My Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah Gift to You: Hope for the Future of the Sea! by Tina Erwin

Dear Friends,

     This is the last blog that will come out using the RSS feed from this Light Times blog. I have migrated my blog to my newly revamped website: http://tinaerwin.com/wp/light-times-blog/

     If you want to read the blog below with the photographs that go with it, then go ahead and go to the new website, now.

     If you would like to continue to receive these blogs automatically, please send your email to:  Tina@TinaErwin.com  Then you will be added to an automatic mailing list if you are not already on it.  Thank you!

 

     This is supposed to be the season of hope, but all too often it is, at the least, the season of stress and at the worst, the season of depression, grief and despair. But it doesn't have to be. If we look around us, we are going to see innumerable acts of kindness, gentle faces with easy smiles and catch a look at a proud parent, or the delighted smiles of a happy grandparent. Perhaps we expect these things. This season is not only for children.

         What we don’t expect is to see something that gives us hope for tomorrow. Despite the commercialism of this time of year, there are ways that we can give back, not merely to each other, but to the Earth itself. Christ’s message was not merely that of resurrection and life everlasting, it was the hope of the inherent goodness of each person, and their desire to make the world a better place for all of us. Hanukkah is about continuing to see the light in the darkness and hoping for brighter times.

         If we look around us, we see how we, as the human species, have contaminated the planet. My focus is how we have polluted the oceans on levels that should sicken all of us. This does not mean that we have consciously dumped plastic in among the sea life. Tsunamis, earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes, shipwrecks and the thoughtless acts of the ships that ply the sea have washed and/or dumped tons of plastics and other debris in the sea.

         The world is not flat as was previously thought and by the same token, we have to change our belief that we have no real way to clean up the sickening level of plastic in the oceans of the world. There is a way.

         This is really a story of how one person can make a difference and absolutely change the world. That one person is a Boyan Slat from Delft, Holland, and to quote him: “While diving in Greece, I became frustrated when coming across more plastic bags than fish and wondered: ‘why can’t we clean this up?” This young man, at the age of 19 years old, figured out a way to clean the plastic out of the 5 massive islands of swirling plastic on this planet.

          But the plastic does not just congregate among these five islands he calls ‘gyres;’ they are all over the world and the concept of cleaning them up looked like an impossibly daunting task. Everyone said it couldn’t be done.

         But it can be done.

         Boyan came up with a concept of “The Ocean Cleanup Array” and to quote his website: “the Ocean Cleanup Array concept is likely a feasible and viable method to remove almost half the plastic from the North Pacific Garbage patch in 10 years, while being an estimated 7900 times faster and 33 times cheaper than conventional methods.”

         So my humble offering to all you is the hope that we can clean this up.  Please check out this uplifting story on his website: http://www.theoceancleanup.com/ 

            Participate in some way.  Believe that the future can be better than it currently is and that we can each be part of it.

            Love to all of you!  Tina

           

        

Work Life Balance Part 3 by Tina Erwin

The Challenge of Working from Home
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The Karmic Savings and Loan Chapter 4??:  Work-Life Balance:       Part 3 The Challenge of Working From Home.

       Working from home saves time, gas, and offers the individual a freedom to manage their day. It can be amazing – or it can also be not – so – amazing.

       When you work from home, your day can begin at 5:30am so that you can get something done before the phone rings. You can go through all of your email so that you are completely caught up before the day starts.

       Once your day starts, you can work through lunch, stopping only for a quick bite to eat. You can work into the darkness and then read email again before you pass out in the wee hours of the morning.

       When you work from home, people think you have all the time in the world and they feel freer to impose on your time.

       Your family may be confused on what your work hours are and how you handle them because you don’t ‘leave’ and ‘come home.’ Family members may be frustrated that you aren’t giving them more time – after all, your home all day? They may also be far more demanding of your time because they cannot actually see what you do and you don’t leave for an office so they may or may not offer you the respect you deserve from working from home.

       You may be the one person who is the most confused of all. Working from home may be the ultimate challenge when it comes to setting boundaries of time management.

       You are the CEO of your life here, whether or not you work for someone else. Working from home is perhaps the most challenging work-life balancing act there is.

