Pope Francis follows chosen namesake - the enigmatic Francis of Assisi

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You should learn more about St. Francis of Assisi if you want to understand the rather radical and eye opening actions of this most unusual Pope.  Just 120 days into his historic election to be Pope, Francis has demonstrated a passion and devotion to one St. Francis of Assisi.

 

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina the new Pope Francis has electrified the somewhat complacent Catholics of the world while sending shock waves through the ancient "Curia" running the Vatican in Rome.

 

 

After four months as Pope he still refuses to move into the plush and private Pope's apartment in the Vatican.  Descriptions make it sound like a penthouse overlooking Central Park.  But our Francis chooses to stay in the Vatican Guesthouse rather than the Papal Residency, while dining with the mere mortals sharing the visitors quarters.

 

So that makes him the first American Pope.  The first Pope from the southern hemisphere.  The first Jesuit Pope.

 

 

BBC News

 

14 March 2013 Last updated at 05:16 ET

 

How many Roman Catholics are there in the world?

 

 

There are an estimated 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, according to Vatican figures. More than 40% of the world's Catholics live in Latin America - but Africa has seen the biggest growth in Catholic congregations in recent years.

 

Latin America accounts for 483 million Catholics, or 41.3% of the total Catholic population. Of the 10 countries in the world with the most Catholics, four are in Latin America. Brazil has the highest Catholic population of any country. The figure was put at 123 million in the last Brazilian census and as high as 150 million in 2010 figures compiled by the World Christian Database. Italy has the most Catholics in Europe, with 57 million, while DR Congo has the biggest Catholic population in Africa, ranking ninth in the world with almost 36 million.

 

 

There are currently an estimated 6.7 billion people on the planet Earth. Approximately 33% of those, or 2.2 billion, consider themselves Christian. That makes Christians the largest religion in the world by far. However, Islam is currently growing at a higher rate than Christianity. Just over half of those Christians, or about 1.2 billion, are Roman Catholic (with some additional 240 million Eastern Orthodox).

 

That makes Roman Catholics, by an overwhelming margin, the largest “denomination” of any religion on the planet. No other Christian “denomination” comes anywhere close to comparing. The only other religious entities that can even start to compare in size are the Sunni Muslims (estimated at 940 million) and the Vishnuism Hindus (580 million) , but neither compare in organization, unity, reach, and influence next to that of the Catholic Church.

 

 

So the Pope has a pretty sizeable flock to start with but there has been a lot of drifting by Catholics the past few decades.  There are a lot of Catholics who would like to find a reason to get more devoted to their faith and Francis may be the key to the return of the fallen faithful sons or daughters.

 

 

Today he travels to the Rio De Janeiro slums in Brazil while a crowd of one million people will join him on the beach to pray for the poor.  With a ready smile and a hand out to the people Pope Francis is well on his way to becoming one of the most popular and charismatic of the 266 Popes that have presided over the Roman Catholic Church.

 

But about his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, there is no mystery why he is so drawn to such a priest from nearly a thousand years ago when you know the story of St. Francis.  Here is a brief account of his remarkable and clearly inspiring life of St. Francis of Assisi.

 

 

Catholic Online

 

 

St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan Order who was born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181.

 

In 1182, Pietro Bernardone returned from a trip to France to find out his wife had given birth to a son. Far from being excited or apologetic because he'd been gone, Pietro was furious because she'd had his new son baptized Giovanni after John the Baptist. The last thing Pietro wanted in his son was a man of God -- he wanted a man of business, a cloth merchant like he was, and he especially wanted a son who would reflect his infatuation with France. So he renamed his son Francesco -- which is the equivalent of calling him Frenchman.

 

Francis enjoyed a very rich easy life growing up because of his father's wealth and the permissiveness of the times. From the beginning everyone -- and I mean everyone -- loved Francis. He was constantly happy, charming, and a born leader. If he was picky, people excused him. If he was ill, people took care of him. If he was so much of a dreamer he did poorly in school, no one minded. In many ways he was too easy to like for his own good. No one tried to control him or teach him.

