Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Software Testing Karma... :-)

Had a lot of interesting experiences with software in the last day or two:
  • At the day job, a piece of code that I work with extensively suddenly decided to quit working. Somebody out there in the net environment apparently changed something - a link probably - that the code relied upon.
  • While I was trying to fix that, I got a couple of calls from people in other departments. It seems they invented some new ways to make the software I have been working on fail.
  • Tried to add a guest book and link to this blog on my website. Found that the Bravenet.com guestbook doesn't quite work as advertized. It provides an editor to update the header of the blog, etc. When I placed the cursor over the save button of the editor, the bar at the bottom of the browser displayed the message "error on page". This was also the case when I tried to enter a test posting from the my website (page I was building, not published yet). So I guess no guestbook yet.
  • I also tried to create a blog using Bravenet. I had hoped that it would be possible to use RSS to import the blog posts from this blog into my site. No such luck... :-(
  • Meanwhile, back at the day job, running tests on another project, today, I found that both the tester and the software under test were thoroughly hosed.

I take my job as a software tester quite seriously. Sometimes, the karma must build up, though, the karma of a software tester. Since I break software for a living, the Universe must now be reciprocating, reflecting my karma back to me. It is now breaking software for me, as well... :-)

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Things getting done...

It's late at night (early in the morning, actually), and I should be going to bed. Got a full day tomorrow. But still - I feel like celebrating a bit...

I just got a whole bunch-o-stuff done, culminating in finally (after WAY too long a delay) getting my edits done to The Fifth Key. At long long long last, it's finally ready to shop out to agents, publishers and the like. The fun stuff is done, I guess... :-)
I've also heard that as you're starting to shop your manuscript out for publication, it's best to start working on your next book. Otherwise, you go nuts - if you're entire focus is on dealing with rejection slips - but my book is going to sell quickly, so I won't have to deal with many of those rejection slips - right? - :-)

I also have the essentials done on my website - www.craigrlang.com. So for a couple of days I can relax. Then it will be time to get back at it.
New items to check out:
- A guest book
- Adding this blog to my website to replace my old Yahoo360 feed

I also want to look into adding a poll of some sort. I'm really interested in learning more about the relationship between Indigos and Experiencers. Is one group a sub/superset of the other? Or is there only a partial overlap? So I think I will start with something like SurveyMonkey.com or similar, and start playing with surveys....

All for now. Sack time...

Friday, June 5, 2009

Dead Presidents and Spiritual Teachings

Today, an e-mail appeared on a hypnosis e-mail list that did some major saber rattling about copyright infrigement of some very effective spiritual teachings. In several of my recent advanced hypnosis certification classes, we have studied a number of healing modalities - extremely effective ones - that use these specific spiritual/metaphysical concepts. The actual material used is held proprietary by its author, and is very jealously guarded - so much so that, according to the e-mail, one hypnotist who misused it lost his National Guild of Hypnotists certification.

This particular material is quite powerful, but is certainly not unique. To me, the beauty of it is that the material is standard between any of the hypnotists who studied at that particular school. However, the material being so jealously copyrighted has tended to reduce some of its effectiveness. So the question arises - how do you mix money and spirituality?

Where is that line between the need of the practitioner (hypnotist, teacher, etc.) to earn a fair living and the spiritual material manifest for the betterment of Humanity? To me, it is a delicate balance. Yet in a way, witholding spiritual revelatory material, such as is being done in this particular case, seems to me to be a misuse of that material. Is this the case?

In my view, the author has the right to dictate - and enforce - his publication rights to the material. Yet does material that powerful require special consideration? Would Jesus copyright the Sermon on the Mount if it were given today? Would Mohammed copyright the Koran? Would John of Patmos copyright the book of Revelation? - and so on... If material is truly spiritual or scriptural in nature, should it be copyrighted, or should it be public domain, perhaps with some way of ensuring the respect it deserves.

I have often wondered; were I to manifest some deeper spiritual truth, would I do the same? Would I copyright it prior to publication, then limit its replication and charge people for it's use? Or would I follow the ultimate path of devotion and put the material in the public domain for all to learn from? Is there a point between these two ends of the spectrum?

In short, do we owe our allegiance to dead presidents - e.g. to money? Or do we owe it to Source/God/The-Universe, the source of such teachings, and to Humanity, their ultimate benificiary? What is the truly ethical thing to do in this case? And what would you do?

