Recognition & Success

Thank you so much! REALLY, thank you so much! I am certain that a large part of my success in the Bay Area is due to the exposure that I receive from OPEN EXCHANGE. I am often stopped on the street or in stores because people remember my ad in your publication!

Today as I reflect on these encounters I am reminded that I have chosen a vocation in which people are looking to see if I represent who I say I am in my advertisement. Taking this moment allows me to recognize the value of your commitment to the publication, to your readers and advertisers; and to thank you for offering what I feel is a vital service to our communities.

OPEN EXCHANGE serves as a bridge connecting, informing, and reminding the public about choices that are available to support them in living a more integrated and sustainable life. The impact of knowing that a person can pick up your publication and make a choice that can alter the direction of their lives and potentially change their world view is astounding!

Cristhal, you are extremely gracious as well as eloquent! Of course, this is a team effort, and there wouldn't be an OPEN EXCHANGE without the participation of conscious healers such as yourself!

Community Resources

Yet again, thank you for the superb coverage of KPFA events. I've long been convinced that, like KPFA, OPEN EXCHANGE is clearly instrumental in assisting the Bay Area in having and retaining the uniquely alternative sensibility it so emphatically possesses. Thank you! I hope you feel substantial pride in your work toward expanding the collective consciousness here.

With media mergers eviscerating the local content of commercial radio, and with community bookstores disappearing almost by corporate design, it's more important than ever to support an institution such as KPFA and, moreover, defend its local charter. At KPFA you and Ken Preston continue to bring socially conscious, world-class speakers to the Bay Area. Mega-kudos!

Vegan's Lost Appetite

My one-time consumption of meat required an air-tight compartmentalization, not allowing me to think about what it was or where it came from. Otherwise, I'd lose my appetite.

Crones In Training

As a 56 year old woman, Jan Boddie's article "Crones in Training" (OPEN EXCHANGE, Oct.-Dec. 2011) spoke to me on a very deep level. I have always felt that women my age and older are treasure chests of experience, knowing, love and nurturing.

The majority of us love(d) to be around our grandmothers for this very reason. I have so much more of value to give now than when I was younger, raising a child, dealing with jobs and emotional upheavals and unhappiness and not as sure of myself. Life is so beautiful as a Crone and the acceptance, laughter, and love that is taking over my heart now is not only life-affirming for me but becomes a gift to those around me that I don't even know I'm giving.

Thank you, Ms. Boddie!

The Mind of God

I applaud Bart Brodsky ("I Want to Know the Mind of God," OPEN EXCHANGE, Oct.-Dec. 2011) for taking the leap into this topic. Your insightful quotes from Fritjof Capra, Fred Alan Wolf, and Ram Dass were appreciated as these writers have respectively contributed to my awareness over the years.

The most compelling aspect of your article was the opening sentence "What do we know about God's will?" followed by the comment "This innocent inquiry may be 'over my pay grade.'" Actually, the inquiry is indeed innocent, yet only the answer seems beyond our understanding or experience. The apostles and disciples of Jesus did not fully understand what he meant in his repeated statements of "doing the will of his Father," which was at the core of his life's mission. He was asserting what is necessary or prerequisite in order to be at one with the will and mind of God. Other teachers have demonstrated the same end in their own path and way.

There is a nexus of concurrence in ancient Kabbalah mysticism, Vedic scripture, Buddhism and the undistorted teachings of Jesus, which affirms that the Universe, our world and our selves as we experience and perceive it through our senses, is an illusion. We should be grateful to certain 20th century scientists-physicists that came to the same 'conclusion' through sub-atomic and quantum related experiments with supporting theoretical frameworks. These experiments 'discovered' that matter, space and time do not exist in a truly definitive sense, but are relative and illusory constructs of perception. According to "A Course in Miracles," it is the mind seemingly separated or apart from its Creator (or God) that is at the root of all perception and illusion - a holographic dreamscape that, like a dream, only exists in our mind's perception and dream memory. It is only when one fully awakes, that one's mind is joined wholly with the mind of God in accordance with his will, which we fully share. Maybe this is "the true open source" which is the innate bed of creation from which we and everything spring.

Consciousness itself would seem to fall short as the source of creation, but it is a likely concomitant agent of the world of perception and illusion. And science has a habit of conveniently forgetting its own most significant or profound 'discoveries' because science "wants to do" things and dig farther into that outer perceptual universe. As the humble 20th century Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj once stated, "Science merely pushes back the frontiers of ignorance." Accordingly, it is our ego that is continually manufacturing maya and illusion in order to keep our attention engaged, lest we awake and let it all go in favor of "being" in our true spiritual state, One Mind reality.

Returning to your "innocent inquiry," God's mind may be closer to us than we think.

Channeling God

If you are serious [re. "The Mind of God"], visit Galacticmessenger.com. The channel is from the mind of God. Which is merely to feed the starving first and foremost, and then clothing, shelter, transportation, recreation, utilities and communications. One high standard for everyone of the creation on this planet Placentia. It is all that simple.

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