High-flying doughnut maker Krispy Kreme hit by low-carb craze

Yahoo! News: "The low-carb diet craze could mean some belt-tightening at the onetime high-flying doughnut company, Krispy Kreme.

For the first time since becoming a public company in 2000, Krispy Kreme is warning of lower profits for the upcoming fiscal year -- about 10 percent below prior forecasts. "

So look out for a low carb doughnut. As if that would be a help to anyone.  ⊕

On leaving things well enough alone

Nutrition & the Immune System: "Stress has a profound affect on the immune system. This is something I wish to explore more profoundly when I have time.

Dr. Weil's morning missive happened to be on Reducing Stress Naturally. It was all good, but this quote struck me:

'News reports can profoundly affect your mental state, increasing anxiety and possibilities for worry. '
We don't need to listen to the news. We don't need to subject our psyche to this bombardment. It is not relevant to us, we are not relevant to it. Skip it."

We react emotionaly and with blinding speed to all we perceive from seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, touching or just 'sensing'.

As part or our self-healing practices, we can help ourselves by avoiding unneccessary or useless stimuli. This includes the general news media lieke most TV news shows and news papers. This is not an isolationist, pull-the-ladder-up-in-the-tree-house-go-away- kind of a thought.

The general news media is sensationalist in its basic orientation. News is served up to be dramatic, titilating and entertaining. In North America, this is driven by the increasingly shorter attention span among a population inundated and overwhelmed by data.

If you know the background of a story, you'll be amazed at all the inaccuracies presented in a paper or TV news spot. Chances are people could get worked up over things that aren't real. The intent
is to get you going, get you riled up and excited. Not for your good, for their good. Don'tplay the game, there is no benefit to you.

The leading principle here is captured in age old adage "Out of sight, out of mind". These are healing words. Things around you can act as reminders and get you going. They can push your 'sad buttons' or 'happy' buttons.

Now you can see a good reason for 'clean desk' policies and hanging pictures of your loved ones or your good times on your wall. Feng-Shui your working or living environment with confidence because you set up automatic 'happy button' pushers and remove 'sad button' pushers.

You should also appreciate now the deeper wisdom of Rabindranath Tagore:

"All the struggle to learn,
when all we have to do is remember".

Just make sure you trigger the useful memories wherever possible.

So, should you stop reading newspapers and stop watching TV news? I'd say 'yes'. I don't watch TV news because this is totally useless to me. I don't even watch TV at all anymore, but stopped watching TV news long before that. TV news is too slow, with too little information. I can read the same material with more context and background in a newspaper or online newsfeed in a lot less time.

I am very selective about reading newspapers. I try to prepare myself and just page through, skimming the pages as I go. Whatever I am supposed to read or learn about will catch my attention. This works surprisingly well.

Whatever information is important to my life will often come to me on routes of its own. TV and newsmedia are incidental to this process, not vital at all. I am learing to trust my intuition more and more and helping out by putting myself in a receptive state of mind.

I rely more and more now on following select, online newsfeeds from sources I trust that present the information in ways pallateable to me. This also filters out all the useless and senseless nonsense I don't need to be exposed to.

Once again, the solution - at least for me - turns out to be more (appropriate) technology, not less technology (like relying on ecologically unfriendly newsprint).  ⊕

Healthy eating guide is launched in UK

BBC NEWS: "The government has launched a guide to help people eat healthily and up their consumption of fruit and vegetables.

The free Five A Day Made Easy booklet includes money-off vouchers, tips on how to make meals more interesting and advice on healthy eating on a budget.

It will available at supermarkets, newsagents, leisure centres and hairdressers across England.

Experts recommend that we eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and exercise five times a week."

This shouldn't be news, but the fact is most people do not eat five servings of fruit. The current UK national average consumption is 2.8 servings per day.

Here's what the Brits read into the 'five portion' (servings) idea:

• One portion of fruit or vegetables is equivalent to 80 grams (3 ounces)


• This could be one medium apple, two small satsumas, or three heaped tablespoonfuls of cooked carrots, peas or sweetcorn


• Frozen, canned, 100% juice and dried fruit and vegetables all count


• A glass of 100% fruit juice only counts once a day, however much you drink


• One portion of dried fruit also counts

I like the insistence that fruit juice only counts as one serving whatever the quantity. Makes sense to me: ithe commercial, frozen varieties are mostly sugar and weakened nutrients due to pasteurization. Better fresh squeezed, but still a big sugar kick.

I wonder about this singular emphasis on fruit, though. What happened to the fresh, raw vegetables?  ⊕

Spritual orienteering and the blissful traveler

I have certainly not lived my life according to some carefully thought out master plan.

Still, when I look at it, I can see how things fit and get a sense for why I am where I am. Perhaps the Universe or the Pure Consciousness has a purpose in mind for me. I say ‘perhaps', because it certainly isn't obvious to me.

If we accept the concept of free will, it is easy to see that unless we cotton on to that underlying – divine – purpose real quick, our free will can take us down paths that may seem very unrelated, even counterproductive.

I am becoming suspicious that in its infinite wisdom, the Divine purpose – I like that term – steers our free will with an invisible hand. In effect we may be deluding ourselves into thinking we act on our own accord when we've really been spiritually conned or hoodwinked by a greater power.

