November 30 Newsletter is Out!

You can read the latest issue of my Intuitive Way eNewsletter at:
www.penneypeirce.com/newsletters/Newsletter113009.htm

Also, check the calendar sections on my websites for the latest radio interviews.
www.penneypeirce.com/calendar.htm or www.thefrequencybook.com/appear.htm

Applying Frequency & Vibration: The Innovative "Lung Flute"

The Pied Piper of Mucus, by Corey Binns

The following article in Popular Science interested me, partly because Sandy Hawkin's innovative idea came directly as a result of his understanding of sound and vibration.

The plastic tube Sandy Hawkins hands me looks more like a toy horn than a medical device. Blowing into it, he tells me, will do wonders for my chest cold. I glance at the dozen or so people enjoying their mid-afternoon Starbucks and give it a few skeptical puffs.

The idea for the horn came one night in 1985. Hawkins, an acoustics engineer, and his colleagues began brainstorming how they could use sound to mess with various bodily functions. They joked about what frequency a toilet would need to vibrate at to force an uncontrollable bowel movement and, slightly more seriously, a way to dislodge goo in sick people’s lungs. Months later, Hawkins was reminded of that discussion when he learned that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a group of lung diseases that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, makes breathing tough for 10 million people, and causes 127,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. “It’s the number-four cause of death in the U.S.,” he says. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I should do something about this.’ ”

In healthy lungs, hairlike cilia on the bronchial walls wiggle in unison to ferry mucus up the trachea and into the mouth, where it can be swallowed or spit out. Patients with COPD, however, secrete more mucus than the cilia can remove, and thick gobs of the stuff build up in the lungs, making them a breeding ground for bacteria that can lead to pneumonia. Vigorous coughing can help dislodge it, but many sufferers require drugs to open their airways; some need help from oxygen tanks. Annually, the combined cost of treatment totals upward of $27 billion.

Hawkins began building an electronic sound machine that would produce waves of 16 hertz—the same frequency at which the cilia move—to help break up the mucus. Generating a hum of such a low frequency normally requires van-size subwoofers, and so he spent 15 years honing and shrinking the speakers. Then one day as he was testing a mouthpiece filter for his machine, he noticed that blowing through it sent a slight vibration into his chest. Within five seconds, he sketched out the Lung Flute to amplify the effect. Blowing into the tube flaps a reed-thin sheet of plastic, which vibrates the chest and shakes the mucus until it’s thin and mobile enough for the cilia to usher it up your throat. “I felt so stupid because the answer was so simple,” Hawkins says.

Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.

As Hawkins tells me all this, I notice that my cough has become more productive, and although he deserves my congratulations, I can’t stick around to chat. Instead, I head outside and march to a storm drain to resolve the situation.

Catch Penney on Coast to Coast AM with George Noori!!

Just wanted to let you know that I'll be on Coast to Coast AM with George Noori, the evening of Thursday, December 3, from 10pm-1am PT. We'll be talking for 3 hours about everything from how frequency relates to UFOs, to dreams, imagination, and how intuition connects to science and religion. Stay up late and call in!!! You can find the radio station in your area that carries the show at http://www.coasttocoastam.com

Maslow Predicted The Shift

A friend forwarded me this article by Owen Waters. It's always good to get various points of view about the transformation process.

Abraham Maslow (1908-70) was a psychologist who became famous for his hierarchy of human needs. When he developed his theory in the 1950s, he predicted the transformation of humanity into a realm of spiritual transcendence, but he had no idea just how soon this would develop into a major movement. Maslow's hierarchy of human needs shows that basic human needs have to be fulfilled before people can attend to higher needs and values.

First, the basic physiological needs of food and shelter must be catered for in order to ensure survival. Second, once food and shelter are obtained, safety and security must be achieved. Third, acceptance by others is sought, in both the social and romantic senses. To fulfill this 'belonging' need, people become part of a group, a tribe, an extended family or a community. When these deficiency, or outer-directed, needs are satisfied, then the individual works to acquire self-respect. Recognition by others produces self-esteem.