 

 

As he grew up, Francis became the leader of a crowd of young people who spent their nights in wild parties. Thomas of Celano, his biographer who knew him well, said, "In other respects an exquisite youth, he attracted to himself a whole retinue of young people addicted to evil and accustomed to vice." Francis himself said, "I lived in sin" during that time.

 

Francis fulfilled every hope of Pietro's -- even falling in love with France. He loved the songs of France, the romance of France, and especially the free adventurous troubadours of France who wandered through Europe. And despite his dreaming, Francis was also good at business. But Francis wanted more, than wealth. But not holiness! Francis wanted to be a noble, a knight. Battle was the best place to win the glory and prestige he longed for. He got his first chance when Assisi declared war on their longtime enemy, the nearby town of Perugia.

 

Most of the troops from Assisi were butchered in the fight. Only those wealthy enough to expect to be ransomed were taken prisoner. At last Francis was among the nobility like he always wanted to be...but chained in a harsh, dark dungeon. All accounts say that he never lost his happy manner in that horrible place. Finally, after a year in the dungeon, he was ransomed. Strangely, the experience didn't seem to change him. He gave himself to partying with as much joy and abandon as he had before the battle.

 

 

The experience didn't change what he wanted from life either: Glory. Finally a call for knights for the Fourth Crusade gave him a chance for his dream. But before he left Francis had to have a suit of armor and a horse -- no problem for the son of a wealthy father. And not just any suit of armor would do but one decorated with gold with a magnificent cloak. Any relief we feel in hearing that Francis gave the cloak to a poor knight will be destroyed by the boasts that Francis left behind that he would return a prince.

 

But Francis never got farther than one day's ride from Assisi. There he had a dream in which God told him he had it all wrong and told him to return home. And return home he did. What must it have been like to return without ever making it to battle -- the boy who wanted nothing more than to be liked was humiliated, laughed at, called a coward by the village and raged at by his father for the money wasted on armor.

 

Francis' conversion did not happen over night. God had waited for him for twenty-five years and now it was Francis' turn to wait. Francis started to spend more time in prayer. He went off to a cave and wept for his sins. Sometimes God's grace overwhelmed him with joy. But life couldn't just stop for God. There was a business to run, customers to wait on.

 

 

One day while riding through the countryside, Francis, the man who loved beauty, who was so picky about food, who hated deformity, came face to face with a leper. Repelled by the appearance and the smell of the leper, Francis nevertheless jumped down from his horse and kissed the hand of the leper. When his kiss of peace was returned, Francis was filled with joy. As he rode off, he turned around for a last wave, and saw that the leper had disappeared. He always looked upon it as a test from God...that he had passed.

 

His search for conversion led him to the ancient church at San Damiano. While he was praying there, he heard Christ on the crucifix speak to him, "Francis, repair my church." Francis assumed this meant church with a small c -- the crumbling building he was in. Acting again in his impetuous way, he took fabric from his father's shop and sold it to get money to repair the church. His father saw this as an act of theft -- and put together with Francis' cowardice, waste of money, and his growing disinterest in money made Francis seem more like a madman than his son. Pietro dragged Francis before the bishop and in front of the whole town demanded that Francis return the money and renounce all rights as his heir.

 

The bishop was very kind to Francis; he told him to return the money and said God would provide. That was all Francis needed to hear. He not only gave back the money but stripped off all his clothes -- the clothes his father had given him -- until he was wearing only a hair shirt. In front of the crowd that had gathered he said, "Pietro Bernardone is no longer my father. From now on I can say with complete freedom, 'Our Father who art in heaven.'" Wearing nothing but castoff rags, he went off into the freezing woods -- singing. And when robbers beat him later and took his clothes, he climbed out of the ditch and went off singing again. From then on Francis had nothing...and everything.

 

 

Francis went back to what he considered God's call. He begged for stones and rebuilt the San Damiano church with his own hands, not realizing that it was the Church with a capital C that God wanted repaired. Scandal and avarice were working on the Church from the inside while outside heresies flourished by appealing to those longing for something different or adventurous.

