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Training Our Attitudes in Daily Life: Nothing Special
Kiev, Ukraine, November 2012
Session One: Nothing Special about Ourselves or Our Feelings
Thank you very much. I'm really very delighted to be back here in Kiev. This evening we're going to start a series of talks on what's called attitude training in daily life, which is actually a very broad topic. It's dealing with how we experience our life. Because, as I think we all know, life is not terribly easy. Many things happen to us all the time, and they come about from a very broad spectrum of causes and conditions.
For instance, if you think in terms of coming here this evening, what is it that brought you here? There's traffic, there's transportation – so the whole physical side – and there's also the fact that you live in this city, whatever interests you might have, and perhaps what was going on in your family or at work today. So as a result of an enormous amount of causes and conditions, we're here together, everybody coming from a different background and a different set of causes and conditions that brought us all together.
As we sit here, we are experiencing being here and listening to a lecture and seeing me and the translator. So the question is, what's the difference between you looking at us and listening to us and the video camera looking at us and listening? Is there any difference? Well, probably the camera has a better memory than we have. And the camera comes here also from various causes and conditions – it was manufactured, somebody bought it, somebody set it up, etc. So if we examine what the difference is, the difference is that we're taking in information, but we have a certain level of feeling about it, a level of happiness or unhappiness. And that actually is the difference between us and the video camera or us and a computer. The computer and camera don't actually experience the information that they take in. We experience it. We experience it by feeling some level on this broad spectrum of happy or unhappy.
The basic principle of life seems to be that we all want to be happy and not to be unhappy, and that of course inspires us to think of the question "Well, what is happiness? What is it that we want?" And happiness from the Buddhist point of view is defined as when we experience something, we would like not to be parted from it.
So it's like when you're looking at something, the level of happiness might be very, very low, but if we're still looking at it, we don't want to be parted from it. If we were unhappy about it – that is defined as the experience of something which you do want to be parted from – we would look away. And sometimes we experience a neutral feeling, where we want neither to be parted nor not parted from it – it's sort of okay the way it is.
Sometimes when we think of happy and unhappy, we think in terms of extremes – a big smile on our face or really sad and depressed. It's not that these feelings have to be dramatic, because in fact we are experiencing every moment of our life. Every moment, all sorts of things are happening, and as I started out, they're happening for just millions of causes and conditions coming together. Like the traffic that is going on outside. Everybody in that traffic is in that traffic for a reason. They want to get somewhere, and they all have their own individual story, don't they? And we have our own story. So this is the information that is coming in, and whether we like it, we don't like it, that's how we experience it. Well, in a way, if you look at it in a larger context, we could describe it as the mood that we're in, a good mood or a bad mood.
The nature of life is that this goes up and down, up and down, all the time, doesn't it? And the mood that we're in doesn't always correspond to the information that's coming in, what's going on, what we're doing. We're doing something that normally we like, but we're in a bad mood, and we're not very happy. Or we could be doing something that is not particularly fun, we don't particularly like it – like doing some difficult exercise in some training – but we're happy to do it; we want to continue. So it really is quite funny, isn't it, how our mood doesn't always correspond to what actually we're doing.
And as we are experiencing each moment, we have a certain attitude toward it (and this is our topic here, attitude). So what are we talking about when we talk about an attitude? An attitude is how we regard something. There can be many, many different types of attitudes that we have, and depending on that attitude, it affects very much the mood that we're in. And often that attitude is directed, the attitude that we have about the mood that we're in. Now, in normal circumstances there's not much that we can do really to change this up and down that we experience all the time in life. Even if we take some sort of medication or something like that to make us feel good, still it's going to go up and down, isn't it, if we look in the long term. So if our moods are going to be going up and down all the time and that's not something that we can really change at this level that we're at, what we can work with is our attitude about the moods that we're in.
When we talk about training our attitude, actually there's two aspects to that. One aspect is to try to cleanse away or stop having a destructive attitude toward things. Destructive is maybe too heavy a word, so let's say nonproductive. In a sense, it's self-destructive (in other words, an attitude that will just make us feel worse). And the other aspect of attitude training is to then train ourselves to have a more productive way of looking at things.
Now, we're not talking about what is normally called the power of positive thinking, which is to be very optimistic – "Everything is wonderful and everything is great," this type of thing. That can help, but perhaps it's a little bit simplistic. So in order to have some sort of effective method for dealing with our attitude about how we're experiencing our life, we need to look a little bit more deeply.
There's Nothing Special about What I'm Feeling
So the thing that I want to focus on this evening is our attitude about what we're feeling, about this level of happy and unhappy. And the big problem that we have, and I think most of us have this, is that we exaggerate the importance of what we're feeling. We make a big, big thing out of what we're feeling and a big, big thing about ourselves – me – and how we're feeling, and then we experience it in what's known as a dualistic way. So, for example, we have this view of me on one side and the unhappiness on the other side, and I have to shield myself from this unhappiness – I'm afraid of it; I have to get rid of it. And how does that make us feel when we have this attitude? It makes us feel worse, doesn't it?
So think about that for a moment. What is your attitude about when you're in a bad mood and you're unhappy? And it's not that you're crying and sad and all of that; it's just… I mean, this happens all the time. You're sitting and you're doing your work, or you're watching television, or whatever, and just: "Ugh. I don't feel well." And do we think in terms of "Well, here I am over here, and now this bad mood has come like a dark cloud," and then we want to put our shields up – "I don't want this!" – and we're very insecure, and we're worried about it? Do you feel that? Is that part of your experience? Think about it for a moment. It's like: "Oh no, I have a bad mood again," isn't it? And "That's not what I want." And the more we focus on it, how horrible this is and so on, it just gets worse, doesn't it? The problem here is that we're exaggerating what's going on and making two things out of it – me on this side and the bad mood on the other.
So what about happiness? Again we tend to have this dualistic way of experiencing it – me on the one side and the happiness on the other side – and then we're afraid of losing it, and so we cling on to it; we try to hold on to it. We feel insecure because we're afraid it's going to pass – we're going to lose it; we're going to stop feeling good. We can't just relax and enjoy feeling happy. And so our insecurity actually destroys the happiness, doesn't it? Think about that. When you're feeling well, do you feel a bit insecure about that? Of course, there can be all sorts of complications – "I don't deserve to feel good," and all of that. That's a further complication.
It's funny, isn't it, if you start to think about it, how sometimes we're a little bit like an animal. You know how an animal, like a dog, is eating, and it's supposedly enjoying what it's eating, but it's always looking around, and it's a little bit tense that somebody's going to take it away. Do you ever have that feeling? You're feeling okay, you're feeling happy, but you're afraid that somebody's going to come and take it away or discover you, or something like that. And then "I don't deserve to be happy. I shouldn't be happy. Somebody's going to take it away from me." It's really weird, isn't it, how sometimes we really are like that dog eating a bone?
And what about neutral feeling? With a neutral feeling, again we have this dualistic thing of me on the one side and the neutral feeling on the other side, and again we exaggerate the importance of this neutral feeling. So how do we exaggerate it? We exaggerated the unhappy feeling into this horrible thing that I don't want and this happy feeling as something that I want to hold on to but I'm afraid of losing, as if it were so precious. And this neutral feeling, we exaggerate it into feeling nothing, no feeling. That often happens, doesn't it? We feel as though we're feeling nothing, it's a big Nothing, and it makes us feel as though we're not really alive. And how does that make you feel? Think about that. When we think that we're feeling nothing, we're actually feeling unhappy about that, aren't we? We don't really like feeling nothing.
In fact with each of these three possibilities of unhappy, happy, and neutral, when we exaggerate it and make it into a big thing, it leads to being unhappy, even more unhappy than we were to start with. So our attitude about what we're feeling is very, very crucial for affecting our experience. What we do is we tend to view the happiness or unhappiness or neutral feeling that we experience with an attitude of "This is something special." We make a big thing out of what we're feeling. And we tend to view ourselves as separate – there's a "me" that's separate from the feelings.
For instance, imagine that there's me sitting here or you sitting there – it doesn't matter – and there are three types of food in front of us. One is terrible tasting, one is very delicious, and one is completely bland and has no flavor at all. These are like the feelings of unhappy, happy, and neutral, and when we feel these things, it's like we're taking that into us – we're eating it. And in a sense, it is as if we could choose not to eat. You can't really do that, can you, with feelings – "I wish I didn't have any feelings" – and then you wouldn't feel alive either, so that's unsatisfactory. So again think about that. Do we have this dualistic thing of me over here and this feeling, this mood, over there?
So the first thing that we need to do in terms of changing our attitude, improving our attitude, is to train ourselves in this attitude of "nothing special." This is actually very profound. "There's nothing special about what I'm feeling now." Life goes up and down. Sometimes we're in a good mood, sometimes a bad mood, sometimes nothing dramatic going on. Nothing surprising about it. Nothing special. And nothing special about me that: "Ooh, now I have to feel this" or "I'm not feeling that." The main thing is to just get on with our life regardless of how we feel.
If you have to take care of your children, for example, it doesn't matter whether you're in a good mood or bad mood; you just do it. You're driving your car, or whatever you're doing – you're going to work whether you feel good or you don't feel good; you just do it. And the more that we focus on ourselves and how we feel, actually the more unhappy that we become. It doesn't mean that we want to stop feeling anything. That's not the point. We're aware of what we're feeling, but we don't make a big deal out of it. It's not that we're afraid of feeling something.
