Maybe you think stuffed peppers are only bell peppers stuffed with rice, ground beef and tomato sauce. Yah, that's how my mom made them and with green bell peppers.... I hated them. Nothing wrong with that if that's what you like but if you can get your hands on some nice sweet Italian long peppers or better yet grow them in your garden and stuff them like I am showing below, you will never look back at those green bell peppers stuffed with rice and ground beef.
Ingredients:
Here's another post that is not about food or gardening but it is good for the soul. Who wouldn't want to be able to slow down time with your mind? Hopefully this article from Enoch Tan will help.
How to Slow Down Time with Your Mind
By Enoch Tan
Your spirit operates
outside time and space. When there is an emergency where danger is about to
approach you faster than you can normally sense, your spirit will compel you to
act quickly without pondering. It directs you through your instinct and
reflexes. Think of a time when you moved out of harm's way in an instant and
the move was so spontaneous it seems that everything just flowed in the moment.
Your awareness of what was happening and your response happened without
hesitation, but so quickly that it was almost together at the same time.
That is because your spirit can observe things and sense reality beyond your
ordinary rate and range of awareness. Imagine that a dagger is flying towards
you from the side. In ordinary rate of awareness, there is simply not enough
time to notice the dagger coming and to move out of the way. But in the realm
of your spirit’s awareness, time is slowed down to a crawl and it can fully
perceive everything that is happening no matter how quickly. It sends the
message to you and in that moment you experience the spontaneous and seemingly
simultaneous knowing and action. The awareness comes just before the action but
it seems that time slows almost to a standstill during that moment of thought.
Perception and action become as one.
If you want to consciously perceive faster so that things don’t seem to
happen so quickly, you have to slow time down in your consciousness.
It is not time that slows
down but you that slows down. See in your mind’s eye and memory things slowing
down. Like a picture frame frozen from a movie in motion. It is the way you
experience time slowing down or stopping when you see a beautiful person of
your dreams.
It would be an advantage
for anyone to stop the world or at least make everything appear to move in slow
motion. It would give you time to analyze the situation and the actions of everyone
and everything around you. It gives you extra time to determine your actions in
a pressure situation. This would be incredibly useful in business, driving your
car in traffic, playing games, military combat, sports and life threatening
situations.
Be Fully Alive to This Moment
Perceptive awareness is being fully alert and
living fully in the moment. It is seeing the trees bend
in the wind and the way the birds circle overhead. It is sensing how the trees
feel and what problems and joy the birds are experiencing. It is experiencing
the full moment around us and not just our little thoughts. It is clearing the
mind of future events and past replayed scenes, so you can experience the
entirety of the current moment in time. It is putting yourself in the full
frame picture now in front of you in relationship to everything happening
around you. It is being fully alive. With that kind of perceptive awareness, a
moment can seem to you to last forever.
A master baseball batter is
apparently able to slow things down when he’s at the plate. To everyone else,
the ball would be rocketing toward the plate at approximately 100 mph, almost
faster than the eye can see. But to the focused athlete, the ball seems to slow
down just for him, and present itself to him.
This is what many of the
best batters have this in common. Somehow, when they need to slow things down
to make their big play, they are able to perceive everything happening in slow
motion. The ball rolls slowly up to the plate and is easy to see, often appearing
larger than life. It’s almost as if the ball is waiting for them to hit it. To
everyone else, the ball is racing to the plate at a blistering speed, curving,
sinking, and breaking in ways that make it almost impossible to track, let
alone hit.
This is truly time
manipulation, since the perception of the person who seems to manage this trick
is that time has been stretched longer or made shorter. Since this is the
perception of the magician, and becomes the way he acts upon the world, it
becomes that person’s own functional reality. It’s really a consciousness shift
and an expanded awareness. And yes, it is real magic as we will see.
