Fluoride Free Bottled Waters

Most Bottled Water is Filled With Fluoride, Here’s a Complete List of Brands to Avoid

Lately, fluoride has become enemy number one and the main topic of discussion worldwide.

Its negative effects have become even more severe and brought to life by experts all over the globe. After alerting the general population about its side effects on the human health, people became more and more demanding in discovering the true damage fluoride can do.

Fluoride is basically found in public water products, which is causing serious health threats for people’s health. Although many may claim that fluoride is, in some respects, healthy for the dental health in humans, numerous researches have proved the contrary.

It has been stated that fluoride negatively affects the human nervous system and harms people’s dental well-being instead of improving it.

As much we try to avoid it, it is clear that fluoride explosion is more common than me might think. For this reason, it is extremely significant to pay attention to the type of water we drink on daily basis, and look carefully for zero fluoride beverages, which are optimal for our health.

First of all, it is safe to learn more about the health risks that fluoride rich products may cause.

Fluoride Side Effects

The most threatening health risk, and also the most common one, is fluorosis. Fluorosis represents a condition of full teeth decay and malformation.

This condition generally develops in the first eight years of a persons’ life, when the teeth are most prone to growth and formation. Subjection to fluoride in large amounts is bound to result in fluorosis, and harm the dental health.

The symptoms, typical for this health condition are teeth stains of different size and color (yellow, brown), teeth decay and cavities, as well as distorted tooth growth and development.

In some cases, other symptoms may also occur, including cognitive issues in children and IQ retardation.

One study carried out in China proved that children exposed to day-to-day consumption of fluoride, show lower IQ records, unlike children who have not been exposed to the substance as much.

Well known author and study developer, Philippe Grandjean, also emphasized the fact that children exposed to fluoride-rich products, could develop certain brain disorders and cause body toxicity.

“Fluoride seems to fit in with lead, mercury, and other poisons that cause chemical brain drain. The effect of each toxicant may seem small, but the combined damage on a population scale can be serious, especially because the brain power of the next generation is crucial to all of us,” stated Grandjean.

In order to preserve your and your children’s health as much as possible, here is a list of fluoride-safe bottled waters, containing little to zero fluoride content:

  • A Better Water
  • Agromas Natural Mineral Water
  • Albertsons
  • Alpina
  • American Fare
  • American Star
  • Appco
  • Aqua Fresca
  • Aqua Panna
  • Aqua Pure
  • Aquarius Natural Mineral Water
  • Arbor Springs
  • Arlington Springs
  • Aquafina Water
  • Aqua Systems
  • Aqua Von
  • Artesian Wells
  • Augusta Medical – Daniels
  • Badger Water
  • Besco Pure Premium Drinking Water
  • BIOTA Colorado Pure Spring Water
  • Bio-2
  • Black Berry Farms
  • Blue Ice Natural Mineral Water
  • Boney’s
  • BORNEO
  • Bountyland
  • Buches
  • Calistoga
  • Callaway Blue
  • CAPA
  • Cascade
  • Century Springs
  • Chemung
  • Chippewa Spring Water
  • Citi Stop
  • Classic Selection
  • Clearly Arctic
  • Clear Mountain Spring Water
  • Clover Company Limited
  • Coach
  • Cold Country
  • Cohutta Mountain Spring Water
  • Cowboy Squeeze
  • Crowne Plaza Drinking Water
  • Crowne Plaza Natural Mineral Water
  • Cruel Jacks Spring Water
  • Crystal Mountain Spring Water
  • Crystal Point
  • Crystal Ridge
  • Crystal Spring Natural Spring Water
  • Culligan Water
  • Dakota Splash
  • Dannon
  • Deep Rock
  • Deep Rock Crystal Drop
  • Deep Rock Fontenelle
  • Deja Blue
  • Desert Quench
  • East Phils
  • Eco Quest
  • Elite
  • Equatorial Natural Mineral Water
  • Essentia Water
  • Eureka
  • Evian
  • E Water
  • Family Pantry
  • Famous Ramona Water
  • Flowing Springs
  • Food Club
  • Founders Square Bank
  • Fresh Brands Artesian
  • Fresh Brands Distilled Water
  • Fresh Brands Drinking Water
  • Fresh Market
  • Get-N-Go
  • Glacier Bay
  • Glen Summit Springs Water
  • Glen Summit Distilled Water
  • Glenwood Inglewood
  • Gordon Food Service
  • Great Bear
  • Great Value
  • Harvey’s
  • H2O4U
  • Henry’s
  • Hidden Valley Natural Mineral Water
  • Hillcrest Distilled Water
  • Hillcrest Drinking Water
  • Hillcrest Spring Water
  • Hilton PJ Natural Mineral Water
  • Hinckley Springs
  • HINT
  • Hi-Sprint Drinking Water
  • Hi-Sprint Natural Mineral Water
  • Hog Wash
  • Hon Less Natural Mineral Water
  • Ice Jam
  • Inland
  • Istana Natural Mineral Water
  • Joe Muggs
  • Joe Ragan’s Pure Water
  • Junior Johnson
  • Just Squeezed
  • KLGCC Natural Mineral Water
  • Kroger Bottled Water (Reverse Osmosis)
  • Krystal J Artesian Water
  • Krystal J Distilled Water
  • Laure
  • Leroy Jenkins Ministries
  • Logansport Savings Bank
  • Lowe’s
  • Martins
  • Masafi Pure Natural Mineral Water
  • Mercurio Produce
  • Mesra Drinking Water
  • Mesra Natural Mineral Water
  • Misty Mountain
  • Monadnock Mountain Spring Water
  • Montclair
  • Mountain Energy
  • Mountain Forest
  • Mountain Valley Spring Water
  • Mutiara Natural Mineral Water
  • Nantze Springs
  • New Frontier Bank
  • Niagra Mist
  • Nicolet Distilled
  • Northern Illinois University
  • Oasis Pure Drinking Water
  • Oasis Sparkling Water
  • Ogallala – Clear Cool Water
  • OUI Drinking Water
  • OUI Natural Mineral Water
  • Paiges
  • Parmer Pure H2O
  • Patriots Choice
  • Pelangi Natural Mineral Water
  • Penta Ultra Premium Purified Drinking Water
  • Piggly Wiggly
  • Polaris Water
  • Pristine Natural Artesian
  • Purely Sedona
  • Quick Stop
  • Rain Soft
  • Refresh Natural Mineral Water
  • Reiser Drinking Water
  • Request Foods, Inc.
  • Rip Time
  • Roundy’s “Purified Water”
  • Safeway – Refreshe
  • Sam’s Wine & Spirits
  • San Faustino Natural Mineral Water
  • San Pellegrino
  • Santee Springs
  • Scheopner’s Water
  • Sequoia Springs
  • Scotts
  • Shamrock
  • Shop-N-Cart
  • Shur-Fine
  • Silver Creek Purified Water
  • Silver Creek Spring Water
  • Sky Drinking Water
  • Smart Water
  • Snow Valley
  • Spinx
  • Stator Bros. Markets
  • Summit Mountain
  • Summit Springs
  • Summit Valley
  • T-Rex
  • Teton Mountain Lodge Spring Water
  • Tweetsie
  • United Dairy Farmers
  • Volvic
  • Vitamin Water
  • Veta Drinking Water
  • Valutime
  • Whistler Water
  • Whole Foods 365
  • Woodland Spring Water
  • Wyoming Machinery “Catipillar” Spring Water
  • Zodiac

The options for no-fluoride waters are numerous, which means that you get the chance to preserve your health and prevent grave health problems.

Below, you will find a list of high risk bottled water brands, full of fluoride content, and definitely threatening to your health:

  • Alhambra
  • Arrowhead
  • Belmont Springs
  • Crystal Rock
  • Crystal Springs
  • Deer Park
  • Diamond Springs
  • Hindley Spri
  • Ice Mountain
  • Kandiyohi
  • Kentwood Springs
  • Mayer Bros.
  • Mount Olympus
  • Nursery Water
  • Ozarka
  • Poland Spring
  • Pure Flo
  • Puritan Springs
  • Shenandoah
  • Sierra Springs
  • Sparkletts
  • Zephyrhills

In order to stay sound and clear of any fluoride related diseases, avoid these brands to the best of your abilities. In a world where the healthy habits are directly presented to us, it is crucial to make the right choices and evade malicious diseases with success.

Source: theheartysoul.com
Other included sources linked in The Hearty Soul’s article:
harvard.edu
www.webmd.com
www.healthmagazine365.com
fullspike.com
Featured image source:
www.foodiva.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Water-galore.jpg

from:    http://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/most-bottled-water-filled-with-fluoride-heres-complete-list-brands-avoid/

The Benefits of Stinging Nettles

 Healing Allergy Inflammation With Stinging Nettle

Many of us look forward to Spring. The weather warms up.  We start spending more time outdoors. Plants are growing, and flowers are blooming everywhere. When spring is in the air, so is pollen. For those of us with seasonal allergies, spring is not as lovely. Fortunately, nature has a way with timing and can really help us out if we pay attention.