There are some people who are afraid of feeling unhappy because they're afraid that: "Oh, it's going to totally overwhelm me." Like when you lose a loved one or something really terrible happens in your life, and then: "Well, I want to protect myself from feeling unhappy about it because it will be too much." That can actually be unconscious; it doesn't have to be a conscious blocking of the feeling. We want to protect ourselves from the feeling again, as if the feeling were something external coming in. Or "I don't deserve to be happy. Things are going well, but I shouldn't be happy about it, because I'm basically no good." Or what's an interesting one is that: "I can't just feel neutral. I have to be entertained all the time." You know, this whole phenomenon of people who constantly have their iPod in their ears. They have to constantly be listening to music because, in a sense, "Well, this is going to make me happy. This will entertain me," and so they are afraid of just a neutral feeling of silence. So, in a sense, often we're afraid of feelings. Why are we afraid of them? Because we make a big deal out of them; we exaggerate their importance. They're just a natural part of life. It's how we experience every moment. It's what makes us different from the video camera. So nothing special. It sounds simple, but it's not so simple. Well, think about that.
The Example of the Wild Bird at Our Window
So we need a delicate balance actually. We prefer to be happy of course, but there can still come a feeling of not wanting to destroy whatever happiness we have, and so we cling to it and feel insecure about it. From our experience, we know that the happiness we have now is going to pass. It's not going to last, because the nature of life is that it goes up and down. So if we know that it's not going to last and will pass, why worry about it? Just enjoy it for what it is for as long as it lasts.
There's a very lovely example that sometimes I use for that. Imagine that a wild bird, a very beautiful wild bird, comes to our window and stays there for a little while. Now, we could enjoy the beauty of that bird there, but we know it's a wild bird; it's going to fly away. If we try to catch it and put it in a cage, that bird's going to be very, very unhappy. And if we try to catch that bird and put it in that cage, in the process of trying to catch it we're going to scare the bird, and the bird is going to fly off and not come back. But if we're very relaxed about it and enjoy the beauty of the bird while it's there, when it goes away then perhaps it will come back.
So happiness is very much like that, isn't it? It's not only happiness but also being with people that we like. When somebody comes to visit, we often have this attitude of: "Why don't you stay longer?" even before they've taken off their coat. "Why can't you stay longer? When are you coming again?" This type of thing. I think that's very typical of this way in which we destroy our happiness.
So nothing special. A bird comes to our window; a friend comes to visit us; our friend calls – nothing special. Just enjoy it while it lasts. And of course it will end, so what? What do you expect? And of course we prefer not to be unhappy. But when we are unhappy, the thing that we have to do is just accept that this is what we're experiencing now. There's nothing special, nothing surprising about it. It'll pass. So try not to make it worse by being afraid of it, making it into a monster and trying to push it away. Think about that.
Is it possible to just relax, to feel calm about what we're feeling? And don't think that feeling neutral means that we don't feel anything and that we're incapable of feeling anything. It's like being afraid of the quiet, that somehow I'll be lost in it or whatever. That's a very strange attitude, isn't it? And again we're making too big a thing out of what we feel and out of me – it's so important what I feel. So again we need to really examine ourselves in terms of: "What is it I'm afraid of? Am I afraid of feeling unhappy? Am I afraid of feeling happy because I don't deserve it? Am I afraid of feeling neutral because then there's just nothing?" What are we afraid of?
I have developed something called sensitivity training, and one of the exercises in it is to help people to overcome fear of feelings. So what I ask people to do – you can try it – is to tickle your hand, and then pinch your hand, and then just hold your hand. Is there any big deal about it? One's a nice feeling, one's not a very nice feeling, and the other is neutral, isn't it? There's nothing special about it, is there? It's just a feeling, so what? And that's the type of attitude that we need to develop: "So what?" "I'm not in a good mood. So what? Nothing special." We acknowledge that we're in a bad mood. And if there's something that we can do to improve it, okay; and if not, well, we just deal with it. In fact, you don't even have to deal with it; you just go ahead with whatever you're doing. But if we want to somehow change the way in which we are experiencing that feeling, then we have to look at other ways of changing our attitude about it.
So as I said, the first level is "Nothing special. There's nothing special about what I feel," right? And it's not that there's a "me" that's separate from all of it and that I have to shield myself from it. It's just that this is the way that life goes.
There's Nothing Special about Me
But now the other side of "There's nothing special about the feeling" is "There's nothing special about me and what I'm feeling now." So this gets into the whole topic of what's called self-cherishing. We experience what we're feeling – happy, unhappy, and so on – in terms of self-cherishing. So what does self-cherishing mean? It means being completely concerned only about ourselves. We're only focused on ourselves and what we're feeling now, and we ignore everybody else: "It doesn't matter what they feel. I'm unhappy."
So again the trick here is "There's nothing special about me and what I'm feeling." The more narrow our mind is in terms of clinging to "me," clinging to the feeling, actually the more unhappy we become. Just think about it. It's like a muscle being very tight and being very tense. So it's our mind being very tight and very tense – just "Me, me, me, what I'm feeling." If we open up and think that there are seven billion humans and countless animals on this planet, what I'm feeling now is nothing special. Everybody is feeling something now. Some people and animals are feeling happy, some are feeling unhappy, some are feeling neutral (they're asleep, for example), and with each individual being, it's changing all the time. So what's so special about me and what I'm feeling at this moment?
Like this terrible traffic jam that was going on outside when we were coming here. Do you think that everybody else in that traffic jam was having a wonderful time and really happy? But the more that we think, "Me, me, me. I'm here and I'm stuck and I can't get out. How horrible this is," the more unhappy we become, don't we? But when you start to think about everybody in the traffic jam, then our mind becomes much more open, much more relaxed.
Remember when we were coming here, the traffic was not moving at all, and there was this side street in which all these cars wanted to join this line of traffic on the street? These cars wanted to get across our lane and into the lane going in the other direction, which was also not moving, and somehow get through the various lanes in our direction and get to the other side. Of course, people don't let them through, and you think, "My god, how are they going to get through?" And they start to inch their way and stick the nose of the car in, and so on, and it starts to become really very interesting. And then the guy in front of us, even when he could move ahead, was speaking on his cell phone and wasn't paying attention. So he wasn't moving, and then the cars behind were getting very uptight about that.
And then, all of a sudden, you're not thinking about: "Poor me, I'm stuck in this traffic." It becomes like a whole drama that you're watching. And you think, "How are they going to weave their way through? How are they going to find their way?" And then you're not thinking just of yourself. You've changed your attitude. You're not making such a big deal out of me. And when we stop making this big deal out of me – "I'm so special. I'm the special one in this traffic" – then the whole way that we experience the situation changes. Think about that.
There was one great Tibetan lama called Kunu Lama, and he suggested a type of exercise that one can do which is very helpful. What he suggested is to imagine yourself on one side and everybody else on the other side, and then imagine being separate from that as the observer. So you're looking at this "me" over here and everybody else over there, and the "me" in this picture is unhappy, but so is everybody else. Or you're stuck in the traffic and so are all these other people stuck in the traffic. And now as the neutral observer looking at this, who's more important, this one person or everybody actually – this one person pushing to get ahead of everybody or the whole crowd, the whole group? So try that.
Obviously the larger group is more important that this one person, isn't it? But that doesn't mean that we're a nothing. If we care about and are concerned about everyone, we're included in the "everyone," aren't we? It's just that we're not more special than everybody else, especially in terms of how we feel – happy, unhappy, etc.
So the problem here is this self-cherishing, being obsessed about "me, me, me" and "I'm so important." So when I'm unhappy and I think that there's this unhappiness over there and a "me" separate from it and: "Oh, I don't want that," that's the self-importance of me, isn't it? "Me, me, me. I don't want that." Or the happiness – it's focused on: "Me, me, me. I don't want some larger dog to come and take my bone away." And "Me, me, me. I'm not feeling anything. I'm not being entertained. I have to be entertained."
The problem is this self-preoccupation, this self-cherishing, focusing in this limited way on "me, me, me" and what I feel. So what we need to do is somehow change this perspective, think in terms of everyone and have our motivation be in terms of everyone: "May everybody get out of this traffic." If you think about it, how could just we get out of the traffic? The traffic has to be eliminated, and if the traffic is eliminated, everybody gets free from it, don't they? So if our concern is this much larger scope of everyone, then we're more relaxed, aren't we? We're not so uptight and so devastated by being in the traffic. And if we finally do feel happy – we get out of the traffic – don't just think, "Oh, I'm so wonderful. I got out," but think in terms of everybody: "This is wonderful. Everybody got wherever they were going." So then we're not clinging to that happiness as if somebody's going to take the bone away from us.
So it all has to do with what's called compassion. Compassion is thinking of others' unhappiness, caring about it in the same way that we care about our own, and taking responsibility and concern to actually help everybody, if we can, to overcome that unhappiness (although that unhappiness is nothing special). Don't get depressed: "Oh, there's such horrors going on in the world." Of course, it's natural that that will happen, but nevertheless it would be better if everybody were happy, wouldn't it?
When you voluntarily take some sense of responsibility that: "I'm going to be concerned about everybody and wish everybody to be free of their suffering," and so on, when we voluntarily take that, we develop a great sense of courage and self-confidence. This is something that the Dalai Lama speaks about very often. If we're only thinking about me and my unhappiness, and so on, it's actually that we're very weak. But if we voluntarily think about and are concerned about everyone, it takes a great deal of strength, doesn't it? It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength, and so it gives us self-confidence. And this positive attitude about ourselves leads automatically to a feeling of happiness. So it's not this attitude of: "Poor me. I'm unhappy," and so on. We're concerned about everybody stuck in the traffic, and we really wish that everybody could be free of that traffic jam, and by opening ourselves up with that – it's really courageous to think about everybody in that traffic jam – we have a more positive feeling about ourselves, don't we? We're not weak and being oppressed by the traffic. Now we're very strong actually.