In other words, we are allowed to live in the delusion of self-control over our destiny.

I think it is true that we can ignore the messages from the Divine to some extent, else how could we explain criminal behaviour like murder? I don't think we need to bring a concept like an opposing ‘evil' power that duels with the ‘good' power. I find it sufficient to recognize the unpredictability of a confused human mind; confused by the conflicts between the material and the spiritual and a very garbled signal from the Divine. Confusion stems from our ignorance; free will can choose wrong for us out of ignorance.

This makes navigating through life a bigger challenge than it appears.

I think about this as an exercise or challenge in Spiritual Orienteering. Here's how I see it:

• The purpose, goal or destination is unclear. It is shrouded in a dense fog.


• The territory is unknown.


• There are few or no maps and those we see are mostly white spots anyway.


• There are few or no guides whose stories we believe about what lies in the above and beyond.


• We are steeped in uncertainty and ignorance.

Sounds like the situation faced by the early pioneers to North America, doesn't it?

By the time the pioneers reached their destinations, they were seasoned trail hands all. Isn't that how all of us start out?

How did they learn? From their guides and personal experience; doing what must be done.

So who are our guides today? The pioneers were fraught with their share of fools, charlatans and other incompetents. We are not so different.

False prophets abound, I'm sure, but often we can't distinguish the fake from the real because of ignorance. Even the 'right prophets' seem unreal and strange to us because of our ignorance.

We are only able to absorb so much at anyone time. We cannot make the required leap in one bound. Every journey starts with one step and after that another and another and another.

As we travel we meet obstacles in our way and we have to make detours. Very seldom can we travel in a straight line; be it across a prairie or through life. Our compass may tell us the direction, but our paths wander and meander.

Orienteering works by picking landmarks along paths we can travel picked from the map. Then we use compass to get us to the next landmark. Once there, we set a new course to the next landmark and off we go again. The compass gives us the direction if a landmark temporarily gets out of sight. In this way we can travel long distances through unknown territory and hit our destination spot on even if the terrain forces usto make big detours around lakes, mountains or what have you.

This assumes we have a map. This is not always the case. Without a map, we can only navigate to the next visible landmark. Our route planning becomes less exact because of our ignorance of what lies beyond your line of sight.

In life, as we emerge from ignorance, we begin to see some things clearer and our goals may change. Our destinations change. New jogs in the path appear. Maybe we turn around entirely. It's like we are creating a map with more and more detail about the territory around us. Route planning becomes possible in a new and exciting way.

To truly conquer ignorance is to achieve enlightenment or bliss. We become blissful travelers and the compass stops spinning.  ⊕

Psychology Today: The Strange Case of Homeopathy

Psychology Today has a great story on homeopathy and some dramatic results achieved by a concerned mother. The story has a great background on homeopathy, but here are the highlights of The Strange Case of Homeopathy : "In 1994, NASA computer scientist Amy Lansky of Portola Valley, California, began wondering about her two-year-old son. Max knew the alphabet and could beat adults at memory games, but he barely spoke and, despite normal hearing, didn’t seem to understand language. At preschool he was a loner. His main form of communication was poking people with his finger. Eventually, school officials urged Lansky to have him evaluated. The diagnosis: autism, a neurological and behavioral disorder for which there is no known remedy.

But Lansky refused to believe Max was untreatable. Her search for an answer led her to homeopathy, an 18th-century healing art now enjoying renewed popularity because of Americans’ growing interest in alternative medicine."

...

"Lansky mixed a little Carcinosin in water and gave Max a teaspoon each morning. Within two days, she noticed subtle changes: “Max’s speech improved, and he seemed more socially aware.” In the next two months the trend toward improvement continued."

...

"After nine months of homeopathic treatment, Max was a different child: talkative, active, sociable and popular. Under Melnychuk’s guidance, Lansky gradually decreased his dose of Carcinosin, eventually discontinuing it. Max continued to improve. By age five, he was virtually indistinguishable from any other kid. “He now sees Melnychuk maybe twice a year,” says Lansky. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s cured.”


"Max’s experience led Lansky to quit her job and study homeopathy full-time. Last fall, she hung out a shingle. “As a scientist,” she explains, “I recognize that homeopathy is implausible. But I’ve seen it cure my son.”  ⊕

Infinite Creativity - A Quality of Pure Consciousness

"The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - are the primary sources of creativity."
Margaret J. Wheatley (1880 - 1957)

"There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will have truly defeated age."
Sophia Loren (1934 - )

In my day time job I sometimes get to apply both my sense of logic and order as well as my creativity. I am most comfortable with the logic part and I am used to relying on it. I am less comfortable with the creative part because I have not learnt to really trust it. It is time for the Michelangelo solution: His approach was to try to bring out what was already there in the stone he was working with rather than trying to create something into it. I liked the distinction as soon as I read it and now think about it often.

Have you noticed something funny going on here? I managed to write all of the above in sentences starting with the letter "I":. At first it was pure flow, then I became aware of it and the flow broke. I tried to continue, but that became forced. Creativity cannot be straight-jacketed.

Infinite creativity is one of the Qualities of Pure Consciousness. I have a long way to go before I am infinitely creative. Still, it makes sense that a pure consciousness that has infinite possibilities to become anything whatsoever would by necessity possess infinite creativity.   ⊕