 

Soon Francis started to preach. (He was never a priest, though he was later ordained a deacon under his protest.) Francis was not a reformer; he preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church. Francis must have known about the decay in the Church, but he always showed the Church and its people his utmost respect. When someone told him of a priest living openly with a woman and asked him if that meant the Mass was polluted, Francis went to the priest, knelt before him, and kissed his hands -- because those hands had held God.

 

Slowly companions came to Francis, people who wanted to follow his life of sleeping in the open, begging for garbage to eat...and loving God. With companions, Francis knew he now had to have some kind of direction to this life so he opened the Bible in three places. He read the command to the rich young man to sell all his good and give to the poor, the order to the apostles to take nothing on their journey, and the demand to take up the cross daily. "Here is our rule," Francis said -- as simple, and as seemingly impossible, as that. He was going to do what no one thought possible any more -- live by the Gospel. Francis took these commands so literally that he made one brother run after the thief who stole his hood and offer him his robe!

 

 

Francis never wanted to found a religious order -- this former knight thought that sounded too military. He thought of what he was doing as expressing God's brotherhood. His companions came from all walks of life, from fields and towns, nobility and common people, universities, the Church, and the merchant class. Francis practiced true equality by showing honor, respect, and love to every person whether they were beggar or pope.

 

Francis' brotherhood included all of God's creation. Much has been written about Francis' love of nature but his relationship was deeper than that. We call someone a lover of nature if they spend their free time in the woods or admire its beauty. But Francis really felt that nature, all God's creations, were part of his brotherhood. The sparrow was as much his brother as the pope.

 

In one famous story, Francis preached to hundreds of birds about being thankful to God for their wonderful clothes, for their independence, and for God's care. The story tells us the birds stood still as he walked among him, only flying off when he said they could leave.

 

 

 

Another famous story involves a wolf that had been eating human beings. Francis intervened when the town wanted to kill the wolf and talked the wolf into never killing again. The wolf became a pet of the townspeople who made sure that he always had plenty to eat.

 

Following the Gospel literally, Francis and his companions went out to preach two by two. At first, listeners were understandably hostile to these men in rags trying to talk about God's love. People even ran from them for fear they'd catch this strange madness! And they were right. Because soon these same people noticed that these barefoot beggars wearing sacks seemed filled with constant joy. They celebrated life. And people had to ask themselves: Could one own nothing and be happy? Soon those who had met them with mud and rocks, greeted them with bells and smiles.

 

Francis did not try to abolish poverty, he tried to make it holy. When his friars met someone poorer than they, they would eagerly rip off the sleeve of their habit to give to the person. They worked for all necessities and only begged if they had to. But Francis would not let them accept any money. He told them to treat coins as if they were pebbles in the road. When the bishop showed horror at the friars' hard life, Francis said, "If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them." Possessing something was the death of love for Francis. Also, Francis reasoned, what could you do to a man who owns nothing? You can't starve a fasting man, you can't steal from someone who has no money, you can't ruin someone who hates prestige. They were truly free.

 

 

Francis was a man of action. His simplicity of life extended to ideas and deeds. If there was a simple way, no matter how impossible it seemed, Francis would take it. So when Francis wanted approval for his brotherhood, he went straight to Rome to see Pope Innocent III. You can imagine what the pope thought when this beggar approached him! As a matter of fact he threw Francis out. But when he had a dream that this tiny man in rags held up the tilting Lateran basilica, he quickly called Francis back and gave him permission to preach.

 

Sometimes this direct approach led to mistakes that he corrected with the same spontaneity that he made them. Once he ordered a brother who hesitated to speak because he stuttered to go preach half-naked. When Francis realized how he had hurt someone he loved he ran to town, stopped the brother, took off his own clothes, and preached instead.

 

Francis acted quickly because he acted from the heart; he didn't have time to put on a role. Once he was so sick and exhausted, his companions borrowed a mule for him to ride. When the man who owned the mule recognized Francis he said, "Try to be as virtuous as everyone thinks you are because many have a lot of confidence in you." Francis dropped off the mule and knelt before the man to thank him for his advice.