So this is an example of how we can change our attitude, what's called attitude training, to completely change the quality of how we're experiencing the natural up and down of life. And it just is a matter of training ourselves to practice doing it, which also takes a bit of courage, I must say, to realize that as life is going up and down, I'm just making it worse by my attitude about it. So there's nothing special going on by feeling up and down, and there's nothing special about me, that I feel up and down, so let me try to change the way that I view that so that I can make the best out of the situation.
So that's the basic overview or introduction to attitude training. So think about that for a moment, and then perhaps you have some questions.
Questions and Answers
Okay. Do you have any questions?
Participant: I would like to ask a question about this example with the traffic. If I'm trying to think about others, not only myself, am I helping only myself or is the power of my thought also helping others?
Alex: Well, I think that indirectly it helps others if you are not aggressive in the traffic and beeping your horn (which obviously is pointless because nobody can move anyway). If you're more relaxed, in a sense it indirectly can help others. When that car in the side street is inching in and cutting you off and you don't open up your window and shout some obscenity and swear at the person, both of you are a little bit more relaxed. But you can't have too big of an influence.
Participant: I'd like to go back to this example with the traffic jam. When I experience something like that, someone cutting me off on the road, I feel like a flash of anger for a moment, and then I try to think about different causes which might have made this situation happen – like, for example, the person in the car might have sick babies and he might be driving to the hospital – and then of course I feel a lot calmer. But the thing is, these flashes of anger still continue all the time. Is it possible to get rid of them completely or will they continue like that?
Alex: Well, it's a very, very long process to overcome the tendencies and habits of anger. Changing our attitude, like in the example that you just cited, by thinking that, "Well, this person who is in such a hurry maybe has a very good cause for being in a hurry" is just a provisional way of dealing with the anger. We really have to go much, much deeper to pull out the roots of the anger, which has to do with how we understand ourselves, how we understand other people.
We tend to identify ourselves and identify people with just one little incident which is happening in life. Like for instance viewing this person in the traffic as this horrible person who is trying to cut me off, and that's all that we think about this person. So we just identify them with this one thing that is happening in their life, particularly something involving ourselves. Then provisionally we're identifying them with something else, which may or may not be true. It doesn't really matter that they have a sick baby and they need to get to a hospital quickly – we're just identifying them with another possible scene; we're still giving them a solid identity. The same thing with identifying me, the solid "me" who's now feeling angry, and so I have to do something about that solid "me" who's angry. So we're identifying ourselves with this anger.
So we have to somehow loosen that, and I don't want to go into tremendous detail about that, but it is a very deep process which has to do with not identifying me or them with anything. It's like taking a still picture of someone or a still picture of ourselves. You have the photograph, but I'm not just that one moment of the photograph, am I, and neither are you that one moment of the still photograph. But we have to stop viewing ourselves and our life and other people in terms of still photographs. Everything's flowing and changing all the time, isn't it? And we're changing all the time. If you look at a photograph of yourself as a baby and a teenager and now, and so on, it's all changing. But it's when you view things as a still photograph that then you get stuck in what you're feeling at that time of the photograph, as if you're making a frozen picture of the emotion and the feeling and the anger and so on. This all has to be loosened. And even once you've loosened it, and loosened it on the deepest level, you have to get used to that because the tendency and the habit is to tighten up again, and that takes quite a lot of familiarity. But eventually it is possible to not get that tightness again or the anger or jealousy, or whatever it might be, because if you look at the nature of the mind, it's to be relaxed; the nature is not to be tense.
Participant: What's the point of all these trainings? If a person lives his life trying to be aware of his feelings or not being aware or not making some identities, what's the real difference? And what is it for?
Alex: On one level, it is for improving the quality of our lives. Basically we all want to be happy. And whether we have this idea that we don't deserve to be happy or not, still the basic drive is to be happy; it's almost like a biological thing. So the initial level is to, as I say, improve the quality of our lives by making it more easy to deal with everything. Life doesn't become such a struggle.
And if you think in terms of a stronger aim, a stronger motivation, it has to do with our dealing with others. If we have children, if we are living in a family, if we have friends, and so on, if I'm always in a bad mood and I'm: "Oh, poor me" and stuff like that, we're in a very poor position to be able to help them, and in fact it makes them unhappy. So we want to somehow deal with our moods and so on in a more productive type of way because it will affect others, it will affect my family and so on, and I'm concerned about them. So that's the reason to work on ourselves.
Participant: I'd like to know if I got it right. As I understand it, the main thing from these trainings is not to be obsessed with happiness and not to cling to it. But how do we deal with that basic principle of wanting happiness? Do we need to try to be happy or not? If we see that life is cycles of unhappiness followed with happiness and it's always changing, do we need to try to attain happiness?
Alex: We do need to try to attain happiness. But when we have it, just enjoy it for what it is, which is that it'll pass. The more relaxed we are about it, the more frequently we'll feel happy. But if sometimes we don't feel happy, well, so what? What do we expect? No big deal. Nothing special.
So the more relaxed we are about it with this attitude of: "Well, there's nothing special about what's going on," then that in itself is a more relaxed way of becoming happier. We're not worried about it is the point. But it's not this constant drive, which is quite a neurotic one, that I typify by: "I always have to be entertained. I always have to have music going on because I'm afraid of the silence or I'm afraid of becoming unhappy." That's a very unpleasant state of mind actually. Because actually if you think about it, as I said in the beginning, being happy doesn't actually correspond to what we're doing – you could be doing the same thing and feel happy or unhappy or neutral – so it's just a matter of what you focus on.
I'll give you an example. I really enjoy going to the dentist because my dentist is a great person, I really like him. We have a very friendly relation – we joke and so on – so it's very pleasant to go to him. So I'm not focusing on: "Oh, I'm so worried because he may have to drill and he may have to do this or that." I don't look at the dentist appointment with anxiety. I look at it with happiness: "Wow, great! I get to see my friend again." This is something that we'll speak about tomorrow, but what is it in an experience that you're going to focus on in terms of your attitude? You could focus on the possible pain that you might have in some dental procedure or you could focus on, as I said, seeing the dentist, who I actually like.
Maybe you think I'm a bit weird, but I had root-canal work done once, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was really very, very interesting because I had my mouth really wide open, and they kept on putting more and more things in my mouth, and I started to laugh because I couldn't imagine how much more they could stick into my mouth at the same time. Mind you, I was all completely novocained, so I wasn't feeling anything. But it was just so hilarious how much was going in – this instrument and that instrument and this hand, and all these things. I just laughed.
So that's very different from when you're not feeling anything anyway, but you're afraid that you might feel something, and then it's complete torture. Right? Or the pain of getting the injection of the novocaine. Well, sure, that hurts, but so what? Would you prefer not to have it and then have a half hour of pain of the root canal, or is it better to have that few seconds of the pain of the injection? So you're happy to get that injection even though it's going to hurt, but it will only hurt for a very short time.
So everything depends on your attitude. That's attitude training. And it works, and it improves the quality of your life. I mean, if you have to go to the dentist and you need root canal, are you going to have it be a torture or are you going to have it be not so bad? We have to experience it, there's no way not to experience it, so we might as well try to make it into as okay an experience as possible. That's the principle behind it.
Participant: When I was a child, I experienced dealing with harsh situations. When I needed to learn something, for example, I would imagine someone who had the qualities to do this hard work, like one of my idols. That was my way of dealing with hard situations. So is it effective or necessary to imagine someone who has all these good qualities and then think how they would behave themselves in these difficult situations?
Alex: That can be quite helpful. I mean, that's usually what people do with their spiritual teacher; they imagine how they would deal with it in a difficult situation. But you have to be very careful in applying that method because if you apply it with the attitude that: "Well, they can do it, but I can't because I'm so inferior and I'm not good enough, and so on," then that's not very much help at all. But if we use the example of how our teacher or another figure that we find inspiring would deal with something, if we use that to lift ourselves up to give us the courage to try to deal with it in that way ourselves, then this is helpful. It all depends on our attitude toward ourselves. Am I someone who could be uplifted, or am I someone who's not good enough?
So again it becomes very delicate. Because on the one hand, you don't want to be too obsessed about: "Me, me, me. I won't be good enough," so this is self-cherishing. But on the other hand, you have to evaluate: "Do I in fact have the ability to act the way that my teacher would act?" And maybe we don't yet, but that is the direction that we can go in, and so we try our best to model ourselves on them, knowing that: "Well, I'm still a child, in a sense." So there's this big difference between "Poor me. I'm not good enough" and "I'm aspiring to be like this, and I'll try my best."
So I think that's enough for this evening, and we'll continue tomorrow. Thank you.
Pages with Similar Content:
- Strategies for Deconstructing Jealousy – Session Two: No Special "Me" or Special "You"
- Equalizing Our Attitudes toward Ourselves: Overcoming Self-Hatred (video + audio + transcript) (multipart text)
- Meditations for Recognizing the Five Aggregates – Session Four: The Aggregate of Feelings of a Level of Happiness
- Developing Balanced Sensitivity: Practical Buddhist Exercises for Daily Life (Revised Second Edition) – 15 Unblocking Our Feelings
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oooOOOOOoooohhhhh :)
The mod you are trying to view has ceased development and consequently been archived. If you are a member of this mod, can demonstrate that it is being actively developed and will be able to keep this profile up to date with the latest news, images, videos and downloads, please contact us with all details and we will consider its re-activation.
Battle the Provisional IRA to restore order to the streets of London. [A police/military FPS co-op from Jam Sandwich Studios]
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nice !
Isn't that dangerous?
Smoke grenade completed by JSS team member Sargent - both blue and red will be available when the mod is completed.

