The Ancient Origin of the Roma People

The majority of this article is psychically received information about the origin of the Roma people. The Roma were historically referred to as “Gypsies” because it was thought (erroneously) that they came originally from Egypt. (Their origins as far as blood lines and language roots can be traced were from the Indian subcontinent, probably the Punjab area.)

In providing this information, I do not intend in any way to offend the Roma. The Roma are an ancient and honorable people who have been much persecuted through the centuries, usually for simply being different. In addition to the estimated 6 million Jews who died in the Nazi Holocaust in World War II, a large number of Roma were also slain in the same manner by the Nazis. (Along with many other people because of their religion, origin, or sexual orientation.) Throughout time, many other countries have practiced (and continue to practice) their own forms of harassment and genocide against the Roma, such as laws against Roma marrying Roma, forced sterilization, and so on. None of this is acceptable or right.

The information I received psychically presents a very different perspective on the antiquity of the Roma, placing their origins as a distinct people sometime between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago (and even then, their bloodline and heritage go much further back than that). If any Roma read this post and find anything offensive about it, please let me know so that I may correct what is offensive.

The Information

During the Atlantean era, one group of people had the tradition of sending their children out on a trek or journey at a certain stage in the children’s development. The children on these journeys ranged in age from early to late puberty (from approximately 12 years old to around 17 or so). The children went out in large groups, with just a few adults along to supervise and assist. The purpose of these journeys is not clear to me. I believe it was a sort of walkabout; a way for the children to come of age and to also work out a number of things without too much parental interference. The reason for the large age range is that the children were sent when they were felt to have reached a certain developmental stage, a stage which some reached later than others.

I do not know exactly how long these journeys lasted, but it was a number of months—I think around nine, as a symbolic representation of the gestation period. (The children preparing to be born again as adults, basically.)

The children and their escorts traveled in caravans (wagons to us Americans) somewhat resembling the caravans that the Roma in recent centuries used. However, there were many differences in these caravans from the traditional horse-drawn ones.

For one thing, the bodies of these caravans, rather than having straight sides and an overall rectangular shape, were instead round, like a cylinder on its side, and were much larger in every dimension. I am not good at visually estimating dimensions, but I think they were perhaps 20 feet (or a little more) in length.

These caravans also had much more advanced technology, with heating, lighting, and other ammenities powered in ways that we do not yet have today. The energy used was a very, very clean energy, without any kind of harmful emanations or radiations. When I “look” at the energy psychically, I become aware of and am astounded at how much worse our current form of energy is—astounded, because we put up with it.

The caravans were made of some kind of light-colored silvery metal, not shiny but dullish. They were not drawn by animals. I do not know what the motive power was, but it was another application of the same very clean energy source being used inside the caravans. The caravans had extremely tall but very narrow wheels, like the wheels of a prairie wagon. However, the wheels also were made of the same metal (alloy?) as the body of the caravan, and they were narrower in proportion to their size, and also very tall in proportion to the caravan itself.

At the time of the destruction of Atlantis, there was a large urban area (much like the San Francisco Bay Area—one large extended city covering hundreds of square miles of land). I will just call this area the city.

The city surrounded a very large, irregularly-shaped bay that had a long and very narrow outlet that led south to a much larger body of water—perhaps an ocean. The bay was roughly curved toward the top, with ragged margins, like many fingers, and larger fingers reaching southward. If you poured pancake batter on an inflated balloon, it might drip down in the shape of the margins of this bay.

A huge, strange pyramid-like metal structure floated above the bay. What was strange about it was that the upper part of this structure was like the pyramids in Egypt, but about 1/3 of the way down, instead of continuing the slope, the surface changed its angle sharply, making a bend and even curving back upward a bit. The surface was covered with plates of what looks like a metal that is a darker color than the caravans—a darker steel blue-grey. Small flying metallic air cars flew in and out of an opening in the pyramid part of this structure. I mention this only because this was part of the information I received, not because I understand its significance.

A large group of children from this city were out on their journey and far away from home either at the time of the destruction of Atlantis, or at the time of the destruction of their city.

The children had traveled a very long way east of their city, and were close to another large body of water at the time of the destruction. The land was quite flat where they were, and the few trees around, which had a very dark bark and were tall, slender, and sparsely branched, with the branches reaching toward the sky, were bare of leaves. I don’t know if this indicates the time of year, or whether something had happened to blast and blacken the trees.

When the city (and Atlantis?) were destroyed, the children had to go on with the rest of their lives. I do not know how they reacted to the events themselves (sadness? fear? dismay? horror? grief? calm acceptance?), but one of the decisions they made was to stick together and to watch out for each other as the only friends and family they had left.

