The series on the Masters of Enlightenment continues today with a profile of a man who was one of the greatest scientists of all time, and who, through his blend of logic, creative intelligence and intuitive insights, opened our minds to the way the universe operates, and in the process, opened the doors of perception to the realm in which science and spirituality merge.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 and died April 18, 1955. He was a German theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics; his theories also provided the concepts and foundation for quantum physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”

He escaped from Nazi Germany in 1933, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities; he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects such as socialism, international relations and the existence of God. His great intelligence and originality has made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius.

Einstein was a scientist, an artist, a philosopher, a rebel, and a mystic. He was an original thinker, and left his indelible mark in the collective consciousness of the world.

His life’s work earned him Time Magazine’s award in 1999, in their retrospective issue that looked back at the 20th century, as “Man of the Century.”

Young Einstein

While growing up, Albert Einstein had such a spotty track record as a student that no one would have predicted where he would end up. One teacher told the young Einstein, “You will never amount to anything.” Einstein was later expelled from high school and flunked his college entrance exam.

The issue for Einstein as a student was that he did not think in a purely linear way, which is the way the education system generally teaches.

Sadly, the way the education system is constituted these days, it plays a major role in the repression of genius, human potential, and the potential for self-realization and enlightenment.

Many brilliant thinkers who have done much to change the course of humanity are not linear thinkers. They are creative thinkers who see the world in original ways.

If creative thinkers are expected to adjust their thinking from a nonlinear way to a linear one, in order to conform to the one-size-fits-all method of teaching that is the norm in education, they eventually lose their capability for original thinking. And sadly, when this occurs, the world becomes poorer for the experience.

Albert Einstein pointed this out in the case of the 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, who discovered electromagnetism. Einstein said of Faraday’s discovery, “Faraday’s discovery was an audacious mental creation, which we owe chiefly to the fact that Faraday never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely.”

Because of his own spotty track record as a student, once he graduated college, it was only thanks to a family connection that he got a job, as a civil servant in a patent office in Switzerland.

It was while working there in 1905 that he changed the course of history with his discovery of Special Theory of Relativity, which he wrote about in a published paper. Over the next few years, he expounded on Relativity Theory with papers on the nature of light and the General Theory of Relativity.

Einstein’s theories changed the notion of space and time, the notion of mass and energy, the notion of matter and light, and the way they are all perceived.

He opened the door to the understanding that the universe we live in is one ruled by quantum laws, a universe in which matter is primarily empty space rich in information and consciousness. Einstein’s perceptions showed that at its core, matter is not solid but comprised of waves.

Faced with such bold new assertions, it is understandable how Einstein and other scientists of the era who built on Einstein’s theories came to adopt a mystical worldview. They realized the universe was much different than what they had been taught, and that this new conception of the universe was closer in line with the teachings of Eastern philosophies than anything existing science could define.

But Einstein himself was always a mystic. His way of learning and perceiving, as I pointed out earlier, was a nonlinear one. He was a visual thinker, and stated, when asked about how his thought processes worked:
“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more of less clear, that I can reproduce and recombine at will.”

Einstein was a brilliant creative thinker, one who saw the universe with fresh eyes. He had beginner’s mind – the mind of an original thinker – and maintained it his entire life. At his memorial, the scientist Robert Oppenheimer proclaimed: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness . . . There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”

Einstein and the Indian poet, novelist, musician and mystic Tagore

When you mix in his creative thinking and original mind with his tendency towards mysticism, you arrive at someone who is enlightened. And the beauty of Einstein’s enlightened mind was that he was able to articulate his vision clearly, for all to understand.

You may not be able to comprehend the profundity of his scientific achievements, but there are many other things that Einstein said that are equally as profound. Here is a sampling of them:

* “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
* “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
* “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
* “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
* “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
* “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
* “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
* “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
* “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
* “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
* “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
* “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
* “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
* “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
* “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
* “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
* “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
* “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
* “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
* “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
* “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
* “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
* “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
* “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
* “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
* “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
* “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
* “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
* “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
* “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
* “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
* “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
* “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
* “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
* “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
* “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
* “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
* “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
* “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
* “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
* “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
* “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
* “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
* “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
* “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
* “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
* “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

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The Low Density Lifestyle is the revolutionary new book by Dr. Michael Wayne, author of the groundbreaking book, Quantum-Integral Medicine: Towards a New Science of Healing and Human Potential.

