Frozen Flower MV - Jo In Sung, Joo Jin Mo, Song Ji Hyo

A much awaited korean movie that was released Dec.30,2008 in Korea, SsangHwaJeom or Frozen Flower starring Jo In Sung, Joo Jin Mo and Song Ji Hyo. I didn't watch Brokeback Mountain but I am gonna watch this for sure.Its got Forbidden love , swordfights galore, royal court intrigues and complicated love triangles , a yaoi fan's delight. If I say I'm watching this because of Jo In Sung (Memories of Bali, Spring Sun, Madelein, The Classic) would you believe me?. Joo Jin Mo of Musa and A Love and Song Ji Hyo of Princess Hours or Goong are in it too. Here is a review from Hancinema after the film's VIP premier.
[MOVIE REVIEW] 'Ssanghwajeom' ("A Frozen Flower") barely avoids trap
2008/12/22
Homosexuality is no longer a hush-hush topic for Korean filmmakers. But depictions of sexuality take another turn in "Ssanghwajeom" ("A Frozen Flower"), as a relationship between two men becomes a triangle of jealousy with an addition of a woman.

But the movie, to be released on Dec. 30, is not limited to sexual entanglement. Sex is used as a key tool to prod the plot forward, often at a rapid pace. To that end, director Yoo Ha includes plenty of explicit scenes of sex and graphic violence. The result, however, is somewhat mixed. The film's poetic justice produces an unlikely anti-hero.

Although the movie sets itself out as a historical drama set in the late Goryeo Dynasty, viewers should bear in mind that the story is purely fictional. The nation is now under the virtual rule of China's Yuan Dynasty, and Goryeo's king (Joo Jin-mo) has to produce a son to keep his position. The only problem is that he cannot sleep with a woman, much less have a romantic relationship with one.

The king's real romantic partner is none other than his chief bodyguard Hong Lim (Jo In-Seong). The two have sex in the inner sanctums of the Goryeo court, and we are shown a graphic kiss scene between the king and Hong Lim, which is bound to shock some Korean viewers.

But the real shocker comes when the king decides to ask Hong Lim to sleep with his wife - the queen (Song Ji-hyo). This idea is based on his assumption that all his political problems will go away once there is a royal son.

The king's miscalculation, of course, is that passionate romantic feelings sometimes form after sex. Hong Lim, who has never slept with a woman before, hesitates to touch the body of the queen at first, but once the physical bond is initiated, he finds himself totally enslaved.

Love triangle established, the plot sprints ahead with a portrayal of the uncontrollable anger and jealousy of the king, leaving heads rolling in the process.

Director Yoo seems to suggest that Hong Lim has long been subjected to a sort of coercion, rather than a real romantic relationship with the king. Hong is a mere subordinate, while the king has all the power, including the right to order his death.

The queen, for her part, discovers the liberating exhilaration when she falls in love with Hong Lim after years of neglect and inattention. She suffers a deep sense of guilt initially but she finds herself indulging in the dangerous liaisons with Hong Lim.

What is notable is that sex in "Ssanghwajeom" ("A Frozen Flower") is deeply associated with death. Eros is often depicted in literature and film as being able to overcome everything. The feelings that interconnect Hong Lim and the queen could backfire lethally because they are cheating on the almighty king.

As far as a plot is concerned, the unfortunate queen and her lover bravely defy the obstacles to prove that mutual love is more powerful than unrequited passion. The king's relationship with Hong Lim has been futile and one-sided. Failing to confirm whether his bodyguard is truly in love with him, he comes to realize that he is totally alone.

It is a pity that the king, trapped in a man's body, is betrayed by his secret lover. What the king fails to notice is that Hong Lim is a bisexual who prefers heterosexual sex.

But Joo Jin-mo does not have to lament his role. It is Jo In-Seong who fails to create much-needed emotional subtlety and often delivers his lines in an annoyingly mechanical fashion. In contrast, Joo Jin-mo emerges as the ultimate winner in the film. Joo pulls off creating a complex and nuanced character with whom audiences will be able to sympathize, rescuing a film that might otherwise have fallen into the trap of having too much sex and violence.