With this decision, as they grew up, they tried to retain as many of their customs and traditions as they could. They also tried to stay together and to keep their bloodlines pure, not so much out of snobbery as out of a feeling that there was them, and then there were the outsiders. It is hard to explain the sense that I get about this. There was (at least, in the beginning) no animosity toward other bloodlines, but there was a strong and definite sense that staying within their own bloodline was a form of honoring their lost families and friends.

Because they were children, they did not have a full understanding of their culture and technology, though they tried to learn as much as they could from the few adults who were with them. (But how many of us, if cut off from everything we know, would be able to explain how a computer works, let alone know how to build one? Where would we begin? How would we get the metals and other materials? How would we shape them?)

Aa the information was passed on over a period of close to 12,000 years, much was lost or changed. (But then, much was lost to everyone when Atlantis was destroyed.)  The wonderful energy sources were lost fairly early, and so the caravans had to be replaced with much cruder ones drawn by oxen and, later, horses.Still, the Roma culture is deeply rich and complex.

That is the end of the information I received. The one additional piece of information I have received is that I have been asked to share this information because it will serve a positive purpose. Some purposes I do not know and do not necessarily need to know. The information was a gift, as is my gift of being able to see such things, and I am grateful for both.

An Easy Way to Stop Junk Mail and Help the Environment

I just discovered the GreenDimes junk mail removal service. They offer a centralized way to get yourself off junk mailing lists. Reducing the number of catalogs sent out saves trees, fuel and transportation costs, etc., and therefore is a tremendous boost for the environment.

If you opt for GreenDimes’ free service (which includes either (A) getting a dollar from them or (B) having a tree planted or (C) getting a free issue of something), then you will have to do a lot of the legwork yourself, but they offer all the information you need.

They also offer two paid-for services ($20 and $36), which they somewhat misleadingly say only require one payment. What they really mean is that you pay once and they do what they can to get you off the junk mailing lists, which should reduce your junk mail for 3 to 5 years, but you may need to pay a half-price “refresh” fee if you move or your purchasing habits put you on new lists. Since many mailing lists are printed months ahead of time, they say to give the service a good three months to start showing results. You have up to a year to request a refund if you aren’t happy.

You do need to tell them what catalogs you receive that you want to stop receiving, but that is easily done. You will also need to sign and send some postcards, but they send you the postcards and even include postage. It couldn’t get much easier than this.

Oh—and they will plant five trees for you with the paid-for services as well. Since we all need to plant a lot of trees to make up for our carbon footprint in our lifetime, this is another painless way to help the environment.

I am already quite in love with this service. I signed up for their $20 service, and have already added over 20 catalogs to the list. I have been recycling all my junk mail, but it is a greater benefit to the environment to reduce it or stop it entirely.

Carbon Footprint? What is That?

Your carbon footprint is basically the quantity of carbon dioxide you cause to be created by using utilities, driving a car (or using buses, taxis, airplanes, etc.), using gas-powered lawn equipment, riding a motorcycle, and so on.

How much is your carbon footprint? Use this calculator to find out. It will also tell you how many trees you need to plant to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions you create. Since carbon dioxide is absorbed by trees, a very easy and common way to offset your carbon footprint is by planting trees, either on your own or by paying someone to do it (or, of course, both).

I am proud to say my household carbon footprint is much smaller than the national average. Having made the calculations, I find that between my gardens over the years and paying for trees to be planted, I have already planted almost enough trees (36) to make up for my carbon footprint (I need to plant a minimum of 43). Nice to know. However, I believe the national average, carbon-footprint-wise, is much higher, so if you don’t want to use the calculator, you can just go with the national average, which is that most people need to plant about 77 trees.

 

Audio Files of Channeling

I finally have posted some audio files of one night’s session of channeling from a while ago. Check it out and let me know what you think.

http://www.thelighthouseonline.com/channel/channel.html

Not All Animal Rescue Societies Truly Rescue

I just took a look at this Web site—it has a nice, clean appearance, and reviews some really cool products for cats. Take a look, if only for the nifty cat swag.

But also, the author has written an article about Best Friends Animal Society and a recent rescue they have been working on. A case of institutionalized animal hoarding had been found, and Best Friends was brought in to help make things better

Animal hoarding is a weird aberration in which a person or institution (in this case, an institution named FLOCK), collect some type of animal, saying that they are only thinking of that animal. But instead of caring properly for them or trying to find good homes for them, the hoarder(s) maintain the animals in horrific conditions. The animals often die or end up completely frightened and confused—and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The conditions are truly, truly horrible, and the state in which the animals are when discovered requires a strong stomach.

