Today's DailyOM Offerings...
March 5, 2010
Turning Down Water for Air
James Yuill
2008
British solo musician James Yuill weaves sublime pop music via his mastery of combining electronic aspects like keyboards, synths and programming with acoustic elements such as guitars and his sweetly hazy singing for a genre unofficially dubbed 'folktronica.' Yuill's blending of the most advanced electro-acoustic effects with dreamy but up-tempo songwriting makes Turning Down Water for Air as energizing yet therapeutic as the low tide evolutionary walk its title evokes. Creating the charged vibe of a first date picnic when it might start pouring any minute, this is pop both mellow and muscular, bouncy yet calm as the eye of a hurricane.
The opener "You Always Do" starts things off in an achingly melancholic folk vein, with minimal synths and maximum acoustic guitar all decked out with restrained yearning. "This Sweet Love" bounces along some ominous acoustic guitar with Yuill's dreamy voice coasting over unobtrusive drum tracks, singing about "Walking on the beach with me," with a slinky break for a bridge of chiming synth solos. Throughout the album, a lush sense of possibility emerges against the melancholy pain and accompanying amniotic balms, with Yuill keeping one ear always focused in on the intricate shadings of genuine emotional experience and the other out over the water, capturing the murky emotional essence of the ocean's ceaseless saltwater tide.
The final track, "Somehow" gradually works up to an invigorating climax before returning to its dreamy guitar-led wanderings as Yuill sings the melancholy lyrics to his nagging unconscious drives: "You're always around me / you sit on my shoulder." and "I know you want me to hurt myself." As his inner demons are filtered out, Turning Down Water for Air becomes a beacon of sanity even as it quietly delves into personal madness headfirst. James Yuill's habit of playing solo shows surrounded by instruments indicates his fearlessness in facing his problems, audience, and self, head-on. Rarely has personal discovery been so universally felt, so warm and so alive with energized tempo and heart, like a hand lifting you out of the storm-tossed tide and into a warm emergency blanket by a roaring rescue team fire.
March 5, 2010
A Wellspring of Wisdom
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
The world can serve as your inspiration today, whether you are creating an artistic masterpiece, putting the finishing touches on a professional project, or attempting grand feats of self-improvement. You may find as you consider how you can achieve your goals that you are granted sudden insights that seem to materialize fully formed in your mind. Though you may look to the universe for answers, this newfound awareness likely comes from within and is the result of your emotional and intellectual maturity. Should you find yourself at a loss for ideas, meditation and soul-searching can help you turn vague notions into refined plans. You’ll likely feel that some new part of yourself has been awakened today and is guiding you toward eventual success.
When we accept that there is much wisdom that can be gleaned from intuition, we tap into a wellspring of insights that are perfectly suited to our individual circumstances. Though we may receive much well-meant advice from others, the guidance they offer will often be skewed by perspective and therefore incongruous. In looking within ourselves for counsel, we ensure that the information we receive is both appropriate to the situation and geared toward our unique needs. Since we know ourselves better than anyone in our lives can ever know us and have made a study of our inner selves through reflection, we instinctively know what is best for us. As you strive to cultivate awareness within yourself today, you’ll discover that there is a wealth of knowledge in your soul.
March 5, 2010
As Good As Your Word
Promises
Be careful with the promises you make as they are energetic vows taken seriously by our souls and the universe.
Ever since human beings could speak to one another, they have been making promises and keeping them or not keeping them. Those who keep their promises are regarded as people of integrity, while those who don’t keep their promises are regarded as people who at best can’t be taken seriously and at worst can’t be trusted. Sometimes we forget how powerful our words are, and we use them haphazardly or unconsciously, creating expectations that are never fulfilled, leaving disappointment and distrust in our wake.
On an even deeper level, there are promises we may have made to ourselves that we don’t remember because they have slipped into our unconscious. An early heartache may have been followed by a promise never to trust love again. Without realizing it, we may be fulfilling that promise and wondering why our love life looks so grim. At an even deeper level, many people who recall past lives become aware that they made a promise lifetimes ago that they are still keeping. For example, a vow of poverty taken in a lifetime as a monk may be holding someone back from fulfilling his earning potential now. Upon realizing that we have made a promise we no longer wish to be beholden to, we can perform a ritual of requesting release from that bond. In doing so, we clear ourselves of outmoded connections and patterns, returning ourselves to a clean slate. Then we can resolve to remember that our word is sacred and to be very conscious of any promises we make to ourselves or to others.