By Yang Sung-jin
Source:http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/

Kabbalah and Pink Floyd-A Wall of Hope

 December 11,2008 Thursday

Just finished another enlightening lesson on the wisdom of the Kabbalah online with the Bnei Baruch institute on arionline.info. Thank you Tony Koseck and Andy. Came across this article on Kabbalah Today, the online publication of the Bnei Baruch Kabbalah Education & Research Institute that is most timely and answers a lot of my questions on the state of the world today. The rockergurl in me was ueber happy that rock and the wisdom of the Kabbalah somehow sometimes converges. Read the entire article from Kabbalah Today 18th edition here and I'm posting the link to the article as well.Pink Floyd for the uninitiated is a British rock band formed in the mid 60's and was active till the late '90s. They had their peak in the '70s and '80s. Embedded in this blog is the Youtube video of  Pink Floyd's The Wall-Comfortably Numb starring Bob Geldof as well as the music only version for the faint of heart, together with the lyrics of Thin Ice Waters, and Comfortably Numb.Read on and find out how we can break the wall in our hearts to let in the music of love and harmony.Shalom!

Wall of Hope

The wisdom of Kabbalah and Pink Floyd have something in common: they like to break walls. But unlike the boys from London, Kabbalah tells us how to break through our inner wall and why this breakthrough is possible now more than ever

"If you intend to slide on the thin ice of modern life, don't be surprised when a crack appears under your feet,” warned Roger Waters, the leader of the legendary Pink Floyd band, in the beginning of their 1979 masterpiece, “The Wall.”

Waters' edgy voice was the voice of a whole generation that felt a crack open beneath it, and the first generation that did not want to be educated. It rebelled, shouted, kicked, and stopped playing by the rules, to the sounds of David Gilmour's electric guitar.

But beyond the harsh indictment against Britain’s strict educational system, “The Wall” was also an allegory about the general condition of humanity. It reflected people’s deep feelings of confusion, fear, and anxiety in the face of new conflicts and challenges. “Break down the Wall!” repeats the choir again and again, and the excited audience responds with a joyous uproar.

But a sober look 30 years later raises the question: Did the wall break after all?

Another Brick in the Wall

On the outside, it seems that some of the bricks that made up the Floydian Wall have indeed been broken. The iron curtain that separated the East and the West has faded, and the remnants of the Berlin Wall are now a tourist site, while the Great Wall of China is already making its way into the souvenir shop of history.

The world is shrinking into a dense, tightly knit network. With modern technology we can bridge distance and time, which used to separate countries and people. A single click of a mouse now bridges any two points on Earth with one another.

Yet, despite the progress and the cellular and satellite communications connecting us all, something is still missing. There is a growing sense of disorientation, moral degeneration, alienation, violence and terror - the same ailments Waters wrote about almost 30 years ago. These feelings have only strengthened through the years. Somehow, thinking we were removing old walls, we’ve actually been piling up new ones.

Comfortably Numb

However, all this is only the external layer of the wall that the legendary band had described in song. Waters knew that the wall between us is not external. He was ahead of his time in pointing out that it’s the inner wall, “the wall in our hearts,” that’s the real source of our suffering and confusion.
How was this wall created, and how can it be broken? This is something Floyd didn’t know and didn't try to explain. Their music burst as a bitter cry from the darkness of modern loneliness, but it couldn’t find the magic hammer that would break the way to the light.

Pink Floyd’s 30th anniversary is fast approaching. Children who grew up with “The Wall” are now parents to a new generation, wiser and more developed than their parents. They don’t have a sense of purpose and they refuse to continue walking the same worn-out path.

The rebellion of today’s youth is no longer directed against a specific system or institution. The new generation’s lack of interest, alienation, apathy, hyper-activity, loss of values, violence, and most of all—the inability to determine the cause of their frustration - situate them before the real wall: the wall within that’s just as impenetrable as it is confusing.

And what about us? How are we dealing with this problem? We are simply going by rote, hoping that our attempts to change this or that framework, or to drug our children into calmness, will suppress the problem.

