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trainingfordogs · 4 years

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Brain Training 4 Dogs Online Training Course Review

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Is Brain Training 4 Dogs the best Online dog Training course?

Brain Training for dogs by certified trainer, Adrienne Farricelli is a unique science-based dog online dog training course. The training methods, content quality and support offer fantastic value for money.

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User Experience

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As soon as you get a dog, your thoughts turn to training them. Of course, it’s only natural to want an obedient dog whom obeys your commands and doesn’t pee all over the place.

Unfortunately, training a dog can be hard work. Especially, if you don’t have much experience with it. People usually turn to the internet for dog training advice and resources like Smiling Staffy. Obviously, I love the amount of information that’s available online (we have an entire site dedicated to helping staffy owners solve problems and look after their dogs).

However, searching online is generally better for times where you have a specific issue or question concerning your dog. When it comes to general training, it’s difficult to find a solid set of organised steps that you can take to turn your dog into a well-mannered intelligent member of the family.

This is where dedicated online training courses come in and my current favourite is Brain Training 4 Dogs by Adrienne Farricelli. This course is designed to take your dog from the very beginning and basics of training all the way to super-advanced techniques like playing the piano (yes! This is really part of the course).

Whether you’re just hearing of Adrienne’s course for the first time or you came here to find out more about it, this article is for you. It will give you an in-depth look at the course from somebody who actually paid for it and owns it. You’ll then be able to decide if it is the right kind of course for you before parting with your hard-earned.

What is Brain Training for Dogs?

Brain training for dogs by Adrienne Farricelli is a unique online dog training course aimed at improving your dog’s intelligence in order to transform them into an obedient and clever dog by engaging their mind.

The main philosophy for the program is the use of force-free training methods, which is something I love and I’m sure you will too. These methods mainly come in the form of games that you play with your dog to reinforce certain training principles and goals.

An example of one of these games is Adrienne’s “Airplane Game”, which is used to control your dog’s attention. Check out the video below to see how this game works:

The brain training for dogs course is filled with games like this and is ordered in terms of difficulty and progression. This makes it easy to follow and gives you a simple path to track your dog’s progress.

About the Instructor

Adrienne Farricelli is a professionally certified dog trainer and behaviour specialist who has been working with dogs since 2006.

From working in an animal hospital to the local shelter, today, Adrienne holds dual qualifications in dog training.

She became certified by the Italian association for Dog Trainers and Canine Consultants after completing an apprenticeship under a master trainer.

I think it’s fair to say that Adrienne knows how to train dogs and her methods of zero-force and positive reinforcement are certainly preferred to out-dated techniques of dominance and punishment.

Following this she gained CPDT-KA certification in the United States. This stands for “certified pet dog trainer – knowledge assessed”, which is a highly-valued qualification that requires some strict terms to be met to achieve it. To maintain her CPDT-KA status, Adrienne also needs to continue her learning by attending various other courses so you can be sure her knowledge is up to date and it shows during her brain training for dogs course.

Her efforts and endeavours have also been voiced in many international newspapers and events like “USA Today”, “Daily Puppy,” and “Nest Pets.”

Also, Adrienne is an amazing writer. Her writings have been published in “Every Dog Magazine” and “The APDT Chronicle of the Dog.”

What's Included in the Brain Training 4 Dogs Program?

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Once you’ve purchased the course, you’ll gain instant access to the Brain Training 4 dogs member’s area, which acts like a dashboard where you can access all of the materials included in your purchase.

When I first opened the member’s area, I was very pleasantly surprised to see the amount of content that was on offer. There are a number of bonuses included on top of the standard brain training course.

Here’s exactly what you get as a course member:

Brain Training 4 Dogs

This one will be no surprise to you; it is the main course and is probably where you’ll start your journey.

Behaviour Training for Dogs Online

As part of your course membership, you also receive exclusive access to a second, bonus course. This was a nice little surprise for me since I didn’t know this was part of the deal.

The behaviour training for dogs course is a 3-module course that focuses on solving 5 very specific and common dog behaviour problems:

Whining

Digging

Barking

Chewing

Jumping

Although the main course will reinforce good behaviours to help these issues, this little course is great for targeting these specific problems directly if your dog displays any of them.

Resources Section

This area includes all of the necessary items you’ll need to complete the courses. Any downloadable resources and product recommendations that are needed for both courses can be found here. It is helpful to have this stuff in one place.

Adrienne’s Archive

Here, you’ll find over 100 dog training articles that have been written by Adrienne. These can serve as extra learning materials for you as you learn how to become a better owner and trainer to your dog.

There’s also another surprise bonus here (although, it won’t be after I ruin it for you, sorry!). You get access to a video archive that includes a couple of extra behaviour videos as well as some cool trick training videos.

Over-the-Shoulder Case Studies

I thought this was a really nice addition to the course and something I haven’t seen online dog trainers do before. Here, Adrienne has included some over-the-shoulder videos of dogs that she has personally trained. You get to see each step as she trains these dogs on their individual behaviour problems.

Private Member’s Forum

The forum is the place to go to ask any questions or queries you might have relating to your dog’s behaviour. Generally, you’ll get answers to your question from the community and even Adrienne herself will contribute. In fact, Adrienne is very active on the forum and does respond to many questions.

I will say some of the videos could do with being updated and re-edited since some are looking a bit old now. However, the information is top-notch, and they all get the job done.

Inside the exclusive Brain Training for dogs private forum

As you can see, you really do get quite a lot included within this course. There is more than enough material to help you transform your dog into an obedient angel as long as you’re consistent with it.

Brain Training 4 Dogs Course Structure

The course recently had a revamp and now features a much easier to follow layout as well as video modules. In the past, some of the lessons were mainly written so the addition of video is extremely welcome.

The course is very straightforward to navigate since it is laid out in a step-by-step order, which means you can pickup where you left off at any time with ease.

In total, there are 5 course modules to follow:

Module 1: Getting Started

Module 2: Obedience Training 101

Module 3: Polishing Up Training

Module 4: Brain Training (the main course)

Module 5: Closing Words

A Closer Look Inside Brain Training 4 Dogs

As I mentioned above, the main part of the course is the brain training in module 4. This is where you’ll discover the majority of the dog training lessons and content.

To make it easy to see your progress, the main course is divided into a school style layout that indicates the difficulty level of each section. At the end of each section, there is a graded challenge where you’ll be able to assess how well your dog performs in the tasks you have been learning together.

Grading Table

There is a grading structure so you can see very clearly when your pup is ready to move on to the next level or if they may need a bit more nurturing and practice.

The best way to take this course is to follow the step by step pattern and complete all of the modules and sections in order. This makes it so simple to follow. After all, the course was designed by a pro so it would be wise to follow along in the designed order.

Inside the Brain training 4 Dogs Course Dashboard

Level I - PreSchool

As the name suggest, this section is all about the basics. You and you dog will learn about brain power and how to quickly respond to your command. We all know the frustration of a pup ignoring us so this level is a valuable one.

The pre-school level target’s your dog’s attention, which is crucial if you are to progress on to the later, more advanced lessons. Here are a few of the lessons and games that are taught at this stage.

“Target Train” the lazy monster to get his eyes on you. Start by teaching your pooch to focus on your hand, stick or a ball. Afterwards, you can extend the target by making him open the door or ringing bells.

The necessary “Eye Contact” with your dog to make the communication strong and improve interaction. This will help him to behave properly all the time and become a good boy/girl.

The simple and interesting “Airplane Game” to make your pooch pay attention to you and look into your eyes

Level II - Elementary

Here's a peak inside the module pages. This is where you'll find your lesson videos.

After cracking the first level, now, it’s important for your dog to learn to fulfil your demands and enhance his/her skills.

The elementary level introduces few games that your dog will love and find very interesting to play all the time. Of course, they’ll be learning as to listen to demands as they play these mini-games.

Teaching a rewarding game like “Treasure Hunt” will rejuvenate your lazy dog and will make his/her routines interesting.

The simple and inexpensive “Muffin Game” will challenge his brain and will also help encourage him to win.

The mood-lifter “Ball Pit Game” that will make him put energy into a task by triggering his mental power.

Level III - High School

Congratulations, at this level, your dog will be all set to learn about endurance and self-control. This will control his excitement and encourage him to be calm in some of the more stimulating day to day situations.

Here are a few examples of some calming behaviour games included in the level of the course.

Control the behaviour of your dog with the “Jazz Up & Settle Down” game that will teach him/her manners and build a relationship. So, no more jumping like crazy when you come through the door.

The interactive “Bottle Game” will let your dog exercise a bit and will keep him busy and entertained for a long period of time.

“Bobbing for treats” will help your dog to behave well as he/she will get the reward for following the commands.

Level IV - College

By this point, your pup will be getting rather advanced and is ready to move on to some more demanding lessons where his/her motor skills will be developed so they can react intelligently to commands.

The college module includes games that will boost the mental capacity of your dog and will let him/her remain calm in exciting situations.

The “Shell Game” will enhance their mind by playing on the dog’s superior sense of smell. This fun little game is excellent for engaging your pups’ mind and keeping them from getting bored.

The “Open Sesame Game” will let your dog remain cool and calm when somebody comes through a door in your home.

The “Magic Carpet Game” will again help in better understanding and tranquillity during times of potential excitement.

Level V - University

Now, your dog enters the senior level of the training programme. He/she will already be super calm and obedient by this point so now it is time to move on to teaching them all about emotional and impulse control.

This level will help in making your dog a better-behaved dog by using the following games to teach him or her how to be more confident and resist temptation:

The “Hide & Seek” game is a fun game for both yourself and you dog. It helps to create a stronger bond between you and is great for helping dogs with issues when being left alone.

“The Look” game is designed to eliminate unwanted barking at others, especially when your dog is looking out of the window.

The fun and trouble-free “Hot & Cold Game” will boost up your dog’s spirit and will help to boost their learning ability as well.

Level VI - Graduation

A you’ve probably gathered by now, this is one of the most advance section of this training programme. The graduation level is all about developing advanced level motor skills and the intelligence to effortlessly obey your commands.

Here’s an example of the kind of learning games included at this level:

“Leg Weaving Skills”. An excellent skill to teach your dog to obey more complex commands and to impress your pals at the same time!

The game, “Serpentines and Spiral” will train your pup to stay by your side at all times, even as you make erratic and unpredictable movements.

“Name Recognition” is an extremely cool technique that teaches your dog to recognise items by name. He/she will learn how to pick out toys by name and bring them to you.

Level VII - Einstein

Finally, your pooch is a genius now, and, by reaching this level he/she can easily impress any human they want with their skills and talent.

Teach your dog to keep his area clean even after hours of playing with the “Tidy up Game”. An invaluable lesson to learn.

The “Ring Stacker” game will again test your dog’s patience and encourage them to develop extra self-control.

“Play the Piano”. This one sounds a bit unbelievable but apparently, it’s doable. I have not reached this level with my dog yet but there are many who have, and they tell me it is certainly possible.

There really is so much content inside the brain training for dogs course. And that is without all the other bonuses I mentioned above.

My recommendation is to simply run through the brain training course as it is laid out then use the bonus behaviour training course to cover any more specific problems that your dog might run into.

Verdict - Is Brain Training 4 Dogs Worth it?

Pros

A Huge Amount of Content for the price your pay

Affordable, one-off payment

Highly qualified and experienced instructor

Safe, non-forceful approach

Simple to follow with videos and clear descriptions of the lessons/games

It's a fun way to train and bond with your dog!

Cons

Some of the videos seem to be old and do look a little dated

I felt a few of the games were a little unnecessary as they didn't seem to have a clear teaching purpose

Some of the lessons required equipment I didn't have around the house. A kids' pool, for example.

Final Verdict:

All in all, I really like this approach to training a dog; it is based around playing and rewards, which is great fun. The games are unique and some are pretty clever, which is perfect for keeping both you and your dog interested in the program.

I've already mentioned it a few times now but the course includes a large amount of helpful content and it is all simple to follow. As long as you're willing to put the time and consistent effort into it, it will help you to train your dog.

So, with all that being said, I would certainly recommend giving it a try. It is very affordable, a one-off payment of under £50 and comes with a 60-day unconditional money-back guarantee so you really can't lose.

link product: Training 4 Dogs

#mydogismy #todayfanphoto #pet #dog #cute dog

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ruminativerabbi · 4 years

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Pandemic Purim

Purim was a slightly melancholic experience at Shelter Rock this year: first we cancelled the dancing, then we cancelled the party, then we cancelled the whole evening so as best to conform to the advice we were getting indirectly from the CDC in Atlanta, less indirectly from the Nassau County Board of Health, and not at all indirectly from physicians in the community who felt we would be putting people—and particularly our seniors—at risk by bringing them together in large numbers in a confined space. I suppose some must have felt we were over-reacting. But can you really over-react when we are talking about the health and welfare of a whole community and specifically of its oldest and youngest members? Better safe than sorry!

And yet, even so, the whole experience left me feeling a bit despondent, a bit blue—but not specifically because I was or am suffering over the decision itself. When I analyzed my thinking, in fact, I realized that my mood had more to do with the way the decision—and the whole coronavirus outbreak—had somehow managed to shift the way I think about Purim itself, moving me along from considering it basically to be about the great success of the Jews of Persia in standing together to defend themselves to focusing instead on just how vulnerable those people were in the first place, how completely they would surely have been annihilated if Queen Esther hadn’t found the courage to enter the king’s throne room uninvited, if she hadn’t found the words to stir the king to action on her people’s behalf, if she hadn’t been the paragon of virtue and bravery as which we more than reasonably remember her. It all worked out well, of course. But it also could not have…and that sense of vulnerability is what I noted coming to the fore in me and displacing the raucous delight our happiest holiday generally elicits in me easily.

And then I read Meir Soloveitchik’s essay published in the New York Times on Purim day itself. Rabbi Soloveitchik, the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on Central Park West, is one of my favorite essayists. (He is also only the synagogue’s tenth rabbi since the American Revolution, which detail seems impossible to believe and yet is apparently true.) He writes in several different forums, all of which I try to keep up with, but this Op-Ed piece for the Times (click here) made a special impression on me both because it both confirmed my mood but also because it helped me understand about the whole concept of vulnerability that had somehow come to the fore in my thinking about the holiday.

Rabbi Soloveitchik’s basic point is that there is something slightly both slightly self-serving and seriously strange about celebrating the happy end of the Purim story without pausing to contemplate the political instability that is, after all, at the heart of the tale. He cites a comment made by his uncle, the late Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s in the latter’s book, Days of Deliverance: Essays on Purim and Chanukah, which I would like also to quote. “If,” the elder Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote, “a Prime Minister who just yesterday enjoyed the full confidence and trust of the king was suddenly convicted and executed,” he reflected, “then who is wise and clairvoyant enough to assure us that the same unreasonable, absurd, neurotic change of mood and mind will not repeat itself?” And, of course, the answer is that none of us is: King Achashveirosh is depicted in the Megillah as the most terrifying political figure of all: the idiot-king possessed of immense and unchallengeable power who is so pathetically eager to please the world that he basically agrees to whatever proposal is put to him no matter how malign or barbaric, and no matter how reliable or unreliable the person putting it to him might be.

The younger Rabbi Soloveitchik, the essayist whose work I so admire, then goes on to ask the obvious question: if his uncle’s observation is correct, which it certainly is, then why exactly is Purim celebrated as a holiday at all? It’s a good question. And his answer is also a good one. Queen Esther, he writes, embodied precisely the character traits— and foremost among them initiative, bravery, and insight—that made it possible for the Jews to survive both the terrifying imbecility of an Achashveirosh and the malign savagery of a Haman. And so we celebrate, not the specific incident that gave rise to the holiday, but rather the possibility of heroism that constitutes its greatest lesson. That last phrase “the possibility of heroism,” comes directly from the final paragraph in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s essay, where he writes that, for all Purim “marks the fragility of Jewish security,” it also represents the possibility of heroism in the face of that vulnerability. And then the essay concludes with the thought that Purim “is therefore a holiday for our time. Around the world, and especially in a Europe that should know better, anti-Semitism has made itself manifest once again. As Esther’s example is celebrated, and Jews gather in synagogue to study her terrifying tale, we are reminded why, in the face of hate, we remain vigilant — and why we continue to joyously celebrate all the same.”

In my weekly letters, I have returned again and again to the topic of heroism and the specific question of what constitutes a true hero. (Click here or here for some examples.) Esther certain qualifies: untrained in diplomacy or in strategic negotiation techniques, she somehow nonetheless found a way to identify her people’s foes’ Achilles’ heels—Haman’s preening megalomania and Achashveirosh’s pathetic need to please—and bravely to use them artfully and cleverly in the defense of her people. And so Purim really is a holiday for our time. We all feel ever more vulnerable in the world than ever as the number of anti-Semitic incidents at home and abroad multiplies, as anti-Semitic tropes creep into public discourse in a way that even a few years ago would have felt unimaginable, and as the world’s eagerness to placate Iran, Israel’s most vicious foe, feels more and more ominous with every passing week. The obvious question is how to respond forcefully effectively. And to that specific question, Purim offers a very good answer: with cunning, with forthrightness, with intelligence rooted in an honest understanding of our enemies’ motives, with selflessness and singlemindedness, and with courage and bravery. And so, because Queen Esther was the embodiment of all of the above, we celebrate her success…even though, at the same time, we take note of just how precarious the security the Jews of old Persia surely felt before Haman came to office truly was. And that vulnerability can serve us well…if we can get over our skittishness in its regard to allow it to guide us an understanding of how things actually are in the world.