The Low Density Lifestyle is experiencing and living in a more relaxed, less stressed, and calm, clear and focused manner on an everyday basis. It is also a way that can lead you to better health and happiness, along with living a more fulfilled and enlightened life.

This is a book about many things—health, wellness, happiness, fulfillment, doing what you love, movement, being a creative thinker—but at the same time, it’s about one thing: living to your maximum potential.

The goal with this book is to help you become a more complete human being. We are meant to live a healthy life, a more fulfilled life, a conscious life, and a more awakened life—this is what it means to be a complete human being.

And this is what is meant by living a Low Density Lifestyle: it is a model for living.

Get your copy now, and get ready to change your life!

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When you read the article, you should be able to wrap your mind around the concept pretty quickly, and I think you’ll agree with me that it makes a lot of sense.

Tomorrow I will begin the first series of the year, and it will be on Longevity. As you probably know, once I begin a series, I spend a few weeks looking at the theme of the series at an in-depth level. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll know more about Longevity than you ever thought you did.

But before I begin the series on Longevity, let’s examine the top ten ways you can start living a Low Density Lifestyle right now.

Yes, right now. Not tomorrow. Now. So let’s begin…

1) Open your mind. When you talk to someone, do you have a knee-jerk negative reaction to what they say? Open your mind to the possibilities that are out there, because it could cause you to change your thinking and expand the way you see the world. When you are closed minded, you shut off 99% of the world.

2) Listen to others. Don’t just be the one talking…listen to what others have to say – you will learn a lot that way.

3) Watch your expectations. It’s easy to expect others to do what you think they should do, or what you think is the proper way for them to behave and act. But everyone is different, and you should never impose your beliefs and standards on others. If you think someone is acting improperly, be aware if your perception is clouded by the way you expect them to act.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t act like an expert, even if you know everything about the subject at hand. This ties in with the first point, to open your mind. The Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” You may know a lot about a subject, and may be the go-to person on the subject, but at the same time, it’s best to be humble about your knowledge, because there is never an end to what can be added onto the subject. For instance, the Nobel-prize winning physicist Richard Feynman once said, “I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there.” And if anyone had the right to claim firm knowledge on a subject matter, it was Richard Feynman.

5. Laugh. A lot. We all have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously. When you laugh you start feeling lighter of body, mind and spirit. You can just feel yourself open up.

6. Move. As often as possible. Especially in ways that accentuate flow. Try this: when you’re home, turn some music on that has a good beat to it, and start moving to it. In whatever way feels right. It doesn’t matter if you have two left feet, just visualize you’re channeling your inner Fred Astaire. Or inner Michael Jackson. Or better yet, inner you.

7. Dream. Dream big. Or even dream small. But just dream. John Lennon once said, “The dreamer lives forever.” And Mick Jagger, in Ruby Tuesday, said, “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” We all have great dreaming capabilities, but it gets suppressed. You can dream at night during sleep, or during the day, in what gets misnamed daydreaming. It’s not daydreaming you’re doing when your mind wanders during the day. Instead you’re doing what we all have as an innate quality: seeing ourselves in a greater capacity, seeing ourselves in the life we were meant to live.

8. Think abundantly. It’s easy to think from a scarcity perspective, in which you see a world in which it’s every person for themselves, and you have to get yours before someone takes it from you. But what if you perceived a world in which it was ok to share and be generous and be compassionate with others? Remember the popular best-seller called “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” by Robert Fulghum? That was the gist of the book, that what we all learned in kindergarten – to share, to play, to have fun, to enjoy each others company – are really the true lessons of life.

9. Live and practice a healthy lifestyle. Eat a whole foods oriented diet. Breathe deeply and relax. See a health provider who helps you to cultivate and enhance wellness. Don’t take drugs, or take as bare minimum as possible, and see them as a temporary bridge that you take only until your health is much better. Instead of drugs, take herbs and supplements.

10. Sign up for the free email course on this site. See the sign-up box on the upper right, below the video, or you can put your name in the pop-up box that shows up when you first come on the site. The course will help reinforce everything written about in the above list. And keep coming back to the site to read the articles. There are new articles on this site four days a week – Tuesday through Friday – on different aspects of living a Low Density Lifestyle. The different aspects are covered in a series format, and each series is written about for a few weeks. You’ll be glad you did.

But to go off on your own is a scary thing for many people. Even if you’re not happy working at a job, there’s a certain comfort level and feeling of security it gives you.

But if you’re not happy working for someone else, you can have all the comfort and security in the world, and you will never feel appeased. You will always have an uneasy feeling gnawing at you.

