But just for the record and to make it complete, here is one last thing that might be useful for some of you - in fact, I wish so much I'd had known this better!am looking into the future :-)

Quick recap of the previous articles (if the links won't work, go here): 

Mistake #1: Different communication levels

Mistake #2: Too different purposes, lifestyles

Mistake #3: Non-supportive partner

Mistake #4: When you don't look, only listen.

This last one below may seem obvious to some people, or may seem totally and revolutionary new to others, even completely unreal to some:

superiority/inferiority

It is simply when one of the partners feels superior (greater, more powerful, more important etc) or inferior (lesser, weaker, less important etc), compared to the other. Although the "symptomes" vary, the end result will be the same: with such a partner, one will feel worse and worse, less able, less competent and healthy, happy, valuable, active, creative, you name it. 

This has endless manifestations and ramifications throughout the various civilizations of Earth: from openly and often crucially suppressing women in certain countries, to the bigotry of misinterpreted gender equality in other places (shall I mention Sweden? don't get me started on it, maybe another time...)

And this is what is called today as "energy vampires" or "psychic vampires", and it is vital to know the basics about the subject of how people become suppressed and by whom, the real nature of suppression, and how to handle that. Otherwise one can't do anything effective about it, no matter if you try to use the most fashionable, ezoteric psycho-bla-bla, full with the most scientific-sounding words. It's more simple than that. 

Simple examples, taken from real life:

It's very easy to recognize if your partner shows his or her superior attitude to you in a direct manner: being bossy, ordering you around, always criticizing what you do, etc. There are thousands of stories and jokes around this sad topic, and I am sure everyone can think of a couple who are like that.

Solution? If you are not masochist and don't want to live with a despot, quit and find a partner. (Note: there might be times when your partner who was not critical to you at the first place but a real sweetheart, becomes so after a while - that has a certain reason which can be remedied and love can reign again.)

But what if your partner doesn't show it directly that he or she thinks less of you than of his or herself? Snide, sneaky, covertly hostile comments: "Darling, why do you put on red skirt in your age?", "In this jacket, everyone will see that you came from another country", "jokes" about you in front of your friends and so on "Oh, that's only my Hubby, he doesn't count", might seem funny and well-intentioned - but the result is that you will feel somehow uncomfortable and degraded, and maybe you don't even recognize why.   

Solution? Unless you are the same sneak type and you enjoy killing each other slowly but surely, RUN!!!!!!!! As fast as you can, and don't ever look back.   

Inferiority might be also very hard to detect at times, but can ruin a relationship just like that.

Especially artists and other talented, outstanding people tend to attract such partners - people with lesser abilities, vital force, emotional or mental powers, personality etc, etc, need somebody else close to them so that they can feed on the energy of the other one. These people might be the most lovable, best intentioned persons who will not knowingly "suck the blood" of the stronger, more able one and if your partner is like that, they might most honestly love and admire you and would even die for you.

In fact, it very well may be that these people who feel smaller, weaker, less talented and so on than their partners, have no any other reason for that, except that they have "learned" it from other people sometime in the past that they were weak, no good etc, and by now, this is what they think about themselves.

An example: you are an artist and your mate is telling you "You are so great, and I know I will never be able to get to that height, I can't even grasp how can it be..." He is saying what? That no matter if he is an extraordinarily intelligent man, with outstanding leadership talents and other skills, let's say - he feels he is less more valuable than you are. Then how are you supposed to love and admire such a man, how can you two be partners?  

Fortunately, again, this kind of inferiority, when the other who feels he is less than you are, but in fact he has some really great values, can be remedied and you can greatly help him. There are steps one can take to discover the causes why one thinks less about himself than one should. But in such a case, it has to be first of all the party concerned who needs to have the will to sort out his or her issues, you can only assist your partner. If your partner doesn't want to, kindly say goodbye and RUN!!!!

