….. ….. ONLY FOR YOU Do not bewail your fate at crossroads Nor shirk the choice of either/or But singing both/and search for the lost notes The key to pick is neither/nor Let us pray for the seasick sailor Stormswept, … Continue reading →
Tag: crossroads
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| Universal human: This reconstruction is of a different modern human from Romania 43,000 years ago. But it gives some clues to what the Siberian man may have looked like. This population was not long out of Africa and genetically midway between Europeans and Asians |
Excerpt from bbc.com
The genome sequence from a thigh bone found in Siberia shows the first episode of mixing occurred between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.The male hunter is one of the earliest modern humans discovered in Eurasia.
The study in Nature journal also supports the finding that our species emerged from Africa some 60,000 years ago, before spreading around the world.
The analysis raises the possibility that the human line first emerged millions of years earlier than current estimates.
Prof Svante Paabo Max-Plack Institute"We seem to have caught evolution red handed”
"The amazing thing is that we have a good genome of a 45,000 year old person who was close to the ancestor of all present-day humans outside Africa," Prof Paabo told BBC News.
Prof Paabo has analysed DNA from part of a leg bone of a man that lived in Western Siberia around 45,000 years ago. This is a key moment at the cross roads of the world, when modern humans were on the cusp of an expansion into Europe and Asia.
Prof Paabo Svante has unlocked the secrets contained in this femur from one of the earliest humans discovered out of Africa.
"Our analysis shows that modern humans had already interbred with Neanderthals then and we can determine when that first happened much more precisely than we could before."
Prof Paabo and his team published research in 2010 which showed that all non-African humans today have Neanderthal DNA. But that genetic material has been broken into much smaller chunks over the generations.
According to Prof Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, this early interbreeding might indicate when the ancestors of people living outside of Africa today made their first steps out of the continent in which our species evolved more than 150,000 years ago.
Prof Stringer was among those who believed that the first exit by modern humans from Africa that give rise to people outside of Africa today might have happened earlier, possibly 100,000 years ago. The evidence from Prof Paabo's research is persuading him that it was now much later.
Crossroads for humanity: the river Irtysh in Western Siberia where the bone was found.
Prof Paabo also compared the DNA of the man living 45,000 years ago with those living today. He found that the man was genetically midway between Europeans and Asians - indicating he lived close to the time before our species separated into different racial groups.
Prof Paabo was also able to estimate the rate at which human DNA has changed or mutated over the millennia. He found that it was slower than the rate suggested by fossil evidence and similar to what has been observed in families.
"We have caught evolution red handed!" Prof Paabo said gleefully.
This raises the possibility that the very first species of the human line separated from apes 10 or 11 million years ago - rather than the five or six million years ago that genetic evidence had previously suggested.
But he stressed in his research paper that much more analysis was needed before re-dating the emergence of the human line.
"We caution that (mutation) rates may have changed over time and may differ between human populations," he said.
Archeologists digging at Binchester Roman Fort near Bishop Auckland in County Durham, England have unearthed a treasure trove of Roman artifacts and buildings dating back more than 1,800 years. Lauded as some of the best-preserved Roman ruins this side of Pompeii, the site has produced an ancient bathhouse, an altar to the goddess Fortuna and a piece of jewelry that offers early evidence of Christianity in Roman Britain.
Excavations at the Binchester site (Credit: University of Durham)
Chief among the discoveries is an 1,800-year-old Roman bathhouse that would have served as the hub of the fort’s social and recreational life. The baths still feature original floors, windows and doorways, and plaster shards indicate that their seven-foot-high walls were once adorned with colorful designs and drawings. “The most unique feature of these remains is the sheer scale of their preservation,” said Dr. David Petts, archeologist at Durham University. “It is possible to walk through a series of Roman rooms with walls all above head height; this is pretty exceptional for Roman Britain.” Further digging in the bathhouse uncovered evidence of plumbing, including a drain and gaps in the walls that may have once held lead piping to channel water.
