Keep Listening to Your Inner Voice
No matter how skilled you become at dealing with challenges, in the end every decision gets tested inside. Whether you call it listening to your gut or obeying that little voice inside you, the process is the same. But not every inner voice is the same, or equally reliable. A leader pierces through layers of second-hand opinion, stress, anxiety, groupthink, and the welter of opinions both within and without. Only when she finds the voice inside herself that is almost silent has she located the voice that should be listened to. Start finding that voice today.
Adapted from The Soul of Leadership, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2010).

Rediscovering the Timeless Way of Living
Developing a natural and nontoxic lifestyle based on what rings true to your senses isn’t hard once you get started. Nor is it hard to learn to work with–and not against–the eternal elements. Simply remember to connect with your body, and pay attention to what it is telling you. We need to rediscover how to cooperate with and listen to our intuition.

There are simple skills involved in living the way I suggest, but you don’t need to look at every task and weigh in your mind how the environmental science is playing out or which of the senses isn’t quite singing yet. Mostly, you just need to choose the nontoxic choice at every turn.
Adapted from Home Enlightenment, by Annie B. Bond (Rodale Press, 2007).

Law of Least Effort
When you struggle against this moment, instead of knowing that this moment is as it should be, you’re actually struggling against the entire universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are.
Adapted from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra (New World Library, 1994).

Least Effort for Healthy Produce
Surely the law of least effort for chemical-free produce is to buy that which was grown organically. Otherwise, this produce wash is the best I know of for removing chemical residue. It was formulated by Susan Summer, a food scientist. It uses vinegar and 3 percent hydrogen peroxide.

First, put the vinegar and hydrogen peroxide in two different spray bottles. The technique is that you alternative spraying first vinegar and then hydrogen peroxide. Spray the alternating materials on the produce and the work surface. Rinse produce thoroughly under fresh running water before slicing.
Adapted from Home Enlightenment by Annie B. Bond (Rodale Press, 2007).

During a series of workshops I offered in Spain several years ago, I ended up staying in over 33 different locations during a two-month period. When I came home, I really understood at a deep level the truth of Dorothy’s statement in the Wizard of Oz that “there’s no place like home!” Prior to that experience, I was unaware of how I had taken for granted the comfort, security, peace, and sense of well being my home provided me. It was more than just a bed, bathroom and kitchen, all of which I had in Spain, it was much more. Being deprived of my own home for such a long time, gave me a newfound appreciation of what a home provides.

In this era of increasing number of Home Improvement, Home Make-over, and Fix-Up television shows, in our efforts to fix, remodel, remake, and change our homes, we often forget to appreciate them as well.

We frequently use the term “homemaker,” but what do we mean by that phrase? If you really think about it, isn’t it someone who is adding a feminine touch to the household environment? In the successful TV make over show, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” the Fab 5 demonstrate that this “feminine touch” resides in male bodies as well.

As Masaru Emoto’s research with water crystals reveals, love and gratitude is a powerful energy that is actually imprinted upon our physical environment! And isn’t that what really makes a house a home? That feeling of love and well being that we get when we walk inside. Like Grandma’s house, with warm goodies baking in the oven, and the knowledge that there’s always a safe place where we can just come and relax, and be ourselves.

If you take the time to do this simple exercise, you will see for yourself the living, dynamic relationship you have with your home, not just as a house with four walls and doors, but a Home, as a conscious, living Being that responds to our thoughts, our feelings and our love vibrations. And isn’t it those feelings and vibrations which really make our house a home?

TRY THIS! Making Your House a Home:

* Find a place where you feel very comfortable in your house, and just settle in and relax for a few minutes.

* Begin to think of all that your home does to serve you and your family’s needs. How does it sustain you, support you, allow you to fulfill your dreams…

* Take a moment to jot down what your home provides for you and your family:

* Imagine what life would be like without your home. If you stayed in hotels everyday of your life, how would you feel? What would be different? What would be missing?

* Take a moment to really feel the appreciation and gratitude you have for your home and all it offers you.

* Now imagine the Spirit of your home. Some think of it as the Angel of their Home. It is the energy being that records and receives all the thoughts, feelings and vibrations you have about your home.

* Now offer the love and gratitude you feel for your home to this Spirit of your Home. By whatever name you call it, the deva of your property will respond to your love. Really let it know just how much you appreciate all that you receive from your home and how much you love being there.

* Then thank this being for all that it does energetically on your property, known and unknown, and for being willing to work with you to continue to increase the vibrations of your space.

* you are finished, do something physical to anchor your intentions. You could offer a dish of flowers, light a candle, or ring a bell. Whatever you decide to do as a symbol to remind you of your feelings of appreciation and gratitude towards your home, do it as your daily act to say “hello” and “thank you” to your home. Each time you do the act, remember the feelings of love and gratitude you feel, and consciously offer those feelings to the Angel of your Home.

As simple as this exercise may sound, you will be amazed at the difference noticed in a very short time of doing this exercise. Everything is ALIVE, regardless of whether or not we can recognize it. Your home is no different, and all life responds to love and appreciation.

