SPEAKING TREE | Celebrating Devi, The Divine Mother

By Bhanumati Narasimhan

The Divine Mother Devi is the womb of all Creation. She is the seed of all dynamism, radiance, beauty, equanimity, peace and nourishment. She isthe life force energy.

The Divine Mother has unconditional and infinite love for Her children, that is, every being in entire Creation. During the nine nights of Navaratri, Devi is worshipped in all Her names and forms each of which has a special significance. We remember a sandalwood tree by the memory of its perfume. Each name and form of
the Devi refers to a specific quality or attribute of the Divine. By remembering the form or by chanting the many names of Devi, we enliven those qualities in our consciousness and they manifest in us according
to the need.

Navaratri is a journey from the outer world of names and forms to the subtle world of energies, invoked through the various yagnas. The first three days celebrate the Devi in the form of Durga. Durga also means hill. A very difficult task is often described as an uphill task. The goddess is depicted as riding a lion or tiger,   alluding to the aspect of courage and valour, the essence of Devi Durga.

The Nava Durga symbolises the nine aspects of Durga-energy that act like a shield to ward off all negativities. When you have obstacles and mental blocks, just remembering these qualities of the Devi can help you overcome the mental blocks.

As Mahishasuramardini, Durga is the destroyer of Mahisha. The word mahisha means buffalo, a symbol of lethargy and inertia. These are the qualities that impede the spiritual and material progress of an individual. The Devi is a storehouse of positive energy and any trace of laziness or inertia dissolves in Her very presence.

The second set of three days honour the Devi as Lakshmi. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and prosperity. Wealth is a vital ingredient bestowed upon us for maintenance and for progress in our life. It is much more than just having money. It means abundance in knowledge, skills and talents. Lakshmi is the energy that   manifests as the complete spiritual and material well-being of a person.

The final three days are dedicated to Saraswati. Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge. She gives the essence, the Sara of the Self, Sva. She is often depicted as being seated on a rock. Knowledge, like
a rock, is a steadfast support. It stays with us at all times. She plays the veena, a musical instrument whose mellifluous notes bring harmony and peace to the mind. Similarly, spiritual knowledge brings relaxation and celebration into life.

Saraswati is the ocean of understanding and the consciousness that vibrates with different types of learning. She is the source of  spiritual light, remover of all ignorance and the source of knowledge.

The Devi is offered flowers in a multitude of hues and fragrances like jasmine, hibiscus, lotus, lilies and roses. From outer beauty, as we turn our focus inward and are soaked in the divine attributes, our consciousness flowers.

Navaratri is a time of celebration of both inner and outer beauty, a time to give thanks to the Divine Mother Devi for her love and protection, guidance and understanding.
Navaratri begins today.

(The writer is director, Women and Child Welfare programme, The Art of
Living Foundation.)

Hundreds of youth gathering to take an oath for change!

Featuring

Papa Groove

Montreal, May 14^th2009 — Hundreds of youth (18 to 30) will gather at Kola Note on June 9^th 2009 for a momentous event of mega proportions! These youth will take an oath for change… a change for a violence-free, stress-free and corruption-free society.

The featured artist is Papa Groove and two other supporting bands, Élie Haroun and Mathieu Lippé. The YES!⁺ Fest’09 will be held at Kola Note, 5240 Parc avenue (corner Fairmount), from 7:00pm – 1:00am June 9^th, 2009.

An event hosted by YES!⁺ Canada, YES!⁺ FEST ’09 is a celebration of a global movement of youth. Uniting Canada’s premier charitable organizations, environmentalists, and leaders with emerging musicians, YES!⁺ FEST ’09 will be an extravaganza of youthful energy, optimism and commitment to individual and global transformation. This occasion will bring together hundreds of youth and raise awareness to the YES!⁺ movement that has been growing exponentially in the international community.

Our Mission:

With a world in crisis, economies in turmoil, and dreams of peace ravaged by poverty and war, a new generation awaits to inherit many challenges. It is time for us all to uplift ourselves and experience the boundless creativity, knowledge, and festivity that we know is possible in our daily lives. YES!⁺ FEST will be the springboard that will mobilize Canada-wide participation for this cause.

All youth leaders or youth aspiring to be leaders in their lives are cordially invited! Bring your friends too!

Recap of the event:

Where: Kola Note

When: June 9, 2009 7:00pm – 1:00am

Why: For an oath to change society!

Who: YOUth!

Tickets: http://yesplusfest.ca/ ($20) / [514-554-6797]

Tony Tinawi's Famous Oatmeal Recipe

By Tony Tinawi...

This month I received 3 fan-mails and none of them were about how handsome I am, how smart I am, how nice I am, how funny I am, how great of a YES!+ teacher I am, nope, looks like people these days are not so impressed with any of that stuff. All 3 fan mails were about how much they love my oatmeal!