We may ask to be released from any promises made to ourselves or others in our present, past, or future lives, consciously or unconsciously, that are holding us back from fulfilling our greatest good. We may ask that love, light, and healing be sent to any souls who have suffered from our inability to be true to our word, including ourselves. We can ask for the wisdom to do our best and from this point forward to be true to our word, promising only what we truly intend to deliver. The resulting clear conscience and liberated energy will illustrate this truth: We are only as good as our word.
March 5, 2010
The Living Matrix, Crystal Bowls, and The Fifth Agreement
Gift of The Week
The Living Matrix: A Film on the New Science of Healing(DVD) - The Living Matrix uncovers new ideas about the intricate web of factors that determine our health. The filmmakers talk with a group of dedicated scientists, psychologists, bio-energetic researchers and holistic practitioners who are finding healing potential in new places. In the film, researchers and others who faced health challenges put the science in perspective when they tell their stories. Modern medicine has no framework for explaining these events, often dismissing them as spontaneous remissions... or the result of some kind of placebo effect. But what if we had the scientific basis to not only explain the phenomenon, but the! means to deliberately initiate these "miracle cures?"
View The Living Matrix
Crystal Bowls Chakra Chants (CD) - A master teacher and composer in the field of sound healing, Jonathan Goldman knows exactly what combination of tones, overtones, and sub frequencies will activate your healing centers and wake you to a higher consciousness. For Crystal Bowls Chakra Chants he employs 20 different harmonically tuned quartz singing crystal bowls in his pursuit of creating sounds that can enlighten minds and "awaken" Kundalini energy in the spine.
Listen To Sound Clips
The Fifth Agreement (book) - Since 1997, The Four Agreements has transformed the lives of millions of people around the world with a simple but profound message. Now bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz and his son, don Jose Ruiz, collaborate with this powerful sequel The Fifth Agreement. The Four Agreements provides the foundation for breaking thousands of agreements that create needless suffering and with The Fifth Agreement you recover all the power of your authenticity, which is who you really are when you are born.
Read Excerpt
Turning Down Water for Air
James Yuill
2008
British solo musician James Yuill weaves sublime pop music via his mastery of combining electronic aspects like keyboards, synths and programming with acoustic elements such as guitars and his sweetly hazy singing for a genre unofficially dubbed 'folktronica.' Yuill's blending of the most advanced electro-acoustic effects with dreamy but up-tempo songwriting makes Turning Down Water for Air as energizing yet therapeutic as the low tide evolutionary walk its title evokes. Creating the charged vibe of a first date picnic when it might start pouring any minute, this is pop both mellow and muscular, bouncy yet calm as the eye of a hurricane.
The opener "You Always Do" starts things off in an achingly melancholic folk vein, with minimal synths and maximum acoustic guitar all decked out with restrained yearning. "This Sweet Love" bounces along some ominous acoustic guitar with Yuill's dreamy voice coasting over unobtrusive drum tracks, singing about "Walking on the beach with me," with a slinky break for a bridge of chiming synth solos. Throughout the album, a lush sense of possibility emerges against the melancholy pain and accompanying amniotic balms, with Yuill keeping one ear always focused in on the intricate shadings of genuine emotional experience and the other out over the water, capturing the murky emotional essence of the ocean's ceaseless saltwater tide.
The final track, "Somehow" gradually works up to an invigorating climax before returning to its dreamy guitar-led wanderings as Yuill sings the melancholy lyrics to his nagging unconscious drives: "You're always around me / you sit on my shoulder." and "I know you want me to hurt myself." As his inner demons are filtered out, Turning Down Water for Air becomes a beacon of sanity even as it quietly delves into personal madness headfirst. James Yuill's habit of playing solo shows surrounded by instruments indicates his fearlessness in facing his problems, audience, and self, head-on. Rarely has personal discovery been so universally felt, so warm and so alive with energized tempo and heart, like a hand lifting you out of the storm-tossed tide and into a warm emergency blanket by a roaring rescue team fire.