It is difficult for us to understand that the new questions our children ask offer us an opportunity to find a real solution, questions such as: “Why do we need all this?” and “What is the meaning of life?” The Show Must Go On

The wisdom of Kabbalah explains what Pink Floyd didn’t: It shows us how we can break through our inner wall and why this breakthrough is possible right now.

“At the outset of my words, I find a great need to break the iron wall that has been separating us from the wisdom of Kabbalah and to this day.” This is how the great 20th century Kabbalist, Baal HaSulam, begins his introduction to one of the most important compositions of our time, The Study of the Ten Sefirot. The wall he is talking about is the wall that surrounds our hearts, separating us from the world around us.

The new generation sees that the former generations have failed to make a breakthrough. It is disillusioned with the old approach and understands, albeit unconsciously, that until now we have tried to break the wall with the very instrument that created it: the ego. This is why our attempts were doomed to fail.

To break the wall, we need another method, written by people like Baal HaSulam, who have succeeded in shattering this internal wall, and who tell us about it from their personal experience. Kabbalists, those who broke the ego’s walls, write about the reality they discovered as a result, where we are bonded by love. There are no walls or iron curtains there, and no personal interests, but only feelings of security, peace, and love that fill all people. This reality can be revealed to all of us, here and now.

With “The Wall,” Pink Floyd created the ultimate sound track to modern life. Now it’s time to change the record. The new generation expects a new melody full of hope, carrying the promise of a better life. What we need now is a melody that plays in our hearts, a melody of love and warmth that will enable us to shatter the walls of hatred and alienation that separate us and cause all the suffering in our world. All we have to do is desire to reveal this melody among us. Today, more than ever before, the time and the conditions are just right.

Source:http://www.kabtoday.com/epaper_eng/content/view/epaper/8350

Lyrics:

The Thin Ice (Waters) 2:28

Momma loves her baby
And daddy loves you too.
And the sea may look warm to you babe
And the sky may look blue
But ooooh Baby
Ooooh baby blue
Oooooh babe.

If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.

Comfortably Numb (Gilmour, Waters) 6:49

Hello?
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now,
I hear you're feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain
Get you on your feet again.
Relax.
I'll need some information first.
Just the basic facts.
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

O.K.
Just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more aaaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick.
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good.
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

Download song here:

http://www.4shared.com/account/file/38632331/890647bb/Pink_Floyd_-_Comfortably_Numb-.html

 

all i want for christmas is you

this is a clip from the movie love actually where olivia olson sings all i want for christmas is you. every christmas, when my daughter carla was a little girl. we would watch the 1946 frank capra classic its a wonderful life starring james stewart and donna reed and the angel clarence . last christmas i finally gave her a dvd copy of this movie. now that my baby is all grown up and has her own life, my favorite christmas movie is the 2003 british comedy love actually with hugh grant, colin firth and martine mccutcheon....so this christmas you know where i am- in front of the telly watching.

Lyrics-All I want for christmas is you

I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you

I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
Don't care about the presents
Underneath the Christmas tree
I don't need to hang my stocking
There upon the fireplace
Santa Claus won't make me happy
With a toy on Christmas day

I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you

Ohh, Baby ...My Baby...
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby

I won't ask for much this Christmas
I won't even wish for snow
I'm just gonna keep on waiting
Underneath the mistletoe

I won't make a list and send it
To the North Pole for Saint Nick
I won't even stay awake
To hear those magic reindeer click

I just want you here tonight
Holding on to me so tight
What more can I do, baby
all I want for Christmas is you
Ohh, Baby ...My Baby...
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby

All the lights are shining
So brightly everywhere
And the sound of childrens' laughter fills the air

And everyone is singing
I hear those sleigh bells ringing
Santa won't you bring me
The one I really need
Won't you please bring my baby to me

I don't want a lot for Christmas
This is all I'm asking for
I just wanna see my baby
Standing right outside my door

I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
all I want for Christmas is you
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you

Ohh, Baby ...My Baby...
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby
You know I love you
So baby, baby...My Baby