In an adjacent changing room, the archeologists excavated a carved stone altar to Fortune the Home-Bringer, one of several aspects of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck, chance and fate. The altar bears an inscription by a trooper garrisoned at the fort with a unit of Spanish cavalry. The etching identifies his rank as “architectus,” offering some of the first evidence that military architects may have operated on staff at provincial Roman outposts.
Excavations at the Binchester site have also yielded a silver ring with an engraving that features two fish dangling from an anchor, often considered an early symbol of Christianity. The design appears widely in Roman artifacts, but the researchers say the ring is only the second time it has cropped up in Britain. Dr. Petts dates the jewelry to the 3rd century A.D.—long before the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313. “This is a surprisingly early date for a Christian object in Britain,” he notes on the project’s blog. “Evidence for Roman Christianity is rare in Northern England, and evidence for Pre-Constantinian Christianity is even rarer.”
With its commanding views of the nearby road and river, the fort at Binchester was one of the most vital of the five Roman bastions that once operated in County Durham. The site was constructed from timber sometime around A.D. 80. on the orders of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Roman Governor of Britain. It was later fortified and rebuilt from stone during the Antonine period in the second century. The newer citadel included a hospital and several barracks, workshops and granaries, but it wasn’t merely a military outpost. From their guard towers, Roman legionaries would have been able to watch a “vicus,” or civilian settlement, emerge alongside their fort. Evidence shows this upstart village continued on long after the fall of the Roman Empire. A nearby 7th century church is even built from looted stone that once belonged to the Binchester fort.
References to the ruins date back to the 1500s, but the first organized study of the Binchester fort didn’t take place until the late 19th century, when John Proud and the Reverend R.E. Hoopell unearthed a 4th century praetorium, or officer’s headquarters, and an adjacent bathhouse. The current Binchester excavation is a joint endeavor between the Durham County Council, the University of Durham, the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Northumberland and Durham and several other institutions. Now in its sixth year, the project has focused on excavating a pair of trenches dug at the site. The better preserved of the two trenches houses the altar and the bathhouse, both of which appear to have been converted into a trash heap in the late-Roman period. The other site features a section of the tower wall, a cavalry barracks, horse stables, bread ovens and a latrine. Petts hopes these finds can serve as a window onto the world of both the fort and the village that once flourished beyond its walls. “Our excavations have uncovered parts of one of the best preserved Roman buildings in Britain,” he said in the press release. “The building itself and the wonderful array of artifacts we have recovered from Binchester give us an unparalleled opportunity to better understand life on the northern frontier in the Roman period.”
The recent discoveries are not the first significant artifacts associated with the Binchester project. In July 2013, an archeology student working at the site unearthed a 1,800-year-old carved stone head that may be one of the few depictions of the Romano-British god Antenociticus.
On May 19-21, Chicago is scheduled to host an estimated 50 heads of state, foreign and defense ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries. The Chicago NATO summit is being billed as The Global Crossroads. Just as Occu...
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a message from Jennifer Hoffman
Monday, 23 May, 2011 (posted 3 June, 2011)
As we become brave enough to explore the truth, and it does require courage because in order to know our truth we often have to disprove ...
As most of you can tell by now, I love a good conversation. To me, dinner with people who know how to discuss delicious topics is one of the great pleasures of life. I don’t even have to include dinner – I just threw that in. A great conversation can take place anywhere, anytime. What makes a conversation “great”, as it were, at least for me – is that my imagination is animated, or I am inspired to think about something in a way that I had not considered it before, or I learn new facts, or I discover a whole new field of information, or I encounter someone who thinks in a way that is so unique that I just want to listen and observe his or her mind in action. So the other day I had the opportunity to have one of those great and delicious conversations with someone who had imagination and depth and wisdom, and so off we went into a discussion of the nature of mystical laws. The conversation didn’t start out exactly on that topic. It began with this question that he asked me, “Are you more fascinated by what you can see or by what you cannot see?”
Now how many people would think to ask you that?