Of course, all Americans are feeling vulnerable this week as the coronavirus spreads unchecked throughout thirty-eight of the fifty states and 117 of the world’s countries including every nation in Europe. But is that sense of vulnerability a problem or an asset? Or is it just the right emotion for us all to bring to the table as we prepare to elect a new (or not new) president in November? Indeed, perhaps we should be coming to the New York State primary on April 19 or the general election on November 3 possessed not of our usual American sense of invincibility but rather of a sense of the vulnerability we are all facing…and demanding that those who would be our leaders respond to how things actually are not with bluster, let alone with unfulfillable empty promises, but with the same combination of intelligence, bravery, and chutzpah that Esther brought to the table when she risked everything to prevent a catastrophe of immense proportions from befalling her people.

Since neither major party has actually nominated a candidate for the presidency, the challenge facing the American people is not prematurely to decide who to vote for, but rather thoughtfully to decide what qualities we wish to characterize those who would be our leaders. Starting from a deep sense of our vulnerability, our national and international interconnectedness to other people and peoples, and our deep and abiding sense of our personal responsibility for the welfare of others sounds like the right approach to me! Even if Queen Esther were somehow to come back to life and become a naturalized American citizen, she still would not be eligible to run for the office of President. So we’re going to have to go with someone who embodies her finest qualities, someone possessed of the courage and the cleverness, the altruism and the cunning to lead us out of this mess we find ourselves in. And who will that person be? That, of course, remains to be seen!

#COVID-19 #Purim #vulnerability

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fimflamfilosophy · 6 years

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Ha ha. Interesting how you're quitting YouTube while whining about the algorithm when really your content just sucks. Creators like Jenny Nicholson have somehow found a way to be funny and charming on the platform without going for the lowest common denominator or selling out. Why not you, Greg? Maybe it's not so easy. You made all the wrong decisions and now your comedy career is over. Go cry some more.

Production-wise and as an example of what works on Youtube, Jenny Nicholson is a pretty interesting case study. Not because she’s different; she’s a vlogger who blogs about third party properties. It’s well-established that’s one of the best ways to get big these days..What’s interesting is how she manages to defeat a number of myths put out about Youtube quality. She has a clear speaking voice. I don’t know if it’d be polite to comment on her appearance but I think people might say she’s pretty. But that aside, she’s really not going above or beyond..I have a cheap set-up myself, but one thing they usually recommend is to set up a three-point lighting system for your vlogs. Most top vloggers do this once they start earning money because it’s a very simple and professional thing you can do. They set up a space, install the lighting, then leave it. Jenny can’t do this because she blogs from her bed, and it would probably be inconvenient to navigate her bedroom if there was a bunch of lighting equipment in the way. So usually her lighting looks pale and not especially attractive. It’s very clear she sets up a camera and simply goes at..Next is her sound situation. I’m not sure what kind of mic she’s using. Clearly she goes beyond the absolute minimum, because I can’t hear the whirring insider her camera, so she’s not using the camera’s built-in mic. But again, because she’s set up in her bedroom, she’s getting a lot of echo. The echo problem is why you often see the big Youtubers doing their vlogs in sound booths, or in front of lots of curtains or drapes or whatever. It helps dampen out the echo and make the sound more crisp..Finally is the editing, which is the real tell-tale sign that few Youtube vloggers could run a talk show or do something you might traditionally expect from an actor. If you have good stage ability, it should be possible to do most of your set without having to resort to tons of jump cuts. Most vloggers rely on them like a crutch, and Jenny is the same. It seems like there’s a jump cut at the end of every sentence or paragraph, and that means there was probably dead space while she thought of what she wanted to say next. We’ve come to expect this from Youtubers, but it wouldn’t be tolerated on one of those late-night shows you see produced by networks..So if Jenny isn’t relying on any professional techniques within her videos, you have to ask yourself: “Well what is she doing?”.The answer is easy. She’s making long form videos, once a week, about someone else’s successful IP. She has decent audience retention, plenty of watch minutes aaaaand... that’s it! That’s the secret. Videos about a popular IP are more likely to show up in the recommended feed, and videos with lots of watch minutes and decent retention will actually show up in subscriptions and be pushed to other people. She already had a viewership from Friendship is Witchcraft, so she had a seed, and aside from that she’s basically like everyone else on the site today..Jenny doesn’t need good lighting, or good audio, or a good delivery with few cuts. To Youtube’s algorithm, a watch minute is a watch minute. There’s no difference between good and bad lighting to the bot. The bot doesn’t care about the quality of the audio. It doesn’t care what’s on screen. A minute, is a minute, is a minute. All minutes are equal. Same goes for audience retention; once your retention is decent, you don’t need to improve or go any further..Vlogs are also very easy. All you need to do to retain the audience is be engaging enough that people will sit through the whole video. There are few working parts. If you tried to make a show, you’d have to write motives, create conflicts, you’d have to act, you’d have to do sound effects, you’d have to worry about screen composition, you have to make sure the actor’s lines are clear, you have to think about what the actors are wearing. There are so many moving parts, and they all have to work or it bothers your audience. It’s challenging and complicated. Youtube just doesn’t reward it, because risk, or writing something that doesn’t resonate as well with your audience will lower retention scores. Your demo has to be broad, your work so simple it can’t be screwed up..A lot of people on Youtube, especially people who are currently doing well, would like to believe that Youtube is promoting based on merit. I recently watched a vlogger extolling the trials of being screwed by the automated demonetization, and prior to this he’d been lucky enough that he hadn’t been burned by the automated system. He’d risen to the top quickly, and then was more likely to get direct attention or lenient behavior from the bots. During the video, he said, “Maybe there is something to all those people saying the algorithm is screwing them over,” as though he’d always dismissed it because the system worked for him..A certain discreet quantity of success on Youtube is owed to ability. You need just enough skill to retain an audience that has already clicked on your video. You need to be just barely that engaging. But beyond that, all that matters is your metadata. Quantity, quantity, quantity..Telling me somebody made it on Youtube by exploiting a third party’s IP and by doing vlogs is like telling me somebody won a pie eating contest. I don’t care, man. I don’t know how you don’t see that as reaching for a low common denominator or as selling out. It’s certainly not succeeding with your own independent content, and the point with that stuff is to appeal to the greatest common denominator of people. “People who have seen Star Wars” is a VERY COMMON DENOMINATOR. EVERYONE HAS SEEN STAR WARS..The point is to come up with my own ideas and have them actually succeed and be seen by people. To grow, using my own imagination and story-telling ability. In a business sense, to establish my own brand, something that actually belongs to me that I can say I built.

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fivepercentgodsandearths · 6 years

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9 Reaches To Decode Black Panther **SPOILERS ALERT** After seeing the Black Panther film I knew I had to pen a think piece to share what I saw. Not to debate the pros or cons of seeing it but to share with those who did see it some deeper insight into the symbolism, folklore and science throughout the film. Even though Black Panther is a 1966 comic developed by a couple of Jewish guys, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, when Christopher Priest, a black man, began writing the Black Panther comic in 1998, this character served as the inspiration behind the Marvel Studios film Black Panther. The story is about T'Challa, heir to a mythical NE African throne in the land of Wakanda; an isolated society comprised of 18 tribes who for centuries has possessed an alien element called vibranium that they acquired from a fallen meteor. Nearly indestructible and one of the most powerful substances on the planet, vibranium is used to create wealth and the highest technological advances known to humans. It is also the element that was used to forge Captain America's shield. Wisely hidden away from the outside world, the Black Panther and his council of tribal of elders known as the Taifa Ngao, have primarily kept Wakanda safe and free from outside influence for the majority of their existence. Like the Five Percent as in Wakandan culture, education or knowledge is viewed as a fundamental building block of its nation. As all things change, Wakandan culture is eventually discovered and the 10% [world’s powers] plot to pillage their vibranium. T’Challa’s father T'Chaka, the current Black Panther and King of Wakanda, is assassinated at the UN thus forcing T’Challa to step up and lead his people as the next Black Panther. The film covers his transition into that role and the challenges, literally, that come along with it. Before I get into the symbolism, folklore and science throughout the film, I think I need to give some context into why Black Panther Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit. First and foremost he is wealthier than any superhero in the DC or Marvel Universes. In other words, he's got more paper than Bruce Wayne, Tony Starks and Floyd Mayweather combined, and he has actual superpowers. Black Panther has super strength, psychic abilities, invisibility, super stamina, clairvoyance, master acrobat, healing factors, necromancy and other powers. If you, and especially the youth around you, have never really checked out the Black Panther comic I would encourage you to. If it's not you, what other fictional or nonfictional images of power are youth exposed to? If you cannot think of any, don't complain; either create them or support those who are creating them. Alright, here are some things I peeped in the Black Panther film that I think are worthy of sharing with you: 1. For my Yonians, central to the Wakandan culture was the worship of the Neteru Bast. Bast, in her ancient Kemetic zoomorphic form, is the symbol of the cat; what some people, particularly men, call a p*ssy. Partly symbolizing a protectress, Bast is the reasoning behind the powerful woman-led Dora Milaje warriors. This is also why present day f*ckboys seek to shack up with Bast women and take advantage of her Okoye loyalty. The heart-shaped sacred herb, a symbol of Bast's transferred power that enhances a person's strength, mobility, stamina, endurance and instincts, resembled a yoni and was cultivated in the subterranean regions of Wakanda... 2. A 'Monger' is a dealer or trader. 'Erik' is a Norse or Proto-Germanic name which means eternal ruler. Thus Erik Killmonger means "an eternal ruler who deals death." As a sexual innuendo of his toxic masculinity, his notches for "bodies" [body counts] went well beyond his belt and covered his entire upper body. He clearly had no love for women as shown by the non-relationship with his mother, shooting his Bonnie & Clyde companion in the head, choking out a elder caretaker of the heart-shaped herb and demanding that she burn its sacred garden, slitting the throat of one of the Dora Milaje, slicing Nakia across her leg and almost murdering Shuri. This is what he did, yet many women have still shown sympathy for Killmonger's actions. "I understand what he was trying to do" I've heard many women say, "to fight for oppressed people" -even though there was no tangible evidence of him working with oppressed people, which includes women. This helped me better understand why some women, not all women, rationalize staying in abusive relationships, keep dudes around because the sex is Killmonger and follow conscious community miscreants; Stockholm syndrome. Some of us love words and potential yet fail to acknowledge what folks are actually doing. I've seen the argument that Killmonger is the result of being left in America, disconnected from his people, and it's not his fault. I agree that abandonment was not his fault and Killmonger's feelings about that family dysfunction were understandable; many black people in the wilderness of North America can relate and feel the same way. Yet his resolve with those feelings, as an eternal ruler who deals death, was not wise nor did it make him a hero. From his own mouth he prided himself on his assimilation into "the white man's" society, via his military experience, and he brought those colonialist ways to Wakanda. King T'Chaka was wrong for abandoning Killmonger as a child in America and Killmonger was wrong for how he handled that disappointment, as an adult, with his family and people. We need warriors with the aggression and passion of a Killmonger, especially as a Border tribesman, but not sitting on no throne. His inconsideration for other men and insensitivity to women, children and the society at large were qualities of a self appointed tyrant who rules by fear, not the qualities of a just and true King. Killmonger's "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, cause they knew death was better than bondage" quote and other revolutionary words were noble but I didn't see one act that demonstrated his capacity to be a loving Husband [King], a Father raising children [successors to the throne] with integrity and a Man of his people wisely working with his counsel of elders. 3. The burial ritual to connect with Wakandan ancestors and inherit the Bastian power of the Black Panther is similar to the Recapitulation technique some warriors in indigenous tribes use to also connect with their ancestral past and gain clarity of their life purpose. In Freemasonic lore it's also symbolic to the shallow grave the Master Architect Hiram Abiff was buried in before he was raised with a lion's paw grip. After you select an appropriate burial spot, usually among trees and in an isolated area beyond human disruption, a shallow grave is dug East [head] to West [feet] about 2 feet deep that's a little longer and wider than ones body. Next layer the bottom with a blanket. After that search the area for sticks and large leaves to cover the tomb that stops the soil from filtering through. You start covering the grave from the bottom to the top and once it's almost complete you climb in and finish covering it as you lay inside leaving a small hole for air. Fasting is important before you do it and the length of time you remain varies. I've done it for 24 hours and the best time to leave the grave is sunrise or sunset. The whole idea is to meditate on our demise as a form of detachment from the world. An earthen self-deprivation chamber, this is literally a place to reflect upon the past and present life and what they can do in the future. 4. M'Baku, King of the Jabari Tribe, in the comic he is the leader of the White Gorilla Cult because he gained his superhuman powers by killing a white gorilla, bathing in its blood, eating its flesh, and then he took on the name Man-Ape. The M'Baku line, "If you say one more word, I'll feed you to my children! I'm kidding. We're vegetarians" in the film was a play on that comic book backstory. Although the mountain ranges M'Baku and his tribe inhabit is nowhere near the Caucasus Mountains, I found it interesting that pre-Farrakhanian Nation of Islam members under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad [THEM] openly taught that white people [devils] that were exiled from our homeland and living in the caves tried to graft themselves back into the original black man. In the process some became [white] gorillas. In fact, he taught that the entire monkey family are from the 2,000 year history of the white race living in the Caucasus Mountains. Although M'Baku carried a shillelagh, THEM also taught that the guards of these mountain boarders kept weapons [flaming swords] to stop these humanoids from coming back among the original people. The above image is from the first page of the 1998 Black Panther comic by Christopher Priest where Agent Ross remarks that, "ZURI was into his THIRD re-telling of how the great god T’Chaka ran the evil white devils out from their ancient homeland." Naw I don't think Stan Lee, Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole drew these parallels and wrote that. Christopher Priest obviously had knowledge of this and I could see the parallels. 5. After Get Out Chris Washington got WOKE, changed his gubment name to W'Kabi and started a rhinoceros farm on the fringes of Wakanda as leader of the Boarder tribe. After Rose 'Beckyed' him it's obvious he ain't been right since. 6. Tobias Whale is Killmonger's uncle; Killmonger's mother's brother. Whale developed a hatred for Black Lightning because N'Jobu reminded him of the Wakandans and the metahuman Black Panther who exiled albinos to the lands where they were hunted, killed and their bones ground up as a power potion, as Lady Eve reminded him. Green Light is a synthetic form of vibranium and when Quentin caught wind of what Killmonger was doing he came back to the Chi to re-stake his claim as a Frank Lucas-like vibranium plug for the 100. Lastly, Kevin was around at the end of the film asking T'Challa questions about his ship because he was with his family in Cali who happened to stay in the hood Killmonger grew up in. Kevin was out there laying low after shooting Ronnie. 7. When it comes to even just conceptualizing a Wakandian society, one of the downfalls of many men is trying to f*ck the Nakia's, Okoye's, Ayo's, Shuri's and Xoliswa's on their team instead of working with them. One of the downfalls of many women is allowing them to. 8. I loved seeing all of the Wakanda inspired regalia at the Black Panther movie premieres around the country. I haven't seen it since Kwanzaa and I look forward to seeing it again during Juneteenth. 9. Black Panther had the fifth biggest opening of all time and broke box office records during its opening weekend. It's the largest opening for a black Director, the second biggest opening for a Marvel Studios film and currently the #1 RATED FILM OF ALL TIME via Rotten Tomatoes. Not only does this demonstrate the earning potential of films told from our perspective but this, along with Get Out, is reshaping the false narrative that black themed films not doing box office numbers domestically and internationally. While some may see this as production houses and film companies becoming more open to our pitched ideas and potential larger pay dates, I see it as a watershed moment of self reliance and cooperative economics. Many of us already know our buying power as a black community, but willfully this galvanizes us to do more, culturally and artistically. Some felt as though nothing could top the response of Get Out, but here we have it, and this film won't be the last. Peace, Saladin Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright and Winston Duke, with Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis. The film is directed by Ryan Coogler and produced by Kevin Feige with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Nate Moore, Jeffrey Chernov and Stan Lee serving as executive producers. Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole wrote the screenplay.

http://atlantisschool.blogspot.com/2018/02/9-reaches-to-decode-black-panther.html

#black lightning #Black Panther Movie #Prince Hall Freemasons #Free Masons #Black Africa #Afrikan #african #african gods #chadwick boseman #Angela Basset #Michael B Jordan #Elijah Muhammad #nation of gods and earths #Nation of Islam #African Tribes #lupita nyong'o #Black Love #Black Family

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bmaxwell · 3 years

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Best Games of 2020

2020 was a lot. It will be remembered for many things far above and beyond video games. COVID-19 shut the world down in a way never seen in my lifetime. It changed day to day life for many of us, and cost many of us loved ones. It was also the year when the ugly parts of our capitalist society were shown in broad daylight. It feels like 2001 again in that our lives will be divided into pre-2020 and post-2020.

For me personally, I was able to keep my job and work from home, and no one close to us died to the pandemic. We stayed home as much as possible, wore masks, wiped down groceries, and did our best to control what we could. It can be hard to talk about stuff like video games and sports with the usual sort of fervor when the world feels like it’s falling apart around us. It feels like playing the violin aboard the Titanic. But self-care is especially important in times like these, and it’s healthy and necessary to close Twitter, or for-the-love-of-god fucking Facebook and get a breather sometimes. Finding a balance where I could stay informed without completely submerging myself in misery wasn’t always easy.

And so. 2020 was a pretty good year for games, though it must be noted that there is a cost to that escapism - the industry is rife with stories of abuse, burnout, and coverups from companies such as Ubisoft and CD Projekt Red, Naughty Dog, and many others. That can add an additional layer of exhaustion to what is supposed to be a relaxing escape. So I can understand the people who say they don’t want to hear about abuse in industry, they just want the games. But also, fuck those people. “I don’t care if you suffer to entertain me, I just don’t want to hear about it.” Fuck the whole entire way off.