In the spring, just as all those flowers, grasses and trees are blooming and releasing clouds of pollen, stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) are popping up in full force, ready to come to the rescue.  Not only are they an amazing superfood and an all around useful medicinal plant, nettles work wonders for reducing inflammation.

This is an important thing to know because inflammation doesn’t stop with our sinuses and seasonal respiratory allergies. Food allergies and associated digestive inflammation are a huge problem for many people, and most of the over-the-counter treatments only make the situation worse.

Nettles are a safe, soothing treatment for inflammation, offering the added benefits of vitamins, minerals, and immune-boosting properties.  It’s time to make friends with the stinging nettle, folks. You won’t regret it.

Nettles and Seasonal Allergies

Stinging nettles have been used for centuries as a natural treatment for seasonal allergies,  hay fever, asthma, and hives. Research has shown that consuming nettles in freeze dried capsules effectively reduces histamine levels in the body, thus reducing inflammation of affected tissues. Even a simple nettle tea consumed daily throughout the pollen and allergy season will alleviate allergy symptoms.

Common symptoms such as itchy eyes, sneezing, runny noses, and stuffed up sinuses  are treated as effectively, if not more so, by stinging nettle than over the counter allergy medications. It has been suggested that nettles actually desensitize the body to allergens and decrease our reaction to the allergens over time. Nettles will also spare you the side effects that come with allergy medications, like drowsiness or irritation and ulcers of the digestive tract, which leads to a whole other set of inflammation issues you don’t want.

With high levels of iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorous, sulphur, chromium, cobalt, magnesium, silicon, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin K,  iron, and chlorophyll,  they will leave you feeling energized while assisting your immune system in overcoming the allergy response.

Nettles and Digestive Inflammation

Inflammation of the digestive tract has become a common reality that many of us deal with, and this isn’t really surprising when you look at the variety of culprits  and how common they are in our modern lives.  Food allergies, Candida imbalance, NSAID medications (ibuprofin, aspirin, etc.), chronic stress, sugars, highly processed foods, and environmental toxins are all potential sources of digestive inflammation and daily struggles for a lot of folks out there.

The most common go-to treatment tends to be over-the-counter NSAID medications that target pain and swelling, but they, in fact, contribute to the irritation and inflammation of the digestive tract, creating a vicious cycle that is difficult to break. Here is where the anti-inflammatory benefits of nettles come into play.

When the leaves and stems of stinging nettle are digested, either in the form of a tea, tincture, capsule, or culinary green, the chemical constituents interfere with the body’s production of prostaglandins, resulting in an anti-inflammatory response. Nettles also interfere with pain signals in the body, clean out the intestinal tract, and boost the immune system, providing relief and healing for issues of the digestive system.

Given these healing properties, nettles are beneficial in healing leaky gut syndrome and are listed as a therapeutic ingredient in the GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) diet. Nettle tea has been noted as a successful treatment for individuals dealing with gluten intolerance and Celiac disease to reduce gastrointestinal inflammation and discomfort.

Ulcerative colitis and ulcers in other areas of the digestive tract can also benefit from nettles, as they stop internal bleeding  and re-build  the blood with their high iron content and aided absorption.

Nettles for Pet Allergy Care

Allergies are not only an issue for people; their canine companions suffer from them as well. Dog owners may associate the springtime with treating “itchy dog syndrome” along with their pet’s eye discharge, ear infections, and overall discomfort. Stinging nettle is a natural anti-inflammatory for dogs to reduce levels of histamines, detox their system, and help desensitize their body to allergens. By giving dogs regular nettle supplements during allergy season, their allergies have been shown to actually go away over time. Nettles can be administered to dogs by adding it in freeze dried form to their food or through supplementation.

Where to Find Nettles

If you are interested in wildcrafting your own nettles, you can find them growing in moist soils at the edge of forests, streams, marshy areas, and pastures. You may even find them growing in your own backyard. They are one of the first plants to come up in the spring. They are very distinct with square shaped stems and opposite, serrated leaves tapered to a point, so they are fairly easy to find. With a good plant ID guide and advice from local foragers, you can venture out and gather your own nettles all through the spring months.