When playing baseball as a
batter, allow yourself to focus consciously on the location and speed of the
ball. Clear your mind of all noise and clutter. Get unnecessary thoughts out of
your head. Tune out all sound and distraction around you. Simply focus on the
baseball being pitched to you. Focus your intent. Imagine hitting it squarely
and watching it sail far through the air. Concentrate on your abdomen and
visualize projecting energy from this “will center”. You must want to hit the
ball and will it to happen. See the ball big and bold. Fixate on the ball. See
only the ball and focus your total intent and will on the ball. Did the ball
appear to be moving slower than normal? If so, you are well on your way to
becoming a master of time manipulation.
For most rapid perception,
attention must be at its maximum focus on the area of the thing to be
perceived. You must intend to see everything you can in that moment of looking.
When you focus only on the thing you are looking at, things surrounding will
become dimmer and out of focus while moving in slow motion together with it.
How to Experience Timelessness
To experience timelessness,
you need to focus intently on the moment at hand. You cannot allow your mind to
wander over events of the past or wallow in deep concern over the future. You
must be in the present moment, fully alert and clear headed. In short, you must
be totally involved in the “now”.
You must not fear but be calm and have a heightened state of awareness. Fear
collapses time. You do not want to collapse time, you want to expand it. Awe is
one of the feelings that expands time and slows it down. The opposite is true;
things that move in slow motion likeness create a feeling of awe. Fear and awe
are very similar and yet very different feelings. Fear causes you to be totally
unseeing and blind to the action of the thing you are afraid of in the moment.
Awe causes you to be totally seeing and taking in the fullness of what you are
looking at.
Scientists have shown that mild anxiety can improve performance in some
instances like a 100 meter dash, a musical performance, or even an exam. But
for the most part, a full-blown autonomic response is not adaptive in most of
these circumstances. These are classic instances of what the Taoists would call
getting in your own way.
The ancient Eastern masters from various traditions such as Taoist, Buddhist,
Hindu, Zen, Sufi and many others recognized this feature of the human nervous
system, and so found antidotes to it. These were awareness and equanimity. They
cultivated a calm temperament through meditation and breathing exercises, which
you can think of as strengthening the parasympathetic response.
As a result, the Eastern masters were able to develop a very strong and nearly
imperturbable presence. Because they were not getting in their own way, in the
face of danger they were pure action, maximally effective. This cultivation fed
into a hyper-aware state of mind, which, interestingly enough seems to block
out emotion-based responses.
Empathic healers who
transfer energy to others in therapeutic touch reach a level of heightened
alertness, which is classified as hyper beta brain activity. This is a state of
“super alertness” similar to the keen alertness that Zen masters have been
observed to reach in closed-eye meditations. In this state, the healer is
acutely focused on one thought or activity, tuning out all peripheral distractions.
You can also heal or
comfort yourself in this manner. In this heightened state of consciousness, you
can focus on any area of pain or injury and send healing energy to that area in
thought forms. Similarly, you can use your hands to help or to heal, using your
hands to project and conduct that healing energy.
A concentrated mind is not
an attentive mind, but a mind that is in the state of awareness can
concentrate. Consciousness or awareness is never exclusive, it includes
everything. It is not a constricted concentration but a relaxed and free one.
When you get into the calm and unperturbed state of mind of conscious
awareness, you can perceive easily and nothing can happen too quickly for you.
When you are able to slow time down in consciousness, you can use time as the
ultimate weapon. Nothing can stop you but you can stop anything. Time is the
ultimate illusion. All time is mental.
By using the principle of “it is not time that slows down but you that slows
down”, you slow down your actions to slow down the rate of things moving around
you in consciousness. Then once you have that increased rate of perception, you
can start moving faster again with much greater control and effectiveness. This
is the secret of slowing down in order to go faster. Do not hurry because hurry
manifests fear and collapses time. Only when you are calm are you able to
perceive things in slow motion.
Act as if you have all the time to do everything you want.