But I digress. Like most years, I played a lot of games. I played a lot of coop beat-em-ups with my kids this year. Minecraft Dungeons and Streets of Rage 4 didn’t make the list, but I spent hours playing them with my middle child. And it wasn’t a 2020 release, but I had a blast playing River City Girls with firstborn. It was a good year for fans of tactics games with stuff like Gears Tactics, Troubleshooter, Wintermoor Tactics Club, and Fae Tactics. 2020 also saw new console releases, though the launch lineups were especially thin.

Gaming-wise, 2020 was the year of Xbox Game Pass for me. I spent most of this console generation (justifiably) dogging Xbox for their lack of platform exclusives, but I decided to pursue an Xbox Series X before a Playstation 5. Game Pass is the main reason for this. The “Netflix for games” thing has finally become a reality, and Sony just doesn’t have an answer for the bonkers value of Game Pass. We head into the new console generation with Microsoft leaning heavily on Game Pass subs, Sony still banking on a few console exclusives, and Nintendo, uh, doing their own thing over there. What a fascinating time for the industry.

Honorable Mention

It’s an honor just to be nominated.

Monster Sanctuary

If you start with Pokemon, strip away the anime, and mix in a healthy dose of metroidvania, you have Monster Sanctuary. This means there are monsters to collect, level, and evolve, and lots of combat revolving around elemental strengths and weaknesses. And I am here for that shit. A game like this lives and dies by its combat, and it’s very satisfying here. The game has plenty of choices about which skills to focus on for each monster, which gear to equip, and which monsters to keep in your active roster.

That said, between a couple of nasty difficulty spikes and some super-frustrating puzzle rooms, I was close to walking away from the game on multiple occasions. It’s a testament to the game’s quality that I kept coming back to it.

Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing on the Gamecube is one of my favorite games ever. Each game in the series since the first has felt like a small incremental change from the original. I played Wild World on the DS quite a bit, City Folk a bit less, and A New Leaf not at all. I was thinking that maybe enough time has passed that I could get wrapped up in New Horizons, but I fell off it after a month or two.

I’m wondering what I would want from a new Animal Crossing game, and the answer is nothing. How much can you change the game and still have it be Animal Crossing? I don’t think the game is bad by any means. My whole family shared an island community for a couple of months. It’s impossible for a new game in the series make me feel the way that first game did.

The most memorable part of New Horizons is the museum. The museum is huge and absolutely lovely, with fish, bugs, fossils, and art each having their own wing. There were a few nights where the tranquility of the museum made for a nice end of the day.

Tell Me Why

My wife, firstborn, and myself have made a nice routine of playing through “choices matter” games together (starting last year with Detroit Become Human and following up with Life is Strange 2). Tell Me Why is the latest one one of these we tackled as a group. These game have created some memorable moments for us; who could forget their child yelling for them to “shoot the hooker”? (thank you, Detroit Become Human).

Tell Me Why was on my radar because it’s One of These, but also because it features a transgender protagonist. As a parent of a trans child, I was both excited at the prospect of this and also worried that it is such an easy thing to fumble. I’m pleased to report that DONTNOD handled the writing of the trans person very well without being hamfisted, preachy, or tryhardy with it. The character of Tyler is a believable trans man, and the topic is spoken of matter-of-factly without placing special focus on it; being trans is a part of Tyler’s story, but it’s not the entirety of his identity.

Less impressive to me was the story itself - especially the way it wrapped up its main conflict. The game trades in the idea of memory being imperfect, which is fascinating in and of itself, but I did not like it as a game mechanism. How did this REALLY happen? One character remembers it one way, and the other remembers it differently. Choosing between them felt cheap and hollow to me; I want you to tell me what happened, don’t ask me to choose. Still, I enjoyed my time with the game, and it feels like a step forward in mainstream storytelling for LGBTQA characters.

Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is flat out gorgeous. Practically every area and every moment in the game is begging to screenshotted to the point where it can sometimes pull me out of the game world a little bit. That’s not necessarily a complaint because, as I said, the game is freaking beautiful. But every part of the world looking like a painting makes it feel more like it takes place in a fantasy world and less like a game from feudal Japan.

I also had some ludonarrative dissonance going on with the game; you play as Jin, one of the few surviving samurai in his homeland which has been invaded by the Mongols. His uncle is being held prisoner, and combatting the occupying force would be impossible without using dishonorable techniques like hiding, attacking from a distance, and ambushing from the shadows. I, however, have no qualms and savored every opportunity to catch my foes unaware. So Jin voices his doubts, then goes into a camp and proceeds to cut his enemies down from shadows as I cackle with glee.

Ghost of Tsushima also combines dark souls-esque* combat with Ubisoft-style open world gameplay where you’re hunting down icons on a map. That kind of open world game is hard for me top stick with, especially after I spent ~30 hours with Assassin’s Creed Origins early in the year. All of makes it sound like I’m pretty down on Ghost of Tsushima, which I’m not. I’m hoping I’ll come back to it at some point when I have more of an appetite for One of These.

Crown Trick

My Dungeons of Dredmor hole has not been properly filled in a long time. Chcocobo’s Mystery Dungeon is the closest I think. These games are what I think of as roguelikes, though the progression between runs makes them roguelites. *tips fedora*

Crown Trick is a turn-based dungeon crawler where the map is a grid, and each time you act, the enemies act. Add to this clockwork puzzle gameplay a good variety of weapons, relics, and events and you’ve got a lot of replayability. It doesn’t have Dredmor’s ridiculous combination of skill classes, but it does have a neat Mega Man-esque system where you defeat minibosses and add their skill set to your build.

Top 10

10. Star Renegades

Star Renegades was not on my radar at all until I heard Austin Walker talk about the game on Waypoint Radio. Two things gave me pause:

- It’s a sci-fi-ass game. It’s a setting I don’t care for. Star destroyers and aliens and galactic battlecruisers aren’t my jam. - Austin Walker’s enthusiasm is infectious. I’ve tried games after hearing him gush over them and those games haven’t worked for me.** That’s not an indictment, he and I just have different tastes.

Star Renegades ticks a few important boxes for me: it has a lot of characters to unlock, it’s highly customizable, and the combat is turn-based with a twist. Every action, whether friend or foe, appears on a timeline. Some attacks will push their target’s action back on the timeline, so there’s a puzzle element to the combat that keeps it feeling fresh. You can choose the makeup of your party on each run, which helped give the game a buttload of replay value.

It’s not flawless by any means. The writing tries a little too hard to be cheeky and ends up feeling tryhardy and a little flat. A decent run in the game would often take 2-3 hours, which makes it feel deflating when it ends in failure - which it frequently did. The sections of the game where you move between zones on an overhead map feels needlessly clunky, and sometimes I ended up with movement points I couldn’t spend because of how the game handles that system.

I enjoyed Star Renegades a lot, but my time with it was weird. The game has unlockable characters, so unlocking them all was my first priority. The game’s runs are pretty long, I was playing sub-optimally trying to unlock things, and the game is more difficult than I’d expected. It took me a long time to complete the unlocks, then I had a hard time actually finishing a run successfully. Eventually I was ready to be done with it and turned the difficulty down to easy**** just to finally get a W. Still, the positives far outweigh the negative here, and Star Renegades is one of my favorite games of 2020.

9. Immortals Fenyx Rising

Man, something happened to me this December. I’m currently finding myself playing a lot of Forza Horizon 4, Destiny 2, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. None of these is My Kind of Game. Immortals is probably the least surprising of these, because it at least has swords and bows and stuff.

Still, I dismissed and mocked Immortals Fenyx Rising when it was first shown. It was called Gods & Monsters back then, and the idea of Ubisoft making yet another open world game, this time aping Breath of Wild was not appealing at all. I only ended up with the game after trading in Cyberpunk 2077 for Xbox credit and looking into Immortals because I was very surprised to see it on Game Informer’s game of the year list.

To get a few things out of the way, it absolutely recycles a lot from Breath of the Wild: you’ll be hang gliding, scaling walls as a stamina meter drains, finding shrines that contain puzzles and combat and climbing towers to get a vantage point and find points of interest on the map. The latter feels the most fumbled in this game - you can zoom in and survey the landscape, and your controller vibrates when you are looking near a point of interest. Move the cursor over it and press a button to reveal it on the map. They split the difference between Assassin’s Creed’s “all the icons pop in automatically” and Zelda’s wonderful “manually mark places that look interesting to you on your map” system and ended up with something neither functional nor interesting.

That’s where my complaints end though. The game’s art style is similar at a glance, but it’s vibrant and gorgeous, and never feels like Breath of the Wild. The combat is snappy, responsive, and challenging. The puzzle design is often creative, clever, and rarely frustrating; most of my frustration has come from my overthinking the puzzle solutions. There is plenty of gear to find, and the game’s cosmetic options are intuitive and welcome. The game’s narrative is better than I expected; it feels like a B-tier Disney movie. The writing has made me smile a few times, and made me roll my eyes a few times. Zeus as comic relief is a pretty major miss, but it’s fine apart from that. It helps that I’m already familiar with Greek mythology.

It’s a huge, beautiful world where traversal and combat feel great. It’s sometimes hard to get anything done because I am constantly distracted by tracking down an icon on the map, or just exploring because I saw something cool or strange. Not all of the puzzles and challenges work, but that’s okay because I can move onto something else. Immortals Fenyx Rising is this year’s Dragon Quest Builders 2: gaming comfort food where it feels good to sit back and check things off a list at the end of a long day. Still don’t like the name though. And fuck Ubisoft.

8. Atomicrops

The first mention of Atomicrops I remember was “What if Stardew Valley was a twin stick shooter?” which is bullshit, because the games bear no resemblance beyond “there’s farming”. Beyond that first blurb, what appealed to me is the idea that the game’s days take place in 2 phases: during the daytime, you go out and fight baddies to gather seeds, and at night the baddies invade your farm and you fight them off while planting and watering crops.

It’s also a run-based roguelike, and I am 1 of 26 remaining people who is still psyched to play those. Give me a challenge, mix up the details, let me upgrade stuff between sessions, and turn me loose. The game has a good variety of weapons and the challenge is satisfying and rarely feels unfair (apart from the bullet hell problem of too much stuff on the screen at times). I don’t love the art style, but the music sure makes up for it.

7. Wintermoor Tactics Club

A game needs more than charm to be memorable and enjoyable. Charm can go a long way though, and Wintermoor Tactics club has it in spades. It takes place at a small college, and you play as a girl named Alicia. She and her friends are members of the school’s tactics club, and much of the game takes place around a table littered with graph paper, rulebooks, and snacks. As someone who loved tabletop RPG’s in simpler times, and never had the traditional college experience, a prettied-up version of that appeals to me in a huge way. It’s not wholly idyllic though, and it touches on issues of discrimination and what it’s like to be an outcast.

The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward tactics stuff and it works fine but isn’t really the draw here. I was propelled through the game largely by a desire to meet the next character, get the next story bit, and keep basking in the game’s wonderful aesthetic and smart writing. There’s something lovely about sitting around the table and playing a game with friends, and this game really captures that.

6. Ratropolis

Ratrpolis is “A fusion of roguelite, tower defense, city-building, and deck-building!” which sounds like a hodgepodge of nonsense. And it kind of is. It’s a city building game where you are periodically being invaded from either the left or right side of the screen (or both). You choose from 6 leaders, each with their own pool of cards and play style, start with a basic deck of cards and slowly evolve it. The cards consist of buildings, military units, and various economic and military buffs. The major things that set this apart from favorites like Slay the Spire are that it happens in real time, and there is an economic aspect to manage. Tax money comes in every few seconds, and it’s possible to make poor decisions early on and not understand why you feel hamstrung later.

I spent a lot of games like that, not really understanding why I’d be doing okay and then get overwhelmed. I had a few rage quits early on, but I could tell that there was something there. I started approaching it with the mindset of building an economic engine in the early game, and I started having a lot more fun and success. Each of the 6 leaders feels distinct, and figuring them each out has been a lot of fun. Runs are usually no more than about 30 minutes, which feels about right.

5. Final Fantasy VII Remake

Despite identifying as a big JRPG fan, I’ve never enjoyed a mainline Final Fantasy game enough to finish it. This year I finished 2 of them: Final Fantasy XV and the Final Fantasy VII Remake.*** I played the original Playstation Final Fantasy VII release, I think I got through disc 1 and a little ways into disc 2. It didn’t resonate with me, so I came to this year’s remake with no reverence for the game. When many of the original game’s fans got upset with how much the remake changed the script from the source material, I didn’t have a horse in that race.

The remake is gorgeous, the combat and upgrade systems are engaging, and the story is interesting enough to keep me wanting to see what’s next. The 1997 release of the game had some stuff that isn’t going to play the same in 2020 like the scene where Cloud is crossdressing, the game’s themes of environmental activism, and, uh, the entire Don Corneo storyline come to mind. But the game handled all of this pretty well. I’m glad to say that this is one of the best RPG’s I played this year, and I look forward to the next entry whenever the hell it comes along. Cloud is still an unlikable punk though.

4. Monster Train

Slay the Spire was a surprise hit a couple of years ago, and inspired a lot of folks in the indie space to take a crack at the deckbuilding genre. Monster Train managed to to take inspirations from Slay the Spire but still feels like very much its own thing. Both games have you progressing through a series of encounters consisting of battles, shops, or small events trying to defeat the big bad at the end of a journey. You start with a deck of basic cards and upgrade them and add new cards along to way. You can’t really start a run planning on making a certain style of deck, you just choose from the cards available and watch the strategy form. The way this process tickles my brain makes these games endlessly replayable. The “one more run” is very strong here.

Monster Train differentiates itself in a couple of ways. First, where Slay the Spire was always just your one character battling one or more enemies, here you are summoning multiple creatures on the lower 3 levels of a 4-level train (I don’t know either). If the enemies reach the top floor of your train, they attack your core directly and eventually defeat you. This adds a strong spatial planning element - now you’re thinking about which combatants you want on each floor, and in what order.

The other notable difference between the games is that while Slay the Spire has four heroes, each with their own unique pool of cards, Monster Train has five factions. It’s one better. The first three factions feel pretty standard from a creativity point of view - red/green/blue are fire/nature/ice. The last two factions you unlock feel wholly unique though: there’s a faction that summons weak, cheap units and feeds on them for combat bonuses, and one that is made of candle beings who are powerful, but melt away. Okay, the real reason is that each time you play, you’re choosing a main faction (each has 2 champions to use from) and a secondary faction (you don’t get their champion, but you get access to their pool of cards). This makes each run feel unique and makes the game feel endlessly replayable. Even after unlocking all of the factions and their cards, and winning a run on the hardest challenge setting with each faction, I’m still playing Monster Train.

3. Spiritfarer

If Kentucky Route Zero is my “It’s Not You, It’s Me” game this year, Spiritfarer might be my “Love at First Sight” game of the year. The game’s striking visuals grabbed my attention immediately when I first saw the trailer at E3 2019, and it was billed as a game about saying goodbye. My only reservation was that it was coming from Thunder Lotus Games, whose previous titles (Jotun and Sundered) both fell flat for me.

Spiritfarer ended up being everything I was hoping for. You play as the newly-appointed ferryperson for the boat that transports souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Your ship acts as your base of operations, and you build living quarters, a kitchen, a forge, and lots of other facilities on it. The beings who join you on your ship are anthropomorphized animals, each with their own story. Your job is to help them be at peace, then send them to the next life once they’re ready.

In practical terms, you’re spending a lot of your time sailing from island to island to talk to people and find resources. There’s a plenty of crafting and time sinks in the game, and I appreciated the excuse to luxuriate in this game world. No game made me cry this year, but Spiritfarer (Alice’s story in particular) sure did try. It was the perfect respite for the nightmare that was 2020.

2. Yakuza: Like a Dragon

A lot of Yakuza fans were concerned over this game’s switch from the series’ usual brawling combat to turn-based RPG combat. I was not one of them. Everything about this game sounds like the sort of fan fiction someone like, well, like me would come up with on a late night drunken bender. “What if it was Yakuza, but like, JRPG battles? Why would that happen.....OH oh oh what if the main character was a big fan of DRAGON QUEST so he just, like, saw the world in those terms? You could have party members, and a Pokedex of all the weirdo scumbags you fight, and you could change jobs by going to a temp agency!”

All of that is in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. And I love it. The series’ producer says they decided to pivot to a turn-based combat system after positive reaction to an April Fools Day Yakuza RPG joke they put online. And there are some rough spots. Your party members get caught on the world’s geometry sometimes, and combatants are constantly milling around so AOE abilities feel like a crap shoot. The Yakuza series has always had about 30% too much combat, so translating it into a genre known for grindy gameplay feels like a perfect storm of sorts. Thankfully, I’m a fan of grindy RPG’s so all of this is directly in my wheelhouse.

This eighth game in the Yakuza series is the first with a new protagonist - goodbye Kiryu Kazuma, hello Ichiban Kasuga. Where Kiryu was very stoic, Ichiban is a hothead with the perfect mix of kindness, earnestness, and stupidity for a JRPG hero. He is an incredibly likeable and charismatic character, and I hope Ryu Go Gotoku Studio tightens up the battle system and keeps this iteration of the series running.

1. Hades

Hades seemed like a slam dunk. My favorite studio was making an action RPG based on Greek mythology. The announcement was the best possible version of “AND you can play it right now!” I bought it (in early access) immediately and played it a bit, but I didn’t want to burn out on it so I only briefly checked in on it every few months. As a result, my hype was pretty low when the game reached its 1.0 release.