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Another view of alien encounters - the numbers and the purpose of alien abduction

I just got done reading an article in the Seattle Exopolitics Examiner indicating that there were up to a billion abductees in our present-day population. The title of the article, Up to 1 billion humans are abducted by hyperdimensional ETs, and humans are in cognitive dissonance, says it all. The author of the article is Alfred Lambremont Webre, one of the wheels in the Exopolitics community - those concerned with human-Visitor political relations(?).

In the article, Webre cites a recent interview with Joe Montaldo, the head of ICAR (International Community for Alien Research), in which he talks about new research indicating many more extraordinary encounters than previously believed. This contrasts with the 2002 Roper poll of unexplained experiences, which states that about 1.4% of Americans (about 2.9 Million) have met all five of the experiential criteria to be considered an experiencer [my paraphrase, CL]. However, Joe Montaldo says his research indicates that about 14% of the population has had abduction experiences.

I am not yet familiar with his research methodology, so I can't make any claims about his results. In my view, we have to reserve judgement on his results until we know more. Still, he claims that the data comes from abductees, themselves. However, we do not yet know how this information was obtained, how it was compiled, what the sampling criteria were, etc. Thus, for the moment, I have to take his numbers with a grain of salt.

In my article, The Logistics of UFO Abduction, I apply some mathematical tests to the idea of nuts and bolts alien abduction. I plug in some numbers from various researchers and conclude that if a physical abduction phenomenon is going on, it must be on the scale of the Allied war effort during World War II. Thus, a Visitor civilization must put a very high priority on the success of such a program. However, it also means that the skies of our planet must be chock full of UFOs at any moment, more UFOs than we apparently see. Thus, I call this the "Air Traffic Cotrol Problem."

In my article, I state that several possible resolutions to this paradox exist:

  1. Each abductee has far fewer experiences than Dr. Jacobs claims.
  2. The number of abductees is far less than the assumed two percent.

  3. UFOs are able escape detection except on very rare occasions. This would imply that they had some visual and radar evasion technology, not an unreasonable supposition given our present stealth technology.

  4. A large fraction of abductions are nonphysical, thus not requiring a physical UFO visit. This would argue (at least in part) against a physical nuts-and-bolts nature of UFO abduction, and would imply that it is in some way less material.
Item 4 (and possibly 3) appear to be compatible with Joe Montaldo's findings. If his results are borne out, then the first two possibilities are negated and the air traffic control problem is far worse than I had earlier imagined. In this case, it would strongly favor a metaphysical (paranormal, hyperdimensional, etc.) model inherent in item 4.

The article goes on to state that the agents behind abduction are primarily Reptilian and Gray aliens. These, he says, are advancing a negative agenda. Indeed, he states that if there is not some sort of intervention, a holocaust-level catastrophe will occur, wiping out the majority of humanity. He states that this information is synthesized from about 20 to 50 recurring abductees, and was derived by directly asking the aliens what their purpose and intentions are.

Budd Hopkins has stated on more than one occasion that "aliens lie." In my own hypnotic work with abductees, I have also heard many things that the aliens have supposedly said. But rather than consistently describing a coherent agenda (positive or negative), the results are very inconsistent, and sometimes pure nonsense. They have made several predictions to me, which have not come true. Thus, I wonder - can we really believe what we hear by "asking the aliens?"

Again, I would need to learn much more about Joe Montaldo's methodology before I could concur or disagree with his results. His results and mine are quite different. Mine seem to suggest a considerably less coherent alien nature and agenda, though his sample size appears to be considerably larger.

Just as David Jacobs states in his book, The Threat, Joe Montaldo's research suggests a massive, negative alien agenda. Furthermore, he suggests that the human population (even UFO researchers) are in denial of the danger humanity faces. While Jacobs favors a nuts-and-bolts nature of alien presence, Montaldo says that they are more interdimensional or metaphysical in nature. For all I know, either or both could be right. However, given the agenda that both Jaobs and Montaldo describe, I truly hope they are both wrong.

Until I can examine his study findings more thoroughly, I will simply have to concur that Joe Montaldo has provided another important hypothesis of alien encounters. With it, he offers a different numbers and a different conclusion on the alien agenda from most researchers. He brings us a new and fascinating perspective, another piece in the ever-deepening mystery that is the UFO encounter phenomenon. And once again I state that I truly hope he's wrong...