And the reality is, if you’re working at a job, working for someone else, you may never feel like you’re doing what you love, because it just may not be the fullest and truest expression of who you are.

I talked in an earlier article about Carpe Diem, of Seizing the Day. That is what it takes to let go of the comfort zone and to venture into the unknown.

But it’s not really an unknown, because it’s fully known: it’s who you really are. It’s living your dream and your passion, and being true to yourself.

And to get past the fear, it just takes a certain mindset.

Here are 7 things you can do right now to get past the fear and attain the mindset of being willing to do what you love:

1. Reclaim your mind.

This might seem a little strange, right? Who would think that they don’t own their own mind? The truth is that most of us live with partially free minds. We act on our intentions as long as our comfort zone is not violated. We rebel when the risk is minimal.

In order to reclaim ownership of your mind (and stop renting it out) you have to demand of yourself nothing short of a completely free, unadulterated mind. Underline this in your mind: “I won’t let anyone else have control or dictate the contents of my mind. Only I have that power.”

2. Put yourself on auto-response.

The ability of the leader to take action, despite not having a clear course, is a highly coveted skill in the entrepreneurial world. A leader takes action while others wait around for the situation to become more favorable. He has the “auto-response” of “I’ll figure it out.” When faced with a tough decision, or unclear path, he takes action instead of waiting for orders.

The more you’re able to take action despite having all the facts, the faster you’ll get results. You’ll adjust your course when you make mistakes and ultimately get there much faster than the person waiting around for the perfect plan to materialize.

3. Think holistically.

All of our decisions are interconnected. A choice in our health could create an improvement in our productivity. A shift in our spiritual practice can cultivate a calm state, where your focus increases. A move toward working for yourself will dramatically impact your freedom of time and movement, and greatly improve your happiness. All of our decisions are interconnected and a smart renegade knows this. She or he tries to make high leverage holistic decisions that will have a ripple effect across all aspects of their life.

Think holistically. See how the changes in all areas of your life impact each other, not just in business, but in the areas of health, fitness, finances, mental/emotional and spirituality.

4. Question authority.

Too much skepticism will make you unbalanced, and will honestly probably turn you into a conpiracy-theory nutcase. A healthy amount of skepticism, on the other hand, is essential to working intelligently.

One of the oldest living renegades, Siddhartha Gautama (also known as the Buddha) once said, “Do not believe anything that you’ve been told, unless it agrees with your own common sense.” The same advice applies 2,000 years later. Listen to yourself first, before you listen to the experts. Test before you assume.

5. Focus on interdependency.

We all have certain communities of people or tribes that we naturally connect with and are attracted to. Seek out these people, help them, start conversations with them. These are the people that are most likely to identify with you, therefore the most likely to also support and promote your work.

Find a way to connect with influential leaders or members of your tribe today. Whether it be through sending them a message on twitter, contacting them through their blog or emailing them directly. And if you can, try to get one of these people to mentor you. It can’t hurt to ask and you’ll be surprised at how genuinely helpful some of these people can be.

6. Defrost your passion.

If you’ve been stuck in a cubicle-farm for some time, or have been in a less than ideal work situation, you’ve probably given up hope on some level. Being surrounded with people you’d rather not work with, grey walls, no windows and bad coffee tends to dampen your spirits. This dispirited condition may have progressed so far that you have trouble remembering what it’s like to be excited about your life.

That’s got to change. It’s time to reconnect with what you’re truly passionate about and wake up to the possibility that you can start making your own rules. Life doesn’t have to be a struggle of paying your dues with the occasional bit of fun. Realize that you don’t have to live in the way you think is required.

7. Be ridiculous.

There’s obviously a certain societal value to being practical. But what’s easily overlooked is the value of being highly impractical. You have to be willing to take risks, and keep your head in the clouds to be a successful trailblazer. You have to strike a balance between having roots (practicality) and wings (innovating).

Realize that all major revolutions in the world were first seen as crazy, ridiculous and absurd. If you want to innovate, you’ll have to accept that the majority of the population will view you as a lunatic. You secretly know, though, that your level of lunacy is quite possibly your most valuable skill.

So there you have it – 7 things you can do to help you get past the fear and do what you love. Once you do so, you’ll be happier, healthier and feeling more fulfilled.

If you are doing what you love, you may have to create your own work.

It’s not always easy to fit into a defined and set job if you are doing what you love, because it often means that you are listening to your own muse and setting out on your own path and finding your own way to express who you truly are.

