Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. – W. B . Yeats.

He knew the names of all 250 bones in the human body and all the muscles too.

My father was medical man, an osteopathic physician, and this stuff was his stock in trade. He’d studied at the Kirksville College of Osteopathy in Kirksville Missouri class of 1934. As one of only two osteopaths in the city of Ottawa he had a busy practice. Every day brought a full slate of patients and on occasion he would have various stressed-out politicians lying down on his treatment table. Even the country’s 10^th prime minister William Lyon MacKenzie King (October 23, 1935, to November 15, 1948) would find respite from his physical pains in my dad’s very capable therapeutic hands.

He was a well known and respected practitioner in our city.  Although he never said anything to me about it I had a hard time meeting what I imagined were his hopes for me.

My early days in high school were not what I’d call the best. I found the standard arts and sciences curriculum boring and overly detailed. My eyes would glaze over especially during math class. My mind would wonder worsening my already poor grasp of the french language taught by a teacher whom, it was glaringly obvious, had never spoken much french outside of the school room.

It was the 60′s and the Beatles were big. That at least that got me excited about playing the drums in band class and, if I could, I’d get there early before the class began to jam for a few minutes with another kid who played the sax. The only other subjects that interested me at all were art class and English literature.

But those two couldn’t save me come the final exams in June. In the end it was determined that I would have to repeat grade nine again the following year. Even that proved fruitless though. After going through the motions for another ten months I was found to have again missed the mark. My average grade that year was 49.9%. Once more not quite good enough for a promotion to grade 10.

It was strongly suggested that I should not return to that school but that I could get into grade ten if I agreed to attend classes in September at an all-boys technical school in another part of town.

It was depressing and demoralizing. The message that all this was sending me was abundantly clear: I was a failure pure and simple. My report card had said so in the glaring clarity of its red ink. I had proven once and for all my unworthiness to warrant another attempt at standard academics. I also felt a deep sense of banishment by being sent to a school where I would now have to mingle with boys whom I believed to be troublesome and raw in demeanor, rough, rowdy, and redneck. I saw myself – quite wrongly I realized later – as somehow higher on the social ladder than they.  I guess I had more to learn than just school work.

To my surprise, after a few months into it I actually started to enjoy the classes in the technical school and I did do well enough. I liked the feel of working with tools my hands. But I wanted something more limitless. I had heard about a new specialized art course which was being conducted at another school in yet another part of town, and it was co-ed.

My dad was able to get the transfer arranged but in order to get into the art course I would have to agree to start in at the grade ten level again. After all, the argument went; it was only a four-year course. Starting in at a higher grade meant that I would simply miss too much. Despite that the choice was an easy one to make. I agreed and things got better for me after that. At least I was able to again become interested in learning in a classroom setting. I could experiment with being creative while using my hands and my imagination.

I did finally graduate out from high school with respectable marks in art and design. But it had taken me all of six years to do it; a fairly unremarkable achievement to be sure.

Sometimes the educational system can judge us to feel like failures.

Fortunately for me I was able to seek out alternatives. Something I’ve been doing my whole life.

Seeking newness is what lights my fire.

How about you?

..More power to you all.

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• Happiness up…Happiness down.
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Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

Lemon Tree – Lyrics by Peter, Paul, and Mary (Popular folk-singing group of the 1960′s)

If you lived, like I did in the era of the 60′s, you would quickly recognize these lyrics as belonging to the popular folk-singing group Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I came across this song on YouTube recently and I thought how relevant it is – in a reverse sort of way – to failure.

We all know only too well that unlike the lemon tree failure is not so pretty.

In fact it really sucks.

It hurts our heads and ruins our day and yet… and yet, I’ve come to understand that its “fruit” is so masterfully designed as a portal to higher learning that it’s now become, and in reality has always been, essential if any of us are to reach any success in our lives at all.

Mickey Rooney, the acclaimed actor whose career spans over 75 years, said: “You always pass failure on the way to success”.

I feel like I’ve passed a lot of failure in my life. So perhaps I, like a lot of folks, have a love/hate relationship with failure. I’ve come to know it well. Thirty years of trying and falling short in my efforts to bring my radical theories about human motivation and empowerment to you and have left me with no choice but to press on every day and learn to do it better.

It’s a matter of mindset.

Hasn’t your life been like this? Hasn’t it been like this for almost everyone you know?

Take a close look at it. You’ve had successes. But every one of them has undoubtedly been preceded by a failure. Some big some small but a foundation of failure is what lies beneath all achievement.

Like the roots of a fruit tree.

More power to you all.

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“A merry heart goes all the day. Your sad tires in a mile-a.”

William Shakespeare made that observation about the connection between the mental state and the rate at which we are able to function some 400 years ago.

I guess things don’t change much do they? Happiness, it seems, gives us more energy, while sadness makes us feel warn out.

Who knew?

Almost all of us who have any experience with the ups and down of life that’s who. Had a rough day at work? You get home and all you want to do is crash in front of the boob tube, gobble up something quick and down some suds. What channel is the Simpson’s on again?

In contrast you may have had a great day (lucky dog!). The supervisor commented on how effective your suggestions have been and has sent off a memo to that effect to those who matter. You get home and you’re ready to party. You feel like the day passed so quickly it’s like you’ve gone through some sort of time warp or something. You stay up late talking to anybody who wants to listen.