Once I decided to fully engage with the game though, I was unable to put it down. SuperGiant’s games have the best writing, music, and voice acting in the business. That’s a pretty high bar to aim for, and they hit it once again with Hades. Both of their post-Bastion games (Transistor and Pyre) are games that I have to recommend with an asterisk though; the gameplay parts of each game is an acquired taste and will put some folks off.

Hades, however, I can give a full throated recommendation for. The gameplay is tight and the combat feels good. There’s a lot of variety in the weapons, so you can either find one that fits your style and stick with it, or do what I did and change it up every run. They also managed to achieve something incredible - they largely took the sting out of losing in a run-based game. There are things to unlock between runs as you’d expect from a roguelite. I found myself enjoying chatting with the denizens of hell as much as the moment to moment action gameplay. I’d respawn back home and make my rounds, taking to people and spending my cash. I had a route I’d travel each time, and that route ended with Skelly in the weapons room. Oh, the gauntlets grant a bonus if I use them this time....the door to start a new run is just right over there....okay I can do one more run tonight.

That personality and dialogue is sprinkled throughout the runs themselves too, in the form of the various Greek gods you talk to and get boons from. The variety in weapons and boons give the game tremendous replayability and give the game a deckbuilding feel. Every character in the game is incredibly well developed and well-acted. Zagreus is a likeable and relatable protagonist. He wants to get away from his disapproving father and find his estranged mother, and he and his father can’t see eye to eye.

The story and gameplay in Hades do equal lifting, the game is an incredibly complete package. The game also provided a couple of the most memorable moments of the year. Hades might just be SuperGiant’s best game. It’s certainly their most complete game.

*It’s very much on the lighter side of this gameplay style, akin to 2019′s Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. Plus there are difficulty settings, which I appreciate.

**Invisible Inc, Dragon’s Dogma, and The Outer Wilds come to mind.

***Final Fantasy VII Remake is only the first installment in a series

****Cloaked in shame and failure.

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writerservicesblogs · 4 years

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How to Become an Author

Today we look at what your options are when writing and editing a book, and the bigger picture of how to become an author. These endeavors – the journey of book writing and the resulting life of an author – are among the most cherished and rewarding of all. I make a point of emphasizing that to aspiring authors because so many find the process of sorting through all the options, the decision-making, and the work of actually writing WELL WORTH IT.

WRITING SERVICES

Full-service companies offer authors everything from collaborative book writing to ghostwriting, editing and more. For example, Writer Services accepts inquiries about any and all aspects of writing a book. We work with aspiring and established authors and entrepreneurs alike to determine which of our services will best achieve our clients’ goals.

Our services include:

Ghostwriting – You simply tell us what you want, and we take care of everything else. As explained in further detail below, your name (and your name only) appears on the cover of your book as author. In other words, your writer remains anonymous.

Collaborative book writing – With this service, we work with you one-on-one through every step of the book writing journey. If you’d like to be more involved in the process of writing than what’s available through a ghostwriting service, this might be the perfect choice for you. You get to be involved as much or as little as you want.

Developmental editing – A more engaged, ongoing editing relationship throughout your book writing process is available through this particular service.

To most authors, this is an invaluable service because of the camaraderie between you and your editor. You have someone to rely on and trust in who will be very honest with you about the quality of your work and the effectiveness of your writing. Any doubts or reservations about your book are resolved.

You can look at this service as more collaboration than in ghostwriting and regular line editing, but less than in collaborative book writing.

Line Editing/Copy Editing – This is a high-quality editing service provided in a more traditional writer-editor relationship. Your material is checked for grammar and sentence structure.

Proofreading – We provide a service that puts the final polish on your work. S/he checks your manuscript for spelling, consistency of the use of punctiation marks and many other things these unsung heros do to make you look like a true professional.

Social media and traditional marketing As a full-service firm, we also offer marketing of your book(s) using our social media and traditional marketing resources. Our marketing services are available at several price points to fit your budget and goals.

GHOSTWRITING DEFINITION

Ghostwriting is a writing service where a hired professional book writer, who remains unnamed, writes your book—using ideas and concepts provided by the hiring party—which is then credited to the payer/author.

WRITING MENTOR

A writing mentor works closely with you, offering their vast experience and unique insight. Every aspect of being a book writer and being an author is real to your mentor, because s/he is a seasoned book writer and experienced author.

You may find that you learn quite a lot just by working with them, such as their writing habits, theories, and even style, which is okay because those inevitably give way to your own preferences as you grow as an author.

To give you a clearer picture of writer/mentor dynamics, you might have a look at one or two unique depictions of the relationship in film.

The Only Living Boy in New York (2017) stars Jeff Bridges as a successful author who stumbles into the mentorship of a young man who is his neighbor.

Adult World (2013) stars John Cusack as the reluctant mentor of a young woman who admires him greatly.

Although these portrayals aren’t typical, they offer a sense of the personal interactions that create the mentor-author bond.

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Video Transcript:

“The life of an author is often portrayed as strictly independent – a one-person show. But, did you know that working with a mentor is one of the best gifts you can give your own writing? Even the great philosopher Plato had a mentor in Socrates. Plato, in turn, mentored Aristotle. Great minds seek other great minds to improve their work.”

WRITING COACH / WRITER COACH

Writing coaches (or writer coaches) differ from writing mentors in the type of relationship they offer to the author.

The writing coach is not necessarily an author themselves, and their role is more like that of a motivator. They’re not the same as a life coach, though, in that they usually have some experience with editing and/or another facet of writing.

Accountability, inspiration and motivation are the tools of the writing coach’s trade. You might find that the interactions with your writing coach are less personal and deep than those with a mentor. Still, without question, to have someone to answer to is better than having no one at all.

WRITING LESSONS

There are a great variety of writing lessons and classes available online and off. These, of course, can be taken alone or as part of a coaching or mentoring program. They might come in the form of:

1. Writing prompts – Prompts are challenges and/or ideas you can use to jump-start your daily writing practice.

2. Creative writing classes – Just about every university, community college, and adult continuing education program offers a course on creative writing. Almost all of them also offer the course(s) virtually.

3. Membership websites – With the recent boom in online learning due to the pandemic, we may begin to see more membership training sites showing up. Though there aren’t many out there to date, we are extremely proud to announce our own membership website for authors! You can get more information about how you can have on-going guidance for literally just pennies a day. It’s called Author Utopia. See it by clicking the following link: https://www.authorutopia.com

4. Vocabulary expansion – Words are the endless variety of colors available to squeeze onto your writer’s palette. The greater your vocabulary, the better you will do at expressing your ideas in compelling and varied language.

Reading is one great way to expand your knowledge of words, but there are dozens of other ways, too. Online tools such as dictionaries and thesauruses provide vast opportunities for learning. You might also try a quick search for “vocabulary expander” and/or “vocabulary tests”.

5. Reading for writing – In my own experience, I find reading an excellent lubricant for writing. The published word has a certain power to condition an author’s mind towards better writing. As you read, you learn the music of well-written phrases. Like a catchy tune, this music stays with you as you write. You write more and more, eventually finding your own unique voice and your own “songs.”

Also, reading improves your vocabulary. This is proven. Some wise writers keep a list of words they don’t know and look them up after a session of reading. In these ways, reading is one of the best activities to improve your own writing.

6. Journaling prompts – In journals, you’re writing the true story of your life as you experience it or shortly thereafter. You can see how this practice can help you develop your own authentic voice as an author. As with creative writing prompts, there exist many sites that offer prompts for journaling.

6. Editing classes – Editing isn’t just a task, it’s an art. Writer and editors (especially), must look at manuscripts with a critical eye. Is a phrase redundant? Delete it. Can a different word provide pleasant alliteration? Use that word instead. Clarity, efficiency, inventiveness – all these and more are the goals of excellent editing.

7. Grammar and punctuation – A good writer is never done learning and relearning the rules of writing. Just as a jazz musician must learn their basic scales before launching into improvisation, an author must know the rules thoroughly before they break them.

8. Journalism and blogging – These two types of writing have ethics and rules of their own. It’s worthwhile to familiarize yourself with these, even if they’re not your specialties. It’s likely that some of the practices and skills involved in journalism and/or blogging will translate to an aspect of your future writing processes.

9. Research and writing – Research is another rewarding endeavor for writers. When researching a topic – any topic at all – you might gain all types of ideas and inspiration for your book. Depending on what you’re writing, research could account for a large percentage of your time working. For example, non-fiction books generally require extensive research into the real people and actual events you’re writing about.

10. Poetry workshops – Here’s a double-power tool for improving your work. Writing poetry hones your senses of efficiency, rhythm, and tone, as well as aiding your creativity and inventiveness. Workshops offer contact and interaction with other writers, and everyone usually emerges from them better editors.

11. Character creation and development – Classes are also available for specific aspects of the fiction-writing process. Think of the value of well-developed, three-dimensional characters to a good novel. Learning this skill can go a long way in making you an effective writer.

12. Fiction for beginners – On the other hand, you might not be ready to dive into in-depth classes on specific techniques. Fiction lessons for beginners are great ways to dip your toe in the water and get a feel for the process and promise of a professional writing career. Make all the mistakes you want! In beginners classes, you’re free from the pressures you might feel elsewhere. In the meantime, you’re getting solid footing for the next steps towards authorship of a book.

13. Advanced writing – Maybe you’ve already taken many of the classes I’ve listed above. Maybe you’ve even written a book or two. Your learning isn’t done! Advanced classes offer learning opportunities to authors who are ready to accept the next higher challenge.

BOOK EDITING SERVICES

“Writing is editing,” is an old adage that holds true today. Editing affords your work a reader, among other benefits. A reader/editor who is not the author often facilitates the best results. Writing is communication, and communication is always a two-way street. You want to make sure that what you’re writing is as close as possible – in clarity, meaning, and tone – to what the reader perceives.

We often think of editing as work done exclusively after a book is written. That isn’t the case at all. In fact, editing often begins in earnest at the beginning of your second draft. So, it’s useful to think of editing as much more than polishing a completed draft.

Working with a developmental editor, for instance, is a fantastic way to refine ideas as you go along. You might find that this type of editing service helps put you on the writing path that you were seeking all along.

Working with a developmental editor means having a working relationship, including dynamics both personal and professional, with an experienced author with whom you feel comfortable. This type of editor guides you towards not only improving your writing but also clarifying and defining your message. Think of this person as just one step shy of a mentor. In fact, a developmental editor can become your mentor under certain circumstances. The definitions are not set in stone, but usually a mentor is more invested in you as a writer. This makes sense because the relationship with a mentor can last a lifetime while a developmental editor is usually on board for one of your book projects at a time.

All these resources, services, and tools can be mixed and matched to fit your goals and needs. I hope that with this article I’ve given you a clearer picture of some of the pathways and work-ways available to burgeoning and established writers. Now it’s up to you to choose the first (or next) step in your journey as an author.

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Video Transcript:

“Mark Twain once said, ‘Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.’ And with that, the great American humorist leaves us back at square one. In a way, he was talking about editing. A subject so broad that a good author is almost always studying it. Fortunately, the resources available to you are also almost endless.”

The post How to Become an Author appeared first on Writer Services.

#Ghost Writing #Book Writing #Ghost Writing Services #Writer Services

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animusalias-blog · 7 years

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Feeling being Manipulated? How to Effectively Distinguish and Stay Away from Toxic People:

Before we get started on how manipulation works we needs to understand who frequently uses manipulation.

What is psychological manipulation?

A type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive.

To explain it in a plainer way, psychological manipulation is making you to do what I want you to do, making you to feel the emotions I want you to feel. I don’t care about how fucked up the means are, and the ends usually benefit me.

As a result, it’s really important to distinguish healthy social influence (which respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject it) between psychological manipulation (underhanded and usually coercive)

Who usually engages in psychological manipulation?

First I want to stress that a personality disorder is a maladaptive fixed long-term behavioral pattern, so don’t worry if you occasionally behave like one or two categories mentioned below. It’s normal. Plus, official diagnosis of those mentioned above can only be made if the person is above 18 years old (shoutout to all edgy teens on tumblr). Although you can use self-reports, they can be inaccurate due to personal bias, and only a professional (e.g. certified psychiatrist) can give out the diagnosis. (So you can see why I’m not assorting respective characters in Ace Attorney to medical conditions mentioned below)

According to Jernberg, antisocial, borderline, and narcissistic personality disorders are all organized at a borderline level of personality organization, and the three share some common characterological deficits and overlapping personality traits, with deceitfulness and exceptional manipulative abilities being the most common traits among the three.

Sociopaths, borderlines, and narcissists are often pathological liars.Other shared traits include pathological narcissism,consistent irresponsibility, machiavellianism, lack of empathy, cruelty, meanness, impulsivity, proneness to self-harm and addictions, interpersonal exploitation, hostility, anger and rage, vanity, emotional instability, rejection sensitivity, perfectionism, and the use of primitive defense mechanisms that are pathological and narcissistic.

A sociopath (or a psychopath, usually referred as someone with antisocial personality disorder. Although there is still some controversy over the distinction among these three, I’m just going to use ‘psychopath’ as the term) is basically a person who has no affective empathy; exploitation is a primary means of relating to others. Irresponsible, impulsive, manipulative, deceitful, hostile, and callous. [below is excerpted from DSM IV-TR]

failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Borderline personality disorder is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by unstable relationships with other people, unstable sense of self, and unstable emotions. There is often frequent dangerous behavior, a feeling of emptiness, self-harm, and an extreme fear of abandonment. [Source: Wikipedia]

Markedly disturbed sense of identity

Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment and extreme reactions to such

Splitting ("black-and-white" thinking)

Impulsivity and impulsive or dangerous behaviours

Intense or uncontrollable emotional reactions that often seem disproportionate to the event or situation

Unstable and chaotic interpersonal relationships

Self-damaging behavior

Distorted self-image

Dissociation

Frequently accompanied by depression, anxiety, anger, substance abuse, or rage

Persons with Narcissistic Personality Disorder [according to DSM-V] usually display some or all of the following symptoms, typically without the commensurate qualities or accomplishments [Source: Wikipedia]:

Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from other people

Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.

Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions

Needing continual admiration from others

Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others

Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain

Unwilling to empathize with the feelings, wishes, and needs of other people

Intensely envious of others, and the belief that others are equally envious of them

Pompous and arrogant demeanor

TL;DR version of all three, in my words, a psychopath is a heartless outcast, your stereotypical villain/murderer, who thinks killing a person is no different from cutting carrots and will happily do it within a second; a borderline is needy, moody, insecure, who will threaten to kill themselves if they somehow think you will abandon them; a narcissist is someone controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others' views, unaware of others' needs and the effects of their behavior on others, and insist that others see them as they wish to be seen.

Why I write this long post?

I’m not saying all manipulators are these three kinds of people. There is indeed controversies regarding the classifications (for example, narcissism or psychopathy should be on a continuum instead of being categorized). I’m not saying you should be suspicious or hypervigilant of every single person. I’m not saying people are inherently bad, because each disorder only affect about 2% of the population. I’m helping you to trust/mistrust wisely and give your kindness to the people who deserves it.

1. I’m just saying if you find someone who exhibits some of these traits you should be cautious and don’t give them too mush trust/responsibility, or expect to be manipulated. If you are already with an abuser, then I encourage you to use the no contact rule or grey rock method to disengage from them.

Why I’m telling you all this instead of simply stating “Leave toxic people”? Because a single simple statement didn’t give any actionable advice! Did every bad guy walk with a paper says“I am a bad guy” on the forehead? Of course not!

2. Knowing the true colors of a manipulator can help you to effectively establish boundaries regardless of their words (glibness and superficial charm), promises (which will never be fulfilled) or innocent appearance (classic gas lighting technique). If they crossed your personal boundaries consciously and continue to manipulate you, burn the bridge. You know who they are and do not expect to change/heal them like in the movies (Psychopathy is, to a certain extent, a neurological disorder which caused their empathy deficit. The heritability of BPD has been estimated at 40%. NPD is notorious with their abusive relationship dynamics with the codependents )

3. If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. If you became too conscious of the viciousness of the three personality disorders and buy into the victim mindset, exaggerating the other’s wrongdoings and labeling them as personality disordered, Congratulations on the start to becoming a narcissist! I mean, be a healthy skeptic.

Also, as you learn more about psychological tactics, constantly remind yourself to not become one of them and NEVER apply them, consciously or unconsciously, to others. Just don’t become the kind of people mentioned above.

#self help #psychology #manipulation #personality disorders #toxic people #self care #psychological manipulation #psychopath #narcissism #borderline personality disorder #action #actionable advice #life advice #self love #abnormal psychology #personality #trust

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junker-town · 4 years

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Bills pick A.J. Epenesa has talent that isn’t debatable

2020 NFL Draft prospect A.J. Epenesa has first-round talent.

Retired defensive end Stephen White knows there isn’t much that makes Epenesa stand out athletically — yet, the Iowa pass rusher is anything but ordinary.

The Buffalo Bills selected A.J. Epenesa with the 54th overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. Here’s what Stephen White had to say about Epenesa ahead of the draft.

I would imagine opinions on Iowa defensive end A.J. Epenesa are going to vary wildly. The reason, quite frankly, is because there doesn’t appear to be anything all that “special” about him at first glance.

I don’t mean to sound harsh with that statement, but it’s the truth. He has good size at 6’4 and a listed weight of 280 pounds, but he isn’t the biggest or strongest guy you’ve ever seen. He has a decent get off, but nothing to write home about. His lateral quickness was fine, but I didn’t watch his tape and come away thinking he’d be breaking any short shuttle records at the combine.

In fact, when I look at his combine performance overall, he put up the kind of numbers I would expect from someone who possessed just above-average athleticism relative to his fellow prospects.

