I always enjoying forwarding to you all mind-expanding information.  As always, you do with it what you wish. :>}

Self-Aware Plants

Jessica Pherson

According to research published in Ecology Letters, a UC-Davis experiment reveals that sagebrush have the ability to "look out for their own kind." It appears that damaged  plants (ones that had their branches clipped) were able to recognize the fact that they had lost a part of them, and consequently, reacted by sending out a type of unseen chemical to drive away predators, such as grasshoppers. For the experiment, some of the clippings were set near the clipped plant, while others were set near unclipped plants. The clipped branches set near the parent plant showed an increase in survival and also a higher rate of deterrence against predators.

Image: "Sagebrush" by brewbooks on Flickr courtesy of Creative Commons Licensing.

To read more about this subject, try the book: The Secret Life of Plants, by Tompkins

Courage, Synchronicity, and the Technology of Magic

Tony Vigorito

I have often been staggered by the forces of the ordinary that cajole the human experience into cowardice. Relentless mass-mediated daydreams croon lullabies to nightmare; meat hook economic rackets hijack freedom with student loans, predatory credit, and eternal mortgages; narratives of responsibility harass the mind with financial planning, time-management, highly-effective habits; and illusions of security, insurance, and retirement prod us into proper place. Lurching through life in the midst of such clamor, is it any wonder that so many trade the tremendous for the trivial, that the ecstatic fantastic wow of existence dims into murk and shadow, flickering into fluorescence like some stepped-on plastic geranium?

But this is not to be some hand-wringing howl of quiet desperation. The walls are high, yes, the challenges are great, but today I'd like to invite an exploration of what it is that happens when this drear occasionally clears, when we see something, something that matters, something possessed not merely of meaning, but of magic? In a previous essay entitled Chaos, Collapse, and Synchronicity, I explored how synchronicity is likely to emerge during and after ego-shattering experiences. Because the ego demarcates the presumably phantasmic boundary between your consciousness and the rest of the universe, the experience of synchronicity can be understood to be the face of the perception of undivided unity. Here, I would like to venture beyond mild-mannered explanation and into wild-eyed exploration. In other words, if synchronicity is the perception of undivided unity, what is the technology of this magic? ...

(To read the rest of this article, go to http://www.realitysandwich.com)

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The above is presented for your consideration.  Take from it what you will, and leave the rest. Feel free to forward this newsletter in its entirety, with proper attribution. 

Blessings,

Lois J. Wetzel