Every time you slip up on
an action or have a hesitation, it’s because you overlapped a proper sequence
of things and it just cancels out in your mind. Maybe it’s because you were in
a hurry. Your mind can only do one thing at a time, yet each may be done at the
rate of microseconds, giving the illusion of many things at once. If you
actually try to do many things at once, nothing happens. We’re referring to the
conscious awareness here, although your subconscious can do many things
simultaneously. It is your conscious awareness that uses rapid perception in
order to slow time down.
Time is an illusion, only consciousness is reality. Who is to say that only a
certain amount of things can happen within one second and not more? There are
times when people encounter life threatening situation and in the moment, their
whole life passed in front of them. As their precious life hung in the balance,
for one split second, they took stock of their life, including their loved
ones, unfulfilled dreams and unrealized goals and made a momentous decision
that saved them in virtually no time at all.
Maybe you experienced moments like this before. It is a state of
superconsciousness. Everything seemed to slow down. Things seemed to appear in
slow motion. You saw your loved ones and they seemed to be frozen in time. You
considered logical arguments and argued them through the steps to completion.
All of this takes a long time normally, but for this one instance when you are
so sharply focused and alert, you play it all our in one magical moment, a
moment that you seemed to control.
You can perceive things in
slow motion and still let your thoughts and actions flow at the “same speed”.
It is all relativity. To you, time around you slows down but to an outside
observer, you become phenomenally precise and in control. When you are able to
perceive faster, you also possess the ability to respond faster. Each second of
your time becomes stretched and you can have increased rate of movement within
it. Your time is increased compared to other people’s. Those watching with
normal rate of consciousness will see you moving like flashes of lightning with
sudden bolts of speed.
You can also use your mind
to increase your own rate of movement to phenomenal levels. Think of yourself
moving at extremely high speed that is beyond the ordinary. And act with that
mental state. Think speed and you manifest speed. Time manipulation and
phenomenally fast movement like all mind powers, require you to be in the right
state of consciousness to be of effect.
The best ballplayers, it
seems, have learned how to manipulate time whenever it suits them. Perhaps they
do this without a great deal of thought or analysis, but they certainly employ
all of the key factors of time magicians. They focus their intent, engage their
will power, and energize their thought forms. This is personal magic. This is
personal power. Everyone can do it. The superstars just do it more easily
and more often than the rest of us. We say that they are gifted or superhuman.
They are simply focused, intent and willful.
All champions have one
thing in common, they have learned to seize the moment. No matter what
situation we are in, there is always a cubic centimeter of chance that appears
in the moment for us to accomplish what we want. The trick is to be alert
enough to seize the moment and then have enough personal power to execute the
appropriate move at the appropriate instance. Impeccable warriors are fully
alert and fully aware of the physical world.
Everybody knows that under
normal conditions when heroics are not on the line, a person cannot pass a ball
through a crowd to a selected teammate who scores, all in less than one second.
Under normal circumstances, most people cannot even locate a person in a crowd
in less than one second, let alone pass the ball to him. This demonstrates over
and over again the elasticity of time.
There’s a young swimmer who
came out of nowhere at the end of a race to eclipse the field. She always found
a way to win, and would “pick her spot” to “make her move.” Still, it seemed
uncanny how she could close the big gap between herself and the race leader at
the end, when you consider she had to swim nearly twice as fast as she had been
swimming throughout the rest of the race.
It’s like the track
sprinter who digs down at the end of the race to bolt like a cannon to victory
at the end. To the observer, it looks as thought they are running against
opponents who are moving in slow motion. How can somebody who’s been running at
top speed suddenly double that speed at the end of a race, when they should be
the most tired? It’s an obvious display of will power, focused intent, and
energized thought power, whereby they conceive of miraculous victory and
believe it is possible. And whatever our consciousness can conceive, the body
can achieve. Since everything is consciousness, the physical world is only an
illusion.
