Solar storm heads Earth's way after double sun blasts

Solar storm heads Earth's way after double sun blasts
The Aurora Australis is observed from the International Space Station during a geomagnetic storm on May 29, 2010 (AFP Photo)

Northern lights over Terschelling, Friesland..

Northern lights over Terschelling, Friesland..
(Terschelling, Friesland, Netherlands - 27-28 February, 2014)

Northern lights delight Dutch in surprise showing in north and east.

Northern lights delight Dutch in surprise showing in north and east.
Still from timelapse film by Schylgefilm (Terschelling, Friesland, Netherlands - 17 Mar 2015)


Amsterdam, The Netherlands
"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) -

“ … Here is another one. A change in what Human nature will allow for government. "Careful, Kryon, don't talk about politics. You'll get in trouble." I won't get in trouble. I'm going to tell you to watch for leadership that cares about you. "You mean politics is going to change?" It already has. It's beginning. Watch for it. You're going to see a total phase-out of old energy dictatorships eventually. The potential is that you're going to see that before 2013.

They're going to fall over, you know, because the energy of the population will not sustain an old energy leader ..."
"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: The Humanization of God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,..... etc.)
(Subjects: Who/What is Kryon ?, Egypt Uprising, Iran/Persia Uprising, Peace in Middle East without Israel actively involved, Muhammad, "Conceptual" Youth Revolution, "Conceptual" Managed Business, Internet, Social Media, News Media, Google, Bankers, Global Unity,..... etc.)



"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …

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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Jewish parents in US begin to question the need for circumcision

Growing numbers make changes to ceremony that takes place on eighth day of boys' lives and is one of Judaism's oldest rituals

The Guardian, Michelle Boorstein for the Washington Post, Friday 17 January 2014

American Jews having second thoughts about circumcising sons. Photograph:
P Deliss/Godong/Corbis

When his pregnant wife first challenged circumcising their son, Mike Wallach had a gut reaction: "That's what we do, we're Jews!" But doubts about whether the surgery was medically necessary and concern over his wife's opposition forced Wallach to confront some questions.

Can you be Jewish without Judaism's oldest ritual? he wondered. What does it mean to be Jewish?

Speaking with God, the 37-year-old screenwriter and grandson of Holocaust survivors explained he was using the "free will and brain you gave me" to reject circumcision. God, he concluded, wouldn't be impressed by the desire to do something simply "for tradition's sake".

"I wasn't at peace until I had that conversation," said Wallach, who grew up in Washington and now lives in Brooklyn.

Wallach is among a small but growing number of Jews who are slowly altering what has for millennia been considered perhaps Judaism's core rite. The Bible says an adult Abraham circumcised himself to mark the covenant between him and his descendants and God. Any male who doesn't circumcise, God says in Genesis, "that soul will be cut off from its people; he has broken My covenant".

Many of these Jews, according to rabbis and the ritual circumcisers known as mohels, are rejecting the classic festive circumcision ceremony, called a brit milah, or bris. For thousands of years, Jews have performed the ritual removal of the penile foreskin on the eighth day of a boy's life, sometimes at the cost of death during periods of antisemitism.

A very small percentage, including Wallach, are not circumcising at all. Others, uncomfortable with the joyous, public ceremony around an intimate surgical procedure, are circumcising their sons in the hospital and crafting new baby-welcoming ceremonies days or weeks later for family and friends. Some are having no public service at all.

Meanwhile, there is an unprecedented level of debate among friends, grandparents and couples about whether to circumcise and how. Given that the topic merges sex, religion, identity, culture, gender equity, health politics and antisemitism, such discussions can grow intense or acrimonious.

"What's a nice word for the Bermuda Triangle?" said Rabbi Shira Stutman of Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, Washington's largest community of 20- and 30-something Jews. "Circumcision is at the nexus of everything that it means to be Jewish ... It's primal. It's deeper than anything we can understand rationally."

Sixth & I gets so many questions about circumcision from younger Jews that it will hold a class in early 2014, Stutman said. While the vast majority of Jews decide to circumcise, she said, "the days of being 100% sure and not even thinking about it are done". Stutman opted for a private ceremony when her son was born.

Several factors are fuelling the trend, including growing secular discomfort with the practice, mixed data on medical necessity and an American culture increasingly open to reinterpreting religious practices. The percentage of circumcision procedures among the general population is also dropping.

American Jews, on the whole, are now more immersed in secular culture and thus more apt to look askance at the idea of a tribal scarification ceremony. High education levels and a natural aesthetic are also prompting questioning among younger Jews.

"Because the American Jewish community is significantly educated, they're more likely to do organic and wanting everything to be natural, and a bris is sort of primal and ancient," said Julie Pelc Adler, director of the circumcision programme for Reform Judaism, the largest US denomination of Jews. "It's really different than the aesthetic of, 'Oh, let's bring this perfect new baby and swaddle him in perfection.' It's looking at this perfect baby and saying, 'He's not perfect, we need to do this one thing.'"