Indeed, I had myself this problem, even with a boy where basically everything else seemed to be almost perfect: my thing was that that time I had no name as an artist, no real path and future before me, for I didn't know myself what I wanted to do with my singing, I only had some very lousy gigs, I felt I was in a quite degrading position - and he was a successful musician, making good money with it, performing for the biggest international festivals etcetera. So I didn't really have the self-confidence and all that which would be necessary for a stable relationship. (By now, although I am not a superstar, this is not a issue any more, I could even have the biggest rock star, if he came my way ;-)

Alright folks, hopefully there is some info you'll find useful in all this, for yourself or for somebody you know...

Wish you all happiness, with a partner who indeed does what he or she speaks about, with whom you can communicate very well, with whom you can align your purposes and life, who is supporting you (and of course this has to be mutual), and with whom you can honestly love and admire each other. How about that? :-)

Photo source: Imperial group as Mars and Venus, by Marie-Lan Nguyen on Wikimedia Commons

Also in Andrea's Survival Guide

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Voila!

DRIFTING

Drifting in your music,
Passionate,
Ethereal,
Ecstatic.

Drifting in your talking,
Meaningful,
Playful,
Caring.

Drifting in your being,
Powerful,
Loveful,
Yearning.

You are drifting me away
To places I have never seen -
Or are these places
I have always known,
Always wanted to be?

I wonder
Where are you taking me?

Drifting me along...

- Andrea Gerak

Also in Andrea's Stories

My poems:

Drifting
Imagining
Dancing violets
Call of the night
I'll be You
A song is born
Why did you come to me?
It's not too late
(for a marriage)
Beauty of the world

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And now my very first Hungarian poem was just born! Which is again, a bit mysterious, because in the past decade, I spent more time abroad than in my homeland, I haven't been there now for more than 9 months... Here it is for those of you who understand this strange little language and want to read it.

Tried to translate it into English, but I find it rather difficult: not only technically, having to find the right words in a foreign language, but more importantly, I feel it would lose something from its mood, the spontaneous atmosphere, the feeling I had right then and right there. For me, it is completed, I said what I wanted to say with it - now let's see the next one :-)

Which is already forming, in English again... Back to you soon :-)

My poems:

Drifting
Imagining
Dancing violets
Call of the night
I'll be You
A song is born
Why did you come to me?
It's not too late
(for a marriage)
Beauty of the world

Previous post: Elisabeth Kontomanou at Huddinge Jazz Festival >>>
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The internationally touring brilliant singer put an outstanding show on the stage, featuring her outstanding vocals conveyed with passion and communication, great stage presence, remarkable musicians and vocalists, songs that gave chills, tears or joy to the audience, making them clapping, tapping, singing along, laughing, or submerging deep in their thoughts and emotions, evoked by the melodies.

A very professional performance and very human in the same time; Elisabeth is a master of keeping contact with the audience in a lovely manner.

Have to mention how respectfully she treated her colleagues on stage: six of them being excellent young talents (three of them in fact her sons!), and despite of that we could witness a few first time performances, such as the opening song, each performer did a great job. Apparently all of them on the stage enjoyed every minute of the show, just as did the audience.

Lead Vocals : Elisabeth Kontomanou
Drums : Donald Kontomanou
Bass : Lars Ekman
Piano : Pelle Karlström
Guitar : Erik Söderlind
Guitar : Joey Belmondo
Backing Vocals : Pixie Jakobsson
Backing Vocals : Christine Sundberg
Special Guest : Gustav Karlström

To get a little taste, open Elisabeth Kontomanu's MySpace and play the songs while looking at the photos.

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See my impressions from before, during and after the event - a wonderful evening in Stockholm!

Previous post: Thinking outside the box >>>
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Giving big, scientific words and explanations that seem oh so scientific, simply seems insanely ridiculous to me. Blatantly put: this study (just as the similar ones designed to explain why certain human behaviors - good or bad - come from certain brain malfunctions) doesn't prove a sh*t. For the very simple fact that there is no such a thing as "psychological illness". All those "diseases" have been and are being invented by psychiatrists, in order to sell medications for profits and control the population as a herd of sheep.