subset: commoncrawl


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does anyone know where to take prenatal water aerobics in Utah?
I would like to take a water aerobics class but I can't find anywhere that offers any for pregnant women.
Posted: 03/14/2011 by PETEMELISSABOND
Mom Answers
Sort by: best answers | most recent answers
1 - 1 of 1 answers
IHC does water classes at some of their hospitals, I know the Murray location does it. A lot of the IHC ones do prenatal yoga as well. You can look up classes here for all locations http://intermountainhealthcare.org/classes/Pages/home.aspxposted 03/24/2011 by lovelikewinter
Answer this question


text:
This job posting is no longer available on Indeed.
Find similar jobs:Program Development Coordinator jobs
- Key Connections Consulting jobs
Key Connections Consulting Inc. is a team of professionals who provide assessment and consult services to a children, youth and adults with a variety of developmental disabilities. We are currently seeking an efficient, enthusiastic, and team oriented team member for full time work.
Tasks and Responsibilities
Please submit resume with cover letter detailing relevant experience via email or fax 403-317-1628. Direct any questions to Sonja Miller or Brandie Andrews at 403-524-2522. Please submit you application on or before March 15th, 2013.


text:
May 2, 2016
Thursday July 31, 2008
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina will have freshman
quarterback Stephen Garcia back for the start of practice. The school said Garcia will be at practice Friday after being approval for early reinstatement. He had been suspended by the university from all activities until Aug. 15.
The Gamecocks are reporting for fall camp Thursday. Their first practice in Friday night. Garcia was suspended in March after he was ticketed for underage drinking. It was his third run-in with authorities since arriving on campus in January 2007.
Garcia thanked university officials for his chance to continue
with the team. His statement said he would not talk to the media
until he began playing in real games at South Carolina.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Click Here to access the online Public Inspection File
Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station's FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or email@example.com.


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Several Fun i Images
My teeth
Image by B_Zedan
Go to AD Link intended for wWW.PArier-Cash.fr :
I cant believe I havent ever taken a snap of my teeth. Im missing three adult teeth, they just, like, never existed.
The gap is where one baby tooth was. It had no tooth bud above and was ground narrower to accommodate some hard core tooth-wrangling via braces. And it rotted out over my early twenties. When I finally got dental insurance I was able to get it pulled and have a "flipper" made, which is essentially a retainer with a fake tooth on. I love that I can take it out.
The front bottom teeth have no adult buds below them and are relics from childhood. Theyre super sad little nubs that have been abused by braces and a couple of decades and change of food. And yet they persist.


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It's raining cars this week as the auto industry gears up to launch six new cars ahead of the festive season. Today (October 15) will see the unveiling of the new Ford Figo
On Tuesday, Maruti's Alto gets a facelift with the launch of the new Alto 800, that is expected to cost between Rs 2.5 to 3 lakh
Also on Tuesday, Tata Motors will unveil the revamped Indigo Manza Club Class
Tata Motors' offerings are twice as nice this week as the company will also launch the Safari Storme on Wednesday
Wednesday will also see the launch of the Rexton by Mahindra & Mahindra's Korean arm, Ssangyong
And finally, Honda will launch the automatic version of the Brio on Thursday. What's your pick of the week? Let us know in the comments section
The journey of the rupee since Independence
The all new Nissan Terrano!
Maruti Suzuki launches WagonR Stingray
The Rolls Royce Wraith rolls into India
Reborn Datsun Go to cost under Rs 4L


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go directly to the
Bill of Rights
In San
Francisco, we organize our efforts to turn the rights into
realities via a written matrix, which helps us keep track
of changes
our collaborative has made and those we need to pursue.
Like the Bill of Rights, this matrix is intended to be a
flexible document – it can be revised and rewritten
based on the needs and resources of your community. To download
a copy of the matrix, click
SFCIPP is now offering training and informational
panels to agencies and groups interested in learning more
about the children of incarcerated parents, and how to incorporate
the Bill of Rights principles into your work. For more information
contact Nell Bernstein at
let us know if you are distributing the bill of rights or
are working towards implementation in your area.
email: email@example.com
with the who, what, when, why, where.
Since the Bill of Rights was first published
in 2003, it has been widely distributed and used in venues
around the country to educate the public, provoke discussion,
and train service providers.
In 2005, SFCIPP launched the Rights to Realities
Initiative, with the long-term goal of ensuring that every
child in San Francisco whose parent is arrested and/or incarcerated
is guaranteed the rights that follow. Our current work plan
involves assessing the current status of each right in San
Francisco, and the availability of model practices from
around the nation; identifying which agencies might contribute
to addressing each right; and working with those agencies
to develop responsive policies and practices. Our overarching
aim is to ensure that every decision about criminal justice
policy and practice takes into account the needs and hopes
of children.
1. I have the right to be kept
safe and informed at the time of my parent's arrest.
2. I have the right to be heard when
decisions are made about me.
3. I have the right to be considered
when decisions are made about my parent.
4. I have the right to be well cared
for in my parent's absence.
5. I have the right to speak with,
see and touch my parent.
6. I have the right to support as
I face my parent's incarceration.
7. I have the right not to be judged,
blamed or labeled because my parent is incarcerated.
8. I have the right to a lifelong
relationship with my parent.