Once the outer needs are fulfilled, the inner-directed need for self-actualization comes into play. To self-actualize means to become the best you personally can be. Self-actualized people include those who have achieved material abundance, and also those who, as a decision of personal power, have chosen simplicity over the pursuit of further abundance. At some point, when a person says "that's enough" to the endless pursuit of additional financial security, then they become free to accomplish anything that inspires their inner joy the most.

Self-actualization is achieved after the individual ceases to have deference to hierarchical authority, and instead matures into the ability to make their own rules of personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is always more powerful and effective than any system of imposed rules. For example, you can threaten to punish someone if they steal and hope that the threat works. But a self-responsible person simply wouldn't steal because they would feel empathy for the loss that a would-be victim would feel. They simply wouldn't have the heart to do such a thing to another person.

It's a matter of increased maturity. When a person abandons the impositions of external authority and becomes their own, self-directed authority, then they become far more functional in the world. This is, in fact, a higher state of consciousness, one which provides a higher vista of awareness. From this expanded vista, they see clearly how they as an individual can best serve humanity.

In this state of awareness, the person acquires the ability to think and analyze situations independently. As a result, new and creative solutions spring to mind. They have enough self-esteem to be able to clearly see their own needs, skills, strengths and weaknesses, and from that they see where they can best be of service to humanity. Once basic needs are fulfilled, the next values to require attention relate to being. The first of these being-values is self-actualization, which is the instinctual need of a human to make the most of their unique abilities.

Above that, Maslow placed transcendence, which he considered a spiritual value. Traditional universities typically presume that spiritual matters are beyond the understanding of their students, so they present the Maslow hierarchy of human needs differently. They present it with self-actualization as the ultimate human goal, and omit the transcendence stage beyond that.

The being-values of self-actualization and transcendence are the higher, more beautiful aspects of human consciousness. They include unconditional love, altruism, inner joy, a love of nature, the development of intuition (in males as well as females), idealism, and a sense of wisdom which springs from within. These skills develop the right-brain functions of creativity and intuition.

In the 1950s, Maslow believed that only 2% of the population had achieved self-actualization. The mid-1960s changed all that when masses of people began the search for the higher values, such as unconditional love and spiritual wisdom. Today, that core group of progressive society has blossomed from 2% to over 20%, and is climbing every year.

The Shift is not a temporary byproduct of the baby boom generation, or any other generation of modern society. It is not a passing fad. It is not going away. It is a cosmic pressure that is unfolding and relentlessly increasing the frequency of all consciousness upon the planet. It is a part of the plan of Infinite Being that we progress to the next stage of conscious human achievement. The Shift is, to put it simply, the most wonderful transformation in recorded history. This is where humanity gets to build, literally, Heaven on Earth.

New Intuitive Way eNewsletter is Out. . .

You can read a copy of my latest newsletter at www.penneypeirce.com/newsletterarchives.htm
Click on the issue from Nov 6th, or any other ones you want.

Frequency in New Spirit Journal!

You might be interested in reading the interview that Krysta Gibson did with me about Frequency, featured as the cover story in the November issue of their newspaper. You can access the website at: http://www.newspiritjournal.com. To get the continuation of the article, download the pdf of page 1, then click on the continued link on that pdf to get the next page.