To quote from the HARC (the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium at Tufts University), “Animal hoarding is not about animal sheltering, rescue, or sanctuary, and should not be confused with these legitimate efforts to help animals. It IS about satisfying a human need to accumulate animals and control them, and this need supercedes the needs of the animals involved.”

In this case, the conditions were as horrific as they get.

The story brought tears to my eyes. I have such a hard time understanding how people can harm cats, and I really don’t get the cat hoarding mentality. Yet it is a problem. A few months ago, I read of a case of cat hoarding that took place in Petaluma a few years back. The woman who was doing it said she was “rational.” Ha!

Because of these kinds of people, animal rescuers can get a little leery of cat hoarding, to the point where they can suspect it in places where it isn’t. I told an animal rescuer recently that I had four cats and she clearly thought I was on my way down the loony path, that it was only a matter of time before the authorities would be knocking on my door. I was bemused by her reaction. I do understand the fear, but my four cats are quite happy and healthy, and I really am rational. (I plan to invite her to my house to alleviate her fears.)

Is there anything we can do to help this problem? Of course! There are some genuine groups who are doing genuinely good things for animals, including no-kill shelters. If you wish to help animals, you can’t go wrong donating to them, or helping them out in some other way. Or, if you want to get more involved, there is probably a local animal rescue group you could volunteer for. These societies always need help.

One more side note: I am reminded of an article I once read about a couple spending $20,000 on an operation for their $4.99 goldfish—and the goldfish died anyway. As my wonderful sister-in-law said, there are a lot more socially responsible ways to spend that kind of money than on a goldfish. Much as I love my goldfish, even if I had that kind of money to burn, I wouldn’t spend it on a risky operation that had only a so-so chance of succeeding. Instead, I’d donate that money to a no-kill shelter, and save the lives of a large number of animals.

But do the research first to make sure you are donating to something that is legitimate. For example, do not donate to PETA, which is another horror story in itself. “PETA is against the no kill movement and euthanizes the majority of animals that are given to them.”

Since you may find conflicting reports about any given place, or you may have different ideas about what constitutes loving care (some places, for example, advocate not letting your animals outside unless they are in an enclosure, and you may not agree with that), you will have to listen to your heart to decide whether a place is doing more good than harm.

A Turkey Visitor Provides Food for Thought

On March 27th, I was up early working at my computer with my balcony door open (which is pretty usual—I like lots of fresh air). I kept hearing what sounded like a turkey gobbling coming from down the street, but told myself it couldn’t be so, could it? It could have been a very weird dog.

The gobbling got closer and closer until it was coming from right in front of my house, at which point I had to get up to go check it out, because now it sounded unmistakably like a turkey. Sure enough, there in my front lawn was a young-looking turkey, strutting around. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, though, it whisked around the corner into my side yard. I never realized that the land speed of a turkey was so fast.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs, then snuck quietly out the back door. It tried to come into my back yard but was foiled by the iron gate. When I came out, it turned around and headed for the northwest corner of my yard. I got a few pictures, one that isn’t very clear at all, one under the redwoods (taken through the iron gate), and a couple that I took by swinging wide and around the redwoods after it flew to the back fence. Then it spread its wings and flew away, rather gracefully and effortlessly for such a large bird.

I believe that, if we are alert and pay attention, information flows to us (and from us, but that’s not the topic today) all the time. This information can be in the way of messages to warn us, guide us, or otherwise inform us. These messages came come in any form, such as billboards that catch our eye, a stranger making a comment that catches out attention, and so on.

Especially, I believe that when we see animals, those animals bring messages of some sort. (Even animals who are in our lives every day, such as cats and dogs and even goldfish.) So my normal reaction when seeing an animal is to reflect upon what the message is that is being brought to me. I always get something interesting.

Somehow I failed that process this time, at least in as far as reflecting on it immediately. That might be in part because I just don’t know what to make of the turkey as a messenger. The usual animals I see, I tend to know their messages (hawks, hummingbirds, crows, and deer appear to me often, for example). But a turkey—? I was clueless.

This morning, however, I awoke thinking about it, and decided it was time to complete the process. After some Googling and reading, I found this Web site that seems to summarize most succinctly the turkey’s meanings (it also plays a nice little sound file of a turkey’s gobble).

After reading the various pages, I turned inward and asked my inner self what the meaning was for me. I got something related to the posted meanings, but personal for me, which is exactly perfect—to be meaningful, a message must be personally tailored to the individual it is meant for. Cookie-cutter symbolism, where a dog is said to mean the exact same thing to everyone, just doesn’t go far enough. It is a start, and that is all; it is up to the recipient of the message to get the gist of the message as it was meant for him or her.