 

 

Another example of his directness came when he decided to go to Syria to convert the Moslems while the Fifth Crusade was being fought. In the middle of a battle, Francis decided to do the simplest thing and go straight to the sultan to make peace. When he and his companion were captured, the real miracle was that they weren't killed. Instead Francis was taken to the sultan who was charmed by Francis and his preaching. He told Francis, "I would convert to your religion which is a beautiful one -- but both of us would be murdered."

 

Francis did find persecution and martyrdom of a kind -- not among the Moslems, but among his own brothers. When he returned to Italy, he came back to a brotherhood that had grown to 5000 in ten years. Pressure came from outside to control this great movement, to make them conform to the standards of others. His dream of radical poverty was too harsh, people said. Francis responded, "Lord, didn't I tell you they wouldn't trust you?"

 

He finally gave up authority in his order -- but he probably wasn't too upset about it. Now he was just another brother, like he'd always wanted.

 

Francis' final years were filled with suffering as well as humiliation. Praying to share in Christ's passion he had a vision received the stigmata, the marks of the nails and the lance wound that Christ suffered, in his own body.

 

 

Years of poverty and wandering had made Francis ill. When he began to go blind, the pope ordered that his eyes be operated on. This meant cauterizing his face with a hot iron. Francis spoke to "Brother Fire": "Brother Fire, the Most High has made you strong and beautiful and useful. Be courteous to me now in this hour, for I have always loved you, and temper your heat so that I can endure it." And Francis reported that Brother Fire had been so kind that he felt nothing at all.

 

How did Francis respond to blindness and suffering? That was when he wrote his beautiful Canticle of the Sun that expresses his brotherhood with creation in praising God.

 

Francis never recovered from this illness. He died on October 4, 1226 at the age of 45. Francis is considered the founder of all Franciscan orders and the patron saint of ecologists and merchants.

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What do the Italians think of Pope Francis?

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Here is the latest account from the Italian News

 

Italian Allegro

 

Pope’s popularity transcends Catholicism in Italy. Polls reveal more people are drawn to pews since Cardinal Bergoglio became Pope Francis. It seems the popularity of the italo-argentine pontiff dwindled concern about priest sex-abuses scandals.

 

(ANSA) – Vatican City, April 12 – Ever since he was named pontiff one month ago and opted to present himself without the traditional papal red cape trimmed with ermine, Pope Francis has had no shortage of admirers drawn to his modest, down-to-earth touch. That popularity extends to Catholics and non-Catholics alike in Italy, according to a new poll Friday that shows four out of five Italians view Francis favorably.

 

 

Fully 92% of Catholics told pollsters IPR Marketing that they found Francis to be close to the faithful, humble, determined, appealing to the young, authoritative, and also sincere. About 77% of non-Catholics expressed similar positive opinions.

 

Although 60% of Italians polled say they want the newly elected pontiff to give top priority to dealing with sexual abuse by priests, that number has fallen from one month ago, according to the survey. Last month, as many as 67% wanted the new pope to deal with the long-standing problem of priest pedophilia, said the opinion poll, which surveyed the opinions of 1,000 Italians.

 

 

Opinions may have been swayed by the new face of the Catholic Church, who, unlike his predecessor, is seen as a Vatican outsider with no direct involvement in the priest sex-abuse cover-ups. Benedict XVI, who abdicated in February over “declining physical and mental strength”, had directly overseen the issue when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s doctrinal watchdog, before becoming pope.

 

Last week, Francis pledged to maintain the same line of “decisive” action adopted by Benedict in dealing with child sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church. In a meeting with Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Muller, who is in charge of paedophilia issues in his role as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Francis said he would “continue in the line wanted by Benedict XVI”.

 

 

A Vatican statement explained that this meant “acting decisively as regards cases of sexual abuse, promoting measures that protect minors, above all; help for those who have suffered such violence in the past; necessary procedures against those found guilty; (and) the commitment of bishops’ conferences in formulating and implementing the necessary directives in this is area that is so important for the church’s witness and credibility”.

