Stop the bleeding, clean the wound, apply antibiotic ointment (helps keep the bandage from sticking), then bandage.

What do you think the change in colors mean (if it’s personal please tell me by e-mail).

The only unusual thing that I am aware of is I cut my finger, at 2 am Sunday morning. There was a lot of blood in the kitchen. Stupidly, I decided to use my finger as a backstop to keep the dull but serrated butter knife from flying away when it broke off the chunk of cheese I was trying to cut. I lost a deep gouge of skin from my finger, but a band aid seems to have taken care of it. I don’t think I need to go to the emergency room. It wasn’t too painful but it is very inconvenient trying to do everyday things while trying to protect the injury from getting bumped.

Thanks for your concern.

How are things with you?

Buddha treated everyone the same, with kindness and respect. This was particularly remarkable given the cast system in that culture. He treated the people in the lowest cast with the same kindness and respect he treated the people in the highest cast with.

Of course the standard for Buddhist awakening is pretty high. Most people have to renounce all material possessions except two robes and a begging bowl and meditate and practice minfulness all day for years and years in order to wake up.

How do you define being awake?

Living in a world full of zombies is a problem every religious fundamentalist, political fanatic, and social or artistic snob has to deal with. It’s nothing special.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org.....cmind.html

The author explains how Buddhist theory gets applied in meditation.

I found a very good explanation of how vipassana, samadi and jhana fit into the larger perspective of Buddha’s teaching:

One Tool Among Many
The Place of Vipassana in Buddhist Practice
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

http://www.accesstoinsight.org.....etool.html

I guess I mean all of the lights I see. I’m not always sure where one kind stops and another begins. When I was given instructions in psychic protection from a professional psychic, she said to fill up my own aura with the sort of light that can be used to heal. She said that it is good to get used to wearing your aura farther away from your body. You kind of fill it up with light and push it outwards a bit. Strangely enough, I find that when I do this, people tend to give me more space. They give me both physical space and psychic space. I don’t get as overwhelmed.

Animals like people who carry a lot of light with them. Even wild animals seem to be less afraid of people who are bright. My husband always jokes that nothing is afraid of me. I always have to step over bunnies along the trail in the park. I’ve also encountered quite a number of large animals like bears, moose and mountain lions in my travels, and I’m happy to say that I’ve never had a bad encounter with any of them either (not that I don’t have a healthy respect for keeping my distance whenever possible). I’ve corresponded with a number of psychics who report the same kind of experiences with animals.

People react to light as well. I’ve sent light to people who were feeling sad or unwell, and it does seem to make a difference. I don’t tell them about it, but they seem to know. My father-in-law has commented on how I seem to affect people, and he doesn’t know about how I am. Complete strangers often come up and tell me their problems, and they quite often say how much better they feel after talking with me. A friend of mine who died of cancer used to tell me that she forgot about her pain when I was around. I wish I could have given her more than just a little bit of relief, but I suppose at least that much was better than nothing. Maybe the effects are really small, but I think that they do appear to be real. And I’ve heard similar stories from people who are professional psychics, not just ordinary people like me.