The point of this post is not just to share my own experience, but also to encourage others to be alert to messages from the world coming their way. Being open to such messages enriches life immensely, and can help each of us make better, more informed choices in our lives.

The Simply True Show

I recently designed and edited Ingrid Katal’s book, What is Your Honor Code? Ingrid is starting a talk show soon, called “The Simply True Show.” This show is connected with Oprah, so many people will see her and her book, I am sure.

In her book, Ingrid offers food for thought and quite practical, do-able tools for understanding and improving many areas of one’s life. The gist of Ingrid’s message is that we are each responsible for our lives and that we create our own realities. I was very much in tune with her on this, which made editing the book a pleasure.

One of the strongest points of Ingrid’s book is that it uses a question-and-answer format, with bulleted answers, to help people learn about and understand the roots of a given issue, and take positive steps toward making matters better in that area. It is the kind of book that gets used, rather than just read. You can purchase used ones from Amazon.com; I think it will also soon be in Borders and Barnes & Noble, and of course you can order it directly from Ingrid’s Web site.

About Bees…and the Environment

I just discovered that bees are slaves. I never knew that. In the years in which I kept bees, starting with the very gentle swarm that I captured without incident or loss of life back in the late 1970s, and kept for several years without incident, I always thought that it was a cooperative enterprise. Mind you, I didn’t practice any of the things that many beekeepers do–I never killed a queen; never killed any of the bees; never medicated them; collected only the surplus honey, not the honey they needed to overwinter with, nor the pollen, propolis, royal jelly, etc.; and so on. Essentially, I respected the bees as partners, and thought kindly of them, and did everything I knew how (which was mostly just leaving them alone and providng them with new supers as needed) to make sure they were healthy and happy. In my entire time managing that hive, I was never stung. (I later had a different hive of bees in Arizona, and that was a nasty-tempered bunch. With that hive, I did get stung.)

I am being sarcastic here about the bees-as-slaves idea. The person who wrote that bees are slaves has many valid points about how we, as a society, are mismanaging honeybees, and I agree with most of them. Many years ago, Rudolph Steiner predicted that our beekeeping practices would weaken honeybees, to the point that we would have the exact problems we are having today with colony collapse disorder (CCD).

CCD is just one result of the carelessness with which humanity as a whole has been treating the world. Though some like to point fingers at the United States, the truth is that people around the world, in all levels of society, are abusing the environment out of ignorance, greed, shortsightedness, and general contempt for any lives other than their own.

The thing is, it is so easy to reduce one’s impact, to respect the planet, to live kindly and lovingly on this earth. It may mean some “sacrifices” for some people (do we women really need to wear makeup everyday? Or even any day, for that matter?), but the end result will be happier people and a healthier planet, I am quite sure of it. You can start by checking out some of my recommendations on this page.

There is a lot of information available on the Internet on the many different things you can do to help the environment; many of them will save you time and money, too, making it a win-win situation for all.

If you decide to make a difference, don’t overwhelm yourself and give yourself goals that are hard to reach. Start small. Pick even one change that you are willing to make, then stick to that one change for a while. Do the research, though. Some groups, such as PETA, who sound like they are wonderful are sometimes doing the opposite of what they say they are about.

On Dreams

I just woke up from a rather horrible set of dreams. I believe that all dreams are real in some regard. I do not believe that they are things concocted by our own brains solely for our own use; if I meet in a dream someone I know in waking reality, I tend to think that there is the possibility, at least, that I have actually connected with and communicated with that person, if only on the soul level.

Therefore, if I encounter a disturbing situation in a dream, especially where people are doing bad things to other people, and especially if those bad things are being done to me, I ask myself about the meaning. I don’t always get good answers from myself. But this morning, I thought to tune in to my spirit friends and ask them to comment, especially since I had received some information last week that I thought might be related to the dreams. As soon as I did, I got the following reply, which I am recording as accurately as I can remember.

“When we dream, we venture into many realities. Some are our own and belong to us; others are realities that we are just visiting. Those that are our own reflect our own truths; those that belong to others, while still reflecting truths, do not necessarily reflect our truths unless we wish to accept them.”

This was just a brief reply, but it was very reassuring. If you want to hear more about my theories and experiences with dreams, I would be happy to write up a post for my Web site. Just let me know.