Caroline Myss-The ending is really a beginning

I met Caroline Myss in October 2003 the same month I got a chance to listen to Deepak Chopra once more and attend the book launch of Christian writer Philip Yancey in Toronto.She had a most riveting workshop on the mystical life and intuitive healing that was both funny and enlightening at the Sheraton Centre in downtown Toronto. I had the chance to actually exchange a few words with her as she signed one of her books. I'd like to share her take on the global crisis as it is an article of hope in the midst of turbulence. As a contemporary spiritual guru, she tells us -"What looks like an ending is really a beginning; what looks safe is really your fear talking; what looks riskiest is really the way to go. Paradox is a mystical force and when it is present in your life, rest assured that the Divine is equally present in the event." Here is the link to the article that was passed on to me by my dearest friend Victor Chua of the Edgar Cayce Study Group in Vancouver, Canada. Caroline Myss - http://www.myss.com/news/archive/2008/112908.asp

  

THANKSGIVING NEWSLETTER: A MUCH NEEDED INJECTION OF HOPE Caroline Myss Israel Tour - Oct. 2008 This is not going to be the usual type of Thanksgiving newsletter in which I remind everyone to be thankful for their blessings, although I might get to that. Rather, I am in a more cosmic mood this morning, so I thought I would share some thoughts that are running through my mind as I attempt, in my own way, to make sense of a world undergoing epoch-size changes at light speed. I also, of course, hope that this Thanksgiving newsletter will be something you’ll be thankful to have read by the time you’re done with it. No one is untouched by these changes, and from that perspective we are being drawn together in uncharted waters. None of us can possibly anticipate what each new day will bring us. Will the stock market go up tomorrow? Crash again? Will billions of dollars move from this faltering bank to that one? Will another entire country like Iceland actually go bankrupt? When have we ever witnessed such unbridled madness right in front of our eyes? So, how do we interpret this? Where do we begin? What calculations do we use that we can even begin to rely upon? This situation has all the “experts” scrambling – and if I’m not mistaken, it was also experts who got us into this mess. Or was it? Perhaps the greater truth – the cosmic truth, as it were, is that this period of chaos was always scheduled to happen. Seems to me deep in our intuitive gut we’ve always been anticipating an epochal period of change. We just had no idea how that period of change would actually manifest and perhaps, in our naiveté, we thought that the dynamic of change would somehow occur “out there” somewhere, affecting the lives of others more than us, or be a controllable force that didn’t penetrate our 401K’s or our subprime mortgages or our personal incomes. I’m reminded of how many times people say this comment after a disaster, “Who would ever think that such a thing could happen here?” We all live in the illusion that bad things happen “out there” and that our particular school of myths has the power to protect us. If I’m a good person, bad things won’t happen to me – but things do happen. The reason you study spiritual and mystical literature is so that you can learn to “reason like a mystic” and apply that skill precisely in times like this, so that when difficult crises arise your response is not, “What have I done wrong?” but, “Ah, so change is constant.” You haven’t done anything “wrong.” Instead, we are witnessing the truths in motion that we have studied for years. To wit, Buddha’s teaching: All is illusion. What greater proof can we have that all is illusion than to see fortresses of finance disappear in front of our eyes that just last week, or last month, we would have “bet the ranch” were as safe as, well, Fort Knox? Who was right? Fort Knox or Buddha? In the end, it is the great spiritual teachings that always, always, always remain steady, and prove to be truth. So let’s “reason like a mystic” as we examine the chaos in the world around us. Instead of looking through the lens of ordinary reason and thought, let us look through the lens of mystical law, those laws which govern the collective field of energy and the collective soul of humanity. This is where you need to cast your attention to “see clearly,” not on the piles of mess on the earth. Once a system has collapsed or is screaming for help, its energies are already exhausted. The first step in learning to reason like a mystic is to understand what “has” to happen, because of the level of psychic free radicals in the collective consciousness. What psychic systems are out of balance that need to come into balance? Nothing that a person can do in the physical world can possibly redirect what “has” to happen in the energetic domain if that process has already begun. That is, once a woman has begun to give birth, it is too late to introduce birth control to prevent her from getting pregnant. The time to have an influence on the formation of events is prior to pregnancy, prior to the time when certain types of changes or events become inevitable because of the energy that humanity has generated. What, then, has to happen within our world? We are living