       If you work from home, and you have family members who are at home during the day with you, whether it is a retired spouse, children of any age, it is ultimate test of setting boundaries to insist that your family respect your ‘work’ day.

       Here are some tips and tools for managing working from home:

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·      Have a beginning and an ending for your day.

·      Tell your family what your working hours are.

·      End your day no later than 6pm.

·      Enjoy business lunches like you would in any off site office setting.

·      When you staying home for lunch, stop working. Go to a different room, eat lunch, rest if you must but stop working for a reasonable time, at least an hour.

·      If you have family errands to run, then set aside a time to just do those things.

·      If you are in the middle of a business phone call, demand, don’t ask, demand that your family respect what you are doing and not interrupt you while you are on the phone.

·      Do not let your children answer your business phone. It is unprofessional and it will hurt your business.

·      Make sure you can close off your office.

·      Do not do email on your phone after working hours.

·      Do not have your office in your bedroom because you will be telling your subconscious that your workday never ends. It is also a constant reminder of how much work is left to do. If you worked in a traditional off site office, you wouldn’t be seeing it.

·      Keep your office neat.

·      When you stop your work day, turn off your computer, turn off your lights and if necessary, close the door.

·      Take weekends off. Take holidays off.

·      Do not answer business calls on the weekend.

·      Do not answer business calls after 6pm Monday through Friday.

·      When you are with your family, give them your entire focus.

       When you do these things, you will ultimately find that you are more professional, you garner much more respect from your family and your peers will also respect you as a professional. These are the golden keys to work-life balance. It isn’t easy, but you will be physically healthier for the long term and ultimately enjoy your work life and your home life so much more!

Work LIfe Balance Part Two by Tina Erwin

Email invades our homes. We have it on our work computer, our ipads/tablets, our phones and our home computers. We are tremendously connected, or tethered, or chained or imprisoned – but only if we allow ourselves to be treated this way.

       Email may not be the problem. The real issue is boundaries. We need to be able to say no I won’t do this or that. This is my time. Sometimes you have to force other people to respect your time, and your standards of work excellence, and you have to respect yourself.

       In a time when so many people are worried about keeping their jobs or having enough money to cover bills, there is a new paradigm that seems to be emerging that demands that our work day never end.

       This new paradigm that has slipped into our very bedrooms is making us sick, physically sick. The tension is never turned off. Our bodies never get a day off, to have fun, to laugh out loud, take a hike, sit and veg in front of a good movie or football game.

       Our busyness from work has taken over our lives like some creeping mold that is beginning to cover us, overtaking us in our waking and sleeping moments. It’s so subtle, most of us have no idea when or how this even happened, but it did, it’s there.

       Perhaps the issue is that we feel that we have all of these timesaving, instant tools that propel us into faster and faster communications scenarios and the expectation is that we will get it done faster and faster until, really, what’s the point? If everything is a fire drill, why care?

       The truth is that people cannot be on the professional firing line 24/7 and expect to work at peak efficiency. It’s like never letting a race horse leave the track and then when he does get an hour or two, you only feed him the bare minimum and then you send the poor beast out to run again until he can’t run anymore.

       There’s an old Navy saying that there will be no leave until morale improves. The irony is that you need leave, vacation time, days off to be able to come back to work fresh, ready for the week ahead, especially if the work you do doesn’t demand that you are constantly making life and death decisions.  So, let’s return to our three scenarios.

       Scenario One

       The woman who was expected to read her email on Sunday afternoon and show up to an 8am meeting Monday morning may want to take her boss aside and ask for a clarification of working hours. The executive has no need to apologize for missing the email. Work parameters should be clearly defined. She can also tell her boss that she does not work seven days a week and that she does not read email seven days a week, especially on weekends. If there is an emergency, she can ask her boss to please call her. She can also ask that if this is required, will she receive overtime for working over the normal working hours.

       This sounds gutsy, but at some point, you have to establish boundaries for yourself, your job, your family and your sanity. Actually, the executive in Scenario One did just that and does not read work email to this day at home. There are also no more ‘flash meetings’ Monday morning. Everyone benefited from one person putting the brakes on insanity, and the constant obsessive control of her boss. Boundaries have to be set and enforced. Also, she didn’t lose her job. She’s still there and now she fully enjoys her weekends.