The emails go something like this:
"Hi Tony, I really miss your oatmeal, I love your oatmeal, I have dreams about your oatmeal!!! Oh by the way, how are you?"

Now in their defense, I do make the best oatmeal on planet earth. <--period I even got Swami Sukhchaitanya hooked on oatmeal. No joke, he's been having it every day for breakfast for at least 6 months now. If you know Swamiji like I do, you probably realize how impressive that is! So, to my current and future oatmeal fans, here it is at last:

Tony's Famous Oatmeal Recipe:

1) ADD OATS
Natural oats, not the kind from a packet that's pre-flavoured, pre-cooked, and loaded with sugar. That later kind should be saved preciously in your gun cabinet and used on anyone you want to kill on the spot.

Get organic oats. You may think I'm being a little paranoid but my friends at Monsanto, have confirmed that their plans to completely destroy the planet are well underway and I figure we should at least give them a good run for their money!

Finally, don't get the quick 1-minute oats. Those things are pre-cooked. You want the joy of cooking them yourself so they can cook with all the right spices and get all the right flavours. Don't go to the other extreme and get those huge rolled oats kind that take weeks to cook and months to digest! Remember, middle path....always.

Finally the oatmeal boxes generally suggests 1/3 cup of oats per person. 1/3 cup is sufficient to feed a Smurf! Since most people make oatmeal that tastes like cardboard 1/3 of a cup is probably all you would want anyway. But with this recipe, you will actually enjoy and you WILL go for seconds. I would recommend 3/4 to 1 cup per person.


2) ADD MILK

To my vegan friends who get offended by dairy, notice I didn't say you had to add Cow's milk. I simply said milk! So it can just as well be soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, etc. When I was in Halifax recently we mixed goat's milk, almond milk and rice milk and it was delicious. So be creative. And yes, if you get cow's milk, it will be nice if your milk is organic and your cows are relatively happy.

READ CAREFULLY: This is the step where most people go terribly wrong!
Most people cook their oatmeal with water! Tsk Tsk Tsk. If I catch you doing that, I will come and smack you with that wooden spoon you were going to use to stir the oats. You can put 2/3 milk 1/3 water but that's the max as far as water goes.


3) ADD STUFF

Start with my secret ingredient that makes any oatmeal taste delicious: fennel seeds. They go in first because the longer they cook, the tastier the oatmeal.
Then add a dash of salt. Just a dash hein, it's not dahl!!
Add chopped almonds. If you don't have chopped almonds, here's an awesome tip: take almonds and chop them....you lazy North-American!!
You can add other quality nuts too like walnuts, pecan or cashews but please do me a favor, leave the bird-food out: no sunflower seeds, no pumpkin seeds!

Add raisins to make it sweet. Some people like to use dates instead. That's great if you're legally blind. Otherwise you will find that dates disintegrate into a mushy paste that reminds you of less pleasant things you don't want to see in your morning breakfast bowl. So stick to raisins, they don't disintegrate and will make your experience a lot more pleasant. Color and presentation is important!


4) ADD SWEETNESS

If you want to be true to Tony's famous recipe: Maple Syrup! Don't compromise on that!
Alternatives: Brown Sugar, Honey, Stevia, Succanat....all these are ok but I guarantee you, they won't give you the same "AHA!" moment when you taste the oatmeal for the first time.
Absolutely no white sugar, and if you add honey you should add it afterward. My Ayurveda friends say you should never boil honey. Besides, there are much better things you can do with your honey. Look at me, I married mine!


5) TUTTI FRUTTI!

Add fresh chopped peaches, pears, apples, bananas, grapes, pineapple, the more fruits your throw in, the less sugar you need to add and the tastier and more colourful your oatmeal becomes.


Heat stove at 2/3 of max and stir. Continue until oats are cooked. Serve it hot, not too hard, not too liquidy....remember middle path! Eat right away, while still hot.


Enjoy and let me know how it goes!
Big hug,

Cancer Update from John Hopkins

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY (TRY THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHN HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .

Cancer Update from John Hopkins

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime

3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9 When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence,Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supple ments like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a20survivor. Anger, unforgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply t o the cancer cells. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal,Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.

b. Milk cause s the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soya milk cancer cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains,seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment.About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels wit hin 15 minutes to nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts)and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine.Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

Johns Hopkins has recently sent this out in its newsletters. This information is being circulated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as well.

Dioxinchemicals causes cancer, especially breast cancer.

Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies.

Don't freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic.

Recently, Dr. Edward Fujimoto, Wellness Program Manager at Castle Hospital , was on a TV program to explain this health hazard. He talked about dioxins and how bad they are for us.. He said that we should not be heating our food in the microwave using plastic containers.