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To Contact Us:We can be contacted via private message on our Facebook page, which is checked on a regular basis. Currently, we are not moderating comments for this blog, but you can reach us through Facebook.
Search site for …
Let Your Voice Be Counted by Liking Us on Facebook
#STOPKemptonCenterCurrently BBC has suspended their plans to name a building in Wendell Kempton's honor, as a direct result of your voices. Please continue to encourage the BBC president to chose a more suitable name, one not connected with collusion and child sexual abuse: email@example.com
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Tell GRACE Your Story
In order for this investigation to progress, GRACE needs contact with as many ABWE Bangladesh missionaries and MKs as possible. In fact, if you were a missionary in Bangladesh during the 60s, 70s and 80s, but were not with ABWE … Continue reading
Posted in Initial Post, More on G.R.A.C.E., Press Releases
ABWE Announces Change of Leadership
This Announcement Regarding Leadership from Board Chairman Ron Berrus to the ABWE family was forwarded to the blog moderators on June 8, 2011. It states: Dear ABWE Family, We are writing to you today to let you know that Dr. Michael … Continue reading
Posted in ABWE's Response, Initial Post 5 Comments
Where Is the Victory?
by Tamara Barrick Rice I like documentaries. I'll admit it. I'm kind of a "doc" snob, actually. But when I finally sat down to watch All God's Children about the horrific MK abuse in the 1960s at Mamou, a Christian & … Continue reading


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Gag Order
A Nebraska judge bans the word rape from his courtroom.
The fact that judges are not rushing to ban similarly conclusory legal language from trial testimony—presumably one can still say murder or embezzlement on the stand—reflects not just the fraught nature of language but also the fraught nature of rape prosecutions. We as a society still somehow think rape is different—either because we assume the victims are especially fragile or because we assume they are particularly deceitful. Is the word rape truly more inflammatory to a jury than the word robbery? Yes, the question of the victim's consent surely makes a rape trial more complicated than some other kinds of criminal trials. But the fact that the evidence may be more equivocal hardly makes the underlying word more likely to incite blind juror outrage.
Wendy Murphy teaches at the New England School of Law and has spent years studying the relationship between language and the courts. She describes Judge Cheuvront's order as part of a growing trend on the part of the defense bar to scrub the language of trial courts, one that has "really blossomed after the Kobe Bryant trial." The big shifts she's noticing: Whereas defense attorneys once made motions to limit the use of the word victim in trials, there is an uptick in efforts to get rid of the word rape. Moreover, she points out, these strategies used to be directed toward prosecutors, but they are now being directed toward witnesses as well.
Do a Lexis search on the influence of inflammatory language on juror perceptions. Try to find some social science data on the effect of loaded courtroom words on conviction rates. Not much out there, notes Murphy. That's one of the things that makes the Nebraska case so maddening. If judges are going to take it upon themselves to issue blanket orders that would have witnesses testifying that black is white, one might hope that they are trying to remedy some well-documented evidentiary problem.
You needn't be a radical legal feminist to cringe at the idea of judges ordering rape complainants to obliterate from their testimony any language that signifies an assault. At worst, that judge is ordering her to lie. At best, he is asking her to play at being a human thesaurus: thinking up coded ways to describe to the jury what she believes to have happened. If Mock, Safi's attorney, is correct in stating that "trials are competing narratives of what happened," why should one side have a lock on the narrative language used? Can it really be that the cure for the problem of ambiguous courtroom language is to permit less of it?
And there's another problem underlying Cheuvront's order: Jurors will not be told of it. Not only is the "dangerous" language to be hidden from them, but the fact that it's been hidden will be concealed from them as well. They are not merely too emotional to hear the phrase rape kit. They are also evidently too emotional to know it's been hidden from them in the first place.
Professor Robert Weisberg teaches criminal law at Stanford Law School, and he acknowledges that judges in rape trials face a particularly complicated challenge when it comes to keeping prejudicial or conclusory language from a jury. He has no problem, for instance, with the fact that courts have gradually jettisoned the word victim for the less loaded complainant. The former proves too much. But he cautions that there is no value-neutral word for unwanted sex and that the word intercourse "understates what happens in a rape case." He warns that a blanket ban on the word rape may in fact be the worst solution. A jury instruction from the judge or gentle admonitions that witnesses watch their language throughout the trial is the better, more transparent fix. "That," says Weisberg, "is what judges get paid for."
If we've learned anything from the dreary wars over politically correct language in America, it's that purging ugly words from the lexicon hardly makes the ugly ideas they represent go away. Trials exist to ferret out facts, and papering over those ugly facts with pretty—or even "neutral"—words doesn't just do violence to abstractions like language and meaning. When it's done in a courtroom, the real victim—if I may still use that word—may well be the truth.


text:
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Title of the LinkITALIADOPTION Mailing List
URL (address) for the Linkhttp://www.tkqlhce.com/click-1029688-10471554?url=http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~jfuller/gen_mail_adoption.html#ITALIADOPTION
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@ Talent fan.....Marc pulled the plug on the straight and went past Rossi as though he was on a CRT. Be interesting to hear Rossi's take on that.
"couch cretins".....I like it, I wish I had come up with that one.
I wonder if Crash will leave it in?


text:
search the archive
search the archive
bibliography and history of the book
cultural studies and historical approaches
ecocriticism and environmental studies
ethnicity and national identity
humanities computing and the internet
journals and collections of essays
NEMLA, Montreal (4/7-11, 2010): "Travelling Genre, Geopolitical Space, and Reception, 1775-1830"
full name / name of organization:
Steven Bellomy, University of South Carolina
contact email:
Transatlanticism invites us to consider the various effects of market circulation, and how generic features of genre must be equally mobile and culturally adaptive. Margaret Cohen writes, "Genres that travel across space, like genres that endure across time, must be able to address social and/or literary questions that are transportable, that can speak to divergent publics or a public defined in its diversity, dispersion, and heterogeneity." Accordingly, this panel invites papers that engage these ideas as expressed in texts circulated during the revolutionary period, 1775-1830. We particularly welcome papers that examine why and/or how "constitutively international genre[s]" such as the novel were appropriated by specific groups or publics in specific locations for specific reasons. With Cohen's observation that travel is rooted in travail, or work, in mind, we encourage submissions that treat genre's ability to do work, be it cultural, political, or ideological. How do genres such as the exploration narrative or the confessional function differently when they are situated in differing geopolitical sites of representation? In what ways does this "travelling" influence the ideological work of genre? Please send 250-word abstrats to Steve Bellomy at email@example.com by September 30, 2009.
cfp categories:


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Every week, new AKA William correspondent Reggie Cameron will cover gay celebrities, chic events, smutty boys, and anything and everything else that comes his way in L.A.
As the first openly poz competitor, Jack Mackenroth brought uber-drama and a sizable helping of nipples(!) to "Project Runway." His tear-filled, early departure from the program (for medical reasons) was tragic and frightening. Sure his designs showed potential, but the realization we'd all be robbed of his occasional half-naked appearance onscreen –that's when the waterworks really got going.
For those of us more interested in his body than his ability to drape and embroider, I give you Jack — tan, wet and in spandex. A world class swimmer, Mackenroth collected 8 gold medals in Copenhagen at the 2009 World OUTGames. A busy girl, he's set to sweep the 50 meter breaststroke, 50 meter freestyle, 50 meter fly, 100 meter breast stroke and 100 meter freestyle at the Gay Games in Cologne, Germany (July 31 – August 7th, 2010). I spoke with the formerly pre-med poindexter about his upcoming trip, gay athletes and porn.
Reggie Cameron
Are you ready for Cologne?
Jack Mackenroth
Sometimes it's a struggle to get in the pool at 5am, but you find the motivation. I tweet to get through the rough patches.
Do you consider yourself an all-around jock, or is it strictly watersports?
I've thought about doing triathlons, and I was in gymnastics when I was younger . . . all the gay sports, but I've been a hardcore competitive swimmer since I was 6. At one point, I tried soccer and it was just embarrassing. I'm not good with anything involving balls other than sex. The memory of a basketball coming and flying at my head at PE in 7th grad and the panic attacks it produced are still with me. So I'm sticking with swimming since I'm fairly good at it.
. . . but you're not a dumb jock . . . .
I studied pre-med at Berkeley, I came from a medical family. I took all AP courses in high school and I thought I would end up at an Ivy League school, but I didn't get in to Stanford or Harvard. Berkeley was actually my backup. I was pre-med for 2 years and it was super-,competitive and everything and one day I just looked around at all my classmates and realized,"These people are douche bags."
Continued on the next page . . . .