       Scenario Two

       You decide to handle the email from this demanding group by keeping it professional. You kindly explain to the boss who hosted the group, on Monday morning, that you have a deep and profound respect for the work-life balance of your entire staff and that none of you read email on Sundays or weekends. You thank him for understanding and promise to get him the edited power point by close of business on Monday. Actually you get it to him by 11am. 

       The outcome of this true-life situation is that the host of this group was not professional. He never responded to a single email, not the first one, nor the second one where the power point presentation was provided. This man was rude. Perhaps he was miffed that someone stood up to him. Ultimately, it is his loss.

       Organizations work with, for and among other organizations, including other companies who may have extremely abusive policies. Each CEO, Manager, Supervisor and Executive has a moral duty to their staff to make sure that no one else abuses their people. People are your most critical resource. It is important that management stand up for them.

       Scenario Three

       Lets go back to our demanding boss who never takes a moment off and is chronically ill. This is another scenario where it is critical to set your personal boundaries. While it is easy to suggest to all who read this that you have to stand up for yourself and set your boundaries, it is quite another to decide to do this if you are worried about your job. However the bottom line is that you simply cannot keep up the pace of work if you never rest your body.

       Ultimately, you won’t be able to keep your job if you are constantly out sick. Remember, if your subconscious thinks that you need time off and you are not taking it, your subconscious will make you sick to ensure you can finally have ‘legally sanctioned’ down time, meaning you get to take a sick day.

       It is interesting to note that France has passed a new law that prohibits after-hours emails.  Check out this link:

http://beta.slashdot.org/story/200571

Work Life Balance Part One by Tina Erwin

     The first time it happens to you, you find yourself a little stunned. How did this happen? When did it change? Did I miss the memo on this? Who decided that this was okay?

      Scenario One

       You come into work Monday morning and your officemates are not there, they are all in a meeting, a meeting you obviously didn’t know about. You aren’t sure what the meeting is about, but it looks like the entire staff is there and you quietly slip into the back.

       When your boss notices you, she embarrasses you by asking you why you didn’t read your email that she sent you. You explain that you didn’t get an email about this meeting on Friday. No, she says, the email I sent out at 4pm yesterday afternoon, you know, Sunday afternoon. Why weren’t you reading your email?

       Now you can boldly go where no executive has gone before and observe that you weren’t aware that this organization worked 24/7 or you can mumble a humble apology for missing the meeting.

       Leaving the meeting, your officemates look at you like you are a complete failure. What’s wrong with her, you can hear them thinking.

       There’s nothing wrong with her! She had no idea she was expected to work seven days a week. There was no memo that discussed office expectations of never having an entire day off.

      Scenario Two

       You make a presentation to a group on a Saturday. Your entire staff gives up their Saturday to do this special work task that will bring in more business. You have all worked night and day to get this done. The presentation is a wonderful success. Everyone is pleased. Their Saturday workday ends around four. Everyone is exhausted from the tension of the workup and then the successful presentation. You tell everyone to have “a great rest of what’s left of the weekend!”

       Monday morning, as you are reading your email, you notice that the Chairman of the group hosting your presentation the previous Saturday, sent out an email at 7am Sunday morning demanding an edited copy of your power point presentation to share with several hundred people. It was due to him before Monday morning.

       Your power point will take time to edit, condense, review and then send to him. You had no idea that you were expected to check email all day Sunday, to work all day Sunday, on a serious deadline no less.
       You can’t help but ask yourself: why was this such a fire drill? Why was this an emergency?

       So, how do you handle this since you have obviously missed his rushed deadline?

       Scenario Three

      Your boss is tired all the time. She works literally from dawn to dusk and expects everyone else to do the same. She is also sick all the time. She never rests and she sends emails out like there is a quota for how many a person can send and she maxes out that quota every day. She sends them day and night, memo after memo, Saturday, Sunday and holidays. It never ends.   

       She expects you to read and answer her emails promptly. She has no family, no ties that bind her, only the identity that is her job. She thinks you are a slacker if you aren’t constantly reading and responding to email. Push, Push, Push, get it done.

