Today I sent Governor Beverly Perdue a letter on behalf of The Love Foundation.  The Love Foundation is a global non-profit mission aimed at inspiring ourselves and other to Love unconditionally.  I was writing to ask Bev if she would be willing to sign a proclamation in observance of Global Love Day this year, which happens annually every May 1st.

After lots of procrastinations, quality thinking, incubation and then saying to myself, “Alright that’s enough thinking it’s just time to send this”, here it is (I’ll keep you posted when I hear back!):

Many thanks to NC Governor Beverly Perdue and her staff!

Love,

~Aaron

Pecha Kucha Raleigh event #2 began on March 23, 2010

It was a Tuesday night and the day went pretty smoothly hauling junk with College Hunks Hauling Junk.

Even though I knew I would be giving a talk later on that night I didn’t really feel  nervous, more excited in a bubbly kind of way.

I remember arriving at the PKNRaleigh event there was a long line of people in front of the Brickhouse the venue for the event.  (A foreshadowing perhaps?).

Well, it turns out this long line of people were actually going into Ben and Jerry’s…oh.  I entered the Brickhouse and for whatever reason immediately felt a strange disconnect from everyone.

I greeted friends from the tribe like @CynMallard @carleemallard @ShannonPrue @UplinkMedia @krtn68 @riannam @BrianneVillano, @learnpleasure, @dckismet and many other friendly faces.

I will say that I did experience something I will term “Speaker Isolation” all night  which is basically a phenomenon where the speaker even while “in” the crowd feels extremely disconnected from the crowd.

It was an interesting thing to perceive at an event like this because normally one is either a audience member or a “performer”.  I was able to see what it was like to be both.

The event was exciting in the sense that you got to drink alcohol and listen to people discuss interesting ideas.  What is really fun about these events is meeting the people.  You know that events like these are going to create threads of commonality that everyone can relate to.

A challenge though is how to bridge the gaps between people who are encountering the group for the first time.  I remember when we first attended Ignite Raleigh we didn’t know anyone and there was uncertainty.

I would imagine that there are lots of other people out there who are finding out about this collective and would like to be more interconnected with the group but doesn’t know how to get in at first.

So, I would like to extend an officially unofficial invitation to anyone out there reading this, that you can feel free to approach me (@HealingVibes) if you see me at an event.

So you might be wondering how the event was?  Well, it was interesting, frustrating, fun, boring, exciting, annoying, engaging, entertaining and best of all authentic.  The people who came for the event were awesome but some of the people who came to drink and be apathetic were well just plain rude at least from our perspective…watch my talk Love Media: Seeing Through The Eyes Of The Heart and you’ll see what I thought about that.

Check out the other brilliant speeches while you’re at it!  Find them here: http://www.pknraleigh.com/

The lack of understanding of who’s behind the media is just the tip of the iceberg in the media illiteracy epidemic. It’s realizing that the information itself is just low-quality infotainment garbage. People have become desensitized to how unintelligent and unhelpful the discussions on major news outlets are having. What’s worse is that this is done on purpose.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion: Why We Listen to What They Say describes the problem best: “We no longer live in a world where the best man wins. It’s a world where the person who has made us believe he is the best man wins…To influence us, they disable our capacity to make reasoned judgments and appeal to deeper, perhaps unresolved, and certainly unrelated issues. ”

I love watching the news media in action. They are smart, professional and extremely convincing. I once took them seriously, but eventually I realized how contrived and narrow-minded their perspectives are.

Unfortunately, because of this perspective our perceptions and beliefs are molded continuously. The media’s main method is to convince enough influencers to go along with their message, causing the rest to just follow along.

The Media Illiteracy Epidemic Spreads To Schools

To amplify this problem, our schools do not teach us the proper skills to form our own perspectives, beliefs and thoughts. Rushkoff expresses his disgust at how the US is the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t require media literacy to be part of its public-school curriculum.

Where do most Americans get their information, thoughts and opinions from? The news media, which controls the roster of pre-approved topics. It’s a very brilliantly designed system but has the texture of one big PR stunt.

When you unplug from the media for a few months you’ll begin to realize how they have carefully framed the choices for you. Many issues like the war in Iraq are framed in a specific way to keep you from questioning the source of the problems.

For example, the media created the concept of supporting our troops. As Noam Chomsky says, “Who would want to disagree with that?” The real issue is do we agree with your policy? Interestingly enough people who disagree with our war policy are attacked as unpatriotic people who are against supporting the troops. Any reasonable unplugged person should see how ridiculous this blatant framing of thought is.