Rabbi Shira Stutman discusses circumcision at a class for converts to Judaism
 at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington. Photograph: Linda Davidson/
The Washington Post

Ben Rempell, 35, didn't consider himself particularly religious. So the USAid employee was surprised at the force of his reaction in November 2009, when one morning his then-pregnant wife, Danielle Rudstein Rempell, lobbed this question: "Isn't circumcision another form of genital mutilation?"

Rempell remembers "giving her a disgusted look" and becoming defensive and angry. He became more so when she raised the question with their weekly Sunday dinner group.

He began to struggle with it on his own, unsure why the rite was so important to him given that he was not a particularly observant Jew.

Ultimately, he discovered, his motivation was more tribal.

"It wasn't a Jewish thing, it was an identity thing, envisioning growing up and he sees me and I see him and he asks why he's different. A child's identity is their family," he said.

But isn't Jewishness part of your identity?

"It had to have something to do with Judaism. That's what we do. That's what I am," said Rempell, who now lives with his family in Honduras.

His secular-but-tribal argument for a son "who looks like his father" convinced his wife. They now have two sons, both circumcised – but with no ceremony.

Not all couples get on the same page. Several couples interviewed didn't want their names used, either because their disagreement was so intense and they wanted to put the issue in the past or because they were expecting and didn't want family and friends to be drawn into their private debate. They tell similar stories of angrily emailing American Academy of Pediatrics studies, painful conversations challenging each other's concepts of Judaism and even circumcisions ending in tears and fights.

Four statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the largest US body of children's doctors, have wavered back and forth a bit since 1979. Most recently, in 2012, the group said benefits outweigh potential risks but not enough to recommend circumcision routinely. Organisations that have done the most extensive polling on US Jews say there is no data on circumcision rates.

Binyamin Biber, a rabbi of the small movement called Secular Humanistic Judaism, is perhaps the only rabbi in the Washington area who advertises his willingness to bless a welcoming ceremony for a boy who is uncircumcised. Requests for his services are small but growing, from one or two each year in the past to four or five a year now.

He sees questions about circumcision as a natural product of a time when more and more families are interfaith and parents aren't sure about a ritual once rooted in special treatment for boys. The liturgy he uses doesn't mention God and emphasises bringing the child into a "human covenant for a better world".

"We live in a more cosmopolitan world and Jewish families have become very intercultural," said Biber. "For those families, a ceremony which regards Jewish males as privileged seems problematic, to put it mildly."

Rabbis who are engaging Jews' questions about circumcision are asking people to think about the ritual in a different way. "We do all sorts of things that hurt our children that help them for the greater good. We vaccinate them, we ground them, we take away their devices," Stutman told a wide-eyed class of adults converting to Judaism one recent night as she ran through the circumcision curriculum.

Several people in the class at Sixth & I gasped when she explained that even when circumcised men convert, they give a few drops of blood from the penis to represent their commitment. "Remember we are an earthy people! We don't pretend we don't have bodies!"

Adler said the circumcision issue is just part of a world of questions about bringing Jewish ritual and law into a new era. She fields questions, for example, about whether the male child of a lesbian couple whose birth mother is not Jewish – but whose other mother is – would be considered Jewish, or would the child need a conversion component of his circumcision ceremony.

Judaism generally was passed to children through their biological mothers. But in recent decades more liberal Jewish denominations have been recognising biological fathers as well.

When it comes to religious evolution, she asks, "where is the line? At what point is it no longer Judaism? Each choice distinguishes Jews, and it's a slippery slope."

This article appeared in the Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post

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Question: Dear and beloved Kryon: What should we know about "Brit-Mila" (Jewish circumcision)?

Answer: All circumcision was based on commonsense health issues of the day, which manifested itself in religious-based teaching. That basically is what made people keep doing it. This eighth-day-from-birth ritual is no more religious today than trimming your fingernails (except that Brit-Mila is only done once, and it hurts a bit more).

It's time to start seeing these things for what they are. Common sense is not static. It's dynamic, and related to the culture of the time. Yesterday's common sense about health changed greatly with the discovery of germs. It changed again with practices of cleanliness due to the discovery of germs, and so on. Therefore, we would say that it really doesn't make a lot of difference in today's health practices. It's done almost totally for cultural historic and traditional purposes and holds no energy around it other than the obvious intent of the tradition.

This is also true for a great deal of the admonishments of the Old Testament regarding food and cleanliness, and even the rules of the neighborhood (such as taking your neighbor's life if he steals your goat, or selling your daughter in slavery if you really need the money... all found in scripture). The times are gone where these things matter anymore, yet they're still treated with reverence and even practiced religiously in some places. They're now only relics of tradition, and that's all. If you feel that you should honor a tradition, then do it. If not, then don't. It's not a spiritual or health issue any longer.

Be the boss of your own body and your own traditions. Follow what your spiritual intuition tells you is appropriate for your own spiritual path and health.

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