       She’s burning everyone out. Since her day and her week never ends, obviously neither does anyone else’s.

       Part two: The devil that is email.

Independence Day by Tina Erwin

     The Fourth of July is a great summer holiday and there will be lots written about how valuable freedom is to all of us.
    We will hear all about how freedom isn't free. It isn't. We pay for it by the good and bad decisions our elected representatives make.
    The Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights were designed to be the guide through the generations and for generations to come of how to run this country to maintain all of these freedoms that we all hold so dear and for which so many of us have died - again and again. However, not everyone believes this. Some elected officials deny the very rights that we celebrate on the 4th of July.  Some elected officials are deliberately putting our country at risk.
     When anyone, including any elected official who wrongly believes that he or she is above the law, seeks to circumvent the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of this country, this person needs to be impeached, removed from office through the correct legal means.
    When anyone, including any elected official who wrongly believes that he or she is above the law seeks to subvert the safety and security of this country, with individuals and governments that wish to destroy these United States and its visitors all over the world, this person and his or her lieutenants, need to be impeached, removed from office through the correct legal means.
      When any elected official seeks to subvert the rights of freedom of speech, denies the truth of situations and lies to the American people and its allies, this person and his or her lieutenants, needs to be impeached, removed from office through the correct legal means.
      When any elected official seeks to destroy the very basis of good order and discipline that define the US military and the safety and security of this country, this person and his or her lieutenants, needs to be impeached, removed from office through the correct legal means.
       American tourists, American personnel working in Embassies, American military personnel and American staffers working for aid agencies all over the globe are now less safe than they have ever been. They have a target on their backs, thanks to the most recent actions taken by elected and non-elected officials. Never in history have Americans been in such a precarious situation put there squarely by those supposedly elected to see to our safety.
        All Americans have a duty to stand up and tell their elected representatives how they feel about the most recent actions happening today and demand that those responsible at the highest levels, be removed from office, for they no longer represent the best interests of the American People.
       Either we stand up for freedom or we no longer deserve to enjoy it.
     And yes, sometimes being 'spiritual' means standing up for the right thing and then doing the right thing.

The Second Ghost Story Book is Coming in August!

Dear Friends,
     I am happy to say that Ghost Stories from the Ghosts' Point of View, Trilogy Volume 2 is in the editing phase. Cover design is in progress and we are well on our way to sharing more fascinating stories of assisting ghosts to cross over to the Heaven World.

I have been delighted to hear the stories of how so many of you have used the information in Volume One of these stories that I would like to include your testimonials in Volume Two. I am especially encouraged to know how you have all used The Crossing Over Prayer©.

I am inviting you all to share your testimonials. If you have used The Crossing Over Prayer©, please share what happened. I will be using this information either on the inside of the book, the back cover and possibly in marketing the book. 

I so grateful for your help that I will share an advance sneak peak at one of the compelling stories you will read.

I will need your testimonials in the following format:
1. The testimonial needs to be no more than 75 words and it will need to be in Microsoft word as a docx or in an email.
2. Please sign your testimonial using your first initial and last name. 3. Include your state or country. 
4. Once submitted, all testimonials become the property of TinaErwin.com
5. I will need them 01 July 2014.

Please email all testimonials to Tina@TinaErwin.com 

You never know how much your testimonial can help someone deciding to read or purchase this book. Your words may be the ones that encourage someone to take a chance and see how they can also help those lost and needy souls on the other side find the light of the divine.

Thank you with all my heart.  Tina

The Importance of Fathers by Tina Erwin

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    We all know that dads are important, and since there are so many single mom’s out there trying to fulfill both roles perhaps it is a good idea to identify what good dads bring to the family.

         A really great dad is a teacher for all his children, offering them the benefit of his wisdom when it comes to people, politics, career guidance, sportsmanship, building things, tools, and life in general.

         The dad who just sits in front of the TV and never spends time reading or holding his little kids misses out on an incredible opportunity to teach his children something. When you teach them, it means you are spending time with them. One of my sons noted that some of his happiest times were when he was in the garage working on something with his Dad - the give and take, the patience of learning how tools work. There were the times when they built gigantic lego projects together and the guidance received at those times, enabled our son had to build Lego models on his on as a practice for following written directions.

