Use your intuition wherever it leads

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.


I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.


It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.


None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.

And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.


Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.


My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired.

How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.


I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.

I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.


During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.


I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.


My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.


Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.


About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.


I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.


This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.


Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.


Thank you all very much.

intuition

Developing Your Intuition: 11 Keys to Expanding and Utilizing Your Intuitive Abilities

• Your perceptions are unique to you. Asking another person how they get intuitive ‘knowings’ or psychic impressions doesn’t mean your experiences will be the same. We are all unique, each learning and sensing differently. Honor your sensory impressions.

• Accept your “1st” feeling or instinct, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at the time. It’s your intuitive self at work when you get a 1st feeling. By engaging your logical mind to question it or make sense of it, you disengage your intuition. Simply allow the feeling and know that it is part of a puzzle and you will have all the pieces when it’s time.

• Usually you will get ‘pieces’ of the puzzle. Allow yourself to sleep on it and let it germinate. Don’t try to figure it out. Attempting to interpret it right away will put you into the logical left brain, out of the intuitive right brain.

• Pay attention to thoughts that come in ‘out of the blue.’ This means while you are day-dreaming, meditating, or even doing ‘mindless’ repetitive tasks. This is the time when you’re more open and receptive to intuitive information because your conscious mind is ‘out of the way.’

• You will tend to experience intuitive impressions the same way you learn; visual learners will tend to be clairvoyant, audio learners would gear towards clairaudience, and kinesthetic learners would benefit from movement and yoga.

• Perceive and record your dreams. Keeping a dream journal is a positive step in developing your intuition. It assists you in remembering and connecting to intuitive impressions you receive in your dream state. The journal also helps you look for patterns that may be expressing themselves.

• Also, journal your intuitive and psychic impressions. This includes déjà vu experiences, chills, knowing who’s on the phone when it rings, etc. Journaling these events can help to enhance your awareness and develops your listening skills.

• Pay attention to strong urges, synchronicities, strange happenings, gut feelings, etc.

• Listen to your body. Sometimes your physical body will experience the sensation before you perceive it psychically. For example, having a feeling in the pit of your stomach, goose bumps, the hair standing up on the back of your neck, etc. These are all intuitive experiences. It is a sensory response to something you are feeling. It may take longer to get to your conscious awareness. The physical body knows how to get your attention. These are signals to stop and listen to your intuition.

• Meditate daily. Meditation is different for everyone. It doesn’t mean you must sit in a particular pose and chant. Some people find it meditative to sit and listen to instrumental music, others meditate in nature by watching the trees move with the wind, or listen to a river flowing. Find the method that works the best for you. Practicing everyday enhances your listening skills and connects you to your inner self.

• Think about developing your intuition as if it were a new skill you are gaining. It will play an important role in decision making, meeting new people, being safe in uncomfortable situations, even help you get the job you desire. Intuition is a critical skill needed in today’s environment. With development of this skill will come greater self-assurance, self-esteem and self-confidence. It develops a sense of trusting in your self.
© 2005 Jodie Foster


www.IlluminationsNetwork.com


psychic development

Distant Healing Put to the Test

On an operating table at a medical center in San Francisco, a breast cancer patient is undergoing reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy. But this will be no ordinary surgery. Three thousand miles away, a shamanic healer has been sent the woman's name, a photo and details about the surgery.

For each of the next eight days, the healer will pray 20 minutes for the cancer patient's recovery, without the woman's knowledge. A surgeon has inserted two small fabric tubes into the woman's groin to enable researchers to measure how fast she heals.

The woman is a patient in an extraordinary government-funded study that is seeking to determine whether prayer has the power to heal patients from afar — a field known as "distant healing." While that term is probably unfamiliar to most Americans, the idea of turning to prayers in their homes, hospitals and houses of worship is not. In recent years, medicine has increasingly shown an interest in investigating the effect of prayer and spirituality on health. A survey of 31,000 adults released last year by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 43% of U.S. adults prayed for their own health, while 24% had others pray for their health.


Some researchers say that is reason enough to study the power of prayer.
"Almost every community in the world has a prayer for the sick, which they practice when a member of their community is ill," said Dr. Mitchell Krucoff, a Duke University cardiologist and researcher in the field of distant prayer and healing. "It is a ubiquitous cultural practice, as far as we can tell…. Cultural practices in healthcare frequently have a clue. But understanding that clue, learning how to best use it, requires basic clinical science."

Science has only begun to explore the power of distant healing, and the early results of this research have been inconclusive. In an article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2000, researchers reported on 23 studies on various distant healing techniques, including religious, energy and spiritual healing. Thirteen of the 23 studies indicated there are positive effects to distant healing, nine studies found no beneficial effect and one study showed a modest negative effect with the use of distant healing.