The Lord of the Rings versus Dungeons and Dragons

There are a lot of fans of fantasy who have come to the genre so recently that they don’t know its history. In not knowing the history, they end up making unwarranted, disparaging comments about classics in the field. Let me give you a few examples.

• When the Lord of the Rings movies came out, I heard people say that yes, they were good, but they were “derivative” of Dungeons and Dragons.
• In reviews of the television version of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books, many reviewers commented that it was okay, but man oh man, the school for wizards—that was soooo derivative of Harry Potter. (The Earthsea television series was, in fact, rather horrible and bore very little resemblance to the books; the wizarding school was one of the few elements that it retained.)
• The Spiderwick Chronicles series of books has also been accused of being derivative of Harry Potter as well, because it has magic and magical creatures in it.

Tolkien versus Dungeons and Dragons

J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnificent work, The Lord of the Rings, was first published in three volumes in England in the mid-1950s. Note that date. It was later published in the United States in the 1960s, first in an unauthorized edition, and then later in an authorized one.

The Lord of the Rings was enormously influential on a number of writers, including game designers E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who created Dungeons and Dragons in the early-mid 1970s—about 20 years after the first publication of The Lord of the Rings. Although Gygax says he was only minimally influenced by the book, he did definitely take the concepts of halflings, orcs, treants, elves, dwarves, etc. from it. (Initially, he used the terms hobbit and ent, for example, but was forced by the Lord of the Rings copyright holders to change those terms. Also, he changed the height of halflings from Tolkien’s description of being about the height of a ten-year-old boy to about the height of a two-year-old toddler.)

In a nutshell? The Lord of the Rings story can in no way be derivative of something that was published twenty years later.

Earthsea versus Harry Potter

The Earthsea books, including the school for wizards, were first published in the 1960s and were rightfully very popular. They were about a young man who discovers that he has wizarding powers, and about how he grows in wisdom while using them.

The first Harry Potter book, on the other hand, was published in Britain in 1997. With almost 30 years between the first publication of Earthsea and the first publication of Harry Potter, there is no possible way that Earthsea could be derivative of Harry Potter.

If you haven’t read the Earthsea books, I highly recommend them.

The Spiderwick Chronicles versus Harry Potter

Although in the case of Holly Black’s Spiderwick Chronicles, the publication date of the first book (2003) came after the first of the Harry Potter books, the books cannot in any way be called derivative of the Harry Potter books. The books are about some children who have adventures in the world of the fairies (using well-established fairy types from long before Harry Potter). The only way you could even come close to calling Black’s books as derivative of Rowling’s is if you then also claim that any fantasy story that uses well-established fantasy elements is derivative of any previous fantasy book that used the same elements. In which case, the Harry Potter books (and, in fact, pretty much every fantasy book) would also have to accused of being derivative as well.

What is Behind These Accusations?

Setting aside ignorance, which clearly is at play here, there must be some other impetus behind these “derivative” accusations. If someone is neutral on a subject, they might mention similarities between the works, even if they mistakenly believe that the older work is actually younger, but they wouldn’t heap scorn on the older work.

If I were to guess, I would say that much of the impetus behind these accusations is the desire to have been first in doing or finding something. Some people who started their fantasy reading habits with Harry Potter don’t want to believe that Harry Potter wasn’t the first fantasy book ever written, because then they would have to admit that other people may actually have enjoyed fantasy long before they did. This would make them late-comers to a genre (which, of course, they are—fantasy works have been around a long, long time), and they don’t want to think they weren’t the first. In short, it is an ego problem complicated by fear—fear that, if they can’t be unique in their tastes or in having discovered a genre, then in what way are they unique?

The answer is that we are all unique, and that sharing a liking for things, far from separating us or making us “less than,” is one of the ways in which we can connect with other human beings. Our lives can be so much richer if we allow others to also not only like the same kinds of things we like, but to have liked them longer or in a different way, because then we can find new books to read, new movies to watch, that we might also like and that we might otherwise not have found. The ways in which each of us are unique are many, including our perspective on things, our beliefs, and the way we express ourselves. Even if we are similar to others in some ways, there are ways in which we are not similar, or ways in which we take similarities from many different sources and make them our own.

So, the next time you encounter someone saying that something is derivative, think kindly toward them; maybe even extend a hand in friendship, if you are so moved.

Or, the next time you find yourself thinking that something is derivative, ask yourself what it is you are afraid of and why you are feeling so scornful. Save yourself some embarassment by doing a little research before speaking or writing. Then, think about it and ask yourself if maybe there might be something new for you to discover if you open your heart and mind a bit.

A New Essay: Television

Although many people have written about the evils of television, I felt I had something to contribute to the discussion. You can find my new article here.