         Dads teach balance in a marriage:  doing chores, washing dishes, sharing in the cleaning, yard work and errand running.

         Dads teach consideration when shopping for birthdays, mother’s day and holidays for moms and siblings.
         Dads also teach the importance of evaluating good rules to follow in life. The dad who insists that his son or daughter wear their helmet while bike riding and doesn't wear one himself, teaches the terrible parable: do as I say, not as I do. A seething resentment will eventually result in the child and the seeds of a difficult relationship will follow.
        However, the dad that shops for parent and child helmets shows by his example the importance of safety, of understanding why these helmets are important. This metaphor is critical in a child's life. Kids learn by example as well as by doing.

         Dads teach politics when they discuss their jobs with their sons and daughters so that they can understand how the real world functions from a man’s perspective.

         Children learn what marriage is like ONLY from watching their parents. Kids will do what their parents do unless they are very, very savvy and can differentiate from what was great about their parents and what required improvement.

         Boys learn how to treat women with respect, from watching their dad interact with their mom. If the dad is kind and considerate, then sons learn this. Girls learn how women are to be treated from their dad’s attitude toward their mom. The abusive father creates abusive kids and abusive adults. The disrespectful father creates disrespectful kids. The physically and verbally violent dad creates horrific trauma for kids literally for generations to come.

         It is always better to have a single mom family than have a violent family with an abusive dad. The kids never really forgive the mom for continuing to allow the abuse much less the dad for abusing all of them. Why didn’t she just leave him, they ask themselves for the rest of their lives, until they end up in the same type of marriage. It takes quite a bit of courage to leave that life.

         So dads are incredibly valuable and families need dads for love and for balance. Families don’t need dads who are never there or who abuse.

         Like everything else in human relationships, the father connection is very complicated and incredibly important. Let us hope that more men decide to be really great dads because they are vitally important in everyone’s life. 

Photo courtesy of James M. Erwin. All rights reserved.

Time is an Energy Field by Tina Erwin

Time is multifaceted, multidimensional, and integral to every soul on this planet. We could not live in mortal bodies without time. We require the patience of time and the luxury of physical space in which to experience all the lessons, trials and triumphs of mortal life. The third element required for mortal life after time and space, is gravity. Gravity grounds us, slows us down. Without gravity, we would travel with the speed of thought and everything would happen instantly, essentially, at once. Time, space and gravity offer us the very framework, the template upon which to fashion our mortal life experiences.

It is hard to fathom time but it is probably even harder to imagine time as an energy field. Time is such a part of the nature, fabric and consciousness of our lives that to try to separate it out as an energy field would seem impossible.

However, if we consider that time itself is an energy field, then we can begin to understand how that field affects us. When we are not in physical bodies, time does not exist. When we live on another realm, time, gravity and space do not exist. Gravity and space are fields of energy in and of themselves, and perhaps we can wrap our brains around that fact, but it is much harder to consider time as an energy field because we could no more separate time from the ebb and flow of our days than we could separate the wind from the air. They are each one and the same, yet at the same time they are different.

Fish only know that water is their environment and they use the energy field of time in the form of circadian rhythms. These rhythms govern the seasons of their lives. The time elements for all sea life are literally embedded in their DNA. The DNA can only become operative when living in the energy field of time and space. Water is the environment for fish and this is all they know. Air is our environment and it is what we know, but it is not all we know. We know that we can be in the fish’s environment but we are limited by time. We cannot live comfortably in a water environment because we are severely governed by the amount of time we are there. The same is true of fish. Fish out of water are profoundly limited by time.  Literally their survival and ours depends entirely by the amount of time we can spend out of our normal space.

This nuance of understanding time is important because time is also embedded in our DNA. The easiest way to understand time being part of our DNA is that we live various life ‘seasons.’ Some are for growing, or marrying and having children or focusing on a career or doing all of those at the same time. The very timing of those events is part of our DNA. We know this is true, because we hear ourselves say that we “felt it was just the right time to do this or that.”