When you begin to examine who runs the show, things begin to make more sense. Let the media literacy begin.

Who Owns The Media?

StopBigMedia.com’s Big Six include current top dogs: General Electric, Walt Disney, News Corp, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS.

The major cable players are: Comcast, TimeWarner, Cox, Cablevision and Advance.net

The major telecom players are: AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, TimeWarner, Cox, Qwest, and Advance.net

I believe that although these “leviathans” seem to grow bigger by day, our eyeballs are still what make them real. As media literacy grows and increases they will either listen to our demands or perish.

One of the reasons for interest in the LOVEolution is our ability to create media on our terms. In our case we seek to create content rooted in Unconditional Love. I personally believe much of the media is controlled by a force that has Lovelessness as their core mission.

Some call this force behind the mainstream media and governing bodies, The “Baphomet, Illuminati, or Dark Cabal”. Whatever people want to call it, this is our shadow -an unclaimed part of our collective consciousness.

As long as we realize that we are inseparable from this force, we can reclaim, integrate and Love our shadow. The natural result will be a shift from lovelessness to Love simply because we said so.

Let’s say so.

Check out The Love Activation to learn more about Activating The Power of Love within You.

Download the Love Activation Package.

You’ll learn: How the media, the government, businesses and religion can create “Organized Lovelessness” Recent breakthroughs that change the way we think about LOVE How LOVE changes your body chemistry and affects everyone around you How you can keep yourself in a state of LOVE using these simple yet powerful “love exercises” 

What is Valentine’s Day?

“Saint Valentine’s Day (commonly shortened to Valentine’s Day) is an annual holiday held on February 14 celebrating love and affection between intimate companions.

The holiday is named after one or more early Christian martyrs named Valentine and was established by Pope Gelasius I in AD 496. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as “valentines”).

The holiday first became associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished.

Modern Valentine’s Day symbols include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the winged Cupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards.” (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day)

Or in today’s case given way to Glenn Beck recommending a Pajama Gram or a Vermont Teddy Bear.  Others recommend cards or other chocolately flowery type ideas.

Today, I am taking an anti-Valentines Day (but pro-Love) stance.

This is mainly in protest to the artificial feelings preyed upon by marketers out masquerading a incomplete incomprehensible version of something  I personally believe is quite wonderful, unlimited and abundant–Love.

These artificial feelings are known as Limerence. I elaborated in The Love Activation:

Distorted Love Leads To Distorted Relationships

Love is often mistaken for romantic obsession—which is a temporary short-term experience. This eternal “in-love” experience portrayed on TV and movies is a fictional occurrence. Dr. Dorothy Tennov—the late-psychologist and author of Love and Limerence—did long term
studies on being “in-love”:

“After studying scores of couples, she concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years. If it is a secretive love affair, it may last longer. When the two year period ends, both partners awaken from their drugged romantic state and remember their desires—which are often different from their partners’.”

Limerence: The Falling in Love Myth

Tennov coined the term Limerence to denote the temporary “in-love” experience which she believes is not Love at all. (I’m going to call it “temp love”) Dr. M. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and M.D., agreed with Tennov, concluding three reasons why this is true:

1. Falling in Love is not an act of the will or a conscious choice.
2. Falling in Love is not real Love because it is effortless.
3. One who is “in love” is not genuinely interested in fostering the personal growth of another person.

Dr. Peck elaborated on why limerence happens:

“[Falling in Love] is a genetically determined instinctual component of mating behavior. In other words, the temporary collapse of ego boundaries that constitutes falling in love is a stereotypic response of human beings to a configuration of internal sexual drives and external sexual stimuli, which serves to increase the probability of sexual pairing and bonding so as to enhance the survival of the species.”

–

And the main reason I’m so ticked off is  that this limerence is completely out of hand.  It’s being used by marketers who know people are going to be out on this Love high.

I realize “You’re fucked up and should Love each other every other day anyway” probably would get the profiteers in trouble so I figure if I go ahead and point it out, we can actually go back to what the original point of Valentines Day which is to celebrate Love!

Myths And Legends Around Valentines Day

“One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl — who may have been his jailor’s daughter — who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘christianize’ celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival.

In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

The boys then sliced the goat’s hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year.

Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day around 498 A.D. The Roman ‘lottery’ system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February — Valentine’s Day — should be a day for romance.(http://www.history.com/content/valentine/history-of-valentine-s-day)

The Love Letter: A Valentines Day Original

The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt.

The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology.

Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s.

In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America.

According to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated one billion valentine cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year. (An estimated 2.6 billion cards are sent for Christmas.)

Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are purchased by women. In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.

Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages (written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400), and the oldest known Valentine card is on display at the British Museum.

The first commercial Valentine’s Day greeting cards produced in the U.S. were created in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland. Howland, known as the Mother of the Valentine, made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap”. (http://www.history.com/content/valentine/history-of-valentine-s-day)

Here’s a video of Nancy Rosin, president of National Valentine Collectors Association and her: 10,000 Love Letter Collection

What struck me about listening to Nancy speak about the Love Letters was how much actually Love was put into the letters indicated most strongly by the hand crafted pieces.  This is where Howland’s Love child went out of control: when Hallmark injected the corporatization.  It started out as a good idea, “why not help people by selling the medium to share Love?”.

Well, it became a problem when that card began to represent the full range of any substance present in the relationship.  Howland’s Love Letters were “remade elaborate creations with real lace“.

Imagine that, Love Letters used to contain real love…very metaphorical of how our money used to contain…well…real value.

Even here with the LOVEolution we have to maintain the quality and substance of LOVE at all times.  It’s our job and I personally believe we have become unfocused.

We just need to reclaim the quality of Love, what it really means to us and how we would like it represented because I believe WE are the ones setting the standard.

I say the final word is more handwritten notes, less (to none) Glenn Beck.

Let the Love begin!

Love,

~Aaron

Further Reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day

http://www.history.com/content/valentine/history-of-valentine-s-day

http://www.theholidayspot.com/valentine/history_of_valentine.htm

Here is the replay link to my interview with Dr. Dean Shrock on Thursday, February 11, 2010.

Topics covered include:

-> How Guided Imagery and helping people cultivate the “will to live” directly led to remissions in cancer
-> What is Quantum Entanglement and The Theory of Non-Locality
-> How Dr Shrock conducted ground breaking research on Guided Imagery and its miraculous treatment of cancer
-> What is the connection between Love and Science?
-> A story about Dr. Shrock witnessing a Japanese Martial Artist who demonstrated a double sided knife passing through his hand
-> Why Love Heals

To hear the replay click here

Dear Shadow, Our Dark Cabal of Consciousness,

It is you we honor, as a divine part from which the energy of humanity originates and resides.

We value the honesty of your feelings, rooted in the earth, in battle and in the hunt. Your anger is profound. Your need for action true.  We applaud your sense of outrage and need for justice.

So let it be known that I Aaron Mangal, a flesh and blood human being housing a Divine Soul or Agent for the Love of the Universe, declare that:

• The alchemical grace of Divine Love permeate your wickedness and transform it into Love for the benefit of all humanity
• Your ritualistic destruction of conscience, purity and otherwise be noted, observed and forgiven by the heart and mind of humanity
• The source of your POWERS–tactics, strategies and other methods of Dark Magic–rooted in fear be noted, observed, forgiven, and DEACTIVATED immediately by Divine Edict of NOW
• That your each and every thought–including any and all energetic coherence, bio-electric or magnetic physiological activities of the flesh and blood human being housed in your Divine Soul–be bonded to acts of 100% Unconditional Love indefinitely

Dearest Dark Cabal of Our Soul,

The dragons of our existence thrive without you to combat them. You embolden me to walk free, and live by my own code. You are my father and brother and truest friend.

These words symbolize Strength. Action. Defense, the ability to cut away illusion.  They represent the history of our blood spilt on the battlefield, which connects us all together.

I accept your Divine existence and reject your Dark Magic and return it to the source of Divine Love for closure of your Divine Order.

Stay with me.  Take your honored place in my soul and in my life.  Strengthen me with your new found power of Love and guide me with your earthy wisdom.

May all the most omnipotent, benevolent beings and all their allies of the universe deliver this message into the heart and soul of any and all agents on all cosmic levels acting from the ethers of Dark Magic who have perverted Truth, Wisdom and Love for their own personal gains.

Your Redemption is NOW.

I Love You Thank You And Forgive You.

Go In Peace, It Is Done.

With The Divine Fury Of Cosmic Redeeming Love,

~Aaron Mangal