You can access the podcast of the audio interview at: http://www.newspiritjournal.com/media/Penney%20Peirce%20Final.mp3

NEGATIVITY PART 5: Examining Positive Thinking

Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out called Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. It caught my attention because I wondered if I myself could possibly be TOO positive. Could I be positive for the wrong reasons? And if I were to give up being positive, what else "should" I be? I wanted to know what was behind her point of view. To that end, I am going to edit some of her introduction here, which you can read in full at her website, as well as see the video clip of her on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, where he greets her as "Hello, Grumpy!" My disclaimer is: I haven't read her whole book yet, AND I have thoughts. . . The following bulleted paragraphs are Ehrenreich's:

• Americans are a “positive” people. This is our reputation as well as our self-image. We smile a lot and are often baffled when people from other cultures do not return the favor. In the well-worn stereotype, we are upbeat, cheerful, optimistic, and shallow, while foreigners are likely to be subtle, world-weary, and possibly decadent. American expatriate writers like Henry James and James Baldwin wrestled with and occasionally reinforced this stereotype, which I once encountered in the 1980s in the form of a remark by Soviet émigré poet Joseph Brodsky to the effect that the problem with Americans is that they have "never known suffering." (Apparently he didn’t know who had invented the blues.) Whether we Americans see it as an embarrassment or a point of pride, being positive—in affect, in mood, in outlook—seems to be engrained in our national character.

• Scientists have found that the mere act of smiling can generate positive feelings within us, at least if the smile is not forced. In addition, good feelings, as expressed through our words and smiles, seem to be contagious: "Smile and the world smiles with you." . . .Recent studies show that happy feelings flit easily through social networks, so that one person’s good fortune can brighten the day even for only distantly connected others. . . .People who report having positive feelings are more likely to participate in a rich social life, and vice versa, and social connectedness turns out to be an important defense against depression, which is a known risk factor for many physical illnesses.

• So I take it as a sign of progress that, in just the last decade or so, economists have begun to show an interest in using happiness rather than just the gross national product as a measure of an economy’s success. Happiness is, of course, a slippery thing to measure or define. . . .In addition to the problems of measurement, there are cultural differences in how happiness is regarded and whether it is even seen as a virtue. Some cultures, like our own, value the positive affect that seems to signal internal happiness; others are more impressed by seriousness, self-sacrifice, or a quiet willingness to cooperate.

• Surprisingly, when psychologists undertake to measure the relative happiness of nations, they routinely find that Americans are not, even in prosperous times and despite our vaunted positivity, very happy at all. A recent meta-analysis of over a hundred studies of self-reported happiness worldwide found Americans ranking only twenty-third, surpassed by the Dutch, the Danes, the Malaysians, the Bahamians, the Austrians, and even the supposedly dour Finns. In another potential sign of relative distress, Americans account for two-thirds of the global market for antidepressants, which happen also to be the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States. . . .When economists attempt to rank nations more objectively in terms of "well-being," taking into account such factors as health, environmental sustainability, and the possibility of upward mobility, the United States does even more poorly than it does when only the subjective state of “happiness” is measured. The Happy Planet Index, to give just one example, locates us at 150th among the world’s nations.

• How can we be so surpassingly "positive" in self-image and stereotype without being the world’s happiest and best-off people? The answer, I think, is that positivity is not so much our condition or our mood as it is part of our ideology—the way we explain the world and think we ought to function within it. . . .There is, we are told, a practical reason for undertaking this effort: positive thinking supposedly not only makes us feel optimistic but actually makes happy outcomes more likely. If you expect things to get better, they will. How can the mere process of thinking do this? In the rational explanation that many psychologists would offer today, optimism improves health, personal efficacy, confidence, and resilience, making it easier for us to accomplish our goals. A far less rational theory also runs rampant in American ideology—the idea that our thoughts can, in some mysterious way, directly affect the physical world. Negative thoughts somehow produce negative outcomes, while positive thoughts realize themselves in the form of health, prosperity, and success. For both rational and mystical reasons, then, the effort of positive thinking is said to be well worth our time and attention, whether this means reading the relevant books, attending seminars and speeches that offer the appropriate mental training, or just doing the solitary work of concentration on desired outcomes—a better job, an attractive mate, world peace.

• The promotion of positive thinking has become a minor industry in its own right, producing an endless flow of books, DVDs, and other products; providing employment for tens of thousands of "life coaches," "executive coaches," and motivational speakers, as well as for the growing cadre of professional psychologists who seek to train them.