Watch the next phases of this story, it will go like this: soon they will STATE that indeed, there is a brain malfunction in geniuses, a certain "chemical imbalance" causes them to think and act in a super fast and individual way. And the next step will be saying "no worries, researches to develop the right cure are already in progress" (without mentioning which pharmaceutical company is funding those studies), and a bit later, voila, researchers have identified the chemical factor which is missing/overrepresented in the brains of those individuals, from which it is just one step away to develop "the right cure," in form of a new drug, of course (and guess which company will manufacture that drug...).

This is the standard routine of putting new psychiatric drugs on the market, just look at any of them. With a few other steps in between, so that it won't be so obvious - and also with an ingenious PR where they sell the idea to all the authorities and to the media. Ordinary people then will have no other choice than to believe the ingeniously made-up story, because it comes from the authorities and experts, and they hear it all the time from tv, radio and the papers, so it must be true.

Oh, yeah.

And here we can see how ingeniously they are working on this plot: psychs (=psychiatrists) are planning to classify independent thinking as a mental disorder - see NaturalNews article Now independent thinkers are considered diseased by psychiatry.

Simply ignore what these guys say, and think outside of the box, folks!

These are the kind of things highly creative persons tend to play around with (warning: shameless self-promotion :-)

Watch video on YouTube

And fortunately, there are sooooo many artists and thinkers, inventors around whose work I could put here to illustrate what a highly creative human being can accomplish, a good couple of names cross my mind, close and not-so-close friends, determining personalities of the past and the present and the creators of future of Mankind.

Read this one, too: Restless people

Also in Andrea's Survival Guide

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Since a couple of days, I am sorting out a few things around me with the help of a friend: spotting moments in my past that still had an effect on me - and I tell you: they are NOT good effects, and one can be surprised about how long time ago they have happened...

With freeing the attention captured in old stories, it is obviously much easier to see one's present situations, handle problems and get the show really going. 

Well, I just find it interesting what reactions I got only in the course of 24 hours: two new friends on Facebook who heard me for the first time, likened my singing and talent to Lisa Gerrard's (and they were not the first ones to say so), and another man was listening to me for a rather long time, eyes closed and I could see the greatest serene happiness on his face - wow, these are the moments that make a singer want to sing forever... And he said that he was a big music fan, loved opera, familiar with many artists but he hasn't heard such a beautiful singing...

I do get such comments every once in a while ("never heard anything like this" is quite common), but now they just suddenly started to flow in, one after the other... Hmm... interesting...

So I should do the next steps in putting my things in order and see what happens :-)

Maybe this song can be considered a bit Lisa Gerrardish? Madárka (Little Birdie)

Don't know, and that is not even the point, enjoy anyway!

Previous post: Not to Idol >>>
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Well, I had a legitimate excuse not to participate: I just got out of a bad cold when I was not able to sing for more than a week, today being the first day when I dared to try. (It worked nicely :-) But anyway, I didn't plan to go, for these talent shows are not really for artists with decades on stage behind them - and I am not sure if I ever want to be a Swedish Idol.

My friends told me I should take the plunge: "Show 'em how to sing a Swedish song for real!" I am sure I could do that, apart from that the pronunciation is quite difficult for me and I would most probably sing it with a strong accent.

I can imagine that it could have been fun, but now there's no point in going "what, if...". I didn't go, I won't be a Swedish Idol - simple. Probably not the biggest thing I miss out in my life, and I have a few other games to play...

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Certainly there will be some of you who, reading this now, would like to shout at me: “HOW DO YOU DARE?!?!?!

All these people are giving their hearts, best intentions and money to help those unfortunate ones who need to fight (in this case: prostate) cancer – and you girl dare to claim that this noble campaign is a scam???

Well, I do. Chill out folks, and get some basic knowledge about cancer itself and how these cancer organizations work.

The helping intention of all these people who want to contribute can’t be overemphasized or -acknowledged. But. One should LOOK at first where to put his money and/or work, and get correct information about the cause one wishes to support.