This especially applies to foods that contain fat. He said that the combination of fat, high heat, and plastics releases dioxin into the food and ultimately into the cells of the body. Instead, he recommends using glass, such as Corning Ware, Pyrex or ceramic containers for heating food. You get the same results, only without the dioxin. So such things as TV dinners, instant ramen and soups, etc., should be removed from the container and heated in something else.

Paper isn't bad but you don't know what is in the paper. It's just safer to use tempered glass, Corning Ware, etc. He reminded us that a while ago some of the fast food restaurants moved away from the foam containers to paper. The dioxin problem is one of the reasons.

Also, he pointed out that plastic wrap, such as Saran, is just as dangerous when placed over foods to be cooked in the microwave. As the food is nuked, the high heat causes poisonous toxins to actually melt out of the plastic wrap and drip into the food. Cover food with a paper towel instead.

1. No plastic containers in micro.

2. No water bottles in freezer.

3. No plastic wrap in microwave.

This is an article that should be sent to anyone important in your life.

Wonders of Alaska

The City and Borough of Juneau is a unified municipality located on the Gastineau Channel in the panhandle of the U.S. state of Alaska. It has been the capital of Alaska since 1906, when the government of the then-Alaska Territory was moved from Sitka. The municipality unified in 1970 when the City of Juneau merged with the City of Douglas and the surrounding borough to form the current home rule municipality.

The area of Juneau is larger than that of Rhode Island or Delaware and almost as large as the two states combined. Downtown Juneau is nestled at the base of Mount Juneau and across the channel from Douglas Island. As of the 2000 census, the City and Borough had a population of 30,711.

Juneau was named after gold prospector Joe Juneau, though the place was for a time called Rockwell and then Harrisburg. The Tlingit name of the town is Dzántik'i Héeni "river where the flounders gather", and Auke Bay just north of Juneau proper is called Aak'w "little lake" in Tlingit. The Taku River, just south of Juneau, was named after the cold t'aakh wind, which occasionally blows down from the mountains.





Downtown Juneau sits at sea level, with tides averaging 16 feet (4.9 m), below steep mountains about 3,500 to 4,000 feet (1,200 m) high. Atop these mountains is the Juneau Icefield, a large ice mass from which about 30 glaciers flow; two of these, the Mendenhall Glacier and the Lemon Creek Glacier, are visible from the local road system; the Mendenhall glacier has been generally retreating; its front face is declining both in width and height.



I had the privilege of traveling to Juneau Alaska this week for business and I can tell you that nature is truly majestic here!

To get there I had to take 3 planes and travel to 6 cities for a total of 18 hours of travel time: Montreal -> Chicago (2.5 hrs), Chicago -> Seattle (4.5 hrs), Seattle -> Ketchikan ->Sitka -> Juneau (5 hrs).


Every morning the sun rises at 8:30am and sets in the early afternoon at 3 pm. The morning sight form my window is breathtaking.

At this time of year it's dark 17 hours out of 24. In the summer it's quite the opposite and people tend to stay up late in this city that attracts thousands of tourists each summer. The weather is usually very cloudy all year long, rain in the summer and snow in the winter. Temperatures are not as cold as I expected, minus 10 degrees Celsius was the average this week however the humidity is very strong.

People are very nice and hospitable and love the outdoors. One of my clients came to the office one fine morning straight from the mountain. He had spent part of the late night climbing up the hill to the top, slept in a cabin for a few hours and skied his way down to the office in the morning.

Food is mostly meat oriented. Almost no vegetable grow here. Most veggies are imported and are not very fresh. I did find a really good health food store in town though.

My favorite restaurants/cafe: Heritage Coffee is a great coffee shop that has blended quality, freshness and sustainability for the farmer and the environment into a wide selection of coffees from around the world. This shop also sells organic pastries and gellato ice creme.

There are many animals in Juneau some of which are wales, bears, eagles and the famous raven which is basically a large and more intelligent crow that I saw walking down the street every day.

Today i went to Eagle Crest, ski area which is about a 30 min ride from downtown. It was so magical to be on top of the highest mountains in Alaska and see the entire valley with all the mountains hovering above and the sun peaking behind the hills, shining its rays on the snow. Skiing was a lot of fun and made me realize once again how lucky I am to be on this planet and how precious mother nature is.



One thing that I noticed everywhere I went was the Native Alaskan totem whether I was in the hotel or in a coffee shop, the native signs were present.
The name of totem poles comes from "totem," the symbol of a northwest North American native clan. When westerners first saw totem poles, they thought they were religious symbols and objects of worship. Mistakenly, early missionaries told their converts to burn their totem poles. Today, we understand the totem poles are more like billboards, signposts or tombstones; telling stories and honoring heritage.The original carvers of totem poles are now known as Alaska's Inside Passage, members of the Tlingit, Haida and other clans.

It's a whole different world out here in the midst of wilderness. I am looking forward to my next visit which will hopefully be in the summer season.

sources: about.com | Wikipedia |