From the study:

Neurodevelopmental disabilities, including autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and other cognitive impairments, affect millions of children worldwide, and some diagnoses seem to be increasing in frequency. Industrial chemicals that injure the developing brain are among the known causes for this rise in prevalence.

A previous study implicated lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene as developmental neurotoxicants. The newer study adds manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, tetrachloroethylene, and the polybrominated diphenyl ethers to the list. Instead of the current way to doing things, which is to use millions of people as unsuspecting guinea pigs for testing new chemicals, the study concludes, "Untested chemicals should not be presumed to be safe to brain development, and chemicals in existing use and all new chemicals must therefore be tested for developmental neurotoxicity."

The following are common sources for chemicals linked to neurotoxic effects:

In the life-affirming perspective of Bioenergetic/Core Energetic therapy, bodily pleasure is the engine of life. Sensual and emotional gratification- good feelings- raises our spirits, releases our tensions and makes us glad to be alive. We are, in our core, pleasure-oriented and life-loving animals!

And since pleasure feeds the fire of life it is no sin. Indeed it is a sacred and life-giving force! Pleasure and love are the medicines we all need. And the open-hearted joy of sex is the ecstatic merging of both!

I've been accused of not respecting religion, and you know what? It's true! I don't respect belief systems, what would have happened if Jesus "respected" the Pharisees? What if Martin Luther King had "respected" racist beliefs? What if Gandhi had "respected" British imperialism? Change doesn't come by respecting old belief systems.

Respecting belief systems is a fake kind of respect. "Respecting" the belief often conflicts with respecting the one who's holding the belief. For example, many religions teach that people are "born into sin", that people are evil by nature. When a religion tells me that young innocent children automatically have a wicked nature, it's out of respect for the children that I call the religion ignorant. It's in this case that the religion is being extremely disrespectful to the human being, and I have no respect for that. True respect doesn't enable disrespect.

When "respecting" beliefs, you'll often have to make this choice: Do you lie or tell half-truths to "respect" what people believe, or do you tell the truth and respect the Being within? Which is greater respect, treating someone like they're strong enough to handle the truth, or treating someone like they're too weak to handle the truth? Which one? One is a fake respect that honors the ego, the other is true respect that honors the Divine within every human being.

We all know how great it feels to receive gifts. However, the joy of getting is short-lived. Our lives are richer when we share, and that great inner joy comes from helping others to better their lives. Truly giving from the heart fills your life with joy and nourishes your soul. Giving provides an intrinsic reward that’s far more valuable than the gift. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “To find yourself, lose yourself in the service of others.” Giving takes you out of yourself and allows you to expand beyond earthly limitations. True joy lies in the act of giving without an expectation of receiving something in return.

Academic research and thousands of years of human history confirm that achieving meaning, fulfillment, and happiness in life comes from making others happy, and not from being self-centred. Mother Teresa is a famous example. She found fulfillment in giving of herself to others. She helped change the expression on dying people’s faces from distress and fear to calmness and serenity. She made their undeniable pain a little easier to bear.

Read the full article... (themindfulword.com)

Focusing on gratefulness keeps us centered and helps ward off negativity.  Here are five little things we can do each day to nourish our sense of gratitude:

1.  Choose your friends wisely.
If you want to be more grateful, spend time with grateful people. Spend time with positive people to be more positive; joyful people to be more joyful.  If you strive to be spiritually strong, supportive, empowering, intelligent, energetic, and positive, seek those characteristics in others.

Help your friends develop more positive traits by living those positive traits yourself.  Know what kind of friends will help you nurture your soul, and set out to find some.

Read the rest.. (positive-thoughts.typepad.com)

Dear Ones, we want you to know that there is never a time when you are not enough. If you ever feel that way, it is never because there is something wrong with you. It is because even more of your divinity wants to shine through! It is your inner divinity that is always wanting to grow and expand and express itself ever more brightly and gloriously.

Think of it this way. A light with three settings of brightness – low, medium and high, is always a light. Even when it is on low, when it is not shining as brightly as it could, it is still a light. Do you see? No matter what you do, you are always a shimmering piece of divinity. If you forget to shine your light as brightly as you could, you are still light and you are still divine. That can never change.

So take the pressure off yourself! Love yourself in your truth, in your divinity, for the glorious piece of the whole you really are, and you will see yourself brilliantly self expressing in ways that make you, and the entire universe, radiant with joy. ~Archangel Gabriel

http://trinityesoterics.com/2014/03/10/daily-message-monday-march-10-2014/

Continuing the theme of finding the Divine within ourselves, I wanted to further address the ideas about God that we've gotten from religion. If you're obsessed with the biblical old testament version of "god", me telling you that You Are God might make you believe you're supposed to go smite people or flood cities. If you listened to the new testament, you might think you're supposed to perform miraculous healing and go walk on water. Both of those ideas are there to put God outside of you, to search for external evidence of God. Religion had to put God outside so religion could control your beliefs about God. Every religion does this, they separate you from the Divine and then install themselves as the middleman. It's a very profitable scam.

If you see things the way I do, you see that Consciousness itself is a Divine miracle. Every sunrise, every sunset, every single Moment is a wholly awe-inspiring event for those who can see past the filters of their limited mind. That's how you begin to see the Divine Within, by being fiercely aware of everything that resides within your own Consciousness. By confronting your fears, by questioning everything you believe, by continuing to dig deeper and deeper and deeper.

Humanity's image of what God is has been steadily evolving. Unfortunately, religion has tried to hold on to the older beliefs about God, while combining them with the newer. This has created what I call the "bipolar god", a God of Unconditional Love, but also a vengeful, punishing, and jealous God. An all-forgiving God, that will punish people for all eternity if they don't do what he wants. The contradiction should be obvious for anyone with even a basic understanding of Love and forgiveness.