Christan Hummel is author of the best selling book, the “Do It Yourself Space Clearing Kit” and an international lecturer, and workshop leader. She has taught thousands around the world how to create sacred space in their homes and cities. For more information see: www.earthtransitions.com

As an “energy healer” with a decade of experience with modalities such as One Light Healing Touch, Reiki,and sound healing with crystal singing bowls taught by Zacciah Blackburn, Jonathan Goldman and others, I’ve worked with clients who have come through the ravages of chemotherapy.

I’ve seen a consistent and surprising need in chemotherapy survivors: Their chakras need to be relit.

Chakras are vortexes of life-force energy (also called prana) in our bodies, offshoots of a central channel that runs up and down the center of our bodies. This channel is sometimes called the pranic tube, or sushumna. Teachers of spiritual healing generally focus on the dominant seven chakras, the first being at the base of the spine, up to the seventh, at the crown of the head. The purpose of spiritual healing is almost always to help the chakras be more full of prana and less of personal suffering causing “energy blocks.” Without life force prana energy we die, so the more infused we are of prana, the more healthy and vibrant we are.

A sobering find of my experience with chemotherapy patients is that the amount of prana left in their chakras is down to wisps. A great gift to help them is to “relight” the chakras with prana so that it can flow abundantly. In doing so, the pranic energy begins to spread out through organs and permeate bodily systems, bringing with it rejuvenating life force.

My most intimate and first experience facilitating such a healing with a cancer survivor happened when working with a close family member (my ex-husband, Daniel), who had acute myeloid leukemia. He had been through three rounds of horrific chemotherapy to enable him to have a stem cell transplant using his own stem cells. After arriving home it was clear to me that he was too weak for a healing. Not only was he exceptionally frail but he was also suffering from withdrawing cold turkey from morphine that had been given for the pain caused by dental complications. His body was spent and every ounce of energy he had was being used to keep himself stable during the drug withdrawal.

Within about 15 days of his final hospital release date I felt he was strong enough for receiving the energy of a healing. Once I entered the healing state that enabled my clairvoyant intuition to be the clearest, it quickly became apparent that the healing would be about his chakras. Once I started using the singing bowls, the best way that I can describe what I saw is that a giant candelabra with candles of prana “came down” from the universe and lit each chakra to replenish them.

This “chemo healing” was simple and powerful. I have seen the exact same healing happen in other cancer survivors that I have worked with. Once the chakras are “relit” there is a renewed sense of harmony and flow in the body. One wonders how slow recovery would be without such a replenishing.

Daniel says that “As a leukemia patient I’ve spent months in the hospital being treated with powerful chemicals and drugs, feeling my body become shrunken and foreign. I’m grateful for what the oncologists have done for me but it was the sound/energy healings that restored me mentally and emotionally to my body and to my sense of harmony with myself.”

Mitchell L. Gaynor, M.D., an oncologist and the author of The Healing Power of Sound, writes that “The crystal singing bowls demonstrate the truly manifold possibilities for healing through vibratory sound. Our body-mind systems are ‘retuned’ by the bowl sounds, and the effects can be physical, psychological, spiritual, or all three at once.”

Surely it is time for trained sound healers and energy workers to be a standard and recognized part of the recovery process for chemotherapy patients, not to speak of being part of the team for earlier stages of treatment.

–Annie B. Bond

What is the matter with chlorine bleach? Breathing in the fumes can irritate the lungs, which is especially dangerous for those with asthma or emphysema. It is also highly corrosive and can damage the skin, eyes, and other membranes. It is listed as a hazardous air pollutant in the 1990 Clean Air Act, and exposure to chlorine in the workplace is regulated by federal standards.

What is the top eco-friendly solution? Using this one simple ingredient is the best way I have found to have both a green –and white- sink. It easy easy to find at natural food stores.

The herbs used to make smudge sticks are usually white sage, sweetgrass, or cedar, although any dried herb is fine, even lavender. White sage, or sage, are the most common. Choose an herb that doesn’t have a woody stem, or if there is such a stem, make the bundle of leaves that you pull off.

A reason to choose white sage is because the leaf clusters are very long, and the leaves will smolder for quite a long time. Sweetgrass has a lovely, light sweet odor, but it burns very quickly. Many spiritual healers believe that sweet grass brings a high level of spirituality and burns away negativity. Cedar is very strong, and is considered powerful for removing negativity, but you need to remove the woody stems as much as possible.

If you make your own smudge sticks, honor the tradition of honoring the plants with your appreciation for using their leaves. Smudge “sticks” are available in New Age stores and some health food stores; look for sticks that indicate that the herbs have been gathered with principle.

Many people burn smudge in a big shell, using it as an ashtray. An ashtray will also work. You want to burn the smudge in a container that will contain the flames, so that you don’t start a fire. I open the smudge bundle and pull out leaves and light them, as opposed to lighting the whole smudge stick on fire.