You can also establish a nettle patch at home in your garden either with nettle seeds from an heirloom seed company or by transplanting rhizomes from wild nettle patches. If you are working with fresh nettles, be sure to wear gloves while picking and handling them in the kitchen. The prickly hairs on the skin contain formic acid and can cause an irritation to the skin, which is a nuisance but not harmful. Cooking, drying, and grinding will break down the hairs so they are no longer an issue.

Nettles are very easy to dry and use throughout the rest of the year when they aren’t found growing outside. For those of us who may not have access to foraging areas or garden space, you can always purchase dried nettle leaf and a variety of nettle supplements. Sometimes grocery stores will even carry fresh wildcrafted nettles in the spring.

Anti-Inflammatory Nettle Tea Recipe

  • 3 fresh nettle tops (three leaf nodes down the plant) or 3 Tbsp dried nettle leaf
  • 1 Tbsp dried marshmallow root
  • 2 slices fresh ginger root

Boil 4 cups water, and pour over herbs. Steep for 7 minutes, covered. I prefer using a quart mason jar with a lid.

Hay Fever Relief Nettle Tea Recipe

  • 3 fresh nettle tops (three leaf nodes down the plant) or 3 Tbsp dried nettle leaf
  • 1 Tbsp dried elder flower
  • 1 Tbsp dried chamomile

Boil 4 cups water, and pour over herbs. Steep for 7 minutes covered. I prefer using a quart mason jar with a lid.

 

from:    http://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/healing-allergy-inflammation-with-stinging-nettle

Embracing Your Fears

How To Turn Your Fears Into Friends

fears

President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the nation in the depths of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” While people remember these famous words, they often don’t recall what he said next: “— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Note the interesting use of the word “paralyzes.” When FDR was paralyzed from polio at the age of 39, his life changed irrevocably. He must have been terrified — but he overcame those fears and became one of our nation’s greatest leaders.

Mind-body connection
Anxiety starts in your brain, but affects your entire body. When you’re anxious, your heart races, your stomach flutters, and you might feel your blood pressure rise. You lose the ability to think straight and truly assess a situation. Relieve some of your fears by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Eat nutritionally sound foods, exercise, and get as much rest as possible. Helping your body won’t necessarily alleviate all of your anxiety, but it is a step in the right direction. Avoid alcohol, opiates and other forms of numbing yourself. They may quell your fears for a short time, but only make things worse in the long run.

Name your fears

What is it that you are afraid of? Failure, romance, finances and health — these are common anxiety triggers, but there are a host of others. If you name your fears, it gives you the opportunity to confront them. You may realize that some of your fears are groundless, but that doesn’t make them vanish. Think about why you are afraid, what is the worst-case scenario, and how likely any of these issues are to actually occur. You’ll get a better perspective on your state of mind.

Practice meditation

Meditation can help manage your fears. If you’re unable to sleep, use the time to meditate instead. Those panicky moments and bad thoughts will come, but over time, they’ll lessen in severity. Eventually, sleep is less of a struggle.Banish negativity
Get rid of the influences in your life that feed your fears. If there are toxic people around you, avoid them. As the old song goes: “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don’t mess with Mister In-Between.” That song was a hit in 1944, when the world was at war. Seventy-two years later, it’s still good advice.

Give yourself time
There’s a reason older people are generally calmer than younger folks. Experience shows them that life has an odd way of working out. People have a fear of failure if they haven’t reached specific goals by a certain age. That might be career, marriage, children — it’s another long list. Reduce your anxiety by “going with the flow.” That doesn’t mean you give up your goals, but realize that things happen when they are supposed to, not when you want them. If you fight the flow, you are only fighting yourself. Allow yourself to enjoy the ride, and remember there’s a reason that patience is a virtue.

Envy is poison
Envy and jealousy are often used interchangeably, but the latter has a sexual connotation. Comparing yourself to others in your peer group and finding yourself wanting is a great cause of anxiety, but resist it. You can’t really know the true interior life of another. Friends and acquaintances may not realize you’re anxious, unless you tell them. The people you envy may suffer more anxiety than you do. Conquer envy and anxiety, and make the best life possible for yourself. In the end, it is never the material things that count, but the kindness and joy you bring to others.

Reward yourself
When you’ve successfully faced a fear, give yourself a reward. It doesn’t have to be a major indulgence, just an acknowledgment that you’ve tackled a fear and won. More victories lie in the future.

—Jane Meggitt

 

from:    http://www.thealternativedaily.com/turn-fears-into-friends/

Time to Move On!

