Everyone knows that the swastika is a symbol of hatred and cruelty, synonymous with fascism that led to one of the most destructive wars humanity has ever witnessed. But did you know that before the Nazis used it, this symbol had a history dating back almost 12.000 years?

The swastika was an auspicious symbol with positive connotations that represented life, sun, power, strength, and good luck. The oldest swastika dating back 12.000 years was discovered in Mezine, Ukraine, carved on an ivory figurine. Pottery and coins from ancient Troy dating back to 4.000 B.C. reveal that the swastika was a commonly used symbol. It had been used by Hindus and Buddhists in India and other Asian countries, who thought of it as an important symbol of good fortune, prosperity, and eternity. Moreover, artifacts that have been discovered indicate its use by the ancient Druids, the Celts, Nordic tribes as well as Native Americans.

By Dane Wigington (with Robert Scribbler*)
Guest Writers for Wake Up World

The entire premise of “solar radiation management” (SRM, a form of geoengineering) is to create artificial cloud cover by spraying reflective aerosols into the atmosphere. This incredibly insane tunnel visioned “human intervention” approach to cooling planet Earth is so packed with pitfalls that they are impossible to quantify. But what is the bottom line?

There are countless sources of anthropogenic (human caused) activity contributing to the alteration of Earth’s systems. And although climate engineers can create short term (highly toxic) cooling over large regions, it comes at the cost of a worsened overall warming. This is the conclusion dictated by all available data.

Waking Times

Video - This motivational video may help you overcome your fears and let go of the excuses that are holding you back from doing what you want to accomplish in life.

Just when you think you have grown wise and calm and gained equanimity, something occurs, or someone occurs, and you are beside yourself with annoyance and despair at ever finding and keeping the evenness and peace and maturity within you.

You ask yourself why someone’s irrationality should affect you at all, and, yet, here you are, affected. Before this response to your affability, you thought you were the cat’s meow of goodness and far beyond feelings of resentment. You thought you had arrived by now.

You went out of your way for several people, and now they want more discussion from you, as if you hadn’t been generous, as if they hadn’t heard what you were saying and grasped that it was from the goodness of your heart that you responded at all. They seem to think that you have the time to coddle them, as if you have the time they apparently do to play around and waste. You were gracious – you really were – and now you feel that you are being walked over. Certainly, your generosity was not valued, and you remind yourself that you are not everyone’s mother and don’t owe what everybody and his brother seem to ask of you, which you really ask of yourself.

HJ: Life will inevitably get challenging, however, you can transcend that experience and slip back into a place of beauty, inspiration and peace.  This wonderful, wise article from Marc Chernoff is all about how to do just that and re-align yourself with flow.

- Truth

5 Ways to Find Beauty in Painful Life Changes

By Marc Chernoff | Marc and Angel

Stepping onto a brand new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation that no longer fits, or no longer exists.

The reason for our suffering, in all walks of life, is our resistance to life’s inevitable changes.

And life is all changes.  To have lived is to have changed often.

Sometimes this is hard to accept…

Marco Torres, Prevent Disease
Waking Times

Researchers suggest children’s social skills are declining as they have less time for face-to-face interaction due to their increased use of digital media, according to a UCLA psychology study. Scientists found that sixth-graders who went five days without even glancing at a smartphone, television or other digital screen did substantially better at reading human emotions than sixth-graders from the same school who continued to spend hours each day looking at their electronic devices.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, studied two groups of sixth-graders from a Southern California public school. One group was sent to the Pali Institute, an outdoor education camp in Running Springs, Calif., where the kids had no access to electronic devices. For the other group, it was life as usual.

“Many people are looking at the benefits of digital media in education, and not many are looking at the costs,” said Patricia Greenfield, a distinguished professor of psychology in the UCLA College and senior author of the study. “Decreased sensitivity to emotional cues — losing the ability to understand the emotions of other people — is one of the costs. The displacement of in-person social interaction by screen interaction seems to be reducing social skills.”