We also live each mortal life in a particular time period, or stack of time. If we accomplish what we intended to in that stack of time, if we worked through most of our mission, then there is no attachment on our DNA of that past energetic time marker. However, if we lived a life that was unfulfilled, was turbulent, horrific, or particularly wonderful, there is going to be a mark on our DNA. This isn’t good or bad. It just is.

Consider that the loss of the Civil War was so traumatic for the South that there is a whole population of people [mostly men] who continually keep trying to ‘re-enact’ various battles. Of course those re-enactors died in those battles. There is what is called a miasma on the DNA, meaning that this marker is something that still bothers us, is unfinished business, or is a profound hurt unhealed. There can also be a time marker on the DNA of a wonderful life. This is why we try to re-create a life we may have enjoyed in, for example, Italy, France, China or England. Look around our homes. Our most significant lives will be reflected in the art and decor we choose because we remember how much the energy of that time meant to us.

Every thing has an affect on us. Certain energetic fields affect us more than others. Time, however is one of the most profound influences on all of our lives and this will always be so until we no longer are required to reincarnate. When that happens, our spiritual progress will have made mighty strides. Then we will be able to remember the time we lived a mortal life because it will be eternally part of the time stamp of our Akashic records stored in the spiritual hall of records in the Mansion worlds. But wait, there’s more to learn outside of our planet!

The Preception of Memory by Tina Erwin

         Recently my husband was sharing a story of an event that took place in Naples, Italy when we lived there some 37 years ago. He was telling this story with gusto because it was unnerving for him. However for me, the issue wasn’t the story but how he remembered it. I had a somewhat different memory of the event. The point of this story is why we each have such different memories. But let us focus on this one story and then go over why we each remembered one key fact so differently.

         In this story, we were returning from a Navy party way out in the country. It took a full 40 minutes to drive back into downtown Naples. We had a top floor apartment on Posillipo hill, right on the bay of Naples. Our apartment overlooked the entire bay of Naples, including Sorrento and the islands of Ischia and Capri. However to get to the final street that would wind us up the mountain to our apartment, we had to drive through a very long tunnel, then turn right, past a traffic circle and then past 12-story apartment buildings that lined both sides of the street.

         Normally, as we came out of that tunnel and turned right, we would get our first glimpse of the Bay of Naples, this glorious view tightly wedged between these two 12-story apartment buildings. It was a ‘T’ intersection with a stoplight. Turn left at this intersection and you head for the center of downtown Naples hugging this glorious bay. Turn right and you enter the Mergillina area and begin to head up the mountain on Via Posillipo. Because the mountains that overlook Naples Bay are so populated with gorgeous villas, there is another major road that intersects with Via Posillipo and Mergillina: Via Petrarca.

         So here is the scene that should have happened:

         We come out of the tunnel,

         We turn right toward the stoplight that is 300 yards ahead of us.

         The light was green and my husband is accelerating to the light.

         We should have flown through the green light and made a slight right turn toward Via Posillipo, past the intersection with Via Petrarca.

         But here is what actually happened at 2am in that incredibly memorable moment. It is also important to mention that in 1977, Naples was a ghost town in the middle of the night. We had driven for 35 minutes and had not seen another car anywhere. We felt like we had the city to ourselves, snug in our fast red Fiat MiraFiori. We thought we would be reaching our apartment in a matter of minutes.

         But this is what actually happened that fateful night.

         We came out of that tunnel.

         We turned right toward the stoplight that is 300 yards ahead of us. We can see the slim view of the twinkling lights of the night fishermen ahead of us, and the wine dark sea past that.

         But in that astonishing moment, I didn’t see any of that. All I could ‘see/sense’ was that there was something very wrong about racing toward that intersection. The light was green and my husband was accelerating toward that green light. That nagging sense that something was terribly wrong gripped me.

         “Troy you have to slow down, slow down now.”

         “Are you nuts?” he demanded. “I’ve got a green light.”

         “No, SLOW DOWN RIGHT NOW.” I demanded in an ever-louder voice.

         “I’m slowing down, but we have the green light? Why should I slow down?”

          “Slow down more, hurry, quickly, slow down now! Just do it!” I’m yelling now, as if something has come over me and I can ‘see’ that if we don’t slow down something terrible is going to happen.

         Troy applies the brakes more and more and we are now a few feet from driving through that still green light.