7 Stumbling Blocks on the Road to Higher Consciousness

Spiritual Seeker-1Julian Rose, Contributor
Waking Times

The purpose of Life is to Live! But upon arrival on this Earth it quickly becomes apparent that this is not the agenda. Ninety nine percent of what’s going on here is not about enhancing human creative potential, but about suppressing it.

It’s about stepping onto an invisible ladder whose rungs form the seemingly inviolable rules of a stagnant, pyramid posturing status quo. A status quo which has almost nothing to do with growing, but a lot to do with decaying. With becoming a well adapted slave in a world whose task masters are kings of a two-dimensional sub reality.

That reality consists of a monotonous fixation on the acquisition of power, money, prestige and preeminence. A world in which a quite deadly lack of awareness remains the prevailing condition; ruthlessly maintained by a small cabal in whose interests it is to keep things exactly as they are, lest some unguarded rebellion should dislodge them from their imperious, sterile thrones.

However the life force is strong. It cannot and will not tolerate eternal repression. Wherever fissures appear in the status quo, it bubbles up and declares itself to be the messenger of truth. “This is our World. We are breaking free and shining a light on the path to be manifest.”

So what is it that is still holding back so many from actually making that illumined path manifest?

Fear

Breaking through the cozy similitudes of a largely routine, safe existence, takes courage and conviction. There is no ‘easy way’ to truth. But the thought of venturing into a deeper side of one’s self – and of jumping into new paradigms of external involvement – often arouses a sense of fear.

Honest internal and external exploration bring things to the surface that many would rather leave buried and, as far as possible, forgotten.

Such embarkations into previously uncharted territories are, for many, an unsettling experience; one where our deeper intuition appears to be at odds with our mundane fixations. Where the inner call to be awake clashes with all too easily accepted patterns of day-to-day existence. Patterns whose ‘successful’ completion ironically, require that one remains largely asleep!

Fear can – and does – create the single largest block to the manifestation of our basic consciousness.

The manifestation of consciousness is not a passive affair, it demands taking action. ‘An action that speaks louder than words.’ And here’s where the next level of inner, fear based resistance kicks-in and tries to hold us back from making a stand. Tries to prevent our involvement in positive acts of resistance in response to the further erosion of the planet’s life support system. And to the further erosion of essential facets of daily life right in our own back yards.

Overcoming the hold which the fear factor exerts upon us is, I believe, the single greatest step we can make towards the emancipation of the true self and a rising consciousness. There are one hundred and one different ways of doing it, but recognition of the paralysis it causes in us is a major first step.

Low Self-Confidence

There are many amongst those longing for both internal and external change who fall at the first hurdle due to a seeming lack of self-confidence. A lack of self-esteem.  But this need not be, for this sense of ‘lack’ is a trick played upon us by a wayward ‘second self’. A little devil who has acquired entry into our subconscious and is damned if he is going to quit without a fight!

He’s a cunning one alright, because he disguises himself as our actual thoughts; making us believe that ‘we’ can’t do such and such – because ‘we’ are not capable – ‘we’ are not good enough.. But it ain’t the real us speaking, it’s the little demon which Carlos Castaneda refers to as “a foreign installation”. And yes, it is a foreign installation. And a devilishly clever little trickster to boot!

Try putting a proposal (to yourself ) to do something for which you feel a great need, but have not as yet taken the step of actually putting into practice. Now, as soon as the foreign installation kicks in with “But I can’t .. it’s really not possible..” you know it’s that little Lucifer fellow. He’s tricking you into believing that ‘you’ arrived at this prognosis, when actually he did. “But I can’t..” Yep – that’s him!

Once you know this you’re on your way. Once you disentangle your real self from that foreign installation – you have one foot on the path to the promised land. No ‘but’s’ – unless you feel a positive urge to boot that little demon in the butt!

Laziness

Yes, well, let’s admit it, getting off one’s ‘butt’ and getting going isn’t the easiest for some people. But most forms of laziness stem from being unmotivated and unwilling to make the effort to become motivated.

There are certain days when we all feel it; days when the energy seems to be drained out of us and nothing really comes to our rescue to kick the mood. But that form of ‘enforced’ lack of motivation can be in our best interests, as it may well stem from too many days of over exertion without a break.

It’s not the same as the kind of in-built lack of get up and go which afflicts millions, sometimes for long periods of their lives. This disease, and it is such, is more often than not associated with being ‘too comfortable’. Too wrapped up in one’s own self-interested state of material well-being to ever consider doing something for the good of the greater whole.

