Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: 2017

August 20, 2017

What I said at my own funeral

Readers of this blog will know that its author, Rosie passed away at the end of March 2017.

However, that hasn't meant that Rosie suddenly had nothing more to say!

Whilst some believe that we are little more than flesh and bone, and death is the end of all that we were, many others believe in some form of life after death, and that our soul goes back to where it came from, to the other side, "spirit world" or heaven (choose your preferred term!), the non-physical source of all life.

You may also know that some people, usually called "psychic mediums", have the ability to "hear" or "channel" these spiritual beings, and relate their messages from the other side back to us here.

If you can allow yourself to go that far, please continue reading, as the very profound message below is what Rosie channelled from the spirit world, to her son Daniel Rechnitzer, on Saturday 1 April 2017 (the day after she died) and emailed to George at 4.27pm.

A shorter version was read out by Rosie’s husband George at her Funeral, held at Springvale Memorial Gardens, Victoria, Australia, at 12 noon on Sunday 2 April 2017. Rabbi Aviva Kipen thought this may have been a first!

“Hello everyone and welcome. It's not everyday you get to speak at your own your funeral, so this will be a first.

Let me begin by saying that you are all here for the wrong reasons. For what a funeral has come to mean, is the end of a life.

But life cannot end. Life is eternal and lives on in many ways, across many bodies, across many galaxies, as the universe itself. Life just is.

This is not the end of a life but the rebirth of something ancient. It's called an idea. What you've come to bury is not me, but an old idea about me. What I was in human form is merely an idea of myself, something that is far from truth. Unfortunately, in my body and stuck in my very earthly mind, I was unable to realise truth, so I was stuck in pain as are many of you. You make excuses for yourself like "I'm just a human being," or "life is a struggle, that's just how it is," but it's not. These are excuses and are no different to the idea I had about myself my entire life.

But for me, the idea rot me to the core. As no doubt you are coming to realise, is some ideas about ourselves nurture and have life flourish, while other ideas like the ones I had, destroy us from the inside out. I know it seems graphic, but it's an important conversation that we are having and one that needs to land in the correct way. We all have a life not to squander, but to live.

Many of you are convinced you are living, but in truth you are running away from the idea you have about yourself, trying to make the most of your life as you would call it. But making the most of your life does not come from rational thought, it comes from learning and understanding the truth about who and what you really are.

For one, you are not a person, as you have come to think of yourself. This is the first incorrect idea about yourself, that has lead to a barrel full of many more non-truthful ideas. You are not here to succeed, you are not here to please others, or any other of the many crazy ideas you are all carrying inside your minds. But rather, you are all here to be and experience love. It is your only salvation on Earth, your one ticket to happiness and fulfilment.

This brings me to another truth. None of you got to really know me. This is sad. The reason none of you got to know me, was because both you and I were blinded by something invisible to the human eye. It's what we have come to call human life. But it doesn't exist out there in the world as the busy-ness that surrounds us, it exists between each other. It's the fallacy that who you are and who I am is different. But we are not different, we are all life, all the same. Not the same people, we are all of life.

We recognise differences in each other and believe we are somehow separate, different - and this gets in the way of truly getting to know one another.
Here is what you would have gotten to know, if we saw each other as one and the same. You would have gotten to see me as a being made of pure light that transcends all human inequality, all religious notions, irrespective of the past we have experienced. You would have gotten to see unending compassion and a deep well of love, unimaginable and unfound in current society. You would have gotten to see yourself in me, as me, as one being expressing herself all over the Earth.

But instead, you felt judgment towards me because you feel judgment toward yourself. You couldn't see the love in me because you place too many conditions on loving yourself. Too much to do, to achieve, to arrive at. Too much past to forgive, to ever allow in true self-love.

But here is the catch as I now know. I wasted my life believing I wasn't lovable or deserving of love, and so I resented those around me for being loving with me and around me. Who was I to deserve such love?

I died not because I was underserving of love, but because I believed others saw me as underserving of love. This was my mistake to believe in the minds of others. Now I know the truth, what on earth does deserving have to do with anything?

I was born into a body as love itself, that's my true nature and has always been, albeit hidden under the views of others. Now I realise, all I had to be was love, no need to be successful, to be accomplished, nor to be recognised by others - for these are all ways to deny oneself the love that exists within. I realise now, a life well lived comes from a love well experienced.