Move into the "Zone" of Higher Performance
You can cope with daily
emergency situations and daily challenges where you need extra time and powers
that heightened awareness affords you. You can run faster in less time and slow
down events when needed by altering your perception of time and space. Some of
the greatest athletes do it. Heroic rescue teams do it. You can do it too.
You can meditate anywhere
and reach a state of heightened consciousness and timelessness. Surely, star
athletes in action do not stop everything that they are doing to sit down in
perfect posture and slowly number their bodies to enter this state. They have
learned to do it within the flow of events. They pop in and out of this state,
as needed. They do it quickly and almost effortlessly with practice. It becomes
a learned behavior. Soon your total self will sense the opportunity or need and
shift you to that new, higher level of consciousness. Then everything slows
down in front of you, so that you can respond.
If you watch top athletes
who gets into this “zone”, as sports people often call it, you will notice that
their eyes seem to glaze over or close halfway for a brief time. They might
even appear to be going into a trance. That trance, of course, is the altered
state of consciousness known to meditators. They go into a state of higher
consciousness very briefly. A split second can seem to last much longer to a
person in this state because there is no time or normal laws of physics in
higher consciousness.
Most people think that
spectacular athletes simply try harder when they “turn it on”. Certainly, they
do find extra energy and move with greater speed in less time at these moments,
almost as though time for them was standing still. These golden moments in an
athlete’s life are truly magical. They can see everything happening in slow
motion around them. They have all the time in the world to make amazing moves.
They can run faster, think faster, and jump higher than anyone else. And all of
this comes by slipping momentarily into higher consciousness, a nonphysical
reality where time does not exist and the normal laws of physics do not apply.
What’s even better, they operate in these golden moments with a higher
consciousness that thinks faster and better than the normal, physical
consciousness that people use.
Remember that you control
time as you experience it. As an agent of change, you control the only real
measure of time. This is because time only occurs with change. The theatre of
events around us is interpreted by our personal perception of change. Your
perception will be somewhat different from mine, although we might agree on
many things we observe together. Because of your unique perception, you create
your own reality. You also create your own sense of time as an agent of change.
Time simply measures change. Beyond that simple function, time is nonexistent.
There is really only the “now”.
Since time only operates
according to perception of it, you can manipulate time by controlling your perception
of it. Your higher consciousness exist in the realm of timelessness. Stay in a
state of heightened awareness in order to make your perception of time stand
still. It is a matter of personal time perception and a focused intent to stay
in the now. There are people who use such time powers to transverse great
distances in very little amount of time and cause limited resources to last far
longer than normal as though inexhaustible. Such are the miracles that happen
when time and space are altered.
Slow Time Down and Stop the World
Sword masters and ninjas
all use this “slowing time down” and “stopping the world” with the mind
technique to accomplish amazing feats of lightning fast combat which normal
perceiving people can hardly even comprehend how it is humanly possible for
themselves to attempt.
We miss ourselves. We are so busy out there in our minds, in the mirror, on the
phone, on the pc, listening to deafening music, overtaking, seeking power,
status, labels. The boy racer feels alive, excited, when he is near a near
death opportunity! Adrenalin pumping, over excited, showing off, seeking
attention, seeking power, seeking approval, fearful. Fight or flight that we
cannot see the signs. We make mistakes, we miss turnings, we lose or forget
things. Because we lose the plot, we lose reign of our senses.
Only when there’s an accident, a car crash, a thump on the head, a slap in the
face, a comment, a synchronistic moment, a glance from a beautiful person, song
of a sweet bird, the rising or setting of the sun, a shooting star, ever
renewing the rhythm of the waves do we stop for a second…time slows down…in
awe, devotion, speechlessness, thoughtlessness, our ears perk up. We become
aware of something here now. Something beautiful, fresh, sweet, pristine,
shining, glowing, evervessant, ever fresh. Only at these times, are we awake,
truly alive - during the skid / bang / crash - time slows down.