It can also mean that you prefer the freedom of working for yourself, so that you can set your own boundaries, as opposed to having them  set artificially by a job.

If you decide to go your own way and create your own work, you are following the time-honored path of entrepreneurship.

It is the entrepreneurs who are the innovators, who move forward even when the naysayers say it can’t be done.

They love what they are doing so much that they believe in themselves even when others don’t, and aren’t afraid to fail.

In fact, failure is not part of the vocabulary of an entrepreneur, because as long as they are doing what they love, whatever the outcome, they are succeeding.

They see failure as not pursuing their dream.

The reality is, is that entrepreneurs can change the world – watch the above video and you will be inspired as you realize this is true.

Just by pursuing their dreams, entrepreneurs are changing the world, by also inspiring others to pursue their dreams.

And with their creative imagination and innovative drive, entrepreneurs are changing the world, by creating new ways of doing things, or by making adaptations to current ways of doing things.

Entrepreneurs are also changing the world by shining the light of hope where there once was darkness.

It takes a Low Density Lifestyle mind to be an entrepreneur with a fertile creative imagination.

Which isn’t hard to do. It just starts with doing what you love.

I started off by telling you about the downside of sugar, and then how toxic high fructose corn syrup is. From there, I discussed artificial sweeteners, telling you about the dangers of all five of the artificial sweeteners that have been approved by the FDA: saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, and neotame.

And so, where does that leave us? Well, believe it or not, the good old sugar industry sees an opening. They realize that if they portray themselves as the natural option, they can convince people that they are the healthy choice.

Why, what a public service they are providing! They are advising people to get away from using the poisonous artificial sweeteners, and instead return back to the fold by sticking with the real thing.

From the tomato sauce on a Pizza Hut pie called “The Natural,” to the just-released soda Pepsi Natural, some of the biggest players in the American food business have started, in the last few months, replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar, and promoting the fact that by doing that, they are giving people a healthy choice.

Blamed for hyperactivity in children and studied as an addictive substance, sugar has had its share of image problems. But the widespread criticism of high-fructose corn syrup — the first lady, Michelle Obama, has said she will not give her children products made with it — has made sugar look good by comparison.

Most scientists do not share the perception. Though research is still under way, many nutrition and obesity experts say sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are equally bad in excess. But, as is often the case with competing food claims, the battle is as much about marketing as it is about science.

But with sugar newly ascendant, the makers of corn syrup are fighting back. Last fall, the Corn Refiners Association mounted a multimillion-dollar defense, making sure that an advertisement linking to the association’s Web site pops up when someone types “sugar” or “high-fructose corn syrup” into some search engines.

In one television advertisement, a mother pours fruit punch into a cup while another scolds her because the punch contains high-fructose corn syrup. When pressed to explain why it is so bad, the complaining mother is portrayed as a speechless fool.

Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said consumers were being duped.

“When they discover they are being misled into thinking these new products are healthier, that’s the interesting angle,” Ms. Erickson said in an interview.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association says that when it comes to obesity, there is no difference between the syrup and sugar.

Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco Children’s Hospital, said: “The argument about which is better for you, sucrose or HFCS, is garbage. Both are equally bad for your health.”

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Dr. Stuart Brown on Why Play is Vital – No Matter Your Age

I talked yesterday about play and relaxation, and how conducive play is to relaxation, stress relief and healthy living.  Today’s article is a video from a May 2008 talk by Dr. Stuart Brown.

A pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults — and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.

Dr. Stuart Brown came to research play through research on murderers — unlikely as that seems — after he found a stunning common thread in killers’ stories: lack of play in childhood. Since then, he’s interviewed thousands of people to catalog their relationships with play, noting a strong correlation between success and playful activity.

With the support of the National Geographic Society and Jane Goodall, he has observed animal play in the wild, where he first conceived of play as an evolved behavior important for the well being — and survival — of animals, especially those of higher intelligence. Now, through his organization, the National Institute for Play, he hopes to expand the study of human play into a vital science — and help people everywhere enjoy and participate in play throughout life.

Play allows us as adults to stay in touch with the child within. And when you lose that child within, you lose spontaneity, creativity, joy and happiness.

So keep playing, you hear? You’ll definitely find stress relief by playing, and you’ll definitely feel like you’re experiencing healthy living .

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When we think of play we think of kids, because we believe that kids should have time to play. But we forget that kids aren’t the only ones who need to play—we tend to think that as adults, we should forget our childish ways and be serious and not play.