In humans it is clear that whatever the intellect is seeing that is what it becomes. Looking at all the troubles in your world as well as the world around you? Get ready for a bout of depression. Concentrate on all the abundance and beauty in the world and you’re in nirvana (unless you’re busy driving down the freeway of course).

But here’s the problem and it’s a huge one. It’s an un-controlable up and down existence. If the condition of your state (both physical and ethereal) is dictated by what you’re looking at any given time, then that fact alone exposes a vulnerability that could have severe consequences for your health and your ability to function in the world. You simply can’t ignore all the things coming at you and deal with them at the same time.

In his book “Ageless Body, Timeless Mind” Dr Deepak Chopra details studies done that associate an increase in the decline in a steroid known as DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) with the stress one encounters in life. DHEA is thought to enhance neuron health in the brain and is in natural decline as one’s age progresses. Experiments with subjects who practice TM (Transcendental Meditation) regularly have shown some improvement in the level of DHEA retention. TM, it seems, has some real merit. It’s true that thoughts do create biology.

This study is somewhat interesting to me since my work with H.E.R.O. over the years has demonstrated that it is at least 10 times more powerful that TM. I believe that’s because, as mentioned above, you end up feeling  like that which you are observing.  With H.E.R.O. graduates it is simply because the results of it creates a solid confidence and happiness that appear to stay active without much reinforcement despite continued stress-producing life experience.

Distress then can be dealt with more logically when one is in a state where more intrinsic intelligence is available to speed problem solving by making better choices quicker.

Can You Help Me?

The  beneficial results that I’ve been seeing with H.E.R.O. , over all the years I’ve been working with clients who have completed it, have been strictly anecdotal and so I’d like to take it a step up.

If anyone reading this has (or knows of anyone) who has access to the methods and means to do a controlled study into how H.E.R.O. might affect DEHA levels (and therefore better brain health and lower stress effects through what I now call “Positive Immunity”) I would be very open to talking with them.

Please let me know in the comment box below this post or click on the “Contact us” tab for other options.

Thanks in advance to all who can help.

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Meet Max

This is Part 4 of a series. ( Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 )

For years he’s been a practicing cosmetic surgeon who spots an unusual trend. He can’t help but notice that, even though he performs hundreds of very successful operations, many of his patients remain depressed as if the physical improvements made to their faces had never happened. He decides to author a book and in it he describes his observations as well as his impressions about such things as self-image. He also details his thoughts about the unseen world of energy within us that he believes somehow directs the healing process.

The book he writes is titled Psycho-Cybernetics.

Max is Dr. Maxwell Maltz and when his book came out it soon became a best seller. People were very interested to learn more about building a good self-image. It played well in the age of angst that existed in the youth of the sixties and seventies.

This is an interesting book and one of the first that I picked up when I started my long journey that culminated in the creation of the H.E.R.O. Discover eMachine. Back then I really didn’t know what I was doing but, with the results that I observed in those who I convinced to use H.E.R.O. , I knew I was on to something.

Through reading books like this I became very interested in the twists and turns of human behavior. I was also quite taken by Maltz’s belief, which precisely echoed daVinci’s before him, that the physical body is a machine. He points out that he believed that man himself is NOT a machine but rather “the essence of man is that which animates this machine; that which inhabits the machine, directs and controls it, and uses it as a vehicle.“

He goes on to report that “individual scientists – psychologists, physiologists, biologists – have suspected that there was some sort of universal energy or vitality which ran the human machine.”

I was blown away. Here again I was seeing references to two distinct realities living as one. Another clear indication of a phenomenon that I’d been tracing back through history and on up to today. I was getting ever closer to the certainty that the ‘human mobius’ really existed. I became immersed in the search for more.

In my own work with H.E.R.O. I was also finding that there was a dividing line between these two realities. Most of the subjects that I persuaded to use H.E.R.O. reported soon afterward that they could feel an unusual energy-like feeling emanating from the gut region of the body that caused an odd and very subtle relaxation effect. I could see it in their faces . Although, like me they struggled to explain it, they went on to say that this feeling was like the excitement they had experienced as youth – perhaps even as children.

(Astoundingly, Dr. Maltz had stated in his book that further research involving this energy appeared to touch upon the fundamentals of ageing.)

The overall effect that seemed to be a common factor in all my participants is that they felt “happy” for no apparent reason except that they we’re alive. This “happy feeling” seemed to have an immediate buffering effect on any stress they had been experiencing in their lives. The benefits also seemed to persist for many years and were not dulled despite constant stress-producing challenges .  I can certainly attest to that.

My test subjects commonly reported being more adaptable in many situations requiring critical thinking. Problems got solved a lot faster than before and, they admitted, they were more productive at work. All this even though they hadn’t studied any “how to” information at all within the context of their personal H.E.R.O. seminar experience.

In my next post, the final installment in this series, I’ll introduce you to yet another eminent physician, a contemporary of Max’s, who will lend even more credence to the existence of this mysterious energy at play within all humans and yet more proof of this phenomenon.

Until then,

More power to you my friend.

David Parsons (aka Mobiusman)

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