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Hourly - Intermediate ($$) - Est. Time: More than 6 months, Less than 10 hrs/week - PostedSkills: iPad UI Design Adobe Creative Suite Adobe Dreamweaver Adobe Illustrator
We are a startup Digital Marketing company looking for a Strong company/Team of professional graphic designers (also web design) to be a backend arm of our company to our clients. We look for HIGH QUALITY services The services you will be providing through our company: - Branding (Logo design) - Photo editor/Manipulator/Removing background - Photo restoration - eCommerce product photo editing - Print/Brochure/Flyer/Business Card Design - Invitation/Menu design - Poster Design - Banner Design - Ebook Cover Design - T-shirt Designer - Presentation design/maker - Infographics - Youtube/Facebook/Twitter/G+ Cover Photo - Social Media Design - 2D/3D image design - Prototype & UI design - Newsletters Design - Magazine Page Layout Design - Print catalogs and e-Catalogs Graphics company/team should have the skillset of any expert design studio > Adobe Photoshop > Adobe Photoshop Lightroom > Adobe InDesign > Adobe Illustrator > Adobe Dreamweaver > CorelDraw You should be able to edit images expertly. See link below http://learnphotoediting.net/ Seeking company/team for Longterm relationship... ***Please share your FULL portfolio and Website (not only the one on Upwork) Rate offered $5/hr... NON NEGOTIABLE Must be willing to work according to Western time zone (GMT-4)


text:
Deborah L. Riggs
**** ******* **., ********, ** firstname.lastname@example.com 440.***.****
ustomer service and relations executive – with a unique complement of sales and marketing skills. Consistently build world-class customer relations that lead to sales. Create a work environment of open communications and team synergy – encourage ideas. Provide unique operational insight and best practices from having served multiple industries: Medical, Education, Retail, and Chemical. Career signature: creating outstanding client relations, sales, long-term corporate alliances, and ongoing organizational improvement. Expert level knowledge of medical office operations.
Customer Relations Contract Negotiations Database Management
Program Development PR / Corporate Relations CRM / Support Software
Process Improvement Staff Management Operational Best Practices
WALSH UNIVERSITY, Canton, OH 2005 – Present
Site Director – Medina Campus
Manage annual budget, student records, staff development, admissions and campus operations for this private university with 700 employees, 4 campuses, and 3500 students.
Responsible for student retention, student recruitment for MBA, RN-BSN and BA programs.
Developed and managed key programs; assembled and led a highly effective cross-functional team.
Work directly with the Assistant Dean to create marketing strategy; provide a support role in PR.
Achieved a record 90% for student retention.
Provided an integral role in achievement of sales quotas, e.g. 2006: 109%; 2007: 107%; 2008: 137% ; 2009: 102%
Designed a landmark Customer Relations Management system-this system increased enrollment in the MBA program by 5%
Negotiated contract for strategic alliance of corporate partners – this alliance proved vital to sales growth and strengthened all aspects of customer relations.
SOVEREIGN CHEMICAL COMPANY, INC., Akron, OH 2003 – 2005
Customer Service Specialist
Initiated several new concepts and standard operating procedures that markedly improved customer relations and account management support for this $24M per annual chemical distributor.
Provided liaison support role to Sales – this directly enhanced revenues and strengthened account management QA.
Decreased A/R from $400K to $100K per month.
Strengthened management reporting capabilities.
Built vital relationships with customers via an innovative use of databases.
CARP COSMETIC SURGERY CENTER, INC. Canton, OH 2001 – 2003
Front Desk Coordinator
Assisted in office management for this privately-owned reconstructive / cosmetic surgery center. Worked with a team of 10 staff members; supported 2 locations and affiliation with 4 hospitals. Annual sales: $1M.
Mastered marketing software (Brickell, Inform); assured CPT/ICCD-9 code compliance.
Managed medical records, patient files and claims processing - resolution; billed patients electronically; scheduled patient appointments, coordinated pre-surgery documentation; mentored new associates.
Selected guest speaker at medical symposium which generated $50K for the center.
Gained invaluable insight into how to achieve outstanding customer relations management within healthcare and best practices for medical office operations.
Deborah L. Riggs
1989 Began professional career as a dental assistant for a private dental practice in Warren, OH
1990 Department manager at Kay's World of Crafts, Warren, OH
Receptionist for a large medical practice in Akron, OH
Dispatcher (New York) for Comdoc, Inc. Akron, OH
1997 Unit secretary for CMA Internal Medicine, Greenville, SC
Gained invaluable experience and insight to medical office procedures
Supported 3 doctors
Learned medical transcription
Learned pre-certification processes for various insurance companies
Ensured proper diagnostic coding on billing
1999 took a 2-year role as self-employed healthcare office consultant/medical transcriber, Akron, OH
Supported several doctors at a breast clinic
Assisted front desk operations for a chiropractic office
Supporter 2 internal medicine doctors
WALSH UNIVERSITY, Canton, OH.
MBA, Integrated Marketing Communications. Graduated with honors, 2010
MBA courses involved 8-week study abroad in Italy.
B.A., Management, focus on HR and Organizational Leadership. Graduated with honors, 2008
Interests include: secret shopper for ICCDS;
Member of American Association of University Women.
Medical Assistant
United States - desk, front desk, medical office, massage, medical,...
Medical Office
United States - medical office, lab, marion, forman, nutrition,...
Customer Service Medical
United States - medical office, medical, office assistant, tn,...
Customer Service Sales Representative
United States - medical office, scanning, medical, bilingual,...
Customer Service Medical
United States - medical office, presentations, recovery, obtain,...
Customer Service Administrative Assistant
Rancho Cucamonga, CA - medical office, tutor, representative, requirement,...
Medical Assistant Customer Service
Cicero, IL - medical office, medical, medical assistant,...


text:
The Power of Independent Thinking
Ben Powell on Government Consumer Safety Videos & Media Piracy Enforcement
Recorded: Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Benjamin Powell engages with Tracy Byrnes on Fox Business Networks Freedom Watch on Government consumer safety videos and
the enforcement of media piracy laws.
Experts: Benjamin W. PowellType: TelevisionIssues: Business, Culture/ Society, Entertainment, Government Waste/Pork, Public Health/ Consumer Protection, Regulation and Deregulation
Anthony Gregory on Military Assassination of American Citizens
Recorded: Friday, September 30, 2011
Research Editor Anthony Gregory interviewed on KTVU 2 on the dangerous precedent of the US government assassinating American citizens such as Anwar al-Awlaki.
Experts: Anthony GregoryType: TelevisionIssues: Civil Liberties/ Human Rights, Constitutional Law, Terrorism and National Crises
Benjamin Powell on Rushing Appointment of Elizabeth Warren
Recorded: Thursday, June 9, 2011
Experts: Benjamin W. PowellType: TelevisionIssues: Politics, Public Health/ Consumer Protection