Mindfulness can be defined as knowing what is happening while it is happening,
no matter what it is. The essence of meditation is training in mindfulness.
It’s direct perception. We see through meditation, what the mind is doing,
moment by moment. Why? Because we are training ourselves to become present. If
we are present, we naturally bring our intelligence to bear on the moment.
Therefore we have no option but to find out what is happening.
Meditation, then, involves being present with what is here. The observer
consciousness allows you to fully observe what is happening internally as well.
You notice thoughts and feelings as they arise and realize the causes. It is a
self-reflective awareness where you know you are thinking when thinking
happens. When you become mindful, you become more aware of things both within
and without. The way to wisdom and intelligence is to understand ourselves as
human beings. Not through a theory, not through a concept, but through direct
experience.
When you are calm, you are
clear seeing. You filter out a lot of
noise that affects consciousness. To have a calm mind is to silence and still a
lot of vibrations leaving perception to be free and unhindered. You get into
the state of observer consciousness, where you are just watching what is going
on and seeing it in every moment of its happening. Mindfulness is the
systematic training in knowing what is happening, while it is happening.
As the mind becomes
tranquil, many things begin to become clear.
Things that were not formerly clear to us about ourselves, the world around us,
the way we are living, relationships. We become clear about everything. So we
need to generate within our minds the conditions for a prelimary mindfulness
which is the essence of meditation. As tranquility arises we began gaining
insight into the state of our own minds. Insight may arise naturally with
tranquility. That is the traditional teaching. We train in tranquility and
insight naturally arises.
Insight is the most
profound level of learning. It is learning through direct perception which
naturally gives rise to understanding. It is not learning through externally
acquired information, something imported from outside. It leads to wisdom
because it is learning inwardly how we are and what we are as human beings.
When your meditation becomes really powerful, it also becomes constant. Life
offers many challenges and the serious meditator is very seldom bored.
When you’re looking for
something or a solution, take time to pause and enter the stilled state of
consciousness. Don’t think of it as wasting time during the work day. With
practice, this little exercise takes very little time, as others perceive it.
Think of it as a creative way to think through your problems by engaging your
higher mind to meditate on work issues. In that state of consciousness, the
answer can come to you suddenly.
Remember, even a brief second
in an altered state of consciousness can seem like hours, since you are
controlling time. You are creating perfect timing of perfecting time
manipulation. Time is but an illusion. There is all of the time in the world,
if you can focus your intent and control your perception. Make your own
reality.
Any activity where you
perform can be expanded and enriched by a heightened state of awareness that
allows you to expand your perception of time and operate somewhat outside of
normal physical limitations.
Slow down only that which you want to, otherwise allow it to proceed at normal
speed. Use rapid perception on whatever you want to, whenever you want to.
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| "LaGrange vs LaGrange" - Painting by Mort Kunstler |
This is a departure from my usual food and garden posts but I wanted to share it because it is a very interesting part of the history of the town we moved to - LaGrange, Georgia. It is an account of how the women of LaGrange, after the men had gone off to fight in the Civil War, formed a local militia group to help guard and defend the town if the occasion arose. They actually had an opportunity to do just that. They formed an armed battle line to stop a Union Cavalry regiment, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry, that had orders to burn down the town - and the women won - by negotiating a peaceful end to the encounter and sparing the town. And then made dinner for the the regiment's commander and his staff. Here is their story from an article in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
"The Nancy Harts militia, formed in LaGrange during the
first weeks of the Civil War (1861-65), was a female military unit organized by
the wives of Confederate soldiers to protect the home front.
On April 26, 1861, the LaGrange Light Guards of the Fourth
Georgia Infantry, comprising men mostly from LaGrange, in Troup County, left home
to fight for the Confederacy. In that year alone, 1,300 men left LaGrange,
making the town particularly vulnerable to Union attack because of its location
midway between Atlanta and the Confederacy’s first capital at Montgomery,
Alabama. Soon after the men departed, two of their wives, Nancy Hill Morgan and
Mary Alford Heard, decided to form a female military company. The two women
called a preliminary meeting at a schoolhouse on the grounds of U.S. senator
Benjamin Hill’s home. Almost forty women attended, ready to do their part to
defend their homes and families.
