Your near death experience?

Tell us about your near death experience(s). These could include any events that seemed certain should have happened, but didn't, that would have profoundly changed your life if they had.

What 'close calls', or 'brushes' with death have you had?

Do you believe your escape/rescue contained any 'paranormal' or 'supernatural' elements?

How did you feel about your near 'miraculous' escape from certain death, calamity or serious injury at the time?

How do you feel about it now?
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"Death is a cessation from the impressions of the senses, the tyranny of the passions, the errors of the mind, and the servitude of the body." Marcus Aurelius

21 memos from your child

Dear Liselle,

I recently rediscovered this in my files. I thought you would appreciate it.

Great Britain's 7-7-7 OM symbol in Eastfield crop circle

Here is a link to the account of 3 researchers, with cameras and video equipment, who spent a night together overlooking a field in order to capture the making of a crop circle:

http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1288...ory=Environment

If someone could please transfer the crop design with the 'Om' symbol included into this thread it would be very much appreciated as I lack the techical skill. Images found at:

http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1290...ory=Environment
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"A picture is an intermediate something between a thought and a thing." Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Twenty Special Secrets

After reading some of the heated exchanges on a particular thread I signed off and began reading from one of my favorite books, 'The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power' by Vernon Howard.

My eyes happened to fall upon page 82 under the title 'Twenty Special Secrets'. I offer the following for what it's worth:

"1. When two people meet, the prize always goes to the one with the most self-insight. He will be calmer, more confident, more at ease with the other.

2. Never permit the behavior of other people to tell you how to feel.

3. Pay little attention to what people say or do. Instead try to see their innermost motive for speaking and acting. When you apply this very same rule to yourself you become an enlightened person.

4. Any friendship requiring the submission of your original nature and dignity to another person is wrong.

5. Mystically speaking, there is no difference between you and another person. This is why we cannot hurt another without hurting ourselves, nor help another without helping ourselves.

6. When we are free of all unnecessary desires toward other people, we can never be deceived or hurt.

7. You take a giant step toward psychological maturity when you refuse to angrily defend yourself against unjust slander. For one thing, resistance disturbs your own peace of mind.

8. You understand others to the exact degree that you really understand yourself. Work for more self-knowledge.

9. Do not be afraid to fully experience everything that happens to you in your human relations, especially the pains and disappointments. Do this, and everything becomes clear at last.

10. The individual who really knows what it means to love has no anxiety when their love is unseen or rejected.

11. If you painfully lose a valuable friend, do not rush out at once for a replacement. Such action prevents you from examining your heartache and breaking free from it.

12. You can be so wonderfully free from a sense world. This is a deeper and richer truth than appears on the surface.

13. Every unpleasant experience with another person is an opportunity to see people as they are, not as we mistakenly idealize them. The more unpleasant the other person is, the more he can teach you.

14. You can be so wonderfully free from a sense of injury and injustice that you are surprised when you hear others complain of them.

15. We cannot recognize a virtue in another person that we do not possess in ourselves. It takes a truly loving and patient person to recognize those virtues in another.

16. Do not mistake desire for love. Desire leaves home in a frantic search for one gratification after another. Love is at home with itself.

17. There are parts of you that want the loving life and parts that do not. Place yourself on the side of your positive forces; do all you can to aid and encourage them.

18. You must stop living so timidly, from fixed fears of what others will think of you and of what you will think of yourself.

19. Do not contrive to be a loving person; work to be a real person. Being real is being loving.

20. The greatest love you could ever offer to another is to so transform your inner life that others are attracted to your genuine example of goodness."

"Look very closely. You will see that no person and no circumstance can prevent you from becoming a self-understanding man or woman.

"This is a tremendous message of mysticism: You need not be hurt by anyone or anything; you need not be enslaved by anything outside you or within you. Not when you really understand.

"How will you know when you've grasped this idea?...(When) you no longer feel insults as insults, losses as losses, threats as threats. While other people may, on the human level, behave badly toward you, you are no longer on that level, so you cannot be offended."
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"Then can men have no more power over us, because they can neither take us by our desires nor by our fears." Francois Fenelon
"Such men not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind." Philo

*Serious Discussion (Adult Content) - Male Fidelity

One day, during the 1920's the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge and his wife were taking separate tours of a Government farm. After observing the hen house Mrs. Coolidge asked the guide how many times a day did the rooster mate with the hens. He replied, "Oh dozens of times." Mrs. Coolidge was observed raising her eyebrows as she said, "Please tell that to the President."

Later, the President was given his wife's message. "Same hen every time?" he queried. "Well no, sir." came the reply. The President smiled and said, "Please tell that to Mrs. Coolidge." This incident created a belief known as the Coolidge Effect.

This theory generally holds that men are far more likely than women to desire a variety of sex partners. There have been some experiments conducted in an attempt to prove this phenomenon.

It was observed that when a male mammal is introduced into a cage with a sexually receptive female, he will copulate with her with vigor. After a period of time he will begin to lose interest, even though the female is still willing. Finally, he will reach a point where he has little inclination to copulate with her.

However, when the female is removed and replaced by a new female, the male will immediately begin enthusiastically copulating with her. This has been tested using Rams. It was observed after 4 or 5 copulations the Ram will lose interest in the female. When a new ewe was introduced the Ram's interest was immediately renewed. This was continued to the 12th ewe with the Ram showing the same pattern of behavior as before. Similar results were established with regards bulls and cows.

The researchers tried to fool the rams and bulls by disguising the females, with which they had mated, with canvas hoods and coverings and masking their scent with other smells and then reintroducing them. The males were not fooled. As psychologist Glenn Wilson observed, "These male animals know where they have been and do not like going over the same ground again."

While it is generally presumed that humans have a greater capacity for intelligent action than any of the other mammals the question remains: is it a biological necessity, a compulsion, or simply an urge for men,who are in a committed relationship with a female, to seek extra sexual affairs? Also, how true is the belief that an erect penis has no conscience? And finally, what can a woman do in order to minimize the threat to them from the Coolidge Effect?
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"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind." Cicero