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The winds raged. Trees crashed. Power disappeared. But hope rose through the people of Key Peninsula Lutheran Church, Lakebay, Wash. On Dec. 14-15, 2006, the area was hit hard by a brutal windstorm.
With a budget smaller than the salaries of most congregations and an average Sunday attendance smaller than a college choir, this congregation did what the Gospel announced that third Sunday in Advent: give a coat if you have two, share food when there's some to spare.
Worship on Dec. 17 was held in the social hall, where more than 100 had been fed and were invited to stay for the service. The congregation was living the gospel as it was proclaimed.
Members had planned and built this multipurpose space to be available to the public, including as an emergency shelter. They had worked with local agencies and received grants to provide emergency power. The peninsula is heavily wooded and often suffers serious power outages during windstorms.
It was amazing to see how people who care for others discover a strength within themselves they couldn't have imagined was possible. This is what God's grace looks like as it comes to us through the lives of people.
This congregation that once served seagoing people is—in times of disaster and calm—a beacon on the key, pointing the way to life.
© 2016 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers


text:
Text Size: Small Text Medium Text Large Text
Building A Strong Network
New college graduates looking for their first job will find greater success if they have a network of relationships with an extensive and diverse group of contacts. Since over 80 percent of jobs go unadvertised, networking can be one of the most effective means of uncovering hidden career opportunities. Networking is simply the process of making contacts and building relationships that can help you obtain leads, referrals, advice, information, and support.
How do I get started?
- Make it a habit to find out about people, be curious, take a genuine interest in others.
- Think of networking as meeting people, learning about them, and making conversation.
- You only need to know one person to begin the process of networking.
- Utilize LinkedIn, and/or other professional networking social media sites.
Building your list
Consider these sources (and others!) for networking contacts.
- Parents, relatives
- Professors
- Classmates
- Fraternity/sorority alumni
- Current and former employers
- Professional organizations
- Past and present co-workers
- Neighbors
- Religious community
- Online communities
Networking Timetable
Freshman Year
- Get to know your professors and fellow students and get involved in organizations and activities.
- If you have a job, establish a good relationship with your boss and co-workers.
- Establish a system for gathering and keeping contact information for future use (Blackberry, iPhone, PDA, spreadsheet, paper address book, etc.).
- Set up a free LinkedIn account and join groups related to your career interest.
Sophomore Year
- Narrow down your career goals by conducting informational interviews.
- Continue to forge ties with your professors, co-workers, managers, and other students and add them to your LinkedIn contacts.
- Land a summer internship.
- If your career goal is well defined, consider joining a professional organization on campus.
- Meet with a career counselor on campus to brainstorm.
Junior Year
- If you have not done so, develop a résumé, and ask your networking contacts to critique it.
- Make a list of employers you would like to work for and start thinking about who you know that can help you get your foot in the door. Follow these employers on LinkedIn and identify alumni contacts in them.
- Step up the pace on informational interviews, set a goal of one or two per month.
- Create a networking card (a personal business card to give to individuals that you meet along the way).
- Stay active in student clubs and professional organizations.
- Get an internship and establish relationships with as many people as possible at your internship workplace.
Senior Year
- Join a professional (not student) organization in the field of your choice and get active.
- Re-contact everyone on your list and let them know about your job search.
- Now is the time for all of your effort to pay off!
- Thank everyone who helps you with a written follow-up, and keep anyone who is interested posted on your progress.
- Members of your network are not necessarily hiring managers, they are anyone who can give you valuable information, career advice, and referrals to the people who do the hiring.
- Find ways to keep in touch with people in your network.
- Send holiday and birthday cards, and articles of interest.
- Follow up and keep track.
By learning the art of making casual conversation, you can find out an individual's current situation, what they do, what you have in common, how you may be able to help them, and something that may help you.


text:
USi Europe B.V.
One USi Plaza
21401-7478 Annapolis, Maryland
phone: +31 20 5923000, +1 410 897 4656
fax: +1 410 897 4116
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Guernsey has been named one of the best islands in the UK!Find out more!
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See what is taking place in our islands here!Find out more!
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text:
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — ABC's fall slate includes new series about black, Asian-American and Hispanic families. But calling the network's choices a case study in diversity is to miss the point, said Paul Lee, ABC Entertainment Group president.
"It is a mission statement to reflect America," Lee told the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association on Tuesday. "That's not so much diversity as authenticity when you reflect America."
The network has the advantage of strong storytellers including Shonda Rhimes, the force behind ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal." She's going for a Thursday-night trifecta with "How to Get Away with Murder."
The new drama stars Viola Davis as a hard-charging law professor and criminal defense attorney, giving the African-American actress the kind of starring role that TV doesn't often accord minorities. Rhimes has done the same thing with "Scandal" and star Kerry Washington.
ABC, the home of white-oriented comedies "Modern Family" and "The Middle," will introduce ethnic families in the sitcoms "Black-ish," "Cristela" and "Fresh Off the Boat."
All of them have minority creators or producers or both behind the camera, which Lee said drives the shows' authenticity.
"Black-ish," about an African-American family whose father worries that they're losing touch with their ethnicity, stars Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross and includes creator Kenya Barris as well as Laurence Fishburne and Larry Wilmore among its executive producers.
Although the shows are about ethnically specific families, they are "relatable" for all viewers, Lee said. "These are American stories, make no mistake about it," he said.
Barris said race is not the central point of "Black-ish."