March 5, 2010
A Wellspring of Wisdom
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
The world can serve as your inspiration today, whether you are creating an artistic masterpiece, putting the finishing touches on a professional project, or attempting grand feats of self-improvement. You may find as you consider how you can achieve your goals that you are granted sudden insights that seem to materialize fully formed in your mind. Though you may look to the universe for answers, this newfound awareness likely comes from within and is the result of your emotional and intellectual maturity. Should you find yourself at a loss for ideas, meditation and soul-searching can help you turn vague notions into refined plans. You’ll likely feel that some new part of yourself has been awakened today and is guiding you toward eventual success.
When we accept that there is much wisdom that can be gleaned from intuition, we tap into a wellspring of insights that are perfectly suited to our individual circumstances. Though we may receive much well-meant advice from others, the guidance they offer will often be skewed by perspective and therefore incongruous. In looking within ourselves for counsel, we ensure that the information we receive is both appropriate to the situation and geared toward our unique needs. Since we know ourselves better than anyone in our lives can ever know us and have made a study of our inner selves through reflection, we instinctively know what is best for us. As you strive to cultivate awareness within yourself today, you’ll discover that there is a wealth of knowledge in your soul.
March 5, 2010
As Good As Your Word
Promises
Be careful with the promises you make as they are energetic vows taken seriously by our souls and the universe.
Ever since human beings could speak to one another, they have been making promises and keeping them or not keeping them. Those who keep their promises are regarded as people of integrity, while those who don’t keep their promises are regarded as people who at best can’t be taken seriously and at worst can’t be trusted. Sometimes we forget how powerful our words are, and we use them haphazardly or unconsciously, creating expectations that are never fulfilled, leaving disappointment and distrust in our wake.
On an even deeper level, there are promises we may have made to ourselves that we don’t remember because they have slipped into our unconscious. An early heartache may have been followed by a promise never to trust love again. Without realizing it, we may be fulfilling that promise and wondering why our love life looks so grim. At an even deeper level, many people who recall past lives become aware that they made a promise lifetimes ago that they are still keeping. For example, a vow of poverty taken in a lifetime as a monk may be holding someone back from fulfilling his earning potential now. Upon realizing that we have made a promise we no longer wish to be beholden to, we can perform a ritual of requesting release from that bond. In doing so, we clear ourselves of outmoded connections and patterns, returning ourselves to a clean slate. Then we can resolve to remember that our word is sacred and to be very conscious of any promises we make to ourselves or to others.
We may ask to be released from any promises made to ourselves or others in our present, past, or future lives, consciously or unconsciously, that are holding us back from fulfilling our greatest good. We may ask that love, light, and healing be sent to any souls who have suffered from our inability to be true to our word, including ourselves. We can ask for the wisdom to do our best and from this point forward to be true to our word, promising only what we truly intend to deliver. The resulting clear conscience and liberated energy will illustrate this truth: We are only as good as our word.
March 5, 2010
The Living Matrix, Crystal Bowls, and The Fifth Agreement
Gift of The Week
The Living Matrix: A Film on the New Science of Healing(DVD) - The Living Matrix uncovers new ideas about the intricate web of factors that determine our health. The filmmakers talk with a group of dedicated scientists, psychologists, bio-energetic researchers and holistic practitioners who are finding healing potential in new places. In the film, researchers and others who faced health challenges put the science in perspective when they tell their stories. Modern medicine has no framework for explaining these events, often dismissing them as spontaneous remissions... or the result of some kind of placebo effect. But what if we had the scientific basis to not only explain the phenomenon, but the! means to deliberately initiate these "miracle cures?"
View The Living Matrix
Crystal Bowls Chakra Chants (CD) - A master teacher and composer in the field of sound healing, Jonathan Goldman knows exactly what combination of tones, overtones, and sub frequencies will activate your healing centers and wake you to a higher consciousness. For Crystal Bowls Chakra Chants he employs 20 different harmonically tuned quartz singing crystal bowls in his pursuit of creating sounds that can enlighten minds and "awaken" Kundalini energy in the spine.
Listen To Sound Clips
The Fifth Agreement (book) - Since 1997, The Four Agreements has transformed the lives of millions of people around the world with a simple but profound message. Now bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz and his son, don Jose Ruiz, collaborate with this powerful sequel The Fifth Agreement. The Four Agreements provides the foundation for breaking thousands of agreements that create needless suffering and with The Fifth Agreement you recover all the power of your authenticity, which is who you really are when you are born.
Read Excerpt