Let this funeral, let ALL funerals be an awakening to the truth unrealised by that person, and celebrate the truths realised in their life time. Let's share my truth with others who are far from their dying days, let's turn around the perceptions on Earth to be about self-love and how to allow it in before you die. Because you won't live long without it.

Make your life about rediscovering the love within from within, not from everything you do or say, or create on the outside. Make your life about loving yourself through and through. It is the lost art of true success and miracles on earth.

I thank you for coming.”

For myself (George), the key message was that we shouldn't wait until people are gone to feel compelled to express how we felt about them, and our appreciation for them, when its too late - and that we should strive to show this whilst they are ALIVE, as often as we can, so that we can make the most of our time together.

Also vital is to gain the perspective that allows us to transcend being caught up in the day to day "rat race", the striving for "things" and the various other petty issues that can become great stressors and distract from living an enjoyable and fulfilling life that lets love in.

We hope this deeply moving and powerful message will be of benefit to you. If you wish to share it with others please do with our blessing! We hope to share more channeled messages from Rosie soon.

April 03, 2017

An important note and thank you to the readers of this blog

Dear readers and friends,

It is with much sadness that we must let you know that the author of this blog, Rosie, passed away a few days ago, 3 months after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.

Rosie bravely underwent the recommended chemotherapy and radiation treatment, as well as some adjunct alternative therapies, alas this type of tumour is rarely survived.

Rosie was a beloved wife, mother, and grandmother, and will be lovingly remembered by many friends and relatives.

We thank you for your readership, it has meant a great deal to Rosie - she loved doing this blog - and hope we can continue this blog in a special way, in Rosie's memory.

Thank you,
George, 4 April 2017

January 05, 2017

Oldest Known Member Of Southern B.C. Killer Whale Pod Believed Dead

Hamilton Spectator

By Camille Bains

VANCOUVER — The death of a whale considered the oldest in the West Coast's southern resident population could particularly affect one animal who may have lost yet another adoptive mother, a wildlife biologist says.

Brad Hanson of the Seattle-based Northwest Fisheries Science Center said an orca dubbed J2 and also known as Granny has not been spotted since mid-October and is believed to have died.

He said that while some estimates put Granny's age at over 100, researchers determined through a biopsy sample nearly two years ago that she was between her mid-60s and early 80s.

She was considered a matriarch of the J-pod, which is one of three family groups of southern resident killer whales.

J-pod now has about 24 members, including L87, who joined the clan about two years ago, Hanson said.

"L87 is actually an L-pod member but he lost his mom a number of years ago and he gravitated over to K-pod and hung out with an older female there until she passed," Hanson said Tuesday from Seattle. "Ironically, he went to J-pod so it'll be interesting to see what L87 does now because these adult males are used to staying with their mother their entire life."

Hanson said male whales sometimes die soon after their mother's death and that females tend to outlive them by up to three decades.

The movement of the entire J-pod will be of interest to scientists because Granny was seen as leading the group since the 1970s, he said.

"These animals are so long-lived relative to a lot of other wildlife populations that it's an unprecedented situation. And I expect that we may learn some new things about how killer whale societies adjust to these changes."

At least two other females in the J-pod, including J16 and J19, were also born in the 1970s and could take on the matriarch role, Hanson said, adding J14 died last summer and that the number of older female whales is dwindling.

"We believe these older females are the keepers of corporate knowledge, if you will, so where (the pod) goes and when they go there, somebody has to make that initial decision."

Hanson said the J-pod spends most of its time in the northern Strait of Georgia or the western part of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and don't trek very far south to the Washington coast, unlike the K and L pods, which also venture as far as California.

The Center for Whale Research in Washington state said in a statement on its website that it does not know what killed Granny and that she was the eldest within the three family pods of endangered southern resident whales.

The centre said the total number of southern resident whales has fallen to 78.

The loss of Granny comes less than a month after J34, an 18-year-old male member of J-pod, was found washed up on a Sechelt beach after apparently being hit by something, and the October death of J28, a female with a one-year-old calf.

Southern resident killer whales, which almost exclusively eat salmon, were listed as endangered in 2005.