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From FDTWiki
MPC5200 PCI Host Bridge
In this section we'll look into the description of a Host/PCI bridge. We use the Freescale lite5200b board as an example, because you will find the schematics in the Internet. To understand this section you need some very basic knowledge of PCI. This is NOT a tutorial about PCI, if you need some more in depth information, please read[1]. For the complete documentation of the Open Firmware PCI bindings please look into PCI Bus Binding to Open Firmware.
/ { model = "fsl,lite5200b"; compatible = "fsl,lite5200b"; #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <1>; interrupt-parent = <&mpc5200_pic>; soc5200@f0000000 { ... mpc5200_pic: interrupt-controller@500 { // 5200 interrupts are encoded into two levels; interrupt-controller; #interrupt-cells = <3>; compatible = "fsl,mpc5200b-pic","fsl,mpc5200-pic"; reg = <0x500 0x80>; }; ... }; pci@f0000d00 { #interrupt-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <2>; #address-cells = <3>; device_type = "pci"; compatible = "fsl,mpc5200b-pci","fsl,mpc5200-pci"; reg = <0xf0000d00 0x100>; interrupt-map-mask = <0xf800 0 0 7>; interrupt-map = <0xc000 0 0 1 &mpc5200_pic 0 0 3 // 1st slot 0xc000 0 0 2 &mpc5200_pic 1 1 3 0xc000 0 0 3 &mpc5200_pic 1 2 3 0xc000 0 0 4 &mpc5200_pic 1 3 3 0xc800 0 0 1 &mpc5200_pic 1 1 3 // 2nd slot 0xc800 0 0 2 &mpc5200_pic 1 2 3 0xc800 0 0 3 &mpc5200_pic 1 3 3 0xc800 0 0 4 &mpc5200_pic 0 0 3>; clock-frequency = <0>; // From boot loader interrupts = <2 8 0 2 9 0 2 10 0>; bus-range = <0 0>; ranges = <0x42000000 0 0x80000000 0x80000000 0 0x20000000 0x02000000 0 0xa0000000 0xa0000000 0 0x10000000 0x01000000 0 0x00000000 0xb0000000 0 0x01000000; }; };
Now we will go through the different PCI specific properties, the common properties are already described above.
Common HOST/PCI bridge Properties
The the first number of the bus-range property denotes the PCI bus number this node is responsible for, the second number is the largest bus number of any PCI bus that is subordinate to this node. Because we only have the Host/PCI bridge in our example, we have only one PCI bus so: bus-range = <0 0>.
device_type = "pci" is self-explanatory.
The interrupts = <2 8 0 2 9 0 2 10 0>; property describes the interrupts the host/PCI-bridge may trigger. Don't mix up these interrupts with interrupts PCI devices might trigger (using INTA, INTB, ...). These are described later in the section PCI Interrupt Mapping. Looking into[2] shows that the bridge may trigger three interrupts: 8, 9, 10; all of the peripheral interrupt group and level high sensitive. This triple of interrupt group, interrupt number and sensitivity is the reason why we have an #interrupt-cells = <3>; property in the mpc5200_pic node for the MPX5200B programmable interrupt controller.
PCI Address Translation
The PCI address space is completely separate from the CPU address space, so we need to specify some kind of address translation. As always, this is done using the range property. The child addresses (PCI addresses) consist of three cells as specified in the #address-cells = <3>; property. The first question might be, why do we need three 32 bit cells to specify a PCI address. The three cells are labeled phys.hi, phys.mid and phys.low [3].
- phys.hi cell: npt000ss bbbbbbbb dddddfff rrrrrrrr
- phys.mid cell: hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh
- phys.low cell: llllllll llllllll llllllll llllllll
PCI is specified up to 64 bit addresses, which are denoted in phys.mid and phys.low. The really interesting things are in phys.high:
- n: relocatable region (doesn't play a role here)
- p: this range defines a prefetchable memory region
- t: aliased address (doesn't play a role here)
- ss: space code
- 00: configuration space
- 01: I/O space
- 10: 32 bit memory space
- 11: 64 bit memory space
- bbbbbbbb: The PCI bus number. PCI may be structured hierarchically. So we may have PCI/PCI bridges which will define sub busses.
- ddddd: The device number. The device number is typically formed by the IDSEL PCI line. We will talk about the device number later if we go through the interrupt map property.
- fff: The function number. Only used if we have a multifunction PCI device.
- rrrrrrrr: The PCI register to be addressed.
So looking onto our ranges property, we have three regions:
- a 32 bit prefetchable memory region beginning on PCI address 0x80000000 of 512 MByte size which will be mapped onto address 0x80000000 on the host CPU.
- a 32 bit non-prefetchable memory region beginning on PCI address 0xa0000000 of 256 MByte size which will be mapped onto address 0xa0000000 on the host CPU.
- an I/O region beginning on PCI address 0x00000000 of 16 MByte size which will be mapped onto address 0xb0000000 on the host CPU.
PCI Interrupt Mapping
Now we come to the most interesting part, PCI interrupt mapping. A PCI device can trigger interrupts using the wires #INTA, #INTB, #INTC and #INTD. If we don't have multifunction PCI devices, a device is obligated to use #INTA for interrupts. Because on PCI only the interrupt number is of interest, we have the property #interrupt-cells = <1>; in our PCI node.
In our example board, we have 2 PCI slots with 4 interrupt lines, respectively, so we have to map 8 interrupt lines to the PIC in the MPC5200B. This is done using the interrupt-map property. The exact procedure for interrupt mapping is described in[4] .
Because the interrupt number (#INTA etc.) is not sufficient to distinguish between several PCI devices on a single PCI bus, we also have to denote which PCI device triggered the interrupt line. Fortunately, every PCI device has a unique device number that we can use for. To distinguish between interrupts of several PCI devices we need a tuple consisting of the PCI device number and the PCI interrupt number. Speaking more generally, we construct a unit interrupt specifier which has four cells:
- three #address-cells consisting of phys.hi, phys.mid, phys.low, and
- one #interrupt-cell (#INTA, #INTB, #INTC, #INTD).
Because we only need the device number part of the PCI address, the interrupt-map-mask property comes into play. interrupt-map-mask is also a 4-tuple like the unit interrupt specifier. The 1's in the mask denote which part of the unit interrupt specifier should be taken into account. In our example we can see that only the device number part of phys.hi is required and we need 3 bits to distinguish between the four interrupt lines (Counting PCI interrupt lines start at 1, not at 0!).
Now we can construct the interrupt-map property. This property is a table and each entry in this table consists of a child (PCI bus) unit interrupt specifier, a parent handle (the interrupt controller which is responsible for serving the interrupts) and a parent unit interrupt specifier. So in the first line we can read that the PCI interrupt #INTA is mapped onto group 0, IRQ0, level low sensitive of our MPC5200B PIC[5].
The only missing part for now are the weird numbers int the PCI bus unit interrupt specifier. Now we have to look into the schematics[6] of the Lite5200b board. Here you can see that the IDSEL line of PCI slot 1 is tied to PCI address line 24 and the IDSEL line of PCI slot 2 to PCI address line 25[7]. The IDSEL lines are used to determine the PCI device number. Looking into[8] shows that using AD24 for IDSEL results in a device number of 0b11000 and AD25 will form a device number of 0b11001. Using these device numbers for the phys.hi word gives us:
- phys.hi for slot 1 is 0xC000, and
- phys.hi for slot 2 is 0xC800.
Putting it all together the interrupt-map property shows:
- #INTA of slot 1 is group 0, IRQ0, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTB of slot 1 is group 1, IRQ1, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTC of slot 1 is group 1, IRQ2, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTD of slot 1 is group 1, IRQ3, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTA of slot 2 is group 1, IRQ1, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTB of slot 2 is group 1, IRQ2, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTC of slot 2 is group 1, IRQ3, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- #INTD of slot 2 is group 0, IRQ0, level low sensitive on the MPC5200B PIC
- ↑ Tom Shanley / Don Anderson: PCI System Architecture. Mindshare Inc.
- ↑ MPC5200B User's Manual Page 7-7
- ↑ PCI Bus Bindings to Open Firmware.
- ↑ Open Firmware Recommended Practice: Interrupt Mapping
- ↑ PCI interrupts are always level low sensitive.
- ↑ Lite5200B Evaluation Board
- ↑ It is common practice to use upper address lines to serve IDSEL wires.
- ↑ MPC5200B User's Manual Page 10-69 and 10-70


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Five things to know about Rutgers
Notre Dame takes on Rutgers just 20 miles east of the Scarlet Knights campus, but the Irish (8-4) may very well be the hometown favorite.
Daniel Duggan, Rutgers beat writer for NJ.com, sheds some light on the Scarlet Knights' (6-6) newly minted starting quarterback Chas Dodd, the return of running back Paul James and what went wrong for Rutgers this year.
Question: Rutgers followed a 9-win season by barely qualifying for a bowl this year. What were the expectations this season and went wrong?
Daniel Duggan: "The expectations were high entering the season. With Rutgers playing in the weak American Athletic Conference, there was a belief that the team could land the conference's BCS bid. That seemed realistic early on, as the Scarlet Knights started 4-1 with only a 52-51 overtime loss to Fresno State in the season opener. They were competitive in a big game at Louisville, losing 24-10, but that started a slide that they never recovered from. There were a number of factors that led them off the rails, but the biggest were inconsistent play by quarterback Gary Nova, an injury to running back Paul James and a porous pass defense that shattered the school record for passing yards allowed."
Q: After a quarterback quandary, Chas Dodd seems to be Rutgers' guy for Saturday. What should Notre Dame expect from him and why was he chosen over Gary Nova?
Duggan: "Dodd will start on Saturday. He's not the most physically imposing quarterback and he's not going to blow anyone away with his arm strength.
"But he's a senior with 17 career starts who isn't going to be rattled by the stage or the opponent. Dodd is steady and makes good decisions, which was not Nova's strong suit. A case could be made that the coaching staff stuck with Nova too long this season. He has flashes of brilliance, but he can never escape his problem with interceptions. Dodd is a safer option, albeit with less upside."
Q: How do you peg the Scarlet Knights' defense? They have one of the top rush defenses in the country, but Rutgers gives up nearly 30 points a game.
Duggan: "It's hard to pin down just how good the run defense is because teams didn't bother challenging it much when yards were so easy to come by through the air. That said, the Knights would love it if Notre Dame comes out and tries to run the ball at them all day.
"The pass defense is a major weakness, ranking 120th in the nation in passing yards allowed. There's been a revolving door in the secondary due to injuries and transfers, leaving a mostly inexperienced group. The schemes were highly questionable, as they got beat week after week by the same type of plays — bubble screens and deep in-cuts. They¹ve been torched by spread offenses all season, and seemingly have failed to make any adjustments. Rutgers fired defensive coordinator Dave Cohen after the regular-season finale, but it's hard to imagine that fixing all of the problems."
Q: Who stands out on either side of the ball? Now that running back Paul James is healthy again, is he the best player on the team?
Duggan: "I'd give James the nod as the most important player on the team. He was second in the nation in rushing after four games, but then he injured his leg and missed the next four games. The offense struggled in his absence and it should get a boost now that he's back and close to 100 percent.
"Wide receiver Brandon Coleman is a beast physically (6-foot-6, 220 pounds) and has declared for the NFL Draft, but his production has been underwhelming this season. Rutgers is expected to be without its most dangerous receiver Leonte Carroo, who missed the final two games of the season with an upper body injury.
"Defensively, Steve Longa has been a rock at middle linebacker, leading the team with 111 tackles as a redshirt freshman. Up front, sophomore defensive tackle Darius Hamilton has been getting better every game. He¹s undersized (6-4, 260) so it will be interesting to see him match-up against Notre Dame's big line, but he's established himself as a force."
Q: Notre Dame is a heavy favorite, but a good showing from Rutgers could help boost its bid to become "New York City's team." How do you see Saturday playing out?
Duggan: "A win would be particularly big for Rutgers because there has been a black cloud hanging over the program for the last two months. Between the blowout losses, a bullying scandal with the since fired defensive coordinator, and a wave of decommitments from recruits, this is a team desperate for something positive, especially with the impending move to the Big Ten.
"There's plenty of motivation, but I don't see that overcoming the disparity between the teams. Rutgers hasn't beaten a team with a winning record all season and it's hard to envision that changing, particularly with Brian Kelly having three weeks to come up with a game plan to attack this defense."