But, the more I watched his tape, the more plays I kept seeing him make. Then, I started tallying up all the damage he’d done in four games I watched: four sacks, 10 pressures, seven other hits on the quarterback, eight other one-on-one pass rush wins, and one pass knocked down at the line of scrimmage.

At that point, it was clear to me Epenesa is one of those prospects who you have to dig a little deeper on to really recognize their value on the next level.

What Epenesa does well: Swiper move

I will admit it did take me a little longer than usual to figure Epenesa out, but then it finally came to me when I changed the way I approached him as a player. Usually, I try to focus on individual traits or moves a defensive lineman uses to win on the field, and extrapolate whether those things will also work for him in the NFL. But with Epenesa, it turns out you have to look at his pass-rushing ability as a complete package.

Epenesa’s best edge move around the corner is his patented swiper move. He has really mastered the details of that move and can seemingly pull it out at any moment. His timing on tape with it was great, too. As soon as offensive linemen shot their hands at him, Epenesa used his swiper so violently that he was almost always able to swat those hands away before they could touch him.

He also finished those moves with a rip, which helped him to turn a tighter corner than he normally would have with just his athletic ability.

Those swiper moves were easily the flashiest part of Epenesa’s game. Just about every offensive lineman he faced had to have been on alert for that move, but they still caught hell when Epenesa was really humming.

There is one problem with the swiper move, however. The success of that move is intrinsically tied to whether or not an offensive lineman actually shoots his punch at Epenesa. If he does, then Epenesa is likely going to able to swat the lineman’s outstretched hands away.

While there is still a shortage of quality offensive tackles in the NFL, Epenesa is sure to go against some who know how to switch up when they shoot their punch and will be able to throw off his swiper move. There will even be a few who understand how to keep their hands back completely when they see him going for his swiper move, and instead just try to bear hug the pass rusher after he swats air.

But that’s where Epenesa’s second-best pass rush move comes into play.

What Epenesa does well: Long-arm move and arm-over

In addition to that swiper move, Epenesa has a nice array of power rushes, and his long-arm move in particular is one of the best you will see from a college prospect. That’s important because once he gets to the NFL where tackles tend to be a little more stingy with their punch, Epenesa will need a Plan B.

It doesn’t get much better than countering your swiper move with a long arm.

If he can continue to switch things up like that, I see no reason why Epenesa won’t be even more successful as a pass rusher in the pros.

The more I thought about it, the more sense this made to me: being able to use his power and his swiper move to keep an offensive tackle off balance could help Epenesa turn into a guy who is damn near unblockable three years down the road. I was even more convinced after I factored in the quick two-step arm-overs inside he was able to win with as a counter move, too.

Those three facets of his pass-rushing plan working together will eventually make life hell for any offensive tackle assigned to block him.

What Epenesa does OK: Defend the run

I believe with Epenesa’s size, he could easily pack on another 10 pounds or so and carry it well, so playing him inside full-time could be viable option if he comes out of the gate slow as an edge rusher. At the very least, being an interior pass rusher could be a way he gets on the field early if he doesn’t earn a starting role right away.

I don’t have a lot to say about Epenesa as a run defender, but not because I think he’s bad at it. I feel like he is a guy who can hold the point at the line of scrimmage and not get driven off the ball.

He showed good technique coming off and using his hands well to try to control the blockers, something aided by his long arms that measured over 34 inches at the combine. That’s why his 17 bench press reps are not the same as a guy who is built like a Tyrannosaurus rex. He is definitely plenty strong enough to at least be a decent run defender in the NFL.

At the same time, I only credited him with four tackles aside from those sacks in four games. I wouldn’t be expecting him to make a ton of them in the NFL. But, just like sacks, tackles don’t always tell the tale about how well a guy plays the run.

As far as dropping into coverage, Epenesa did do a little of that, and he was at least OK at it in the games I watched. I don’t think it’s a major selling point for him, however, aside from maybe using him as a spy inside from time to time. But with the speed this new generation of quarterbacks seems to have, I’m not sure how well he would match up with them in that role.

Where Epenesa can improve: Playing both sides

Now that I have established he has first-round talent, I can also point out some valid concerns about Epenesa’s game.

My biggest concern in projecting how Epenesa will do in the NFL is I only got to see him play on the right side of the defensive line. He did show some versatility by kicking inside as a three-technique pass rusher in definite passing situations quite a bit, but even then, he was always on the right side. It seems like there had to be a reason behind it, because I would have assumed at least once in four games Epenesa would’ve found a favorable matchup on the left side, at least on passing downs.

We don’t talk about this a lot, but there are pass rushers who feel a lot more comfortable on one side than the other. I know this because I was one of them until a few years into my NFL career. I had played almost exclusively on the right side at defensive end in college, so playing on left side at first felt like trying to sign my name left-handed.

Eventually I, like a lot of guys in the same situation, did get more comfortable playing on the other side, mostly because I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to stay in the league. Which is to say unless there is a physical issue preventing Epenesa from playing on the left — like the situation with another former Hawkeye defensive end, Adrian Clayborn — Epenesa should get to that comfort level eventually. That is especially true if he is drafted high and expected to play right away.

Epenesa’s NFL future: Underrated but productive

To sum it up, I definitely believe Epenesa is worth a first-round pick, even if he isn’t the best athlete testing-wise. He has legit pass-rush moves and a plan that will work on the next level as long as he continues to improve. If he goes in the first round, it will likely be because the team that took him largely ignored the testing stuff and focused on the film, which I personally would encourage.

I don’t think he’s a finished product anyway, but his floor as a prospect is just too good to ignore.

With the way he plays, I can see Epenesa starting off slowly until he gets a feel for the quicker speed of the game in the NFL. However, a few years down the road, I can also see him being a double-digit sack guy in the right system. That will be especially true if he is comfortable playing on the left side already and won’t have to adjust to that in the league.

I will note, again, that he has excellent potential as an interior pass rusher.

If a team needs a guy to come in and be a “savior” for their defensive line right away, I’d probably advise against taking Epenesa. But if there is a team with some talent up front and is just looking to add to it, then I think most could do a lot worse than drafting Epenesa this year.

But I do think there will be enough conflict between where different teams see his value that he could drop to late in the first round, or out of the first round altogether.

Always remember, it’s not where you start, but where you finish. Barring injury, I believe Epenesa is going to be a hell of a player no matter where he is ultimately drafted. At the same time, he may be one of those guys who is perpetually underrated because he makes a lot of plays without being that flashy.

That’s OK, though — flash doesn’t win games, production does. And Epenesa should have plenty of the latter by the time his career is all said and done.

Be sure to check out my other scouting reports on Chase Young, Jerry Jeudy, Derrick Brown, and Jedrick Wills Jr.

For the purposes of this breakdown, I watched Epenesa play against Iowa State, Michigan, Purdue, and Minnesota.

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hasansonsuzceliktas · 4 years

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An Enlightened History of Humanity

There is a more positive way of looking at history than in the context of who fought which wars or invaded and became the leader of which countries. That way of regarding history tells us that humanity has remained really childish. I believe most children have played the game; “I’m the king of the castle and you’re a dirty rascal!” If we look at newspapers or read history books it appears that humanity at large is still stuck in these childhood games. Just the other day for example, Trump sent out a tweet saying that: “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” This tweet of course sparked intense debate and fears of a demented world leader starting a third world war! I offer here another vision of history, an Enlightened vision. Instead of remembering and honouring political leaders and warmongers of all kinds, let us turn our attention towards the Enlightened ones and how they have benefitted humanity. Being With A Master

It was my great good fortune to sit at Osho’s feet from 1973 till his death in 1990. During those years, he gave hundreds of discourses on the many enlightened beings that have graced this Earth. In this way, I was introduced to another version of history, one that brings so much richness and appreciation of humanity’s potential for genius, love and compassion. It is one of the greatest legacies of Osho, to have introduced to the world for posterity, a deeper understanding of the mystical geniuses who have graced this planet. These enlightened beings are in fact our greatest heritage. When an Enlightened one dies, their light and love remain in the ether, available for future generations to tap into and be uplifted by. Each Enlightened being functions as a portal through which we have access to Universal Consciousness. Being with a Master is a love affair. Who can say why a person is attracted to this master, or to another one? Similar to falling in love with a woman or with a man, we are magnetically drawn towards the Master who will best suit our unique being on multiple levels. I remember hearing Osho say that the way to know if a Master is right for you is: If you feel that your heart is expanding and growing wings, this is a right master for you. If you feel your heart shrinking, then this will be a wrong master for you. This attraction goes beyond the physical. Even after a Master’s death, people still can be initiated into the Master’s spiritual lineage and be benefitted from his non-physical presence. I offer some examples: Hermes Trismegistus Hermes was a King, a Philosopher, an Alchemist and a Spiritual Master of great renown in Egypt in the very ancient world. Some say he lived 9000 years ago and was the originator of the Emerald Tablet, revered by Egyptian Mystery Schools and reputed to contain the three dimensions of wisdom regarding the whole universe. There is much speculation about him and no definitive proof. However, his Hermetic writings have and continue to hold a powerful influence in the Western world.

He taught the alchemy of transcendence and revealed the ways and means to have an overview of our dual world, moving into a non-dual state of being. His teachings inspired the Middle Eastern and European tradition of the Magi (also known as magicians). There was a division in his followers, some who followed his wisdom teachings for the greatest good of all beings and for the Earth (the Gnostics) and some who twisted his teachings into black magic and manipulation of the masses (the Illuminati). Unfortunately, The Gnostic wise people were exterminated and the Illuminati gained power over much of the earth, which they still hold secretly to this day. Osho spoke on the Great Law of Magic in his book, My Way the Way of the White Clouds. In this discourse he encapsulates in just a few sentences the entire transmission of Hermes. It is certainly an awesome methodology. Osho says: “Choose happiness – that means you are choosing the effect – and then see what happens. Choose ecstasy and see what happens. Choose to be blissful and see what happens. Your whole life will change immediately and you will see miracles happening around you – because now you have created the effect and causes will have to follow. This will look magical; you can even call it the law of magic. The first is the law of science and the second is the law of magic. Religion is magic, and you can be the magician. That’s what I teach you: to be the magician, to know the secret of magic. Try it! You have been trying the other your whole life – not only this but many other lives also. Now listen to me! Try this magic formula, this mantra I give to you. Create the effect and see what happens; causes immediately surround you, they follow. Don’t wait for the causes; you have waited long enough. Choose happiness and you will be happy.” Wikepedia says: “Hermetic tradition” refers to alchemy, magic, astrology, and related subjects. The texts are usually divided into two categories: the philosophical and the technical Hermetica. The former deals mainly with philosophy and the latter with practical magic, potions, and alchemy.” A quote attributed to Hermes says: “If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too, nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.” The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra This is a scripture attributed to Lord Shiva. It was most likely part of an oral tradition and then written down about 5000 years ago. Osho has given us two volumes of discourses on the 112 sutras contained in this scripture. Osho’s discourses on this subject are in ‘The Book Of Secrets’.

The Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is the most valuable scripture in the world in my opinion because it is simply offering practical methods for attaining expanded consciousness. It is not giving dogma, theory or a set of beliefs, just methods. By practicing the methods, your own innate wisdom will begin bubbling up and overflowing into every aspect of your life. The storyline for the Scripture is Devi (Shiva’s Consort) sitting in his lap and asking him questions about life, love and spirituality. Each one of Shiva’s 112 answers is in sutra form and constitutes one method of meditation. Devi Asks Shiva: “O Shiva, what is your reality? What is this wonder filled universe? What constitutes seed? Who centers the universal wheel? What is this life beyond form pervading forms? How may we enter it fully, above space and time, names and descriptions? Let my doubts be cleared!” When we go deeply into the practice of Shiva’s methods we begin to realise that the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra has seeded many of the world’s religions. Perhaps a seeker of truth stumbled on one or more of the methods and through this, became enlightened. He then began teaching it and by and by this became the foundation of a new religion. For example, Buddha’s Vipassana is from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra, as are methods of Bhakta, Sufism, Pythagoras, Atisha, Zen and so on…. I teach the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra Retreat each year in Dharamsala, India in Osho Nisarga, a center at the foothills of the Himalayas. I have been teaching this retreat there for many years and each time it gives me immense joy to again be immersed in these meditations. Each of the techniques is a masterpiece, and we can feel the Enlightened being who gave birth to these sutras was of the highest calibre. We can still feel the vibrant aliveness of Shiva and Devi through the sutras and through the practice of the methods. Osho says in his Book of Secrets: “Vigyan Bhairav Tantra is five thousand years old. It is the most ancient and yet the latest, yet the newest. Old like the hills, the methods seem eternal; and yet they are new like the dewdrop before the sun, because they are so fresh.” “These 112 methods are for the whole of humanity-for all the ages that have passed, and for all the ages that have yet to come.” A selection of 3 Sutras from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra “Attention between eyebrows, let mind be before thought. Let form fill with breath essence to the top of the head and there shower as light.” “At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.” “O Shakti, each particular perception is limited, disappearing in Omnipotence.” Krishna Lived about 5000 years ago. He is one of the most passionately loved and revered Masters of all time. His story is very romantic. Having been raised with cowherds, he grew up to become a Spiritual Master and a King with far reaching power and influence. During his teenage years, it is said he had 15,000 girlfriends, with the most prominent being his Soul Mate, Radha. He played the flute in the forests of Vrindavan, which the women of the surrounding countryside found absolutely irresistible. They would spend hours in Ras Leela, intoxicated on the divine presence of Krishna.

His religion is purely Bhakti, based on love and devotion. To this day, devotees of Krishna dance and sing in large gatherings, calling his name over and over in an ecstasy of adoration. Krishna was also highly influential in the great ‘Mahabharata War’ (also known as the Kurukshetra War), which Osho describes as having broken the backbone of India and from which India never recovered. Even though no one can prove this, it certainly sounds from written accounts in the Mahabharata that nuclear weapons were being used at that time. “Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana (fast aircraft) hurled a single projectile (rocket) charged with the power of the Universe (nuclear device). An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand suns, rose with its entire splendour.” (There are many more passages in the Mahabharata describing several types of very advanced weapons used in the war.) Osho has given us a large book on Krishna, the Man and His Philosophy, which is a masterpiece of insight into this enigmatic enlightened being. Osho says: “His significance, his greatness lies in the fact that he is all things together, all things rolled into one, all contradictions living hand in hand, and there is a great harmony in all his contradictions. He can play the flute and he can dance, and with the same ease he can fight his enemy in the battlefield with his chakra, his wheel-like weapon. And there is no contradiction between the two roles. He can play pranks with the girls of his village, running away with their clothes when they are bathing in the river, and he can also make the most profound statements like in the Geeta. He can be a thief and a perfect yogi together. Krishna is one person in so many diverse roles — and that is his grandeur, his glory. And this is the uniqueness of Krishna, his individuality. You will not find it in Rama, Buddha, Mahavira or Jesus Christ. Krishna is a blending of contradiction, a beautiful synthesis of all contradictions. I say so for the reason that I don’t find these contradictions to be really contradictory. In fact, all of life’s truth is a blending, a synthesis of contradictions. The whole of life is based on contradictions, and there is no discordance in those contradictions; rather, there is full accord, absolute harmony among them.” Some Quotes attributed to Krishna are: “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained to the highest state of spiritual union.” “Actions do not cling to me because I am not attached to their results. Those who understand this and practice it live in freedom.” “The body is not yours, neither are you of the body. The body is made of fire, water, air, earth and ether and will disappear into these elements. But the soul is permanent, so who are you?” Amitabha Buddha Amitābha is known as “The Buddha of Immeasurable Light and Life”.

He is spoken about by Gautama the Buddha as having lived 2,500 years before Gautama the Buddha. It is said he established a pure land paradise where those who call upon him can go after death to become steeped in Dharma and return to the world as Bodhisattvas for the benefit of all beings. It is said that if his name is recited, anyone whether monk or layperson, can achieve Spiritual Liberation. The way to unite with Amitabha is to recite his name and also to visualise this world as the lotus paradise. Amitabha made a vow to wait at the portal of Enlightenment and not to go through until all beings of our world have become enlightened. He has great followings of people in Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam and Tibet. Wikipedia says: “His most important enlightenment technique is the visualization of the surrounding world as a paradise. Who sees his world as a paradise, awakens his enlightenment energy. The world can be seen as a paradise by a corresponding positive thought (enlightenment thought) or by sending light to all beings (wish all beings to be happy). After the Amitābha doctrine, one can come to paradise (in the Pure Land of Amitābha), if they visualize at their death Amitābha in the heaven (sun) over their head (western horizon), think his name as a mantra and leave the body as a soul through the Crown Chakra.” The mantra for manifesting a connection with Amitabha Buddha and all he represents is: OṃAmideva Hrīḥ pronounced as Om Ami Dewa Hrih. It is advised by devotees of Amitabha Buddha to recite this mantra 108 times each day. A quote attributed to Amitabha Buddha is: “Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, whether you are praying, working, driving, cooking, sleeping, eating, lying and even breathing or whatever, learn to be mindful of your thoughts, actions and speech. Make it a natural way of life and realise the calmness within; feel the happiness that arises and know that anyone can attain this state of calmness.” Gautama Buddha He lived 2,500 years ago in Northern India. He was raised as prince Siddartha in great luxury and sensual enjoyments. However, being a seeker at heart, he escaped from the palace when he was 30 years old and went in search of Enlightenment. He tried numerous paths, followed several Gurus, and went deeply into asceticism. Having nearly died from his ascetic practices, he finally let go of all effort to become enlightened and simply witnessed his breath, while sitting under a tree. He slept and as the dawn broke, he entered the enlightened state. He then established a Sangam (spiritual gathering) of monks, who roamed with him in India for over 40 years. His teaching is centered on the spiritual practice of meditation and compassion.