Wow, what a boring way to live. And also, what a stressful way to live. No play = living a High Density Lifestyle. No play, no stress relief. No play, no joy.  And no play, no health and wellness, for that matter either.

Play is necessary, no matter your age. Play is so important, in fact, that Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) once described it as the defining characteristic of our species. For Huizinga, humanity is notable not as Homo sapiens, “wise people,” but Homo ludens, “playful people.”

So, what is play good for?

Absolutely everything, as it turns out.

Play is good for healthy living. Play helps manage stress, easing us into relaxation mode. Play releases a whole range of beneficial brain chemicals, which not only make play fun but relieves tension and allows for stress relief.

Play opens up your mind and allows you to think different. Play stimulates the brain in nonlinear ways, causing your creative intelligence to be heightened. This changes the way you see things and allows you to think different. In this mindset, nothing is just what it seems – things take on new forms, problems seem not just solvable but trivial, and we feel empowered to take on the world.

Play unites the mind and body.  In play, the gap between physical sensation and mental sensation is bridged, as both your mind and body enter into heightened states of awareness. As the mind is stimulated from play, so is the body, and as the body is stimulated from play, so is the mind. It becomes a two-way street, and play helps to make you more in touch with yourself.

Play creates social bonds. When you play with others, a bond arises from it. You don’t think about what your differences are and let that get between you – instead you form a camaraderie due to your commonalities. Play unites us as humans – everyone likes to play, and so we bond over it.

Children bond with other children quickly, and the bond is based on playing. “Can you come out and play?” is the common refrain one child will ask another.

So when’s the last time you played?  I mean, really, really played. You know, having fun, letting loose, blowing off steam type of play. Not play in which you work out your tensions and aggressions at the expense of someone else, but good, old-fashioned play that’s fun and is a meaningful manner of stress relief.

When you find that kind of play, that’s when you really feel like you’re living a Low Density Lifestyle and you’re on the path of health and wellness.

If you’re not sure where to start, try this: Stand in front of a mirror, and make really ridiculous faces. Turn your eyelids out, stick your tongue out, snort, chuckle, and make weird noises. Truly embarrass yourself.  That’s right, really make a fool of yourself.

We all need to lighten up.  Being serious, heavy and dense all or most of the time isn’t good.  When you’re like that, you’re caught up in the High Density Lifestyle mode and taking life way too seriously. Chances are when you’re like that, you’re also getting stressed out way too easy.

So, now you know how to manage stress and find stress relief and start on the path to healthy living: Go out and play!

And actually, by making time to play, you become better at dealing with all the serious stuff in your life. You’ll feel better, be more relaxed, have better health and wellness, and enjoy more creativity – and all this will help make the rest of your life better.

And you know why?  Cause then you’ll be living a Low Density Lifestyle.

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Can You Imagine?  Can You Use Your Creative Intelligence and Vision? Can You Dream, Can You Vision?

Today, for the series finale on Creative Intelligence, I present you with a video that I hope will inspire you and move you to continue to use your Creative Intelligence, and to Dream, Vision and Imagine.

In words and pictures, the video will tell the story.

Enjoy!

See you next time……

Imagine This

Before I tell you who the company is and some of the results of the creative intelligence of the employees, I just want to say that imagine if all companies cultivated creative intelligence and vision?

And how about schools? Imagine if creative intelligence and visionary thinking was the guiding force behind the education process? (Hint: creative intelligence is not cultivated in the education process and is usually squashed.)

So if all companies—and schools—truly cultivated creative intelligence and vision, all I can say is: Wow! This would be a world of creative thinking visionaries, people who were willing to dream up big ideas and put them into practice.

It would be a world filled with people living a Low Density Lifestyle.

Ok, so now back to about that specific company. You may have heard of them. Their name: Google.

Google

Google allows all employees to spend 20% of their time on whatever endeavors they fancy. They are totally allowed the free rein to do whatever they want with their work time, and to dream up ideas and then to see if they can come to fruition.

And this is why the folks at Google have created a cutting edge company that is never at a loss for new and fascinating ideas. By letting employees truly use their creative intelligence and by encouraging them to live a Low Density Lifestyle, they are a rich resource of original thinking.

How do I know Google encourages employees to live a Low Density Lifeestyle? Google offers a free dining facility for their employees that serves organic whole foods, offers free massage services to their employees and has places on their campus where employees can go to take a nap.  These things are part of the 12 steps to attaining a Low Density Lifestyle.