I invite you to read Cancer research: forward or backward? that I wrote in last October, when it was Breast Cancer Awareness Month (with a huge money collection campaign, of course) and I saw that in the information brochure they were giving out, there were some obviously contradictory statements about the causes and treatments of breast cancer. I asked the ladies who were put there as medical experts to answer questions – and they were staring at me with the greatest surprise, having no any clue whatsoever what to say about it…

Why, this seemed a bit fishy about the Almighty Cancerfonden (the Swedish Cancer Society), so it was a logical idea to have a bit more thorough look.

What goes there for breast cancer in October, same goes for prostate cancer in May – fantastic sounding PR action to get more money out of people, for not clear and clean purposes (shall I even mention the recent scandal here in Sweden when 2.5 million SEK went right in the pocket of a former head of donations…?)

If you want to know more about what's behind the scenes, watch this video

And you will see dear Swedes that it’s a “Foolhetskontrakt*” you get with this campaign…

*Swedish ladies sign a paper for their spouses that for one month, it is OK for them to look ugly, by growing a moustache for this cause. It is called "Fulhetskontrakt" = "Ugliness contract")

Photo: Archie McPhee

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In the last 4 days, I met 7 young girls for the first time, and I was so happy to see that only a couple of minutes talking with them made a positive difference in their lives - I hope so.

On Thursday afternoon two girls with angel voices were sitting on a corner, strumming their guitars. I (along with a couple tourists) was listening to them for a while, it was beautiful! They were not busking, just trying out some songs. But I saw that people wanted to give them money. I went to them and we had a little singer chat. They were 14, and had a dream to perform, to be famous artists. I acknowledged them for their beautiful singing and playing, and suggested to put out one guitar case so that people can throw money on it, as they were anyway sitting there, to start with. After 45 minutes or so, I run into them again somewhere else and they told me very happily how much money they have made :-)

On Saturday evening I bumped into other two girls, they were just over twenty. One of them sings soul, gospel and such with a choir, we had a little talk. As they had nothing special to to, were simply hanging around in Stockholm city (and actually wanted to go to 7Eleven, as a Saturday night program, ouch!!!), I took them to a pub with a blues jam session. Oh, great music, and they had such a great time, we were even dancing together - and she did have a good voice :-)

Yesterday evening I was at a shop entrance where 3 young girls were standing around, waiting for the rain to decide whether or not it will be on. About the age of my son, 17-ish. One of them was smoking and shaking from the cold, oh my! I asked them why didn't they go inside somewhere so that she won't freeze to death? They found this funny, so I went on with this voice (I am 200% against smoking, especially for young girls, but didn't want to mention anything about that, not good to appear as a smart-ass adult.) I asked them to keep an eye on my shopping bag for a second, so that I could run to catch a moment with my camera, etc. 

And then the one who was smoking, finished her cigarette and started spitting. So I started acting a bit, stared at her with great astonishment: "Uhhh, what was THAT???" They found this funny again, they were giggling at anything I was saying from that on, and I indeed acted as in a comedy, to express how disgusting spitting is, and why beautiful young girls shouldn't do that.

Well, artists are "crazy folks", and I am a foreigner in Sweden, so I could afford a little theater show :-)

Actually, I was setting up my stage there in that shop entry - don't get shocked, folks, but still today, I go out often and do a some busking... One fantastic good way to practice, get gigs, new fans and friends, feedback in my guestbook, promote my stuff in one go - and I even get paid for all this :-)

Anyway, I started singing, and before they hit Burger King or some other place, the three girls knelt down to my guestbook, giggling, and wrote me this:

"We will stop spitting now :-) We are girls and it is not "nice". Thank you. & your voice is really beautiful :-)
Emma, Jessica and Frida"

Isn't this awesome?

Today is Emma's Day in Hungary (name days are big in my country, sometimes bigger than birthdays), and that makes me think that I am the daughter and grand-daughter of two Emmas: my mother and her late mother...

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