His great tree of spirituality has spread into many branches, covering the whole of the Eastern world. Even today, many people attain Enlightenment using his teachings and techniques. (It is interesting that his principal method, Vipassana is actually one of the methods from the 5000 year-old scripture, Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.) I once saw a documentary in which a mathematical image mapping of the universe was shown. At the very center of the universe was a clear image of a Buddha seated in Meditation. So evidently, this posture of meditation in which the Buddha is depicted, resonates with the vibration of the core of our universe. Perhaps it is for this reason that so many people have entered universal consciousness while seated in meditation. Osho has given us many volumes of books on the Dhamapadha (Buddha’s teachings) plus many books on Zen (one of the branches in Buddha’s lineage). For anyone who is attracted to the teachings of Buddha, Osho’s books offer rare insights and stories regarding this mystical path. Osho Says: “Gautam Buddha’s emphasis on compassion was a very new phenomenon as far as the mystics of old were concerned. Gautam Buddha makes a historical dividing line from the past; before him meditation was enough, nobody had emphasized compassion together with meditation. And the reason was that meditation brings enlightenment, your blossoming, your ultimate expression of being. What more do you need? As far as the individual is concerned, meditation is enough. Gautam Buddha’s greatness consists in introducing compassion even before you start meditating. You should be more loving, more kind, more compassionate. There is a hidden science behind it. Before a man becomes enlightened, if he has a heart full of compassion there is a possibility that after meditation he will help others to achieve the same beatitude, to the same height, to the same celebration as he has achieved. Gautam Buddha makes it possible for enlightenment to be infectious.” A Quote of Buddha says: “A generous heart, kind speech and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” Lao Tzu Born in China, Sixth century B.C.E. Died: Sixth century B.C.E.

Was a great Taoist Master in China. It is said he was born already old, meaning he was born wise. He was a contemporary of Confucius and indeed it is very humorous to read the description by Confucius of his meeting with Lao Tzu. It is obviously the meeting of an intellectual scholar with an Enlightened Master. Confucius stumbled out of the meeting with Lao Tzu in a very dazed and confused state, saying, “I understand the order of things, how fish are able to swim and birds are able to fly, but I have met with a Dragon and cannot grasp how he can levitate into the clouds and reflect on what cannot be known.” In typical Taoist style, Lao Tzu gives the supreme teaching of ‘suchness.’ Even though highly revered, he shunned fame and fortune and lived a simple life. At around the age of 80 he left the city to go on an eternal pilgrimage. At the Hanku Pass, near Loyang the guard at the gate recognised him and detained him, requesting that before he disappear from the world, he should write down his wisdom for the benefit of all beings. Under duress, Lao Tzu wrote down 5 thousand wisdom teachings and this later came to be known as the Tao Te Ching. Osho says about Lao Tzu: “When I speak on Lao Tzu I speak as if I am speaking on my own self. With him my being is totally one. When I speak on Lao Tzu it is as if I am looking in a mirror – my own face is reflected. When I speak on Lao Tzu, I am absolutely with him. Even to say absolutely with him is not true – I am him, he is me.” A quote from Lao Tzu’s book Tao Te Ching, chapter 6, translated by Arthur Waley says: “The valley spirit never dies It is named the mysterious female And the doorway of the mysterious female Is the base from which heaven and earth spring It is there within us all the while Draw upon it as you will. It never runs dry.” Patanjali (born 150 BCE)

Is known as the principal proponent of Yoga, even though he himself was part of a long lineage of Yoga Gurus. Due to his phenomenal articulateness on the subject of Yoga, we have the gift of being able to follow Yoga principles clearly, even today. It is a Godsend that Yoga is now so prolifically spread all over the world, even though many people do not understand the spiritual foundation of it and think of it only as physical exercise. According to Osho, it is much deeper than that and is indeed a path to Samadhi, spiritual liberation. Osho has spoken 12 volumes on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, offering us a wealth of understanding and insight on this subject. I have a friend, Yoga Deep who is a master Yoga teacher. He has studied many Yoga forms and has also studied in-depth Osho’s 12 volumes on Yoga. He is the only person in the world as far as I know who blends classical Yoga with Osho’s deep insights on Yoga. Osho says about Patanjali: “Patanjali is logical and rational, mathematical, scientific. He does not ask any faith. He asks only courage to experiment, courage to move, courage to take a jump into the unknown. He does not say, “Believe, and then you will experience.” He says, “Experience, and then you will believe.” And he has made a structure how to proceed step by step. His path is not haphazard; it is not like a labyrinth, it is like a super-highway. Everything is clear and the shortest possible route. But you have to follow it in every detail; otherwise you will move out of the path and in the wilderness.” Patanjali outlines an eight-fold path for attaining Enlightened Consciousness: Yama (Truthful, conscious and kind conduct.) Niyama (Spiritual lifestyle, including devotion to God or Guru, purity of body and mind, self-discipline, contemplation, and contentment in all circumstances.) Asana (Right posture with spinal column straight, body upright and firmly rooted in a comfortable position for entering meditation.) Pranayama (Practice of breathing exercises leading to awareness and experience of prana, the subtle breath of life.) Pratyahara (Withdrawal of senses from external objects.) Dharana (Holding the mind steady, ability to focus only on one thought.) Dhyana (Meditation.) Samadhi (The experience of remaining conscious and in a state of witnessing while the body is in dreamless sleep. This opens into superconsciousness.) Patanjali is quoted as saying that Yoga is: “Neutralization of the alternating waves in consciousness.” He also says: “When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations; your conscious expands in every direction; and you find yourself in a great, new and wonderful world.” Issa (Jesus) (Born approximately 17 April, 6 B.C.)

Jesus has had the sad fate of being entirely misrepresented by Christianity. If we simply put the lie-based Christianity aside and focus on the man, Issa and his life story, he is indeed highly inspirational as a spiritually awakened Master. To understand the real Jesus (Issa) more deeply, read the book or watch the documentary by the same name: Jesus Lived In India.These contain irrefutable evidence of Jesus’s lost years both before and after the Crucifixion. He lived an incredible life! Before going to Israel and proclaiming his teachings there, he lived during his youth in India, studying Jainism, Vedanta, Upanishads, Yoga, Buddhism, and Tantra. After the crucifixion (which was rigged for him to survive) he travelled back to India where he established an Ashram (becoming a Guru to the large Jewish population in Kashmir), married a local peasant woman, had a son and lived to the ripe old age of 112. His tomb is in Srinagar, Kashmir. His teachings are kept on record at many temples, including in India and Tibet. Osho spoke at length on Jesus and it was from him that I first heard that Jesus studied in India, survived the crucifixion and went back to India where he lived to a ripe old age. Through further study, I found out that what Osho said is indeed true. Osho’s books on Jesus, The Mustard Seed and Come Follow Me, are a revelation about the man and his mission. Osho Says: “Jesus never renounced the world. He was standing in the midst of us all. He was not an escapist. He moved in the marketplace, he lived with the crowd. He talked to prostitutes, labourers, farmers, fishermen. He didn’t go out of the world. He remained here amidst you. He knew the world better than anyone who has escaped from it. It is no wonder that Christ’s message became so powerful. Mahavira’s message never became so powerful but Jesus converted almost half the world, why? Because he remained in the world; he understood the world, its ways, the people, the mind.” Beautiful translations directly from Aramaic of Jesus’s teachings can be found in the book: Prayers of the Cosmos: Meditations on the Aramaic Words of Jesus by Neil Douglas Klotz A quote of Issa (Jesus) from Neil Douglas Klotz’ translation is: “O Birther! Father-Mother of the cosmos You create all that moves In light O Thou! The breathing life of all Creator of the shimmering sound that Touches us Respiration of all worlds We hear you breathing in and out In silence Source of Sound; in the roar and the whisper In the breeze and the whirlwind, we Hear your name Radiant one; you shine within us Outside us—even darkness shines—when We remember Name of names, our small identity Unravels in you; you give it back As a lesson Wordless action, silent potency Where ears and eyes awaken, there Heaven comes O Birther! Father-Mother of the Cosmos!” Gorakhnath

Was a renowned Tantra Master who lived (approximately) in the 8th Century. He was reputed to be in the direct lineage of Lord Shiva. According to Yoga historian Romola Butalia he authored the following scriptures: “The Goraksha Samhita, Goraksha Gita, Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati, Yoga Martanada, Yoga Siddhanta Paddhati, Yoga-Bija, Yoga Chintamani.” He is also said to be the founder of Hatha Yoga. His influence is far reaching, even today, stretching from Nepal to South India. His greatest glory is to be experienced in Khajuraho, the village in Madhya Pradesh, India, which boasts a series of Tantra and Jain Temples. They are famous for the exquisitely formed erotic sculptures on the outer circumference of the temples. Some of these temples were built based on the wisdom teachings of Gorakhnath and with the support of the Chandela Dynasty. Wikepedia says: “Historical records note that the Khajuraho temple site had 85 temples by the 12th century, spread over 20 square kilometres. Of these, only about 25 temples have survived, spread over 6 square kilometres.” Osho Says about Khajuraho “If you meditate there, you will know what the Tantra masters were doing. They were creating in stone something that is felt in the ultimate orgasmic joy. It was the most difficult thing to do, to bring ecstasy into the stone. And if the stone can show the ecstasy, then everybody can move into that ecstasy easily. Khajuraho sculpture is not just to see, it is for meditation. Sit silently and meditate for hours. If one goes to Khajuraho, one should live at least for three months there, so he can meditate on each possible inner posture of orgasmic joy. And then, slowly, slowly, the at-onement, slowly, slowly, the harmony; then suddenly you are transported into another world — the world of those mystics who created this temple.” Osho had a supreme respect for Gorakhnath, listing him as one of the 4 greatest Mystics India has ever produced. Osho says: “The whole palace of India’s literature of the Saint Tradition rests on this one stone; everything is based on this one individual. He has said it all and slowly, slowly all he has said will go on becoming more beautiful, a many coloured splendour over time. People will meditate and base their spiritual practice on it for centuries to come. Who knows how many enlightened beings shall be born through him?” A Quote from Gorakhnath: “Neither emptiness nor fullness Neither Isness nor no-isness So unfathomable, beyond the senses In the Inner sky of the crown chakra It is the innocent voice of a child How can it be named? Laughing, being playful, The knack of meditation Day and night Sharing this divine inspiration He laughs, he plays, his mind untroubled This unwavering one is always with God.” Padma Sambhava (lived during the 8th Century) Is known as the second Buddha in Tibet. He travelled from India and established Tantric Buddhism in Tibet and was also influential in Bhutan. His Tantric consort was the Princess Mandarava from Rewalsar, India. The cave they lived in is a revered place of pilgrimage today. I have been there and meditated in the cave and it is indeed a place filled with superpowers.

In Tibet, Padma Sambhava worked with a team of 133 translators on translating Tantra and Buddhist Scriptures and gave Tantra teachings. Due to his genius in helping enemies of the Dharma turn towards the Dharma, the Emperor of Tibet offered Padma Sambhava his own wife, Yeshe Tsogyal as a second consort. When we see depictions of a male and female in the Tantric Yab Yum position, this is usually depicting Padma Sambhava and his consort in deep embrace. He is also depicted in paintings as sitting in the middle between his two consorts. It is said that both of Padma Sambhava’s consorts attained Enlightenment during Tantra Sexual Union practices and that in the form of a Rainbow Body and Terma, they are ever available to help Tantric practitioners on the path. (Terma is a word which means the hiding of deep spiritual teachings in the ether. When a seeker arrives, who is ready to receive the transmission, the Terma is delivered as a download into the psyche of the recipient.) During the sacred tour of Leh Ladak in September 2018, we will be visiting a monastery where Padma Sambhava lived for some time. A quote from Padma Sambhava says: “If you want to know your past life, look at your present condition. If you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.” Saraha

Was born as a Brahmin during the 8th Century in Roli, within the city-state of Rajni in Eastern India. He later became a renowned Buddhist scholar. His Enlightenment happened when he became a disciple of a female Tantra Initiatress and Master known as ‘the Arrow-smith Woman.’ His teachings also went to Tibet and had a great influence on the Tantra lineages there and a Tantra stream in India represented by the Baul Mystics still keep his teachings alive. (If you would like to meet a Baul Mystic Master come to the Tantra Festival in Delhi in November 2018.) Osho has given two volumes of discourses on the Baul Mystics, called ‘The Beloved.’ It is very special to read or listen to Osho’s discourses on the Royal Songs of Saraha. Osho’s discourse called ‘Aiming At the One’ detailing Saraha’s life story and the meeting with his Tantra Female Master is simply breath-taking. A quote from Saraha says: “Here in this body are the sacred rivers, here are the sun and the moon as well as the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body.” Abhinava Gupta (950 – 1016 AD) Was a highly influential and revered Tantra Master in Kashmir, India. Kashmir was a melting pot of many different nationalities as it was on the Silk Road and people from China to Rome passed through there. The many spiritual traditions introduced to the region by travellers found a welcome amalgamation through Tantra. The tradition of Tantra simply expanded to make space for all approaches of spirituality to be embraced under one umbrella.

Abhinava Gupta was thus very open minded, with an incredible intellect, and profound spiritual insights. He was born to Tantric adept parents and his first Guru was his father. He subsequently studied with 15 different Gurus. His most profound initiation happened through the wife of one of his Gurus, Sambhunatha. She acted as a conduit for the great Goddess in a Tantric Ritual. He lifted Tantra out of the shackles of a male oriented Tantra Yoga approach and taught the equal honouring of both male and female in life, love and spirituality. He taught that householders as well as renunciates could have full access to Tantra teachings and benefits, thus deleting the stranglehold of elitism. At that time, Tantra was simply a way of life for all. Wikipedia says: “His desire was to create a synthetic, all-inclusive system, where the contrasts of different scriptures could be resolved by integration into a superior perspective.”—“By his own testimony, he had attained spiritual liberation through his Kaula practice, under the guidance of his most admired master, Śambhunātha.” Because the region was a crossroads, Kashmiri Tantra spread to the whole of the known world, from China to Europe. If we look at the web of Tantra throughout the world, all the silken threads lead back to Kashmir and Abhinava Gupta. Of course, there were many illustrious Masters spanning many generations before and after him but the teachings of Abhinava stand out, illuminating across time and space. This is also because he was a great scholar among his other attributes and wrote down Tantra scriptures for posterity. A quote of Abhinava Gupta says: “The couple (yamala) is consciousness itself, the unifying emission and the stable abode. It is the absolute, the noble cosmic bliss consisting of both Shiva and Shakti. It is the supreme secret of Kula; neither quiescent nor emergent, it is the flowing font of both quiescence and emergence.” (Tantraloka) Atisha (Born 982 – Died 1054 CE)

Was a devotee of the Goddess Tara. The goddess Tara is renowned for alleviating the suffering of all beings both physically and spiritually. After a series of dreams and visions where the Goddess appeared and gave him instructions and initiations, Atisha travelled from India to Tibet bringing the wisdom teachings of Tara and sparked multiple streams of Tibetan Tantra and Tibetan Buddhism. A quote from Atisha says: “To be kind to those who have come from afar, to those who have been ill for a long time, or to our parents in their old age, is equivalent to meditating on emptiness of which compassion is the very essence.” Tilopa Born 988—Died 1069 Had a very interesting life. He was born to Royalty but left his family to become the disciple of a female Tantra Master. He travelled far and wide, also receiving the transmission from 6 other Masters. His last Master, Matangi, sent him to become a pimp and bouncer in a brothel. While working there, he experienced a download of Mahamudra (meaning the great gesture arising from the Ultimate Orgasm with the universe). He then began teaching Tantra and his greatest disciple was Naropa, who became his successor. Tilopa gave 6 powerful instructions to Naropa for adhering to the Tantra path:

1) Don’t recall; (Let go of what has passed.) 2) Don’t imagine; (Let go of what may come.) 3) Don’t think; (Let go of what is happening now.) 4) Don’t examine; (Don’t try and figure anything out.) 5) Don’t control; (Don’t try and make anything happen.) 6) Rest; (Relax right now, and rest.) Osho gave beautiful discourses on Tilopa’s Song of Mahamudra, in Tantra: the Supreme Understanding; Osho Says: Tilopa says in the song, “Become like a hollow bamboo, nothing inside.” And suddenly, the moment you are a hollow bamboo, the divine lips are on you; the hollow bamboo becomes a flute and the song starts. This is The Song of Mahamudra. Tilopa has become a hollow bamboo; the divine has come and the song has started. It is the song of the ultimate experience itself.” Tilopa says: “At first a yogi feels his mind Is tumbling like a waterfall; In mid-course, like the Ganges It flows on slow and gentle; In the end, it is a great vast ocean, where the Lights of Son and Mother merge in one.” Osho gave talks on Upanishadic Rishis whose written teachings form one of the main foundations of the Hindu Religion. Written Upanishads are from the 6th century BCE to 15th-century CE and before that there was a long oral tradition. Osho also spoke on many other Enlightened beings that we may never have heard of if it were not for him. He has certainly exposed to the world the glory of Mother India as a fountainhead of Enlightened beings and Enlightened research. He has also spoken on Sufi Masters of the Middle East, on Hassids of Israel, on Heraclitus and Pythagoras of Greece, on Gurjieff who was from Russia but lived in France, and many more. As the number of Enlightened Beings who have graced this Earth number in the thousands, it is not possible to write down the stories of all of them in this article. Many have remained unknown. However, their fragrance wafts through the ether, touching our heart and soul. Out of the many Enlightened beings, it is important to mention the Pagan, Gnostic and Shamanicapproaches to life. In many indigenous cultures, an Enlightened lifestyle was simply a way of being. One contemporary culture that functions in this way today are the Kogi of Columbia. See the film Aluna to learn more about them. The Gnostics had a very simple and intelligent way of being in communion with the divine in everyday life. They had mystery cells of 8 men and 8 women who went through initiation with a Master and after experiencing illumination, they too would start their own mystery cell. These mystery cells were spread throughout the middle east and Europe for a thousand years before Christianity and indeed are the true roots of the Western spiritual heritage. Christianity did a massive genocide of Gnostics, burning their scriptures and killing them in the millions till every trace of them was purged from historical memory. One historian John Lamb Lash, has spent 20 years studying any records he could unearth about them and has written a ground-breaking book about the Gnostics called Not in His Image. This book holds an important key for our future as well as vital information about our roots. A Quote on the Gnostics from John Lamb Lash is: “Gnosis is psychosomatic illumination, the full-body rush of cognitive ecstasy and direct sensorial reception of the vital intelligence of the earth.” The Hawaiian Huna Tradition deserves special mention. Their wisdom, carried most probably from the famed continent Lemuria (Mu) is really timeless, being nature based and leading to harmony within and without. An affirmation from the Huna Tradition is: Ike (awareness) Kala (freedom) Makia (attentiveness and concentration) Manawa (Presence in this moment) Aloha (Love) Mana (Confidence) Iroquois Nations In the USA there are innumerable examples of indigenous wisdom, and no more so than the Iroquois People. They were wisdom holders of the highest order and it is actually they, who are the true authors of the American Constitution. When early American statesmen were searching for an appropriate foundation document for the new country, they came to know about the amazing peacekeeping and governance strategies used by the Iroquois Indians. They took their vision statement and used it for the American Constitution. To understand the depth and breadth of the Iroquois’ Nation read the book, The Walking People A native American Oral History by Paula Underwood. A quote from Gloria Steinhem says: “When a Laguna law student from New Mexico complained that her courses didn’t cite the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution—or explain that this still existing Confederacy was the oldest continuing democracy in the world—I thought she was being romantic. But I read about the Constitutional Convention and discovered that Benjamin Franklin had indeed cited the Iroquois Confederacy as a model. He was well aware of its success in unifying vast areas of the United States and Canada by bringing together native nations for mutual decisions but also allowing autonomy in local ones. He hoped the Constitution could do the same for the thirteen states. That’s why he invited two Iroquois men to Philadelphia as advisers. Among their first questions was said to be: Where are the women?” A quote from the Iroquois at the time of Thanksgiving is: “Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People. Now our minds are one.” Some persons reading this newsletter may be wondering how to meet an Enlightened being who is still alive in the body. In my lifetime so far, I have met 5 Enlightened beings. Krishnamurti, Osho, Tamosan Uetzusan Kohrogi Sensei Osho

I met him in 1973 and remained in his community for 26 years. I never saw him do anything which was not in service of awakening consciousness in individuals and for the collective. He worked through powerful discourses, meditation methods and devices aimed at drawing out the fullest potential of each human being. His compassion was simply breath taking in its depth and vastness. His methods were designed to shock us out of our long sleep, to dissolve collective conditioning, to reveal to us our own grandeur. Osho says: “To be an Enlightened Mystic means that the song this person was born to sing has burst forth, the fragrance that was hidden in this flower has been released to the winds. An enlightened consciousness means you have become that which you were destined to be. And naturally, in the fulfilment of this destiny, there is supreme bliss”. Krishnamurti (11th May 1895—17th February 1986)

I met him in Mumbai after having been initiated by Osho. I could recognize his Enlightened quality and felt great appreciation of him and his work. However, I found him too serious for my taste and therefore did not seek him out again, though I greatly enjoyed some of his books. Osho spoke about Krishnamurti many times and offered great respect towards him, teased him and also expressed compassion for what he went through earlier in his life. Krishnamurti says: “It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly enquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning that you find truth, God or love.” Tamo san (enlightened Japanese Priestess)

She came to Osho’s community in November, 1989, saying: “I came to give my energy to Osho that his strength would come back. He can make a big change in the world. I want to make sure he can be well.” Osho publicly recognised her as enlightened by showering her with Rose Petals. He gave her a certificate which said: “I Osho, as a Buddha in my own right, recognise and rejoice in your Enlightenment. I know and you must be knowing, that there is one step more, going beyond Enlightenment, and being nothing.” Later, I visited her in Japan. She had an altar with pictures of Buddha and Osho. Her way of working was very interesting. She was a tiny woman but with superhuman strength. She would pick up a huge grown man, give him a powerful blow on the back and put him back down. She did this to me and I was reeling from the lightning bolt of energy that ran through my body for days afterwards! Tamo san left her body on 21st November 2001. Tamo san says: “In the old days, evil things spread rapidly, but now good things spread rapidly. If you understand…everything begins to appear wonderful and beautiful, and it naturally makes people stop wasting or stop desiring unnecessary things. This awakening is contagious and it will be transmitted to everybody soon.” Uetzusan He came into my life for a brief period and we taught together for about a year, and during that time we created a world-wide movement for teaching our combined work of meditation and Tantra. He is a charismatic Healer and offers a simple yet powerful transmission of Expanded Consciousness. In 2008 he gave me a transmission which propelled me into Universal Consciousness.

Uetzusan says: “Live with love and compassion for everybody and everything; this is the practice of truth. The ultimate purpose of the body is to live with this understanding, that everything is love, everything is compassion.” Kohrogi Sensei Is a Japanese Master who has been in my life since 1994. He is a healer using the method Ito Thermie and also teaches a group called Natsukashi, which means ‘coming back home to your original nature.’ He teaches in Japan, Tokyo area, and also comes to Europe about once per year. His teaching is beyond definition, but if I could name a flavour, it would have to be Tao. He is both ordinary and extraordinary. His teaching is both simple and profound. I have participated in his groups and trainings about 18 times and never get tired of it because it is the refined flavour of his teaching which brings me back again and again. Every time I think of him, an inner smile comes to my lips. Kohrogi Sensei says: “You are not just alone. Everything is supporting you. Hold a leaf and have eye contact. Hold a rock and have eye contact. These will help you to remember. Natsukashi means, “Everything is already present.” We have forgotten this. When we ‘remember’ this is Natsukashi.”

The Ocean Of Consciousness Humanity tends to behave like fishes who are in the sea, crying out, “Where is the sea?” when the sea is all around! I hope this blog has awakened your enthusiasm regarding the true history of humanity, the Enlightened history. Let us not celebrate the villains who are raping and pillaging the treasures of our world. Let us place our attention and highest regard towards those beings who are showing us the way to live in harmony, peace, love and wisdom. These Enlightened Beings are our best resources. They each have different ways of helping humanity to awaken. And all of their varied devices lead to the same ocean of consciousness. (Article taken from Sarita's blog: http://www.tantra-essence.com) Read the full article

#earth #east #leadership #meditation #soul #spirituality #tantra #world #yoga

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orphans-forest-blog · 5 years

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A Few Quick Tips to Help You Find the Best SEO Company

In our entire world SEO needs no introduction. Carrying away technical SEO for local research engines is really a comparable process. These aspects may involve websites content technique and its user relevance, SEO search engine optimization, length of time since on-line presence was established and more. A good starting point whenever using keywords for SEO will be to identify existing pages that will can use some optimization. You can review your page's SEO health, evaluate SEO metrics for a quantity of pages, and analyze each external and internal links upon any given web page. But, I'm quite certain that by the end associated with 2020, voice search will end up being very common, and you will have a lot of talks going on in the particular SEO world on how in order to optimize the content for any tone of voice search, similar how it's right now about mobile. But there is definitely another significant SEO trend through the rise of voice lookups. The brandname is powerful for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION even though it may not really be a specific ranking aspect.

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SEO helps to develop a great image for the website simply by creating blogs, adding to brand-new material and new site hyperlinks towards the website to create it remain active on various search platforms. Most people in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (myself included) divide keywords straight into three main categories: head, entire body and the (long) tail. A very essential SEO trend to know within 2018 is the mobile-first catalog. To avoid getting penalized and ensure that will a website is fully enhanced, these top SEO trends with regard to 2018 ought to be regarded. Being a good experienced SEO content writer, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION copywriter, copy writer, technical writer, reactive content writer, blog writer, Superb special interest in digital advertising. That means this increases user experience which increases SEO and rankings. Carrying out technical SEO with regard to local search engines is actually a similar process. In Local SEO, citations are referred to as mentions” of your local business on other websites and web pages. That getting said, if you want in order to increase your search ranking, and stay relevant and competitive in your own industry, then you have in order to stay abreast of the present SEO trends and techniques. SEOs will need in order to collaborate closely with designers plus developers to prioritize technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and usability search engine rank factors to gain a competing edge. And you can see the section on where you can use key words for more information on integrating these keywords into your SEO content strategy. According to a research conducted by BrightEdge, a innovator in SEO and content overall performance suggests that 57% of visitors as of now comes through smartphones and tablets. On the other hand, SEOs have to understand what our own customers are searching for after which create awesome, relevant, quality content material for them. Without quality links, your web page will probably not rank quite high in search, even if a person have excellent copy or make use of every other SEO ranking element out there. Within case your website is produced up of lower-quality doorway kind pages using old SEO-techniques (which more and more labelled since spam in 2018) then Search engines will not index all associated with the pages and your site ‘quality score' is probably heading to be negatively impacted. Voice search is another one particular of the latest trends within SEO that will be influencing search engine optimization in 2018. SEO is important because may make your website relevant in order to your keywords throughout the research engine ranking process and can lead to improved search motor ranking. Many spamming internet sites have the tendency to make use of such Black Hat SEO methods. From targeting the right keywords using Google Keyword Adviser to sharing valuable information- content material marketing was and will often be one of the most essential SEO trends for a lengthy time to come. Whilst classical techniques will continue in order to be effective, the SEO tendencies and tactics mentioned on this particular page can significantly change the particular way we perform search motor optimization. Content marketing and advertising is maturing and trying out there infographics and video marketing may just add value for your own SEO techniques. ⭐ One of the best strategies adopted by businesses nowadays is an SEO focused content material strategy. John - we have around one, 000 video podcast episodes, plus currently kicking off a repair of our own site specifically to enhance our SEO (we've decided really easier to rebuild than in order to try to fix our frankenstein monster).

Excellent rule in my SEO agency which usually i instill in all our clients which is ‘if a person want your business top associated with Google, it must DESERVE in order to rank top of Google'. At the same time, the growth of voice search and virtual assistants can become an ideal basis for your development of artificial intelligence systems as well as the promotion of those SEO strategies that take into account current trends. Within the below-mentioned write-up, I did drop my key word SEO” in the beginning by itself. Alexatmedia is an marketing agency with 5 years' encounter In E-Marketing Field, We are usually using that technology to enhance any kind of business plus help the business owners in order to be in the first of most them Competitors, Alexatmedia with the professional team had all the particular secrets to do this, using Interpersonal Media and search engine marketing (seo), web designs, web growth, mobile app designs, mail marketing”, Alexatmedia leading your business in order to the top. With regard to this post, we decided in order to include some top digital advertising blogs that aren't hard-core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. She provides some awesome tips on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION for voice search, including considering how people ask questions plus understanding local queries and purpose. In addition, when it comes to Nearby SEO, long-tail keywords become also more important. Nearby SEO will play a excellent role in mobile searches is definitely all about content. That's why optimizing your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique for voice search nowadays is of vital importance. To rest guaranteed that the right SEO Organization has been selected, the prior projects must be looked from. See the search positions of the projects on the particular top search engines. Adapting to tone of voice search in your SEO technique calls for careful attention in order to the keywords you try in order to rank for. In other words, content and hyperlinks will still be the creating blocks of SEO in 2018. From the above-mentioned information, crafting link-worthy content seemed in order to be the winning choice, since chosen by 35. 2% associated with the 100+ participants as properly as the close runner-up choice came out to become -- guest blogging on sites along with high Domain Authority for developing reliable backlinks gaining 30. 8%. Outreaching top influencers of the particular niche to write articles and insert links in this; bagged the support of twenty one. 3% of the SEO experts, whereas the option of damaged backlink although being highly efficient in white-hat SEO practices obtained the selection rate of twelve. 7% of the total sharers in the survey. Causing, new SEO trends of 2018 are evolved. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today, particularly link building, is focused on relationships because ranking highly demands quality links from authoritative sites. Well right now there are more than enough affects of SEO but the almost all worth mentioning impacts of this are typically consisted of elevated website visibility, availability of natural traffic, rapid sales volume, prolonged return on investment (ROI), inexpensive business promotion and marketing, improved website exposure and awareness, long lasting business identity development, and competing edge over the other companies in the global marketplace. Power Suggestion: Like with a blog article, I've found that you obtain a slight video SEO increase by putting your keyword with the beginning of the name. The good news is definitely that there are plenty associated with excellent tools you can make use of to tackle SEO and get the data you need in order to improve your rankings. Once the post is drafted up, it's time for an SEO check always via Yoast (WordPress Plugin). There are usually many guides out there upon the web which can become found quite easy using Search engines as being a search tool to discover them, which will explain exactly how you can SEO your web site yourself "DIY". But more than time, SEOs have identified a few of the factors they think about when ranking a page. Another post of attention might be this one: nine Ways to Use Heatmaps in order to Improve Your SEO” Ways shown include to determine the perfect length of your articles plus its structure, to improve inner links, and to boost sales. It's a complicated and usually expensive process but, as along with social listening, the goal is definitely for SEO experts, business experts, and entrepreneurs to be capable to map how websites web page link to one another and extrapolate larger SEO trends and development opportunities. User encounter signals are a major SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor once your content material reaches the very first web page of Google. Within short, content and links will certainly still be the foundation associated with SEO in 2018. To get more detailed details on the use of key phrases in your website visit SEOcious exactly where you will discover many various other important factors involved in obtaining your website in the best 10 listings on Google. In general, SEO had been created like a method of enhancing websites' search engine ranking outcomes. It will end up being difficult part for virtually any SEO man to implement the necessary methods in getting on search outcomes trough voice. Wish already seeing content strategies changeover away from keyword-stuffing, and I had created be prepared to see lots of SEOs going through their content in order to reevaluate just how much worth it actually holds for the particular user. Google's algorithm keeps a track associated with pages and sites that fulfill the user so this requires to be a primary worry for SEOs going forwards. Don't forget to write us in the comments section if you like our article on SEO trends in 2018 or have any questions regarding them. Google blogs have an tremendous advantage over any other SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION blog because, not only may they go directly to the original source, in most practical ways, these people ARE the source. A slow web site is bad not only for that end-user, it is also poor for SEO (search engine optimization), so we share some essential ways by which you may make your site load extremely fast. These types of SEO tactics could boomerang upon you and affect your rank on Google. We're the particular main one Stop for just about all your 2018 SEO marketing attempts, so get in touch along with one of our experienced professionals today and let's plan intended for a brighter future for the particular company. Even more significantly, the tool should give a person enough data points, guidance, plus recommendations to verify whether or even not that particular keyword, or even a related keyword or research phrase, is an SEO fight worth fighting (and, in that case, just how to win). The methods that were the simplest (reciprocal links or directory submissions) perform not work anymore, so the particular SEOs spend a lot associated with time trying different approaches. In my above illustration, the keyword that I utilized is best SEO agency within Manila The trick here is usually to use the site: lookup operator plus the keyword : e. g. site: best Times in Y” to generate focused discussion pages.

For instance, pictures to show that you simply got best position on Google's first web page for high competitive keywords might definitely help to talk regarding google search optimization (SEO) tool. More significantly, you can track exactly exactly how much traffic, leads, and clients you are getting via Nearby SEO and organic search visitors. Rankwatchโ€ A simple SEO Management Platform with geo-specific results allowing users to optimize their local SEO. On-Page SEO is the particular practice of optimizing various internet pages for high rank plus earning more relevant traffic looking engines. In 2018, SEO's need to answer this question: Would I actually be achieving this if search motors didn't exist? Google's mentioned mission has been to offer worth to users, and this furthermore lies at the core associated with great SEO. Showing up during these research features is critical for productive SEO in 2018. Businesses, therefore, ought to align their work frame plus campaigns that complement the most recent SEO updates If you are usually searching for optimizing your internet site that speaks the true vocabulary of internet marketing, call us We all will be there to help you.

When creating a web site for Google in 2018, a person really need to understand that will Google has a large associated with things it will mark websites down for, and that's generally old-school SEO tactics which are usually now classed as ‘webspam‘. White hat SEO's generally follow Google's quality guidelines. Google introduced local SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION as one of their methods some time back, but nevertheless many companies aren't embracing this particular requirement, meaning that they are usually losing out on valuable company on a daily basis. Using keyword-rich point SEO 2019 PDF for internal links is the clear sign of over-optimized web site or overly SEOed, and this will look just like this not naturally made smiley face. Voice search is one particular of the latest SEO developments in 2018. Consumer experience for SEO will turn out to be even more important in 2018. This could mean hyperlink acquisition, building mentions, utilizing the PR agency, building your brand name off site to have the positive effect on your web sites SEO.