As soon as I heard the question, I almost swayed into another dimension: Am I more fascinated by what I can see or by what I cannot see? I replied that I was more drawn to the dimension of the unseen. He asked for an example and that’s when I submitted as article number one: The Mystical Law of Synchronicity. I said that I was fascinated by that law and how its alchemy comes together within each of our lives. As a visual, imagine this law as an alchemical dynamic comprised of several chemicals that may or may not create a spark overhead. Conditions have to be perfect – but what exactly are those conditions? Imagine, then, that you want to interact with those conditions – you want to become an active variable in the creative dynamic of the law of synchronicity. Is that even possible and if so, what would you have to know and become – not do – but become in order to interact with the law? How intriguing is this? (Said another way, how could such a question not intrigue someone?)
Carl Jung brought the mystical law of synchronicity into common parlance and then it made its way into mainstream awareness. Commonly understood, it refers to a coming together of events that happen to coordinate or parallel with something that you are experiencing at that same time. Sometimes a synchronistic event is localized, meaning that the psychic event and the physical event occur in the same place at the same time. Jung called that the first category of synchronistic events. Thinking of someone and then seeing that person one minute later or receiving a phone call from them five seconds after you thought of his or her name are examples of what he would call the second category of synchronistic events; that is, two people having mutual thoughts of each other separated by distance.
We have all experienced synchronistic events – some on a small scale, some on a grand scale. They happen all the time. Can a person influence the Law of Synchronicity? How fascinating is that question? What makes a synchronistic event or moment come together? And are some people more receptive to synchronistic events than others? All of those questions are worthy of an afternoon’s lecture (which is why I’m doing a workshop on the Mystical Laws in April), but I’ll address each one in brief. (Other Mystical Laws include the laws that govern Fate and Destiny, the Mystical Laws of Healing and the Mystical Law of Transformation).
Why is knowledge such as this so important? Because you interact with these laws with every breath you take. Nothing about your life is casual or happenstance. On the other hand, literature abounds about how you can “create your own reality” just by thinking “positive thoughts”. How many positive thoughts? One? Two? Is creating your whole reality really that simple? What about all your negative unconscious thoughts – what happens to them? The tendency in this contemporary spiritual society is to take these extraordinary Mystical Laws and reduce them to a user’s guide to happiness - not that there is anything wrong with happiness. But you miss the whole galaxy by focusing on only one planet, if you see what I mean. These laws govern the invisible universe and suggest that an ideal harmony (not happiness but harmonious balance) coexists between the soul realm and the physical. That same relationship in the macro realm is what each person contains in the micro as an individual and thus these laws operate as a mini-universe within each human being.
We are born knowing this truth, though not in the intellectual detail with which I am now communicating it. Rather, we are born with an inherent awareness of these Mystical Laws. We are born with a type of yearning to experience awe and to be blown away by greater-than-ordinary events. And if they do not happen naturally or supernaturally (as in Divinely inspired), then we create them just to get our adrenalin going at max speed because that part of us longs to break through the barrier of “earth speed” in order to touch mystical weightlessness. Ask anyone who pushes the envelope why they risk their lives doing the most outrageous sports, for example, and their responses hint at a longing for a mystical experience. Many speak of “losing themselves in the moment” or “feeling weightlessness” just for a second, as if time stands still. That’s a description of a mystical experience, not a physical one. It’s the best a person can achieve on his or her own without the addition of maximum “grace speed”, but it’s most certainly a taste of the thrill of “mystical weightlessness”. No wonder athletes get addicted to the “high” of those experiences. They literally and symbolically are “highs”.
The Law of Synchronicity, then, is one of many Mystical Laws that govern the invisible world. These Mystical Laws work in partnership with the laws of the physical realm, such as motion, speed, gravity, etc. The Mystical Laws work in subtle ways, but they are as intimate as our breath. When are we not “thinking” or “emotionally reacting” or stressed or unstressed or creating or angry or not angry or in love or broken hearted? We are, in other words, always “in psychic motion” and our energy is at least a part of the substance these laws use to function within our lives.