 

The Catholic Church has been rocked in recent years by a long series of paedophilia scandals, most of which emerged under Benedict’s eight-year papacy, although in many cases the abuse dates back decades and was hidden by the clergy. In cases in countries including the United States, Ireland, Australia, Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Germany, Belgium and Italy, the Church was found to have discouraged victims from reporting abuse to the police.

 

There were also a number of documented cases of Church authorities moving paedophile priests away from one post to another, where they repeated their crimes with fresh victims. Benedict’s initial response to the scandals was depicted by many as being defensive. The former pope also personally came under fire for allegedly failing to respond properly to several abuse cases when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church’s doctrinal watchdog.

 

 

But he became increasingly open about sex abuse, apologised for it and in 2010 he issued new Church instructions on dealing with paedophile priests, making it mandatory for cases to be reported to the police. Benedict also prayed with abuse victims on many of his trips overseas, including to Malta and Britain.

 

But the German theologian’s pastoral skills have so far been eclipsed by the warmth of Latin America’s first pope, who is proving to be something of a draw to the pews. According to the poll Friday, 13% of Catholics in Italy said they were attending mass more often because of his appeal. All of this despite virtually no doctrinal differences between him and the pope emeritus.

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The NSA Secrets - What haven't they told us?

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Just think of the possibilities.  Maybe the "other stuff" Edward Snowden hasn't told us has nothing to do with the ramshackle Operation Prism run by NSA.  What did they call it?  A clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program.

 

So far we know our government knows everything we are doing on the Internet, on cell phones and land lines, and even post office info on everything you got or received in the mail.  That ain't bad for what used to be an unknown spy program.

 

That means our government has figured out how to get digital information on you from the Internet, phones, email and snail mail and they promise they won't use it to violate your right to privacy.  Do you buy that?

 

 

So what else might we find out is being done with taxpayer money and top secret status?

 

How about Remote Viewing?  It has long been rumored that NSA had a secret Remote Viewing project to determine if they could use out-of-body travel to infiltrate Soviet missile sites.

 

 

According to The Farsight Institute, the following is their explanation.

 

What is Remote Viewing? Here's a Simple Explanation ...

 

Remote viewing is a controlled and trainable mental process involving psi (or psychic ability). Remote-viewing procedures were originally developed in laboratories funded by the United States military and intelligence services and used for espionage purposes. The scientific understanding of the remote-viewing phenomenon has greatly advanced in recent years, and as a result the process of remote viewing can now be reliably demonstrated in both laboratory and operational settings.

 

 

There are a number of styles of remote-viewing procedures that are popularly practiced, such as Scientific Remote Viewing (SRV), Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV), Hawaii Remote Viewers' Guild procedures (HRVG), as well as a few others. Remote viewers use one or more of these styles to gather descriptive data of a "target," which is usually some place or event at some point in time. Remote viewing is always done under blind conditions, which means that the remote viewer must know nothing about the target when conducting the remote-viewing session.

 

All of the various styles of remote viewing require both training and regular practice in order for a remote viewer to become proficient. Remote viewing is normally considered a controlled shifting of awareness that is performed in the normal waking state of consciousness, and it does not typically involve an out-of-body experience, hypnosis, an altered state of consciousness, or channeling.

 

 

Remote viewing is often performed in laboratory experiments involving psi functioning. The targets used in such experiments are normally considered "verifiable," which means that everything that needs to be known about such targets either has been or can be determined so that the remote-viewing data can be compared with the target facts. A great deal of research is currently being done with regard to remote-viewing processes. Researchers are trying to understand the underlying mechanism of psi functioning, as well as to develop theories that explain various known and repeatable phenomena associated with remote viewing.

 

It is a matter of historical record that remote viewing has been used operationally in the past with considerable success by the U.S. government for espionage purposes, and a number of books recounting such programs have been published. There was even an official (and largely positive) evaluation of a significant part of the government's early remote-viewing program. Popular interest in remote viewing is often associated with this history. Current levels of governmental support for remote-viewing research and operations in the United States are not publicly known, although it is commonly assumed that efforts to utilize remote viewing for espionage purposes continues today, both in the U.S. and elsewhere.