OK, I'll stop here for now; there is much more to Ehrenreich's introduction that I may address at another time. I find many of her points well-taken, and some, as the ones I highlighted in bold, above, laden with a bit too much cynicism and lack of understanding about the deeper dynamics of consciousness and spirituality. With Jon Stewart, she says we seem to have a "deficit of empathy" in our country, an "irrational exuberance," and "I never think delusion is OK." So, wading through the swampy layers of insight and possible distortion here, I want to speak to this a bit.

I deal with people every day who have suffered through traumas, losses, and deaths and who are not pasting smiley faces all over their computers, mirrors, and refrigerators. They are sincerely pursuing the positive development of their inner character, their spiritual evolution, their healing. One woman, whose sister was murdered, told me that the memory of the violence and that kind of loss never leaves you; you must find a way to live WITH it. She works with the feelings in her art. Another man, whose 4-year-old daughter died in a tragic accident told me he tries to make his life "bigger," so his life has more spaciousness and room, so the loss of his child isn't such a primary focus, so it doesn't overwhelm him as much. These are not people who have a deficit of empathy, or who are pretending to be positive. They ARE positive, because they are acting in an expansive way without denying their experience.

Ehrenreich almost seems to be making fun of people's natural spiritual inclination, which in my experience is to grow and expand—in understanding, in love, in creative ability. I think, just like flowers and trees, we grow toward the source of Light, we bend toward Light, be it physical or spiritual. This "evolution urge" is nothing if not positive. People who truly embrace growthful change make a point of finding the positive meaning—that which frees us to be more loving, more understanding, and more creative—in whatever occurs in their experience. Even the loss of a beloved sibling or child can make us more loving, more understanding, more creative—if we look for how that could be possible, for what the connections are that could free us. Every "negative" or contracted experience is like a bow pulled back, about to release its arrow to fly to an expanded reality—if we release the arrow.

I define being positive as living in and experiencing what exists in the present moment. What exists takes up what artists and designers call "positive space." "Negative space" is the space around an object where "nothing" exists. Being negative is living in fictitious realities centered around what doesn't exist, what might never exist, what we don't have, what we can't do, etc. Think: worry, complaining, even mourning ad infinitum for the loss of a person in the physical form when their spiritual self is still present, right next to you, but at a higher vibration. Being negative doesn't allow us to experience the soul's reality, because the soul is accessed through presence in the present moment, through existence. So when people are positive, they have a better chance of receiving insight from their deepest self.

Being positive, then, is akin to being clear. It is my experience that a positive attitude—and I mean one that sees what exists, be it a high frequency of energy or a low one, an expanded reality or a contracted one—actually allows us to see more realistically, with less clutter. It helps us add to our sense of self rather than detract from it.

This is quite different from Ehrenreich's criticism of the willful imposition of "having to be positive" on one's reality because the person is afraid of being devastated by negative emotion that they haven't actually experienced yet, and may not, for all they know. This way of being doesn't allow all of life; it divides experience into good and evil and doesn't allow the yin-yang symbol's flow between light and dark, where you eventually experience firsthand how dark becomes light and light becomes dark and dark light, and on and on, and you see how, in the end. they are ONE FLOW. Stopping the flow becomes the real cause of suffering.

There are two kinds of "positive." Spiritually speaking there is what exists, and that experience is inclusive of expansion AND contraction, and doesn't equate contraction with negativity. Contraction may dredge up fear-based emotion, but of itself it is simply a mechanism that causes us to FOCUS or DISSOLVE a reality by removing attention. Mentally and emotionally speaking, however, positivity is the opposite of evil, destruction, and everything we've labeled as "bad." There are typically strong religious overtones, based on fixed belief systems. There is will power involved to maintain positivity so negativity doesn't sneak in through the door and take over. This way of seeing the world does not include the fullness of spiritual, mystical understanding. It is a world view that is still based on fear.

I'm wondering whether Ehrenreich should really be talking about fear as the main theme in her book. . .