The study of distant healing was once the realm of eccentric scientists, but researchers at such prominent institutions as the Mind/Body Medical Institute in Chestnut Hill, Mass., Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina and the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco are involved in the field. And the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine has spent $2.2 million on studies of distant healing and intercessory prayer since 2000 — a small fraction of the agency's annual budget, which totaled $117 million in 2004.

Some people think even that relatively small sum of money is not being well spent.
"You can't use science to prove God," said John T. Chibnall, an associate professor of psychiatry at St. Louis University School of Medicine in Missouri, who co-wrote a scathing rebuttal of studies on distant prayer published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2001. "We shouldn't waste the money of the government showing that Jesus is 'the man,' " Chibnall said in an interview. "Faith is faith. Science is science. Don't use science to strengthen or diminish belief in God."

While some scientists oppose such studies on religious or scientific grounds, others question whether it is possible to devise a scientifically valid method for measuring something as nebulous as the power of prayer.

What constitutes a "dose" of prayer? How does one define prayer? Is channeling Buddhist intention or reiki energy the same thing as praying to a Judeo-Christian God? And how do you determine whether it was prayer that made a patient better, or something else, such as the placebo effect?

"There are enormous methodological and conceptual problems with the studies of distant prayer," said Dr. Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University in New York. "Nothing in our understanding of our universe or ourselves suggests how the thoughts of one group of people could influence the physiology of people 3,000 miles away."
For example, said Sloan, unlike clinical trials where researchers can carefully monitor the dose of medicine each patient receives, it is all-but-impossible for scientists to control or quantify the amount of prayer directed toward a patient.

"People all over the world are praying for the sick," said Sloan. "Friends and family are praying for people in any control group. Unless you assume some potency — that the prayers of certain people are more powerful than others — you are talking about a tiny amount of prayer against the enormous amount that is already out there. It is like taking a drop of water, putting it in Lake Michigan and trying to detect the effect."


Weighing the possibilities
One of the leading centers for such research is the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell in 1973 and located on 200 acres of oak-studded hillside in Petaluma, the institute describes its research mission on its website as "exploring phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models."

Marilyn Schlitz, vice president of research and education at IONS and a senior scientist at California Pacific Medical Center, is leading the study of breast cancer patients.

For more than 20 years, Schlitz's research interest has been studying whether the human mind has hidden capacities to promote healing. Some of her projects sound a bit far-out. She once studied whether off-site healers could revive anesthetized mice. Another time, working on research funded by the Pentagon, she conducted experiments designed to determine whether someone could provoke a physiological response in a person in another room simply by staring at his or her picture on a video monitor.

Her work continues to look at whether mind can influence matter.
"The survey data is saying people pray, that they are using it as part of their healing regimen," said Schlitz. "Shouldn't science look at that? … Maybe it helps in certain kinds of conditions and not in others. Well, we cannot answer that unless we take a rigorous, systematic look at what people are actually doing."

Early research
Cardiologist Randolph Byrd did the first major clinical study on distant healing at San Francisco General Hospital in 1988. He divided 393 heart patients into two groups.
One group received prayers from Christians outside the hospital; the other did not. His study, published in the Southern Medical Journal, found that the patients who were not prayed for needed more medication and were more likely to suffer complications. While it had flaws, the study garnered considerable attention.

Since then investigators have continued to look at the possible effects of remote prayer and similar distant healing techniques in the treatment of heart disease, AIDS and other illnesses as well as infertility. Numerous experiments involving prayer and distant healing have also been done involving animals and plants. One such study found that healers can increase the healing rate of wounds in mice.

"Critics often complain that if you see positive results in humans it is because of positive thinking, or the placebo response," said Dr. Larry Dossey, a retired internist in Santa Fe, N.M., and author of numerous books on spirituality and healing. "Microbes don't think positively, and are not subject to the placebo response."

In the early '90s, Elisabeth Targ and colleagues at the California Pacific Medical Center studied the effects of distant healing on 20 AIDS patients. Schlitz, who worked with Targ (who died of a brain tumor in 2002), said the study found those receiving prayer survived in greater numbers, got sick less often and recovered faster than those who did not. A follow-up study of 40 patients found similar results.

At about the same time, Duke University's Krucoff was leading a small but unusual experiment to determine if cardiac patients would recover faster after angioplasty surgery if they received any of several intangible (noetic) treatments. His study compared the results of healing touch, stress relaxation and distant healing with standard care.