 

 

The Farsight Institute is a nonprofit research and educational organization that is dedicated to understanding the remote-viewing phenomenon itself through the process of scientific experimentation. Our mission is to investigate the process of remote viewing itself. It is our belief that a more complete understanding of the remote-viewing phenomenon will have collateral benefits to much of science and society. Due to how the remote-viewing phenomenon manifests in controlled experiments, the remote-viewing phenomenon appears to be based on quantum-processes. Much of the research done at The Farsight Institute blends the theory of quantum mechanics with interpretations of experimental remote-viewing data. This has lead to new insights into the remote-viewing phenomenon as well as the nature of time and physical reality. For example, new research indicates that alternate futures actually do exist, and that the past exists simultaneously with the present. New research also suggests that at least information can be transferred in a manner that violates relativistic limitations of the speed of light, and that information transfer across time does not require enormous energy consumption that would be associated with worm hole singularities. These questions are among the most profound addressed by science today.

 

 

In simple terms, a person at a lab with handlers leaves his body and travels to a designated location where he or she can observe what is going on.  It is not known whether they could actually interact with people in that existence.  Any success in time travel either forward into the future or back in time has been kept from the public.

 

But imagine the consequences.  What would happen if you could go back in time and warn Lincoln that he was going to be shot at Ford's Theater.  If you could convince him you were legit and he skipped the theater engagement the future would be radically changed.

 

 

On another note, since you are traveling out-of-body that puts you into the spiritual realm so does that mean you could interact with angels, or demons?  What would happen if someone encountered a powerful fallen angel, the epitome of evil on earth?  Could the physical limitations of the human brain even start to absorb the magnitude of such an encounter?

 

 

Participants in the secret remote viewing experiments sometimes died in the midst of encountering some form of demon, evil or absolute darkness out in the spiritual realm.  It was as if they died of fright.

 

 

Certainly remote viewing was possible.  I knew a former audio engineer named Robert Monroe who actually patented out-of-body travel techniques through his Monroe Institute.  He dedicated his life to finding ways to use such techniques to help people trapped in their bodies by mental illness, altruism and ADHD among many other techniques.

 

Robert Monroe

 

I joined his Foundation which then became his Institute back in the 1970's and watched in amazement as he used science to study the metaphysical world.  In fact we did a lot of experimenting with another of his inventions, hemi-sync.

 

Hemi-Sync is short for Hemispheric Synchronization, also known as brainwave synchronization. Monroe indicated that the technique synchronizes the two hemispheres of one's brain, thereby creating a 'frequency-following response' designed to evoke certain effects. Hemi-Sync has been used for many purposes, including relaxation and sleep induction, learning and memory aids, helping those with physical and mental difficulties, and reaching altered states of consciousness through the use of sound.

 

Robert Monroe (1915-1995) was the pioneer in the investigation of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and the author of the ground-breaking book entitled Journeys out of the Body. His record of out of body experiences in places unbound by time or death has comforted millions of people who have encountered paranormal incidents.

 

 

Unpredictably and without his willing it, Monroe found himself leaving his physical body and traveling via a second body to locales far removed from any physical or spiritual reality he could comprehend. In the ensuing years, Monroe and his group began work on means and methods of inducing and controlling this and other forms of consciousness in their laboratory. As specialists in creating patterns of effective sound, they used this base for their research.

 

Their efforts gradually produced significant results, and attracted International interest among people from all walks of life. In 1974, he founded the Monroe Institute and began conducting learning seminars in self-control of human consciousness. Three patents were issued to Monroe for the methods and techniques so generated, and the trademark, HEMI-SYNC, also became broad public knowledge. Other works by Monroe are Far Journeys, and Ultimate Journey.

 

Robert Monroe

 

The Monroe Institute

 

Our Vision

The Global Awakening of Humanity

Our Mission
To enhance worldwide cooperative efforts in furthering the exploration of consciousness, expanded awareness, and discovery of self.

The Monroe Institute provides experiential education programs facilitating the personal exploration of human consciousness. Over the last 30+ years, tens of thousands of people have attended the Institute’s residential and outreach programs, and millions have benefited from our educational materials. The Institute admits students of any race, color, creed, and national or ethnic origin.