at a great turning point in history. We are witnessing the shifting of all the power structures of the great nations and systems of this planet as they tumble out of control while struggling to remain in control. The great threads holding the illusion of control together are currency and oil. It’s quite astounding to observe this dynamic that has silently maneuvered behind the scenes for years suddenly become exposed before our eyes because of the failings of greed, in effect. What we are witnessing is the ceiling on greed. Apparently there is an end point, at least to how the current system has structured the market. From a completely different perspective, we are witnessing the closure of the era of separation of powers and domination by force and inequality of cultures. For those of us who have aligned ourselves even slightly to the perspective of holism as a personal code of health, that code assumes that each organ in the body, while remaining an individual organ, is no longer sovereign. It is, insread, subject to a grander holistic body politic whereby the whole must be served in order for the whole body to thrive. Cosmic law, or mystical law, teaches that “what is in one is in the whole.” This means that every person who has absorbed that mystical law as a health code has also absorbed that cosmic law as a prelude to the transformation of the global body politic. It can’t be otherwise because, “What is in ONE is indeed in the whole.” Therefore, through every action you as an individual have taken to further your personal health as a “whole being” you have also inadvertently supported the transformation of the global village into a whole body politic at the energy level. To put this in yet a more mystical context, if you thought of yourself as a “living prayer,” which in essence you are, then all your intentions and thoughts to become a whole and healthy person are consumed by the collective soul as well as your individual soul. These intentions, or units of grace, are the fuel that, in turn, converts into physical events and actions in the greater arena of life. Here’s a pause for thought: I remember studying the texts of the mystical apparitions from Fatima and Lourdes and other well known sightings of the Madonna. They intrigue me for many reasons, not the least being the pattern behind those apparitions. Consistent with her messages to the visionaries was always the urgent plea to tell people to pray. The apparitions of the Fatima Madonna, which occurred in 1917, included the prediction of yet another world war that would eclipse World War I in size and horror, which, of course, World War II did. That early exposure to “messages from above,” so to speak, set me on a path of wondering for years, if “heaven” already anticipated such horror, why didn’t heaven just stop it? What’s with telling us to pray? Why not just stop all those evil Nazis and Hitler and Stalin? How could a good and just and loving heaven and God permit such nightmarish suffering? To say that I struggled with this question as a child and young adult is a masterpiece of understatement. The study of the Holocaust consumed me from the age of thirteen as did the study of war, which still consumes me, always looking for the root of that point of evil. But finally, in my own way, I understood a small piece of this mystical dictate about the power of prayer. That power represents the counter-power to psychic free radicals that also must find an avenue of physical expression in the form of events in the physical world. Psychic free radicals are generated by the negative thoughts, words, and deeds of humanity, and these gather in the collective unconscious, generating pools of energy that look for vessels of expression. Wars, turbulence, terrorism, violence, greed, and all the shadow characteristics of humanity thrive off of psychic free radicals. That is simply the law of manifestation expressed at the level of the collective unconscious, and we are the ones in charge of how well we learn to work with these laws. The law of manifestation is not just for creating personal wealth, as it has been introduced in popular culture. This is a major cosmic force that functions on multiple levels, including the collective, creating events that affect the collective and reflect the quality of consciousness as a whole. We are either subject to them or we work within them, which is the essence of mystical reasoning. This is what Buddha realized along with Jesus and all great spiritual masters. The turning of the tides is done from above and from within. It is you who must learn to work with the power of your interior forces, to scaffold your inner consciousness and build a soul with stamina, so that when chaos abounds around you, you can see through it rather than be consumed by it. We can look at this time as a nightmare of chaos or we can look at this time as that which we have prepared ourselves for during these past many years, working on our health and on becoming more conscious individuals. If this isn’t the time to put all that you’ve learned about being a conscious person into action, then when would be that time? Ask yourself, “Why have I worked so hard on myself?” Was it just to process the wounds from your childhood? Well, if it was, be done with that and get on with the business of thinking, living, acting, and