11pm; Feb. 14-9am-10pm LAX Hilton Hotel -5711 Century Blvd., Los Angeles 90045 *Validated parking: $10.00

Admission: $20 Advance/$25 Door. Workshops: $45 Advance/$55

For show info, contact: conference@consciouslifeexpo.com or 1-800-367-5777

Visit website: www.consciouslifeexpo.com

100 Year Old Teacher Gets Degree a Day Before Dying

Source: Yahoo -  It was Harriet Richardson Ames' dream to earn her bachelor's degree in education. She finally reached that milestone, nearly three weeks after achieving another: her 100th birthday.

On Saturday, the day after receiving her diploma at her bedside, the retired schoolteacher died, pleased that she had accomplished her goal, her daughter said. Ames had been in hospice care.

"She had what I call a 'bucket list,' and that was the last thing on it," Marjorie Carpenter said Tuesday.

Ames, who turned 100 on Jan. 2, had earned a two-year teaching certificate in 1931 at Keene Normal School, now Keene State College. She taught in a one-room schoolhouse in South Newbury, and later spent 20 years as a teaching principal at Memorial School in Pittsfield, where she taught first-graders.

Through the years, she had taken classes at the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth Teachers College and Keene State to earn credits for her degree. With her eyesight failing, she stopped after retiring in 1971 and was never sure if she had enough credits.

Her wish for a degree became known when a Keene State film professor interviewed her a couple of years ago for a piece on the college's own centennial, which the school celebrated last year.

The school decided to research her coursework and see if it could award Ames her long-sought diploma. The offices of the provost, registrar and other departments worked quickly in the last month to determine, that indeed, it could.

"She wanted to be the best that she could be," said Norma Walker, coordinator of the Keene State College Golden Circle Society, an alumni group for classes that graduated 50 or more years ago.

Walker said when she mentioned to Ames during a recent visit that the college was working on the degree, Ames started to cry and said, "'If I die tomorrow, I'll know I'll die happy, because my degree's in the works.'"

College officials, including Walker, drove the document to Ames' bedside on Friday.

Walker, who first met Ames in 1997 at an alumni gathering, said she enjoyed listening to her talk about her students and how she encouraged them to read.

"She's the kind of person that every parent would want their first-graders to have as a teacher," very loving and caring, Walker said. She will read Ames' diploma at a memorial service this Saturday, "if I can do it without crying."

Paula Finnegan Dickinson of Gilford, who was Ames' student back in 1956 and became an educator herself, regarded her as a mentor and dear friend.

"Mrs. Ames, along with Dick, Jane, Sally, Spot and Puff, became our friend," Dickinson said, recalling the "Dick and Jane" series that was used in class reading groups. "With her enthusiasm, these characters came to life. ... Mrs. Ames showed us how reading opened the doors to other experiences we in Pittsfield might never have known."