Spiritual healers from around the world — including Jews leaving prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Buddhists praying in monasteries in Nepal and France, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore offering prayers during vespers, and Moravians, Baptists and fundamental Christians praying during church — each simultaneously prayed for one of several designated groups in the study.
All of the groups did better than the standard care group, with those receiving distant prayers doing best. He has since completed a larger, multi-site study. That study — the largest to date — is currently under review for publication in a medical journal.

The IONS and California Pacific study, which will be completed next year, will follow 140 breast cancer patients who have undergone reconstructive surgery. At the time of the surgery, each patient has two small, spaghetti-like tubes of Gore-Tex implanted in her pubic area to measure how much collagen is deposited as her wound heals.

The study is designed to address one of the primary concerns raised by critics of distant healing research: that the studies are not designed to account for a placebo effect.

Researchers have divided the patients into three groups. One group will be prayed for but will not know of the prayers; another will be prayed for and will be told of the prayers; and a third group will receive no prayers and will be told nothing. The healers who will do the praying must have years of experience in distant healing and come from varied traditions — such as shamanism, bioenergy and reiki.

After eight days, the tubes will be removed and collagen growth in the wound area will be analyzed — an accepted scientific method to measure wound healing. The rates of healing of the groups will then be compared.

But even some who believe in prayer's power to heal concede the difficulties of designing a good study.

"I do believe distant intention works," said Dr. Loren Eskenazi, a California Pacific Medical Center surgeon who is working on the study. "I don't know how, but it works. But it is so hard to design a study that works. We don't know the mechanisms. Is their whole church praying for them? That could skew the results. If someone wishes [a patient] ill, that could void the results."

Mary Destri, 43, a reiki healer who is participating in the study, also had misgivings about the study design. She said she had participated as a healer in other scientific experiments, but had typically been given more information about the patient.

"This is the first time I've ever worked on someone I've never met, the first time I'm working with someone I have no access to, cannot communicate with," she said. "It helps with intentionality to have a sharper focus."

Dossey said such concerns were a challenge for researchers.
"I think you can sanitize the process so greatly you eliminate the effect," he said. "They are taking prayer out of the real life context to the extent that you wonder if this has a real life applicability. People in real life tend to pray for people they know and love. Healers will say if you want healing to work it has to include a factor of profound love and compassion. Many of these randomized, controlled trials virtually eliminate any knowledge whatsoever of the subject."

As a cardiologist Krucoff has seen many patients near death. He says that what determines their survival often reaches beyond technology and medicine. Whether you call it chi, faith, divine energy or placebo, this intangible factor makes a difference, he says.

"We are pretty good at doing studies on the safety and effectiveness of pills and procedures," said Krucoff. "We have a well-established approach to figure out what the risks and benefits are likely to be….

Could you inadvertently kill someone with a loving prayer? Not too many theologians want to have that discussion. But in healthcare, these are fundamental questions."

Hilary E. MacGregor L.A. Times

medical intuition

Meditation 'brain training' clues

Meditating monks are giving clues about how the brain's basic responses can be overridden, researchers say.
Australian scientists gave Buddhist monks vision tests, where each eye was concurrently shown a different image.

Most people's attention would automatically fluctuate - but the monks were able to focus on just one image.

Writing in Current Biology, the scientists say their ability to override this basic mental response indicates how the brain can be trained.
Researchers from the University of Queensland and the University of California, Berkley, studied 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks at mountain retreats in India.


The monks had undergone between five and 54 years of meditative training.
In the tests, they were given special goggles that meant they could see a different image with each eye.

Normally, the brain would rapidly alternate between both - termed perceptual or visual rivalry.
It had been thought that this was a basic and involuntary response.
'Move on'

However, the monks - who carried out "one-point" meditation, where they focus attention on a single object or thought - were able to focus on one image.

Monks who had undergone the longest and most intense meditative training were able to focus their attention on just one of the images for up to 12 minutes.
Olivia Carter, of the University of Queensland, said: "The monks showed they were able to block out external information.

"This is an initial step in understanding how their brains work.
"It would now be good to carry out further tests using imaging techniques to see exactly what the differences are in the brains of the monks."

She said that could direct researchers to a broader understanding of how meditation influences what happens in the brain when someone is deciding whether to give something their attention, and what happens when they choose not to dwell on bad news, or to calm down.

Ms Carter added: "Buddhist monks often report that if something negative happens they are able to digest it and move on.

"People who use meditation, including the Dalai Lama have said that the ability to control and direct your thoughts can be very beneficial in terms of mental health."

Dr Toby Collins, of the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind, told the BBC News website: "Meditation is a way of tapping into a process of manipulating brain activity."
He said the idea that meditation trained the brain to attend to just one thing at a time fitted in with previous research.

He added: "How that's done, we don't yet know. But studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) can show what's happening in the brain."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4613759.stm