Did the German Soccer Team Use Unity Consciousness to Win the World Cup?

• Want to see a list of the world's unsolved problems?  Here, Wikipedia has neatly catalogued them for you.  

• Happy Birthday, Brain Pickings: 7 Things I Learned in 7 Years of Reading, Writing, and Living.  Reflections on how to keep the center solid as you continue to evolve, by Maria Popova, curator and editor of the Brain Pickings Blog.

• If you want to see how deep and vast the field of Mindfulness has become, take a look at the newsletter of the Mindfulness Research Guide.

• Mindful people don't waste time obsessing with a future that they cannot predict. They shift their focus to the present moment, because that's where progress happens. Check out these things mindful people do differently for less stress and more success.

• The Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is completing a unique experiment called the Holometer which has recently started collecting data to answer some mind-bending questions about our universe-including whether we live in a hologram.  Pair with Michael Talbot's excellent book The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality

• How can a manufacturer reformulate a cleaning product to contain fewer harmful chemicals, and how can a retailer stock its shelves with more eco-friendly merchandise? UL (Underwriters Laboratories), a product safety testing and certification company, thinks it may have a solution: a set of data tools that helps businesses search and choose ingredients and products based on their environmental and social responsibility profiles.

• Ethical & Conscious Clothing and Ending Modern Day Slavery.

• Alzheimer's Is Type 3 Diabetes - The idea that Alzheimer's is a form of diabetic disease has been gaining currency in medical circles for almost ten years. The accumulated evidence is now so strong that many specialists are now comfortable referring to Alzheimer's as type 3 diabetes.

• It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness by Sylvia Boorstein.  This wonderful and easy to read book is a great introduction to the core concepts of Buddhism.  Ms. Boorstein, a long time Buddhist teacher, brings the teachings to life in small chapters (1-3 pages) and illuminates through stories from her life how they can be used in our modern day existence.  "When I was a child, small towns passed ordinances against "disturbing the peace".  I used to wonder what would constitute such a disturbance.  Shouting in a public place? Singing in the street?  Given our current complex city life, the idea that any place is essentially peaceful, or should be, is wonderfully quaint.  The mind is essentially peaceful.  For me, that discovery, at least initially held both bad news and good news, like the punch line of many current jokes.  The bad news was that the relaxed mind, the mind free of disturbances, was not necessarily psychedelically exotic.  I had hoped it would be.  The good news was that contentment turns out to be the most exotic mind state of all and is never tedious or tiresome.  We could experience it forever.  We could experience it forever, because it's our natural mind."

• Roman Krznaric - The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People - Roman is the founder of The Empathy Library.  In this talk, he does an excellent job in conveying the latest neuroscience findings on intrinsic empathy within humans and great examples from around the world about fellow citizens putting empathy to work in their lives.

• 100 Bass Riffs: A Brief History of Groove on Bass and Drums.  100 Bass Riffs is a brief history of groove performed on bass guitar and drums. Marc Najjar of CME and Nate Bauman of Reverb.com put together this incredible followup to Chicago Music Exchange's viral video sensation "100 Riffs", with a compilation of killer bass riffs performed in one continuous take.

• Roger Waters - Amused To Death - Live  - In 1992 Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd released a solo album titled Amused to Death (the link is to the title track on Spotify).  It is a poignant piece of social commentary about western society being consumed by television and other mass media. More relevant today than ever.  You can can see the lyrics here: In http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/80598/
  
  
• Cathedrals - Cathedrals EP - 2014.  The new (fun and intelligent) release from the electronica - dance group.  
  
  
• U2's new album Songs of Innocence - in a bold marketing move, they are giving it free to all 500 Million Apple ITunes users - it's already in your purchased account.  Thanks Santa (I mean Bono...).
  
  
• Johannes Moser - Chopin: Cello Sonata & Piano Trio - 2014.  This is the first time I can recollect hearing a cello sonata by Chopin.  A nice work - equal parts vigor and introspective melodies.

• On Being Podcast with Krista Tippet - Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness - "Harvard University Professor of Social Psychology Ellen Langer's unconventional studies have long suggested what brain science is now revealing: our experiences are formed by the words and ideas we attach to them. Naming something "play" rather than "work" can mean the difference between delight and drudgery. She is one of the early pioneers - along with figures like Jon Kabat-Zinn and Herbert Benson - in drawing a connection between mindlessness and unhappiness, between mindfulness and health. Dr. Langer describes mindfulness as achievable without meditation or yoga - as "the simple act of actively noticing things."  A great discussion - Ms. Langer is one of the most original and unconventional thinkers in the mindfulness area.

• "Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity. Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living - for, as Annie Dillard memorably put it, "how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." - Maria Popova - the curator and editor of the Brain Pickings Blog. From her article summarizing the 7 key lessons she has learned on the 7th anniversary of Brain Pickings.

• "We don't invent our missions, we detect them." - Stephen Covey

• "Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything." -Jonah Lehrer

• "In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what's really important to them. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying." - Austin Kleon

• "Suffering is Optional..." - Garland Jeffries

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