Just like the athletes experiencing a weightless high during a peak experience, it’s possible to sample that same sensation when you become aware that you are in the midst of a synchronistic event. Immediately your senses become more alert as you shift from just glancing over the environment you are in to scanning in for miniscule details, each one on reserve for potential symbolic significance. Instantly you begin to wonder about the “meaning” of that particular moment over the other ordinary moments of that day when nothing synchronistic occurred. Such questions lift your thinking above the ground. Where? To mystical heights – a synchronistic event ultimately makes you wonder about purpose, meaning, significance, fate, and destiny. Granted, your wonderment will not always be overwhelming with each synchronistic event but because these are, in essence, mystical sparks – a merger of the psychic and physical realms coming together – you are experiencing a mystical law in motion acting directly through the corridor of your life. And that is awesome.
As I briefly describe my own observations about the Law of Synchronicity, I want you to think of yourself as an active variable. You are the X-factor in your own life, an active ingredient that can initiate a synchronistic event or dispel the energy of one. You are the object, then, that needs to be understood in addition to the Law of Synchronicity.
- Can a person influence acts of synchronicity; that is, are some people more likely to experience synchronistic events, and if so, why? We can and do influence all the Mystical Laws, including the Law of Synchronicity. This particular law seems to be far more animated around a person who lacks a heavy emotional/mental/psychic history. Said another way, a person who lives primarily in “present time” is living in harmony with the natural energetics of this law.
- Adaptability and respond-ability are two qualities that seem to magnetize synchronicity. A person’s willingness to adapt to the opportunity that a synchronistic event presents with minimum hesitation jumps right into the magic of the moment. That person has “respond-ability”. This is a big deal as most people hesitate out of over-caution and fear of the consequences of their actions. As a result, most people continually look to their past for inspiration as to what to choose next, and many times they end up stuck. The ability to recognize an opportunity as a synchronistic “Divine set up” and then respond to that moment in a way that grounds that opportunity ensures a person of a “follow-up” synchronistic experience, if not a series of them. This is a person who is now living in the flow of a mystical law.
- A person cannot make a certain type of synchronistic event happen. We have no control over the types of events or the timing of them.
- Why and when synchronistic events happen seems to be connected to greater or lesser choice points in a person’s life. The significance of these choice points varies but the common thread is that a synchronistic moment or experience is a choice point.
- You as the active variable should take time to reflect upon whether you are a psychic anchor in your own life or someone who is capable of an immediate and dynamic response. That is a question worthy of hours and hours of reflection and not just as regards the Law of Synchronicity, but all the other Mystical Laws as well. Specifically, someone who fights change, who fears the unknown and new ideas and suggestions weakens or depletes the energy field required for synchronistic events.
Continuing on with my conversation:
My friend and I chatted for quite some time about the Law of Synchronicity and my observation about how being in present time increases the likelihood of synchronistic events. How can that not happen? It’s so energetically logical. Of course, our conversation had to include this question: Can and do people know when they are sabotaging a synchronistic event? Fascinating question. I’ll have to ponder that one and save the answer for my upcoming workshop on the Mystical Laws.
Meanwhile, let me leave you with this insight: When a synchronistic event/moment occurs, it does so because certain elements of the psychic realm and the physical realm match. I always take that as a signal that I am standing at a crossroads, a choice point. That choice may not be huge – or it may be. But I always ask myself during a synchronistic moment, “What choice occurs to me?” and then I act on it.
This Universe is a mystical wonderland, to say the least. So I will leave you with the question that started my conversation with a dear friend, “Are you more fascinated by what you can see or by what you cannot see?” Reflect upon that, now imagining that there is no such thing as empty space.
Love, Caroline
© 2009 Myss.com - Caroline Myss is a New
York Times best-selling author whose books include Anatomy
of
the Spirit, Why
People
Don’t Heal and How They Can, Sacred
Contacts, and Entering
the
Castle. Defy
Gravity:
Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason, will be
published by Hay House in October 2009.
Listen to Caroline
every week on www.HayHouseRadio.com
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