The Monroe Institute also serves as the core of a research affiliation investigating the evolution of human consciousness and making related information available to the public. The Institute is devoted to the premise that focused consciousness contains solutions to the major issues of human experience.

A greater understanding of such consciousness can be achieved through coordinated research efforts using an interdisciplinary approach.  For this reason the Institute is working in collaboration with researchers and clinicians in many areas, especially through university and clinical collaborations and our Professional membership and Board of Advisors. 

The results of such research efforts are meaningful only if there are practical applications—something of value for our contemporary culture. As a nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to the exploration of human consciousness, the Institute proposes to introduce or enhance abilities that will constructively change humankind’s direction and destiny.

Ours is a mission of service in which we use the technology created at The Monroe Institute to better the lives of all those we can reach.  Bob Monroe wanted to provide something of value to humanity, help people lead better and more fulfilling lives. 

We strive to carry out that legacy by reaching out to communities that can benefit from this technology, not only those who are able to come to our programs.   We are working on several projects with this intent.

The Monroe Institute serves as the core of a research affiliation investigating the evolution of human consciousness and making related information available to the public. The Monroe Institute also provides experiential education programs facilitating the personal exploration of human consciousness. Over the last 30+ years, thousands of people have attended the Institute's residential and outreach programs, and millions have benefited from our educational materials.

We are a nonprofit charitable organization furthering the evolution of human consciousness through our Education Programs and associated Research. The Institute is internationally known for its participatory educational programs that provide opportunities for the personal exploration of expanded states of consciousness. The Monroe Institute admits students of any race, color, creed, and /or national or ethnic origin.

So I say NSA could tell us their experiences about remote viewing and other metaphysical activity or do we just have to wait to see if Snowden releases it in his next round of exposing secrets.

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Trump Shines Light on Clinton Aide Huma Abedin & Anthony Weiner - Master at Wiggle Room Antics - Bing, Bing, Bing!

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Anthony Weiner campaign fleet

In case you do not remember, Anthony Weiner is back in the spotlight thanks to Donald Trump talking about the Hillary Clinton top aide who is also the wife of the disgraced Weiner man.  While Trump focused on her access to all Hillary documents on the private email server, other questions remain as well.

One is whether she is being investigated for being paid by both the State Department and Clinton Foundation, perhaps at the same time, as she was handling classified documents for Hillary. By the way, Huma also had a private email account on the server in the Clinton closet or Colorado bathroom.

This was the last report on the antics.  

  

So Anthony had so much pride in his rather limited physique that he lit up the Internet with his nude self-portrait photos.  That was when he was a Congressman from New York.  When the photos, hardly an asset for such an ass, were exposed so to speak he was forced to resign from Congress.

A year later, knowing what the people were missing not having him in public office, the Weiner man is running for Mayor of New York City and his campaign slogan must be "It's time for change - make the Big Apple the Bigger Banana" or some such nonsense.

Once again he gets caught when his I phone again gets fascinated with his perceived Rambo body and he can't resist the empowerment of sharing his joy with the women of the world.

So once again we have a mea culpa for a mea big opinion of ones' own self.  This time he had to recruit his wife.

In a public statement that one political strategist said hearkened to the Hillary Clinton days, Huma Abedin said Tuesday she’s forgiven her husband, former Representative Anthony Weiner, for his sexting scandals — including the latest, which went public this week — and said most marriages encounter difficulties and challenges.

“Our marriage, like many others, has had its ups and its downs,” she said, in what The New York Post reported was her first speaking engagement at a press conference. “It took a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy to get to a place where I could forgive Anthony."

Huma Abedin is a well respected aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and this time her awkward defense of her goofy husband seemed far more political than personal.  One could only wonder how she could let herself become such a ripe subject for yet another tragic country song and not kick his skinny butt out the door.

It is sad.

Sad for his well meaning wife.  Sad for his son who was born between his two disgraceful episodes of cyber sex simulation or whatever you want to call it.  Sad for the Jewish community of New York City he claims to represent and sad for the voters of New York City who hardly need another ego driven sex freak on the public dole.

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