And so, whether you are a technophile or technophobe, it’s worth checking out some of the really cool things Google employees have developed, thanks to the corporate climate of encouraging creative intelligence. It may not be your inclination to think up these kinds of things, but I just wanted to show you the possibility of what can be done, if it is cultivated and encouraged, in order to inspire you:

IGOOGLE:  At iGoogle (google.com/ig), you can dress up all that white space with useful miniboxes containing additional info. Hundreds of useful displays are available: a clock, local weather, movie listings, incoming e-mail, news, daily horoscope, to-do list, Twitter updates and whatever-of-the-day (joke, vocabulary word, quotation, Bible verse and so on).

GOOGLE READER: Why spend your time finding and navigating to the Web sites that cover your favorite topics? They can all come to you — all nicely congregated on a single page, called Google Reader (reader.google.com).

You type in a topic, inspect the search results, and click the Subscribe buttons that look interesting. After that, Reader displays the first paragraph from each site or blog; click to read more. Star items to read later, or pass along your favorites to friends.

FLU TRENDS: Google figured out that whenever people get sick, they use Google to search for more information. By collating these searches, Google has created an early-warning system for flu outbreaks in your area, with color-coded graphs. Google says that Flu Trends (google.org/flutrends) has recognized outbreaks two weeks sooner than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has.

GOOGLE MAPS: You probably know this one, but it’s still worth pointing out (maps.google.com). Choose the directions you want: by car, by public transit or on foot. Drag the path line with your mouse around construction sites or down interesting streets. View current traffic conditions. Turn on Street View to see actual photographs of your destination.

GMAIL LABS: Gmail is already the world’s best free Web-based e-mail service, with terrific organization tools and a superb spam blocker. But if you click Settings and then Labs, you find a huge list of on/off switches for cool enhancements.

There’s Text Message in Chat (send text messages to your friends’ cellphones from within Google Chat or Gmail); Offline Mail (work on Gmail when you’re not online); Canned Responses (build a menu of stock answers to your mail); Multiple Inboxes (manages mail by auto-creating multiple mail folders); and Send & Archive (one click sends your reply and removes the original from the list).

TRANSLATOR: Translate any text or Web page to or from 40 languages (translate.google.com). It’s not perfect, but you’ll get the gist of that spam from Russia.

800-GOOG-411: Possibly the best voice-recognition cellphone service in existence. Call the number, say what you’re looking for (“comedy clubs, Chicago” or “Domino’s Pizza, Cleveland”), and Google’s auto-voice reads off the closest eight matches. You can speak the number of the one you want, and he’ll connect your call automatically — no charge. You never know or care what the phone number was; it’s like having a personal secretary.

Or you can say “text message” at any time to have the address and phone number zapped to your cellphone in one second.

GOOGLE SMS: Send a message to GOOGL (46645). In the body of the message, type the sort of information you want: weather report (“weather dallas”), stock quotes (“amzn”), movie showtimes (type “slumdog millionaire 44120”), definitions (“define schadenfreude”), directions (“miami fl to 60609”), unit conversions (“liters in 5 gallons”), currency conversions (“25 usd in euros”), and so on. Five seconds later, Google texts back the details.

GOOGLE SETS: At labs.google.com/sets, type in several items in a series (like “cleveland browns” and “dallas cowboys”); Google fleshes out the list with others like it (all the other football teams). Great when something’s on the tip of your tongue (a kind of fruit, president, car, holiday, currency) but can remember only something like it.

GOOGLE SCHOLAR: You can search all published academic papers at once, at scholar.google.com, for whatever subject you are interested in.

SECRETS OF THE SEARCH BOX: Usually, whatever you type into Google’s Search box is treated as a quest for Web pages. Certain kinds of information, however, get special treatment.

For example, you can type in an equation (like “23*9/3.4+234”); press Enter to see the answer.

Think of Google, too, for conversions. For example, type “83 yards in inches,” “500 euros in dollars,” or “grams in 3.2 pounds”; then press Enter.

The search box can also serve as a dictionary (type “define:ersatz”), package tracker (type your FedEx or U.P.S. tracking number), global Yellow Pages (“phonebook:home depot norwalk ct”), meteorologist (“weather san diego”), flight tracker (“AA 15”), stock ticker (“AAPL” or “MSFT”), and movie-listings (type “movies:10024,” or whatever your ZIP code is).

And there’s more, but that’s all space allows.

That’s one company with mega amounts of Creative Intelligence and Vision.

Come back tomorrow for a final article on Creative Intelligence and Vision. It will be a video that will move and inspire you.