         “Stop the car!!”  I’m screaming at him now. “Stop the car immediately, DO IT.”

         And as he brings the car to a full stop, another car comes out of absolutely nowhere utterly ignoring the fact that he has a red light and should stop. But he doesn’t stop, he slows down when he sees us – finally – and then he continues on his way.

         Some part of me ‘saw’ him coming. If Troy hadn’t slowed down, we would have been hit and if we hadn’t stopped, we would have killed the man in the other car. Only bringing our car to a complete top saved us both.

         As the other car proceeded on, we noted that there was not another car in sight, anywhere, only two cars on a collision course stopped by an unseen feeling that saved us all. Troy pretty much demanded to know in a very loud voice how I could have known that that car was there and how I knew to stop. He freaked out all the way up Posillipo hill.

         Needless to say, this was the beginning of a lifetime of remote viewing, because in this case I could ‘see’ past those 12-story apartment buildings to perceive that lone messenger of potential death for us all on the other side of those buildings.

         But this isn't the point of the story.

         The point of the story is that when Troy is telling the story, he remembers the car coming from the right, down Via Petrarca towards Mergillina. However, I remember the car as coming from the downtown area, coming from the left, not the right.

         When Troy told the story I listened and did not correct him. His perception of the event is his alone. I remembered the key element of the story very differently. So who's right?

         It doesn’t matter who is right. We see this all the time, especially between couples or family members who are all party to the same event yet have decidedly different recollections of one or more key features of the event. You often hear one spouse or family member immediately correct the other, smugly believing that the other person has to be wrong, that there can only be one correct memory of an event. But what if it is possible for there to be two accurate versions of an event?

         Is this why ‘eye witness’ accounts are so routinely suspect? Does our perception of an event color our memory of it? What creates this influence?

         I remember an event with both my brothers and my father. It involved a dark colored car. All four of us remembered that the car was dark, but we each specifically remembered a different car color.  The cop threw up his hands: if four eye witnesses, standing side by side cannot agree on the color of the car, what is the truth in any situation?

         Perhaps the truth is that we each perceive reality slightly differently. This does not make anyone’s perception wrong. It makes it simply their perception and nothing more.

         So if you are telling a story and someone corrects you, you have good ground to tell him or her that your version of the story is based on your perception of the moment and is not right or wrong. It’s a perception. Perhaps correcting someone else would also be something that you would want to forgo in the future, especially if you are able to acknowledge and allow that other people are just as equally entitled to their perception as you are.

The Integratron Part 2 by Tina Erwin

Acoustic Perfection

       My husband is an extremely good sport. I have taken him all over the place, talked him into buying a crystal mine in Arkansas, purchased thousands of crystals and bought jewelry all over the world, so an hour’s retreat with a sound bath must have seemed pretty tame for him.

       The Integratron is acoustically perfect in every way. It is an all-wooden structure made without benefit of nails of metal. There is a downstairs entry which is the bottom of the dome. Here you remove your shoes, learn what the directions are and then climb the mostly vertical steps up to the second floor of this Integratron.

       Once up there, you find that your mat and pillow have already been laid out for you. Then you lay down. In one slice of the arc space on that floor, are 14 quartz crystal signing bowls perfectly arranged in what appears to be a random order, but nothing here is random, everything here is purposeful. The process begins by listening carefully to the brief directions. They warn you not to snore. I found that rather humorous since once you are that asleep and sawing wood, you are pretty oblivious to the noises your nose and mouth are making.    

However, we were given permission to tell the person next to us to top snoring or to at least touch them. They also asked us not to get up and move about, but to be still throughout the entire experience. Please, no cell phone, talking or moving about.

       They strongly suggest that you meditate, that you drift into that place of mindfulness and healing.

       I own three quartz crystal signing bowls myself. I know how they work. They come in a tremendous range of sizes to correspond to the notes on a harmonic scale and the chakra system in the human body. They are made of pure crushed quartz crystal that is combined with a resin or an epoxy and then specifically shaped into these harmonic sizes.