Inexperienced with firearms and unfamiliar with military
matters, the women turned to A. C. Ware, a physician who remained in town due
to a physical disability, for assistance in their training. The members
initially elected Ware as captain but soon thereafter chose Nancy Morgan as
captain and Mary Heard as first lieutenant. The regiment leaders were assisted
by elected sergeants, corporals, and a treasurer. The group called themselves
the “Nancy Harts,” or “Nancies,” in honor of Nancy Hart, a Patriot spy who
outwitted and killed a group of Tories at her northeast Georgia cabin during the
Revolutionary War (1775-83).
The women began their military training using William J.
Hardee’s Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics (1861) and met twice a week for
drilling and target practice. The leaders offered prizes to the best
markswomen, and after several mishaps, including shooting a hornet’s nest and a
cow, the women became expert shots.
Although the Nancy Harts organized as a military unit,
they served primarily as nurses. During the latter half of the war, LaGrange
became a medical and refugee center because of its proximity to key
battlegrounds and its intact rail line. LaGrange’s four hospitals were often
full, and a number of residents, including nearly all the Nancy Harts, took
patients into their homes for individualized care.
Although it was not the only female military unit
organized during the Civil War, the Nancy Harts militia was unique in several
respects. First, the women drilled and continued target practice until the end
of the war. (Most other such groups existed only fleetingly.) Second, unlike
other female militias, the women faced Union troops as a regiment. In mid-April
1865 Major General James H. Wilson led a Union raid on west Georgia. As the
Union troops approached LaGrange from West Point, the local Confederate
cavalrymen fled, and the Nancy Harts stepped in to protect the town.
On April 17 the Nancy Harts marched to the campus of
LaGrange Female College (later LaGrange College) on the edge of town to meet
the enemy forces. When the Union cavalry arrived in LaGrange, the women negotiated a peaceful surrender of the town to Union colonel Oscar H. LaGrange
(coincidentally named) and laid down their weapons then organized an effort to feed both the Union and
Confederate soldiers. In return, Col LaGrange agreed to only destroy facilities that were helpful to the Confederate war effort - factories,
stores, and railroad tracks, but spared private homes and property.
After the war the Nancy Harts members returned to their
prewar duties, though many were forced to make difficult adjustments since more
than a quarter of LaGrange’s enlisted men did not return home.
The Nancy Harts have been a point of pride for residents
of LaGrange over the decades. In 1904 the Ladies Home Journal published an
article on the Nancy Harts, giving the militia national attention. In 1957 the
Georgia Historical Commission placed a historical marker commemorating the
women’s service in front of the LaGrange courthouse, and four years later a
group of LaGrange women staged a reenactment of the Nancy Harts’ activity for
the Civil War centennial, complete with officer elections. In 2009 the LaGrange
chapter of the UDC and the Pine Needle Garden Club planted a tree in the city’s
Stonewall Confederate Cemetery in honor of the Nancy Harts."
Caliente Pizza and Draft House is our favorite pizza joint here in Pittsburgh. And our favorite style is their Big Fat Greek Wedding pizza that used to be called their Mediterranean pizza. Either way it is amazing. It is a "white" pizza with a mix of interesting toppings - garlic butter sauce, artichoke hearts, agrodolce tear drop peppers, kalamata olives, baby spinach and feta, provolone and mozzarella cheeses all on top of their secret recipe long rise dough.
Crisped up pieces of soppresotta
Boboli crust but home made would be better -
Roasted a head of garlic the day before and squeezed out the soft sweet cloves with butter, salt and a little olive oil to make the garlic butter -
Brush the roasted garlic butter over the crust -
Add the artichoke hearts first -
