By Carolanne Wright
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

We’ve all been touched by death in one form or another — whether through a beloved animal, the rhythm of nature or someone close and dear to us. Autumn in the northern hemisphere is the quintessential time of death and decay, as the abundant growth and life of summer quickly fades away to barren trees and fallow fields. It is considered the season of sorrow and grief in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

As commonplace as the cycle of life and death is, those in the West tend to have an aversion to the reality of this most natural of transitions. We try our best to evade the aging process and glorify youth — while ignoring the elderly and dying. Many times, we are completely numb to our emotional terrain or become overwhelmed when faced with death. But an organization in the United States is on a heart-centered quest to change the way we relate to death and return a sense of sacredness to the process.

By Philip Shepherd
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

A well-known neurological phenomenon is expressed in a catchy maxim: “What fires together wires together.” This phrase tells us that if two distinct neural pathways habitually fire together, they eventually lose their distinctiveness. The brain starts to treat them as one, because it’s more economical. As an illustration of this, researchers taped two fingers of a hapless monkey together for a period of time [rather cruel]; and when the tape was finally removed, the two fingers straightened together and bent together. Their neural pathways had been forced to ‘fire’ together, so they had ‘wired’ together.

There are many ways in which our neural pathways practice such economy in our daily lives, but the effect often remains hidden to us because the ‘wiring’ so often belongs to the culture that shapes us.

By Jack Adam Weber
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

In a recent conversation, a dear friend for many years asked me, “I wonder why it is that people need to hold this special view of what is sacred… why some things are sacred and others aren’t.” This is fascinating inquiry, one that invokes a number of subjects, such as the nature of healing, activism, our working definition of spirituality, and our emotional lives — all of which I hope to touch on here.

Sacred Space is time and space we set aside, or which spontaneously arises, to experience a depth, richness, and sense of meaning that usually escapes us in fast-paced everyday life when we are not as connected as we could be with our body, intuition, good thinking, compassion and empathy, and other emotions.

By Makia Freeman
Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

The Wolfowitz Doctrine, a document authored by Zionist neo-con Paul Wolfowitz, is the key to understanding the United States’ geopolitical policy and behavior. The Wolfowitz Doctrine is the unofficial name given to the early version of the Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy report for the 1994–99 fiscal years. It was later released by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in 1993. It brazenly advocates that America do everything in its power to retain its global hegemony and superpower status, including ensuring that Russia, China, Iran and other regional powers – but especially Russia – be prevented from attaining enough power to seriously challenge the US. In short, it’s another US blueprint for total global supremacy.

There are many quotable passages from the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Here’s one which sums up its aims:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union...

By Dr. Edward Group
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

The CDC estimates around 5.3 million Americans are living with some form of Alzheimer’s disease, and that number is expected to double by 2050.^[1] Dementia, a generalized term used to describe neurodegeneration, is a disabling issue that have definitive roots in lifestyle and nutritional habits. While genetics may play a role in brain health, it’s lifestyle factors that are the driving force behind the progression of hereditary variables. A recent study is suggesting pomegranate, a red deciduous fruit rich in polyphenols, may be a potent protector against mental degeneration.

The Wonder Power of Pomegranate