This affliction is particularly prevalent amongst those who feel safest when operating in a club-like atmosphere where maintaining a public face of cheery conviviality acts as an insurance policy to protect against ever having to think and act ‘outside the box’. To ever get truly serious about the dire nature of the predicaments faced by mankind and mankind’s planet – and indeed one’s own neglected soul.

For these beings, the only thing to jolt them out of their lethargy, is a disaster. And so it is that millions will in fact face just such a disaster, as a form of karmic retribution for failing to make use of the gifts bestowed upon them.

This form of ‘waking up as a last resort’ is clearly to be avoided. Our World needs action in the here and now – and not years of inaction in never-never land.

Being Different

Here’s another barnacle encrusted old anchor chain that’s been holding back the evolution of large segments of often thoughtful individuals .. for far too long.

So it starts with worrying about what other people might think about one, especially if one is intending to embark upon something which fails to conform to the politically correct menu of the day. It’s a form of paralysis which blocks any instinct to move away from ‘herd mentality syndrome’  with its rigid confirmation to what are considered ‘acceptable’ parameters of behavior.

So powerful, for many, is the pull of trying to appear normal, that few openings exist for the true individual to ever emerge. What a tragic waste of human potential!

The prevalence of this condition is particularly well suited to the goals of the centralized control system. The one which sets the agenda of daily life on our planet. It plays into the hands of the top-down politics of persuasion through ensuring basic conformity with whatever the majority might be up to. Not daring to ever speak-out against even the most fool hardy propositions and practices, lest one should appear ‘different’, is a disaster area of global proportions, especially in the face of ill-conceived and often abject acts of destruction which we witness almost every day of our lives.

I’ve got news for those who suffer this affliction: you’re not going to be your own best friend in later life if you fail to make the effort to overcome your shyness now. Because either the frustration will build up to the point where sickness intervenes, or you accept becoming just another number amongst the robotic crowd. A crowd that operates without any true emotions ever breaking the surface.

That’s an ugly choice to have in front of one. So why not break free today? Stop hiding your light under a bushel; step out and let it shine!

You’ll be amazed at how much brighter everything becomes once one ceases trying to be like Mr, Mrs or Ms Normal..

Stuck in the Wrong Job

This one’s a major energy sucker, as anyone in this position surely realizes. The inventor of the 9 to 5 work day sure came up with a clever control mechanism for keeping mankind terminally preoccupied. Preoccupied with ‘earning a living’ – pretty much 24/7.

What the hell is this? Shackled to a desk in a neon lit air-conditioned sterile office building with only a computer as work mate? Or maybe not quite as dull as that, but nevertheless, enforced and usually slavish routine day after day. A routine that ultimately only succeeds in bringing in more dosh to a business or corporation whose end product is just one of millions steadily destroying the health and welfare of planet Earth and most of her occupants. Get the hell out of there – and fast!

Better to be on the street than in this kind of prison. Better (by far) to be working for yourself, not for someone who is only out to use you, prior to installing a robot a year or two down the road. The kind of robots that don’t ask for wages. You know. They’re even better than the one’s that do, like you.

The typical 9 to 5 job leaves no time for the type of deep reflection required to move forward into a state of conscious awareness. How could it – when 90% of one’s energy is used-up fighting to survive in the job market jungle. The rat race.

Our survival as human beings demands more than the monthly pay cheque. It demands that we are able to hear the voice of our true selves, and then turn its message to good effect in helping to shift the tide of history in a positive direction. Away from the neo-liberal capitalist money-making machine and into something which calls forth a true power of awakening, sharing and social responsibility.

The Skeptical Intellectual

“I can see that it won’t work.” Yes, sure you can! Because you made-up your mind years ago that there’s really no point in getting involved in any remotely idealistic initiative, since such initiatives are all doomed to failure at the hands of Mr Realism and his “I know best” crew.

There’s something more than faintly fatalistic about our skeptical intellectual. Strange really, to build a pedestal for one’s self and then set it in a concrete plinth, so as to be impervious to the swirling current of a life force which is capable of bringing ‘a mountain to Mohamed’ if that’s what’s really needed.

“Prove it”. And when he says that, you know that everything which follows is something ‘you’ have to do – never him. For him, proof is actually never good enough anyway, because the mind which demands answers without ever trying to find them itself, is a sad and polluted vessel; badly in need of a full immersion detox.