Light the dried leaves, and once there is a good flame, blow it out so that the leaves smoke. The burning leaves will smolder, and the smoke will waft into the home. Walk around with the ashtray (smoking herbs included), and make sure the smoke reaches into all the areas of a room you want.

When to smudge, and why?
Smudging is great to use to clear out unwanted energy no matter what that energy is. I think that this is because the sage permeates the air, shifting and changing it. Smudge after a fight, when you’ve cleaned out a closet, after working all day, if someone has been sick, or any other thing that you sense has been stressful in some way and you would benefit if it were removed.

What is the solution? There are some surprising solutions that are safe and humane that you may not have known about!

Green Quest is written by Annie B. Bond, bestselling author of Better Basics for the Home, Home Enlightenment, and three other books about green living. Ask Annie a question by writing to welcome [@] greenchicafe [dot] com

The commitments of the bodhisattva vow are divided into three categories: 1) the commitments of bodhichitta in general, and 2) the commitments particular to aspiration bodhichitta and 3) those particular to implementation bodhichitta.

The first of the three categories, the commitment of bodhichitta in general, are:
• to respect teachers of the mahayana;
• to avoid the four negativities;
• and to never mentally abandon any sentient being.

The four negativities are:
• to deceive the venerable or those worthy of veneration (it does not mean elderly);
• to cause another to regret an action that is not regrettable, so to cause someone unnecessary or inappropriate regret or guilt;
• to revile or denigrate the holy;
• and to deceive all beings.

Deceiving all beings means to give up bodhichitta, because since you have promised to bring about the awakening of all beings, if you give it up, that is called deceiving all beings.

In this first category of the commitment of bodhisattva vow, the commitment of bodhichitta in general, of the three commitments—respecting teachers of the mahayana, avoiding the four negativities, and never mentally abandoning any sentient being—the most important one is never mentally abandoning any sentient being.

The second category of the commitment to the bodhisattva vow, the commitment particular to aspiration bodhichitta, is to maintain the intention to achieve buddhahood for the benefit of others.

And the third category of commitment to the bodhisattva vow, commitments particular to implementation bodhichitta, are: to dedicate any virtuous deed you perform to perfect awakening for the benefit of others; and to avoid avoidable wrongdoing.

In addition to this summary of the commitments of the bodhisattva vow, it would be good if you would study the extensive treatises on the training of bodhichitta such as the Bodhicharyavatara, its commentaries, and other books.

If we can develop this kind of perspective of the commitments, then we will be able to develop stable bodhichitta. One instant of that kind of stable bodhichitta accumulates so much merit that, if it had physical form, it would be larger than all space in the universe. Furthermore this merit continues to accumulate even when we are not thinking about it, even when we are asleep, because the commitment to bodhichitta remains.

For this to work, we have to actually take responsibility for the development of our bodhichitta and to train our minds.

It is not enough simply to hear lamas talk about aspiration bodhichitta and implementation bodhichitta, and how great they are. Even if you hear hundreds of lamas extol the benefits of bodhichitta, even if you take the bodhisattva vow hundreds of times, if you do not take responsibility for training your own mind in bodhichitta, then you will have generated it, but it is not really going to develop. So I hope that you will train your minds and cultivate bodhichitta, and I offer you my best wishes.

First blog from a teaching on The Commitments of the Bodhisattava Vow given by Bardor Tulku Rinpoche at Kunzang Palchen Ling in May, 2010. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso, transcribed by Alan McCoy, edited by Basia Coulter, adapted with permission by Annie Bond. Copyright 2010 Bardor Tulku Rinpoche and Peter O’Hearn. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint without permission.

THE GOODS: BPA/EA Free Baby Bottles, glass baby bottles, sippy cups, training cups, drinking cups, baby gifts and sets, and accessories.

THE EXPERIENCE: According to the WeilBaby.com site, “The dangers of bisphenol A (BPA) have been recognized by health agencies, researchers, and governments around the world. Canada recently banned the use of BPA in baby bottles and lawmakers in Suffolk County, New York have voted to ban the sale of baby bottles and sippy cups made with BPA. Cornell University’s Sprecher Institute has reported that numerous studies suggest a link between BPA and breast cancer.”

Fortunately, a company such as Dr. Andrew Weil’s WeilBaby are offering alternatives. Andrew Weil, M.D., has devoted the past three decades to developing, practicing and teaching others about the principles of integrative medicine.

A TIDBIT: Andrew Weil, M.D., donates all of his after-tax profits from royalties from sales of Weil BAby products directly to the Weil Foundation.

THE COMPANY: Weil Baby
The Weil Foundation
PO Box 13006, Tucson, AZ 85732
www.weilfoundation.org

By Annie B. Bond, best-selling author of five green living books including True Food (National Geographic, 2009).

Green Quest #3 Answer: The treat trick for having a green Halloween.

Green Quest is written by Annie B. Bond, bestselling author of Better Basics for the Home, Home Enlightenment, and three other books about green living. Ask Annie a question by writing to welcome [@] greenchicafe [dot] com