perceiving the world around you through the lens of a mystic. This is the time to apply all the laws of the cosmos to every one of your challenges, to approach every problem through mystical reasoning and not that of ordinary reasoning, which will draw you backwards and into your history. Looking backwards at what you used to do or how you used to do something will not work anymore. So many people have contacted me to discuss what they should do next, because their lives are melting down around them. And my counsel to them is yet another mystical law, which is, “Learn to think in paradox.” That is, paradox is one of the fundamental expressions of the Divine. What looks like an ending is really a beginning; what looks safe is really your fear talking; what looks riskiest is really the way to go. Paradox is a mystical force and when it is present in your life, rest assured that the Divine is equally present in the event. To me, this is a time of great hope because when chaos abounds, so does opportunity. It can look as if the field of opportunity is bleak, but that is simply not true. As I teach my students, whether you are healing an illness or maneuvering through change, you must keep your attention in the present in order to “perceive” intuitive instructions. These will rarely speak of what you have already done. Rather you have to be prepared to do what you have not done before, as your intuition will always direct you to draw on new inner resources as opposed to relying on the old and familiar. The power of grace is yet another mystical resource, and not grace in general, but specific grace. In my upcoming book, I elaborate extensively on how to call upon your intimate graces. You have to learn how to use each grace, to become familiar with its power and presence. The grace of Wisdom is especially useful in times of darkness, because this grace gives you the capacity to discern truth in the midst of chaos, however that chaos manifests in your life. The presence of grace is realized when your aptitude for discernment or wisdom becomes heightened, serving you as a candle in the night. Turn to Wisdom writings, either the sacred scriptures of the world or the writings of all the great mystics, as a way of putting their vocabulary in your head and reminding yourself of the value of wise truth. Wisdom teaches us, for example, that if all we thought was stable evaporated so easily, it can all be replaced just as quickly. Chaos is as much an illusion as stability. What is not an illusion is truth. Truth is the one constant. Look at whatever is happening in your life and remind yourself that if it is chaotic, there is something old that must be surrendered. Look to your interior and listen for guidance. Remind yourself that you are alive at this time because you are meant to maneuver through these changes. Move forward, ever forward. And think like a mystic! I invite all of you to come study with me, come learn to reason as a mystic in this world. My upcoming book, BEYOND REASON: Healing Through Mystical Wisdom and Simple Truths, explores mystical reasoning in detail, breaking the boundaries of ordinary thought. The time could not be more right for this information as the changes in the world have made the need to know how to use mystical reasoning a matter of practical survival. I consider the election of Barack Obama a global mystical event, quite frankly, a turning of the tide for humanity and certainly for America. This nation was on a respirator and going down fast after almost eight years of being fed the poison of the Bush administration. Finally in a great voice, the majority screamed, “Enough,” and we broke through the dark hold of the Bush administration, redirecting this nation from hopelessness to hope. Everyone feels it everywhere around the world. No one has ever seen such a response to a presidential election because never before has America sunk to such darkness. Never before has the world witnessed such a malevolent administration in charge of this great nation as the Bush-Cheney team. America was turned into something it was never meant to be – an aggressive, attacking nation. And we disintegrated as a result. But then we were offered hope and we grabbed on to the grace with all our might. We broke through that darkness, and with the force of hope we will build this nation anew. And we will. And we will be all the wiser for having taken this detour during these past eight years, a detour that will forever remind us that we can lose our freedom, we can be led by fools, we are responsible for the quality of our leadership and the actions of our Senate and Congress. We must never again neglect our end of what it means to be a citizen of the United States of America or a conscious global citizen. Our time has come. We are no longer “waiting” for the era of consciousness to begin. We are that era. We must now put to use all that we have prepared ourselves to be and to do through these years. The world is now the new monastery in the most cosmic meaning of that term and you are a mystic out of the monastery, who has the potential to be a force of great change in your personal life, for your family, your friends, and your community. We are indeed all in this together – and thank God for that. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Caroline