Yet many of these sorts of people are just the one’s to become bankers, army corporals, political strategists, bureaucrats, professors and civil servants. They are the glue that holds together the status quo. Very reliable at carrying out their duties and ensuring that nothing too imaginative or spontaneous ever gets in amongst the automated cogs and wheels of the sanitized status quo.

The best cure for such individuals is to suffer an insufferable shock .. like falling in love. Is it possible? Something that shakes them to their roots and causes a little volcano to erupt deep within. That which is capable of blowing away the densely packed layers which have caused a crust of cynicism to form over buried benign feelings of compassion, joy, creativity and yes, love. Something which turns on its head all the false pride of an over indulged, obese ego.

Lack of Passion

This is very bad news. Nothing, but nothing, truly meaningful comes into being without someone, somewhere, having a strong desire to bring to life their deepest needs. The manifestation of our inner powers is all about following through on that which inspires us. Inspires us to take action, to create meaningful change.

That should be the very definition of ‘living’ of ‘being alive’. All the rest is shadow boxing with phantoms. And happy are these phantoms to be given so much unearned attention.

It is passion which created life in the first place. Passion is the precondition for all genuinely creative acts. It is the motor of universal movement. It is the dance of life!

Yet, for tens of millions of human souls it remains an almost entirely missing ingredient. And if, God forbid, it should ever rear its beautiful head, it is greeted with as much indifference as its recipient can possibly muster!

Come on! Sustained intent, fueled as it is by passion, poses a massively intrusive threat on the control system’s determination to keep the lid on human emancipation. It is the key without which we cannot unlock the door behind which we have for so long been imprisoned.

Look, I’m not talking about ‘having a blast’, going to a rave, or even getting worked-up about something nasty going on in the neighbourhood. The architects of control have arranged all the outlets you will ever need to ‘let off steam’; such sporadic outbursts of passion are well catered for.

No, I’m talking about a deeply sustained burning intent which simply will not die; once you’ve given it your recognition and grasped the implications of its transformative powers.

It’s the reason I write these essays. A deep need to share a vision of something. Something out of the ordinary. Sharing my thoughts and aspirations with you, dear reader. That’s all part and parcel of this passion – which catches fire in those who are ready to burn.

That’s it! And it all bubbles up from a place which is inseparable from Source. It is Source. Passion is ‘the original energy’.

So how could one hope to Live Life without this primary force playing its fundamental role in everything one does. I can barely imagine. It’s not possible. For whatever that thing is which happens between the time when we are born (on Earth) and the time we depart (from Earth) – it is not Life unless it is inspired by passion. It is a fake.

And, due to the fact that so many feel the need to fake their way through life, our World is starved of direction. There are too few helmsmen. It is largely direction-less. The only forces to bring direction into this vacuum are the masters of control. The architects of fear. The instigators of war, oppression and violence.

Quite simply, it is the lack of ‘we the people’s’ ability to sustain a passionate commitment to taking forward the callings of our destinies which is responsible for a global take-over by the preeminent despotic masters of oppression and control.

If we want to ensure their days are numbered, and we surely do, we must dig deep. Yes, dig deep, always keeping victory firmly in our sights. The despots cannot endure a sustained barrage of many awakened souls. They fall away, exposed as the hollow cardboard shells which they really are.

And we? We take the helm.

 

from:     http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/05/23/7-stumbling-blocks-road-higher-consciousness/

Finding Meaning in the Darkness

A Dark Night of the Soul and the Discovery of Meaning

Anyone may go through a period of sadness or challenge that is so deep-seated and tenacious that it qualifies as a dark night of the soul. Not long ago I was giving a talk at a university when a man shouted at me from back in the crowd: “I’m terribly depressed. It’s been years. Help me.” I shouted back my email address. In his voice and body language I could see that this man was not caught in some passing depression. His life was broken by some loss, failure, or long-forgotten emotional wound that left him in a desperately dark place.

I reserve the expression ‘dark night of the soul’ for a dark mood that is truly life-shaking and touches the foundations of experience, the soul itself. But sometimes a seemingly insignificant event can give rise to a dark night: You may miss a train and not attend a reunion that meant much to you. Often a dark night has a strong symbolic quality in that it points to a deeper level of emotion and perhaps a deeper memory that gives it extra meaning. With dark nights you always have to be alert for the invisible memories, narratives, and concerns that may not be apparent on the surface.