The Canadian Press
Related:

Whale-watching in Australia

Blue Whales Numbers Recover To Pre-hunting Days Says Study

January 01, 2017

Patsy Cline’s I Fall to Pieces: The Tragic Tale Of A Country Idol

Sadly not unique. A very talented singer who unfortunately was but one of the few who had to struggle like this.

The postwar country music scene was a frontier land of drunks, swindlers and scammers.

There were thousands of venues and as many bands and singers entertaining Americans before televisions flickered in every home. These were mostly poor people, and the entertainers and their audiences would travel hundreds of kilometres for a show.

The performers were a tight- knit community working in a brutal trade of gruelling tours and thieving promoters. It was a cash business and they were sometimes robbed. It was common for performers to carry a gun — like Buddy Holly, whose .22 pistol was found near his plane’s crash site. The Holly crash also claimed the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens.

Driving to gigs could be equally perilous: country singers Johnny Horton and Betty Jack Davis were both killed travelling between shows.

This was the world over which Patsy Cline briefly ruled with a short run of beautifully produced country crossover hits driven by her pure contralto. Pioneering a movement later dubbed “countrypolitan”, Cline led a revival of sorts as more traditional music was sidelined by the rock ’n’ roll phenomenon.

Virginia Patterson Hensley was named after the state in which she was born in 1932. Her parents were working poor and after her father left home she dropped out of school for a series of menial jobs before asking the local disc jockey if she could sing on his show. It went well and the soon-to-be-renamed Patsy started performing around the state and coming to the attention of rising country star Jimmy Dean. About the same time she married Gerald Cline.

Like many stars of the era, and lacking confidence, Patsy Cline signed a hopelessly restrictive contract and found she could record only material also published by her record company. After a series of honky-tonk duds, she chanced on a Kay Starr reject — Walkin’ After Midnight. It took off, reaching No 12 in January 1957 on what by the end of the year would be renamed Billboard’s Hot 100.

But it was a false dawn, and Cline remained shackled by her contract until 1960. Signing with Decca, she quickly relaunched her career with the glorious ballad I Fall to Pieces, one of the most distinctive hits of the era. It went to No 1 on the country charts and glanced Billboard’s top 10.

But as I Fall to Pieces made its way to the top, Cline did just that: on June 14, 1960 she was almost killed in a head-on car crash in Nashville. Cline was in hospital for a month and shaken by the near-death experience that left scarring on her forehead but, on crutches, she returned to touring almost immediately.

She soon scored another hit with one of Willie Nelson’s first compositions, Crazy, and became the first female country star to headline her own shows. She had a full book of them when, on January 25, 1963, disc jockey Cactus Jack Call, an old friend, was killed in a Missouri car crash, setting off an extraordinary series of events.

On March 2, Cline played a concert with Tex Ritter and Jerry Lee Lewis. She and others on the bill agreed to perform at a fundraiser in Kansas City the following day to help out Call’s widow. Cline gave three performances, finally appearing in a white chiffon gown and singing I Fall to Pieces.

With the airport fogged in, they stayed the night, but her manager and pilot, the recently licensed Randy Hughes, who had less than 50 hours’ flying experience, decided to take off into the poor weather the next day. “Don’t worry about me,” Cline told her friend Dottie West, who was driving back. “When it’s my time to go, it’s my time.”

Unable to read the instruments in the heavy weather, Hughes lost control and the plane went down outside Camden, Tennessee. Cline and Hughes were killed alongside Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins.

One of the first on the scene the next morning was singer Roger Miller, a friend of all on board. He found the Piper Cherokee crashed nose down and everyone dead. “Oh my god, there they were. It was ghastly,” he said years later.

After the bodies were removed, local looters stole personal effects from the scattered wreckage, including the chiffon dress and Cline’s concert payment.

Cline was 30 and left a son and daughter by her second marriage, to Charles Dick, who died last year aged 81.

Not long after setting out from his home in Tennessee to attend Cline’s funeral, her old friend and label mate from those days on the road, singer-guitarist Jack Anglin, rounded a bend at high speed, lost control of his car and was killed instantly.

Below: Dwight Yoakam
Long White Cadillac

Allegedly about Hank Williams.

The Blasters song by Mister Yoakam, a tribute the father of Country Music, Hank Williams
Enjoy and please visit http://www.dwightyoakam.com/
Live version by the Blasters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb2xyj...

By Alan Howe

With many thanks to The Australian