Wesak is a celebration of the enlightened masters who walked the Earth before us, giving us the template for ascension. These beings include the Buddha, the Christ, Tapihritsa, Kuan Yin, and many more. At Wesak, too, we celebrate the Buddha’s birthday, passing, and enlightenment.

For those who are fully consumed with bad news and feeling totally at the whims of dark and powerful forces, it is crucial to remember the value of life and the value of our precious personal time in this cauldron. As a practical matter of achieving this awareness, here are five things that people can consider and focus on to alleviate the fear, anxiety, and concern of living in these interesting times.

Whenever I come in contact with highly judgmental people I do my best to put myself in their shoes and understand why they behave the way they do and why do they feel the need to point the finger at those around them. Today I want to share with you 7 clever ways to deal with highly judgmental people in a more positive and loving way.

On Saturday April 26, 2014 at 10am PST, Lynne McTaggart and her team of scientists will be testing, for the first time ever, the power of intention to heal an individual with a diagnosed illness under scientifically controlled laboratory conditions. If this experiment produces a positive outcome, it will have enormous implications about the role of thought in healing and the practices of our community of healers.

One of the most paramount and compelling choices people face is whether or not to let bad or unexpected things get them down and make them feel unhappy. Guess what happy people choose. They choose to be happy regardless of what is happening around them. If you want to start feeling happier, then do what happy people do, and make these 14 choices.

The digital surveillance systems of today are far more advanced than most people understand. No longer are these machines simply recording the data and storing them in some historical archive to be pulled at a later date should the government ever have reason to take a closer look at your personal life. The next generation of systems are being used to actively monitor your digital interactions, surfing habits, conversations and daily sentiment in an effort to predict your future behavior. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the systems currently operating within the social media sphere.

Ben Swann: Senator Harry Reid calls Bundy protestors domestic terrorists. But what act of terrorism did they commit? Meanwhile, the President’s adviser on Homeland Security says that families and communities can recognize homegrown terrorism by looking out for a “confrontational child.” Is that the definition of domestic terrorism: confrontation? It turns out, if you look at what happened in Nevada, the answer may be, yes.

The Obama administration must disclose the legal basis for targeting Americans with drones, a federal appeals court ruled Monday in overturning a lower court decision. The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) claim by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the administration must disclose the legal rationale behind its claims that it may kill enemies who are Americans overseas.

A government that continually violates our rights of property and contract can fairly be descried as authoritarian. How else do you describe a government that forbids Americans from grazing cattle on land they have used for over a century, from buying health insurance that does not meet Obamacare’s standards, from trading with Cuba, or even from drinking raw milk!

Foster Gamble: From one perspective, people are trying to use the government and the court system to stand up for their rights. Ideally, from my perspective, none of this begging for rights from authoritarian rulers or frequently co-opted courts should be necessary because no person or organization should have rights that all people don’t have. I believe that any individual or corporation that is violating any person, their privacy, or their property should be prosecuted and need to provide restitution. These legislative wins that I refer to are examples of that Stage, of bringing as much integrity to our existing institutions as we can while we’re transforming our society to a free one. As we learn to move into self-ownership and self-governance, where there are defensive rules to protect against aggression and fraud, hopefully we’re going to look back at the obvious evidence showing government to be the most lethal concept in human history with over 200 million deaths just within our governments’ own so-called jurisdiction in the 20th century alone. People who want others to rule them can set up their own special colonies for self-selected coercion, but the rest of us, following the principle of the non-initiation of force, will be free to love, to prosper, and to thrive.

Earth and Space Weather News April 24, 2014: Rise in the earthquake condition index; Persistent Ice on Lake Superior; First-of-its-kind NASA space-weather project; Global weather; Space weather; Earthquake watch; Canada quake

n what is being called a legal blow to the fracking industry, on Tuesday a Texas family was awarded $3 million in the first ever verdict to be handed down over the negative health impacts of fracking. Bob and Lisa Parr of Wise County sued Aruba Petroleum in 2011 for shale gas drilling operations which their lawyers said “fouled the family’s 40-acre ranch property, their home and quality of life,” by sickening both them and their daughter Emma, as well as their pets and livestock.

Rather than building a brand new home, it can often make more sense to renovate an existing home and bring it in line with modern standards. This 1930s property was transformed into a passively-cooled home, complete with a modern extension that both adds space and contributes to its considerable charm.

Earth and Space Weather News April 23, 2014: NOAA State of the Climate; Selected Significant Climate Anomalies and Events March 2014; Global weather; Earthquake watch; Space weather

Research ship Okeanos Explorer is roaming the Gulf of Mexico, and its remotely operated vehicle is live streaming video that any landlubber can enjoy. The need to understand the Gulf should resonate this month, because the four-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion was Sunday, April 20.

Over the past decades, globalization, or the continued deregulation of trade and finance, has created a world dominated by giant banks and corporations. Because governments almost everywhere have catered to their demands, we are now faced not only with global warming, extinction of species and dramatic increases in pollution, but also with financial instability, endemic unemployment, increased conflict, and epidemics of ill health and depression. We need to move in exactly the opposite direction – away from economic globalization and towards the local. This doesn’t mean eliminating all trade or adopting an isolationist attitude – it simply means shortening the distances between consumers and producers wherever possible.

This growing divergence between CEO pay and that of the typical American worker isn’t just wildly unfair. It’s also bad for the economy. It means most workers these days lack the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing — contributing to the slowest recovery on record. Meanwhile, CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts.

The growing inequality problem is not just about our weekly pay. Average Americans have lost wealth from home values, pensions, savings, and total assets, and our broken economy prevents them from making up any ground. Meanwhile, the wealthy elite have seen larger and larger income gains, and they’ve stashed billions away in property, savings, and various types of low-or-no-tax investments.

Senator Bernie Sanders discusses wealth inequality and how America has become an oligarchy during a Senate floor speech.

With the job participation rate in America at all-time lows, nearly 92 million able-aged adults are not working but are still able to contribute a service, even if that’s merely baking a pie. After all, people still have to eat and get services. Timebanking networks are evolving to support those needs.

Alexis speaks with renowned dream researcher and former colleague of dream expert Dr. Montague Ullman about the cosmic reality embedded in dreams. According to the late Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung, dreams are a gateway to the collective unconscious. Dream decoder, researcher and explorer Judy Gardiner knows all too well how dreams can tell a […]

Many, many, sages, scholars, researchers and laymen have attempted to answer the perplexing question of – What is Chi? The simplistic answer most often used is that Chi is “vital energy” or Chi is the “life force”, but this answer falls well short of addressing the apparent complexity of Chi.

Inside a tunnel system carved out of the solid limestone bedrock in the desert of Egypt, more than 20 granite boxes made of precision shaped Aswan granite (the Stone Boxes of the Serapeum) are a true enigma. Said by some to have been the burial places of prized bulls, their real function is far more intriguing.

It appears possible that people can intentionally dream details about the personal problems of an unknown individual, simply by examining a picture of the target and then “incubating” or planning to dream about that individual’s problems.

Brandon West: In this article we will explore how your body is a holographic projection of your consciousness, and how you directly influence that hologram and thus have complete control over the physical health of your body.