The bowls are ‘played’ by gently but firmly tapping the outside of the bowl and then caressing or rubbing the side of the bowl with this same rubber-tipped wooden wand. Once the bowls are played, they begin to have a unique and dramatic vibration that seems to penetrate your very soul. The sound is pure, sweet and harmonizing.

Many people are familiar with Tibetan singing bowls, those small metal bowls that sit on colorful silk pillows. Metal singing bowls specifically target the musculoskeletal system while crystal singing bowls directly affect the sensory nervous system. This is probably why you feel so rejuvenated after the experience.

They play the bowls for 25 amazing minutes. The sound is nothing like you can imagine and something I find that I am inadequate to fully describe. The tones penetrate your being, your soul, your mind, heart and the emotional/spiritual basis of your very life. Not bad for a 25 minute session. After the playing session, they have you simply lay there for another 25 minutes absorbing your experience. Then you quietly arise and leave.

Our experience was a little hard to describe. Troy pretty much fell asleep, woke up refreshed as if he had had an extra nourishing nap and had no further description or unique experience.

My experience was completely different. I tried to meditate, really I did, but I found that I was more than mindful of the sound penetrating every cell of my body. In fact, I felt myself pinned to the floor, experienced a tremendous cold wave come over me and could not move even a finger. It was not unlike receiving an acupuncture treatment where you dare not move until the energy has finally settled down in your body. Finally, after the 25 minutes I began to feel warmth return to my body and we made our way out of this magic chamber.

       Then we made our way back to 29 Palms and spent the afternoon in Joshua Tree national park and watched the sun set. You can see the San Andreas fault from here. Gorgeous landscape, almost surreal.  There are a number of charming bed and breakfast Inn here. We stayed at Roughly Manor. We highly recommend this beautiful place to stay with its private quaint cottages. This is a great get-a-away!    Photography by Tina Erwin.  All rights reserved.

The Integratron Part 1 by Tina Erwin

The Integratron

       Several people had told me about this unique place, this place where you could get a sound bath and find that your body was cleared of all kinds of pesky things that come upon you in your day to day life.

       So just what is this place, this Inegretron? This is the description they provide in their brochure:

       “A fusion of Art, Science and Magic, . . . this world famous, circa 1950’s historic dome is located at an intersection of strong geomagnetic forces in the Mojave Desert. The Integratron’s unique geometry focuses and amplifies sound and energy. Its architect claimed he received the instructions from extraterrestrials and intended its purpose to be rejuvenation and time travel! A one of a kind, all-wood Tabernacle. You can feel it!”

       What is a ‘sound bath?’

       “The antidote to everyday life,” is how it is described. “The sound bath is a 30-minute sonic healing session in the deeply resonant sound chamber. 14 pure quartz crystal singing bowls keyed harmonically to the body are played live while you recline and relax. Imagine being ‘bathed” in beautiful and powerful sound waves: it’s nutrition for the nervous system. The results are waves of peace, increased balance and awareness, and deep relaxation of the mind and body. It’s kindergarten naptime of the third kind!”

So my husband and I decided to visit this Integratron, this sound bath chamber located in absolutely the middle of nowhere in Landers, California. We wanted a unique get-away for a weekend, to see and experience things that were out of our normal day to day experiences. So off we went to find this amazing place. We made an appointment for our ‘sound bath’ at the Integratron and then set out for the 29 Palms area to spend a couple of nights and also experience the Josuhua Tree national park.

       You have to follow their directions to get there pretty specifically because one wrong turn and this weird place in the middle no nowhere can turn out to be a very empty, nothing-for-miles dirt road.

We found it. It looked rather like a forgotten 1970’s hippie retreat with a hammock section in an odd circle, steam punk art everywhere and lightening rods stuck in the ground at odd angles. There is a unique collection of rusting sculptures randomly placed among the desert plants. There are chairs to sit in if you are not hammock inclined and absolutely no shelter anywhere if there is rain other than the two bathrooms and the tiny staff room.

       You have to have a reservation because they are booked all the time. This isn’t a place to ‘just show up’ and hope you can get in. They can have 25 people in a sound bath at a time and that’s pretty much it. Although it looks large from the outside, it is not that large on the inside. 

     Part 2 will discuss what the sound bath feels like!
Photography by Tina Erwin.  All rights reserved.