Starting from what exactly is usually voice search and why will be it so important for your own online business, in this guidebook we will share with a person 10ย actionable tips on how in order to optimize your content for tone of voice search and various SEO strategies that can specifically assist this particular. Within 2018, SEO is content plus content is SEO, content is definitely digital and digital is content material. As with any kind of industry, it is our obligation to stay aware of any kind of emerging SEO trends so that will we can incorporate them directly into our strategies and be certain we are providing our customers with creative, industry-leading strategies plus business advice. For this reason, in general, the rule associated with thumb here is that, within order to win SEO”, a person want to rank #1 with regard to all of your keywords. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION stands for Seo. ” This particular is a significant process associated with generating traffic from the free of charge, organic, editorial and natural research results on search engines. This enables you to react quickly within case of unwanted new back links, and therefore avoid common SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques like negative SEO episodes. SpyFu is the paid tool that uses eleven years of historical data in order to assist you find your competitors' most profitable keywords and the particular keywords they've employed for SEO plus ads. Hence, a person would not like to forget the importance of content marketing within your SEO strategy 2018. While that theory will be sound (when focused on a single page, when the intent is usually to deliver utility content in order to a Google user) using aged school SEO techniques on specifically a large site spread out there across many pages seems in order to amplify site quality problems, right after recent algorithm changes, and therefore this type of optimisation with out keeping an eye on general site quality is self-defeating within the long run. 1. I don't believe Google uses the content within the comments as an on-page SEO signal. That's why SEOs are usually starting to element in the objective behind each search query plus optimize the content and consumer experience accordingly. As Bing's Duane Forrester said, all SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Ranking signals revolve around content material of some kind” highlighting the particular impact good content has upon your internet site. Coming up with clean and unique ideas day within day out is incredibly difficult, however necessary to keep your own site not only relevant plus engaging for the audience, yet optimized for search engines such as google. Soon after this article focused around a major on-page SEO factors that will impact the search ecosystem was published by Google, a debate about prominent Offpage SEO trends that can disrupt the world of SEO in 2018 sparked in the industry. Nonetheless, auditing your competitors SEO gives you new ideas on how you can grow your local business, improve its SEO, target new keywords, and beat your competition in the process of doing so. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION involves communicating aboutness” in the specific context to both individual users and technology. Google Research Console is, slowly but definitely, getting better Google's getting the much more aggressive about producing rank tracking more difficult (some rank tracking folks I'm helpful with told me that Q4 2017 was particularly gut-punching), plus the SEO software field will be way, way more densely loaded with competitors than ever just before. In this post, we all would be talking about On-Page SEO and some of the very effective ways of boosting your ranks on Search Engines. Some Webmasters will pay 1000s of dollars to a so-called professional SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert to have their Sites on top within the search positions. Meta keywords would end up being the least priority in standing factors in SEO. The SEO Trends associated with 2018 are turning in order to impact approach on various other procedures related to Digital Marketing. These types of advanced SEO techniques might not really be the easiest to apply - they actually require even more effort than basic keyword study and link building - yet they are incredibly effective.

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oblivionspeakk · 5 years

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How to SEO 2019

Search engine optimization (SEO) is usually the procedure for improving the particular volume and quality of visitors to a website from research engines via search results regarding targeted keywords. The particular volume or productivity is not really the only way to place a smile on the encounter, rather the optimum SEO methods are the effective methods in order to make the search process dependable and efficient for the customers as well as for the particular marketers. Growing opportunities in order to connect brand and user imbed today's market, making it essential that you improve your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and happy to take benefit of these unique and related statistics. Very helpful information for me personally, thanks a lot for sharing with us, yet i would like to ask that I was doing seo for online publication and which new techniques we can use to have even more traffic to our website. In case your own video stinks, it won't rank…no matter how optimized it will be for SEO. In light with this, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services are compatible with lookup engines and you will simply work along with the guidelines of the best search engines out there. The work of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to make your internet site indexed by the search motor. Disavow poor links that might affect your own SEO. According in order to experts, Content is the almost all critical element of SEO styles in 2018. SEO Wise Links provides automatic SEO advantages for your site in add-on to custom keyword lists, from it and much more. For the past few yrs, a focus on mobile-friendly consumer experiences is becoming more plus more prominent, and although this is a key aspect within SEO, it will hit the peak in 2018. It is vital in the direction of the future success of your own online marketing and SEO efficiency that you get the correct individuals with the right abilities and knowledge to assist a person make the necessary changes. Great post, We am really impressed using the methods you spoke about within the particular content, there were quite the few new strategies on offpage seo which makes your website the must read for the customers, The newest things that I emerged across while reading your website had been - Direct Link Enquiry through Known Sources, Building Visual Content material Resources, Testimonial link Building, Brand name Mentions into Links. Tips you suggested for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Advance are valuable as Sites need to undergo SEO Review from timt to time in order to stay On top of research engine results, I was presently taking care of SEO progress Strategies to Improve website position, Found Out your post appropriate. The tone of voice search is getting vital with regard to SEO. The moot stage of any SEO strategy, is actually still imperative to find out how in order to use keywords the right method. It means ensuring that will your site is designed, constructed, maintained with SEO best procedures to make sure that lookup engines don't have any specialized limitations with indexing or knowing your content. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION activities when boosted with each internal and external resources, that will is On-Page optimization techniques along with external Off-Page tactics like visitor blogging and social media advertising gives speedy outcomes. SEO problems and top 10 google outcomes for keyword. The initial action for top-tier local SEO is definitely claiming all local listings such as Google My Business (obviously one of the most important) as well as other people like Yellowpages, Bing, and 411. Plus spending all your time (or paying some SEO firm) in order to sit there and build inbound links to suit your needs laced with keywords… this is a waste of your own time and money. With a very aggressive technique, proper keyword research, great SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION content, on-page and off web page SEO, you could begin in order to see the rewards of ranks within a few months. Nicely, Hyperlocal SEO should be away right at the end associated with 2017, many experts believe this and so do I. Nevertheless, it may come anytime plus it's time to focus upon local search as your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION opportunities in 2018. SEO is getting more important year after season and people who spend time upon increasing the high quality and experience associated with their sites will benefit significantly. In today's quickly shifting world, SEO techniques may change on a dime—and the particular worst part is that a person may not even know this. Hacks that could have earned you a front-page result mainly because recently as 2016 are not really only obsolete now, but they will may even hurt your home page's rankings.

Simply by optimizing Youtube videos, your web site will get traffic from Search engines as well as the video clip publishing platform, so make certain your video titles and explanations are SEO friendly to create them rank on search. It might be the case (and We surmise this) that the introduction of the certain SEO technique initially synthetically raised your rankings for your own pages in a way that will Google's algorithms do not say yes to of, and once that issue is spread out throughout your own site, traffic begins to degrade or is slammed in the future algorithm update. Technical optimization consists of every thing that SEOs do to create it easier for search motors to find a website. Our SEO company ratings are based off of points like affordability, the other solutions they provide, and the history they have with their present and past clients. Together with the quality content, the relevance of back links will also be a main aspect of SEO 2018 in order to consider. Yes, I agree along with you Karthikeyan Maruthai, We Need to Know Above Off-page SEO Methods to Achieve Very Good Position. Even Google already announced a good SEO update in 2015 that will has a tendency to enhance search ranking for mobile reactive websites. Meta description plays the major role in search motor ranking of your post therefore writing an SEO friendly meta description is important for standing factor. Visit omega seo in order to learn more about developing long lasting strategies to improve your Search engines ranking. The particular ads that you simply often see upon various webpages shown and these that also show on the rightmost side of search results are usually inorganic SEO examples. When you are doing a expert SEO audit for a real company, you are going to require to think like a Search engines Search Quality Rater AND the Google search engineer to offer real long-term value to the client. An example of White colored Hat SEO will be a good in-depth article with what may be thousands of words (called long-form content), implementing proper SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION such as semantically related key phrases, heading tags, optimized images, plus internal links.

Not just is it a great method to get different viewpoints in to your article and find out there new things, it also assists grow your SEO rankings plus traffic. Use LSI keywords in body (use Seo pressor plugin to get related keywords). All these consequences also lead to better SEO and higher search engine rankings. On-page SEO is the exercise of optimizing individual web webpages to be able to position higher and earn more appropriate traffic in search engines. When you are a local company and want to build upon your local SEO, try this simply by looking for websites that are usually associated with the area a person operate in. You can inquire your local magazine whether these people wish to work together upon online articles and mention your own business in them or perform the role of mentioned upon local websites like your local community page. To predict tips on how to surface a business's results within a voice search, SEO experts now need to concentrate upon ranking for the common NL queries around target keywords. You are able in order to put up a team yet it would take a great deal of time because you've got to create substantial research and training just before you can incorporate it. This this case, hiring the solutions of an SEO firm is definitely the best choice for a person. So in particular in the event that someone is pasting links upon a spammy site, or probably a previous SEO went away and ran some script in order to place links and a few of forums, and you aren't clean that up for no matter what reason, and you don't possess a manual action, but a person want to make sure this doesn't even get that considerably, then the disavow file is usually a great method to simply like preemptively say well I am aware about these issues, I avoid wish to lose any rest over them, I'm just heading to disavow them and obtain them taken out of the particular equation. Mobile phone optimization for local users, together with the rise of tone of voice search, can provide an outstanding way to produce a productive SEO strategy in 2018 simply by facilitating the search experience by means of personalized and relevant answers. In 2017, using the introduction associated with new SEO techniques it emerged to light that using a good Alt image can proof in order to be quite effective in updating your ranking online. Within case you are struggling along with the search engine optimization regarding your online store, please feel free of charge to fill out our on-line form and we will offer you with a free SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION analysis of your website together with improvement suggestions. In brief, SEO drives two things : rankings and visibility. It has an SEO industry debate as in order to the validity of PA plus DA, and exactly how very much influence the PageRank algorithm nevertheless holds in Google results (more on that in a bit), but outside of Google's personal analytics, they're the most broadly accepted metrics on the market. Just go via the list of Best SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Agencies compiled by the study team of GoodFirms and employ the main one you think can alter the game of SEO regarding your business. Fairly recently, I've seen the resurgence of on-page SEO elements making a difference in research engine rankings. A person can also see the off-page SEO power of free equipment through backlinks. If you would like to keep thriving in lookup rankings, you need to end up being aware of all of the particular latest Google algorithm updates plus SEO best practices. Although the fundamentals associated with SEO will stay important (links, onsite SEO, page speed, content material etc. ), how one makes the most of for certain queries will modify. Several thanks for your awesome In-depth Guide, I have learnt several new SEO Strategies, I will certainly begin with improving my web site's Dwell Time Beside Creating Visible Content, I am going in order to really appreciate If you can Write an In-depth Guide regarding Creating Embeddable Images”, I require to understand it better. On-page SEO may be the process of enhancing websites or blogs in purchase to increase a site's rating in search results. In 2018, your SEO achievement won't depend on how properly you optimize your website intended for Google. In case a person are reading this blog right now, you'd probably understand what Research Engine Optimization” is. It is usually quite commonly called SEO I am giving you a fast short on Search Engine Optimization, forms of SEO techniques, the methods involved in these processes and so on. With recent Google changes, failing to look after mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION could cause search invisibility, plus mobile's bringing other changes likely to need to be ready regarding. We all know that testimonials and social proofing are important in online marketing and business in general, but they are a lot more crucial in case of local business SEO. By customization knowledge graph under SEO you happen to be giving helpful information to customers to make best decision. In 2018, we'll see search engines make use of that data to serve customized digital experiences to individual customers and SEOs will seek in order to find a method to change that algorithm to find a benefit for their clients. If you want to properly optimise the SEO of your local business website and keep growing and getting stronger in the search engine rankings, you will have to regularly operate a Local SEO audit on your website.

SEO means lookup engine optimization. Should you be within the process of developing your own search engine optimization strategy in order to increase your search ranking, I actually encourage you to check out there the SEO shortcuts” in this particular post first. If you do not really upgrade your SEO strategy plus simply stick to traditional strategies, you will probably find this difficult to push your internet site pages in top 10 outcomes, and even worst, get punished by Google for continuing intense and forceful SEO tactics in order to gain ranking. Along with solid content, the overall user knowledge of your website is associated with crucial importance for SEO within 2018. Instead, insert keywords and carry out an SEO overhaul within the overarching category pages. Even though plenty of SEOs focus upon ranking factors that get their own happy to the top place in the search results, much less many focus on keeping their own content ranked high. In case your video stinks, it is just not rank…no matter how optimized this is for SEO. Topics like as content quality, website acceleration, security, design, the Knowledge Chart, artificial intelligence, algorithm updates plus Google mandated changes should become considered by anyone looking in order to stay up to date along with SEO. The tactic of enhancing your pages to earn even more traffic through being more extremely relevant to search queries, on-page SEO is something everyone may do. Our goal is in order to craft a page that assists the searcher achieve their objective, answering the intent of their own search. Videos on your blog may also increase your Dwell-Time, producing them a must-have for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this year. Since Google continues to refine the enigmatic search algorithm to provide users one of the most relevant results, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION professionals and pundits across the particular globe have taken note associated with the growing number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends and strategies that are usually poised to be the potential future of SEO. You may expect a rise in video articles, page relevance, mobile SEO, plus site speed. Companies are already optimizing their own SEO strategies to provide easy user experience to users. With 15 many years of SEO experience and study under her belt, she understands what works and what in order to prevent and she shares huge useful and actionable information upon her blog. Today that you understand the significance of pleasing your users, allow me you Pillar #2 within this SEO strategy. Algorithmic chasers, technical SEOs, plus Google Doodle followers should develop their technical skills to pay out attention to emerging voice lookup technologies and AI applications. The particular SEO companies who know just how to handle their clients properly do include these techniques associated with Content Marketing. Getting this right affects just about all you do in search, plus really helps with issues that are usually becoming big in SEO today like: voice, answer boxes plus topic-based content (instead of the particular old-school keyword focused stuff).

Mobile phone SEO trends and strategies may continue to morph and modify. While I understand all about the SEO things: SEO title, focus keywords and so on, my challenge is writing different headlines that contain all the particular focus keywords. Canonical: This connect to handles content syndication, which basically allows other blogs to distribute your work (similar to franchising) without hurting your website's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking—simply by adding a rel=canonical will get your brand and articles from the web in several outlets, ensuring a greater get to and bigger audience without harming your own search results. I am just curious - sometimes with your own chapter-based guides, you have just about all of them on a individual page like this one, yet sometimes they're separate pages along with an overview page as the sort of intro + desk of contents, like the Key word Research for SEO Definitive Guidebook. A much great number of social media events will highlight that your content material is well engaged with the particular users as well as this is likely to create the value for the users, for that reason SEO experts must leverage nicely for the social media plus brand mentions as well.

Using AI and even more semantic search engines, how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is conducted will change. For way too long, SEOs have obsessed by looking in the Pagerank or whatever metric of the linking page. For SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specifically, it is important in order to comprehend where voice search ultimately gets its data from. In 2018, we can be seeing citations ceasing in order to have a major impact upon SEO efforts, and similarly, wish able to be encountering a good even stricter standard on key phrase stuffing as semantic (topic-based) SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION matures. Google is also maintaining track of Accelerated Mobile Webpages as this format enables quick loading, giving a much much better reading experience and improves SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION of the website. Nevertheless NATURAL backlinks from real high quality sites, that will ALWAYS assist you with your SEO. Your own monitors are covered with dashes from Google Analytics, an SEO ranking band like Moz or SEMrush, reports through your CMS or marketing software tool, and a few Search engines sheets keep your results arranged and keep an eye fixed on your own search engine rank position. In 2018, SEO marketers require to up their game plus shift their focus beyond position and towards revenue. In this post, I will be talking regarding 7 On-Page SEO techniques that will will boost your ranking. I obtained Best off-page SEO strategies through this post it helps all of us a lot to build even more links. Listed below are few SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION trends which are to turn out to be kept in mind as these types of factors will be advantageous with regard to your business growth by enabling you to shine among many. If your own content has answers of consumer questions, then you will have a win-win SEO 2017 craze. The optimization processneeds to be continued round the particular clock after consulting with the particular experts who guide you means best shape content that a person publish on your website that will might lead to optimum efficiency at that moment in period. Traditionally, this is the reason affordable SEO solutions in Toronto and elsewhere are usually a rarity. Screaming Frog is a tool that crawls websites to better analyse onsite SEO. Hey Brian, I'm in the particular present process of optimizing the YouTube Channel and update almost everything I can to enhance the SEO rankings. The search marketing of the bad practices concerning the SEO has been decreased as the artificial intelligences get the charge over the Search engines. Good-quality, substantial content material has always been an efficient and safe SEO tactic that will has been rewarded by Search engines. You can use SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION optimization tools like Keyword Adviser to find keywords. User experience indicators are a major SEO rank factor once your content gets to the first page of Search engines. In SEO terminology, whitened hat SEO refers to making use of optimization strategies, techniques, and strategies that focus on a human being audience opposed to search motors and completely follows search motor rules and policies. 11. Site Security - HTTPs @jambad 2018 SEO Trends -- 5 Ways To Stay Forward of the Curve SEOmeter 88 What exactly is it? From what we have got experienced with some in our SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION clients, Keywords can be useful in small doses and along with strategic inclusion but it ought not to be the only focus. Indeed, 2017 saw many major leaps forward for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, from an increased focus upon machine learning for search motors to modifications in our method that consumers search for details online. Really widely believed that mobile looking, mobile advertising, mobile SEO advertising, plus much more are no longer 2nd in priority” or afterthoughts. Technical knowledge because technologies plays a huge role within creating, optimizing, and benefiting through every available search marketing possibility (e. g., AMP, PWA, wealthy results, angular SEO). The particular field of search engine search engine SEO 2019 PDF optimization (SEO) is indeed ever-changing. On-page optimization, furthermore called on-page SEO, ensures that will search engines a. ) realize a page's topic and key phrases, and b. ) can fit it to relevant searches. In 2018, SEO strategy inside the contemplate however we have a tendency to consume visual content, and the way search engines transcend text to explore ever-changing search habits. These SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION crawler programs resemble Google's personal crawlers and will provide a person with an overview of just how your page will perform within SEO rankings.

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