Intentions and outcomes - more on the challenges of the healer's doorway...

The last couple of days have been interesting - both successful and challenging.

I have booked several new clients and done some rewarding healing work. I have also had a couple of inquiries that for one reason or another, didn't turn into client bookings. Specifically, one woman who clearly needed to do hypnotic work finally begged off with the "I need to talk with my husband and get back to you..." I have found that this usually means "I don't have the authority/willingness to say yes..." So the question is, what is the difference? What are the reasons that someone who wants and needs healing work suddenly decides to back off from the opportunity to receive it? Is there something I could have done - perhaps better salesmanship - to help her step through the healer's doorway into my studio?

I put that question out to the 5-PATH list on Yahoo groups and got several good answers back. The most interesting response was from one member of the hypnosis community who had extensive sales training and experience. Basically she said that to become a healing client (or a customer of any kind) a person must meet the following criteria:
  • They must see a true need for healing - an immediate one.
  • They must be committed to the process of healing
  • They must be able/willing to pay for the work
  • They must believe they have the authority to make the commitment

In the case of the caller I had talked with most recently, the "must consult my husband..." suggested that she either didn't have the immediacy or did not feel she had the authority to make the commitment. Either way, she found a way to avoid commiting to the challenge of the healer's doorway.

The respondent on the list suggested that, since I (presumably) explained the process of hypnosis and established what the healing work would entail and what her benefits would be (and indeed I did), I ultimately did my best. My intention was to offer healing in return for fair compensation and all I can control are my own intentions. Only God/the-Universe can determine the outcomes.

What will transpire with the inquiring parties, I may never know. Often we are the bearers of gifts we don't even know of. And in that, I pray that any verbal help, questions, observations, etc. may have offered her a stepping stone on the way to resolution of the issues in question.

In short, in order to achieve a healing goal, whatever it may be, a person must have the determination. They must also believe that they have the authority/ability to achieve that goal. In short, they must arise to the challenge of the healer's doorway.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Test post #2

Testing to see if they have fixed the bug - blogspot did not feed to Plaxo.
Re-creating blog post on 2009-06-03 at 1253 CDT.
Let's see what happens now... :-)

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Website Updates: online booking and lots of new articles

Announcing my updated website: http://www.craigrlang.com

The biggest change has been the addition of on-line booking through genbook.com.
My scheduling and rates page is located at the Book-a-Session page on craigrlang.com. Clients can now schedule hypnosis sessions on-line directly, or by contacting me and arranging a session - which I can add to the schedule using the same utility.
Just click on the Book-Now button on the top button bar of my site and follow the directions on the book-a-session page.
I hope people enjoy the convenience of being able to schedule on-line.

I have also removed my blog page from my site - hopefully temporarily. Unfortunately, the host for my blog, Yahoo 360, is closing down, so my blog is now on a new location. I invite people to check out my previous postings on profiles.yahoo.com/craigrlang2002a. I plan to add new postings are on thecosmicbridge.blogspot.com, which will (hopefully) appear on my Plaxo page as well.

I invite readers to check out The CE4 Corner section on my site The Cosmic Bridge for the latest articles on close encounters with the unexplained - my continuing series, The CE4 Corner.

On my UFOs and Encounters page, I also have added a number of new articles over the last several months:

  1. Star travel sooner than we thought? (are we closer than we thought to the development of warp drive, faster than light travel and other wonders?)

  2. Intrusive Doses of Reality: (are events accellerating toward a singularity, or is life just going at its usual brisk pace?)

  3. Book Review: Beyond UFOs by Jeffery Bennett

  4. Prophecy and Prediction, What are the lessons of 10/14? (what do the myriad of "the aliens are coming" false-alarms teach us?)

These are just a few of the new articles on my site. They are a regular part of my bi-monthly newsletter, News from the Bridge. Feel free to click on the link and sign up for News from the Bridge.

Lots more to come:
In the next few months, I plan to take a lot of new steps my as I grow hypnotherapy practice - all of this in preparation for eventually ramping up to full-time. These include adding the ability to accept credit cards, addition of more time slots, completion of my next books: The Fifth Key, and a followup to The Cosmic Bridge, and the addition of several new self-hypnosis CDs.

In the mean time, I invite you to Check out the updates on my site and let me know what you think...