Faced with a dark night, many people treat it like an illness, like depression. They may take medication or go into counseling looking for a cause. It can be useful to search for the roots of a dark night, but in my experience the best way to deal with it is to find the concrete action or decision that it is asking for.

Engaging the Night

A dark night of the soul is a kind of initiation, taking you from one phase of life into another. You may have several dark nights in the course of your life because you are always becoming more of a person and entering life more fully. At least, that is the hope.

One simple rule is that a truly deep dark night requires an extraordinary development in life. One outstanding example is Abraham Lincoln. With his early life surrounded by death and loneliness and his adult life weighed down by a war in which thousands of young men died, he was a seriously melancholic man who, in spite of or through his dark night, became an icon of wisdom and leadership. One theory is that he escaped his melancholy in his efforts for his country, but another possibility is that the very darkness of his life—he once said, “If there’s a worse place than hell, I’m in it.”—was the ground out of which his leadership grew.

As a therapist, I have worked with people profoundly sad and discouraged, and I join with them in looking for ways to transform that heavy mood into a weighty life. Contemporary people often don’t take their lives seriously enough. This tendency might be an aspect of the cult of celebrity, where we lose sight of our own importance by making too much of it in others.

In the archetypal psychotherapy that I practice, we always say: Go with the symptom. I don’t look for quick escapes from the pain or good distracting alternatives. I try to imagine how a symptom, like a long-standing dark night, might be re-imagined and even lived out in a way that is not literally depressive. As far back as the Middle Ages at least, dark moods were considered to be the work of Saturn, a spirit symbolized by a planet far out in the solar system. He was cold, lonely, and heavy, but he was also the source of wisdom and artistic genius. Look through history and you will find a great number of creative men and women who have struggled with the Saturnine humor.

This ancient idea that a dark night may be connected with genius and inspiration could help us today as we try to be constructive with a Saturnine disposition, like Lincoln’s, or a period of smoky moodiness. We might imagine it as the root and basis of an engagement with life that could give meaning and purpose. This doesn’t necessarily mean that eventually the dark spirit will go away, but it may have a counterweight—some extraordinary creative activity and involvement in life—that will make it more than bearable and may diminish it.

With our contemporary view of anything that looks like depression, we think: I’ll never be happy, never have a good relationship, never accomplish anything. But with the medieval image of Saturn, we might instead tell ourselves: A dark night is the sign of a high calling. My pain and loneliness will prepare me for my destiny.

Finding the Gift in Darkness

There are many examples of men and women who endured unimaginable ordeals and yet contributed in a striking way to humanity’s progress. Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years under harsh conditions, yet he never lost his vision and sense of destiny. One of his younger fellow prisoners said of him: “The point about Nelson, of course, is that he has a tremendous presence, apart from his bearing, his deportment and so on. He’s a person who’s got real control over his behavior. He is also quite conscious of the kind of seriousness he radiates.” This is dark night talk—presence and seriousness, the key gifts of Saturn—as a long tradition holds. Mandela’s dark night was an actual imprisonment, not a mood. Still, he teaches how to deal with a dark night. Don’t waste time in illusions and wishes. Take it on. Keep your sense of worth and power. Keep your vision intact. Let your darkness speak and give its tone to your bearing and expression.

The regenerative power of nature grows more beautiful after a devastating forest fire at Yellowstone Park in 1988. photography | Wikimedia Commons, Jim Peaco

As strange as it may sound, there is a temptation in a dark night to slip into enjoyment of the pain and to identify with your emotions and moods. “I’m a lonely person. I’m depressed. Help me.” One striking quality we see in men and women who are dealing with their dark nights effectively is a lack of masochistic surrender to the mood, which can be forceful and dominating.

Mandela had “control over his behavior.” He didn’t succumb. It’s important to live through the dark night, acknowledge it, notice its qualities, and be affected by it. At the same time, it is not useful to be too attached to it or to let it dominate. You don’t want to be the hero who slays dragons and tries to obliterate the darkness, but you do need all the strength of heart you can muster.

While giving a dark night its due, you can also cultivate a love of life and joy in living that doesn’t contradict the darkness. You can be dedicated to your work and your vision for humanity and also feel overwhelmed by the suffering in the world. To do this it helps to have a philosophy of life that understands the creative coming together of conflicting moods. The rule is simple: Human beings can do more than one thing at a time. You can acknowledge your darkness and still find some joy.

An example of the dark night leading to a transformative presence in the world is Maya Angelou, who went from not speaking for five or six years as a child out of guilt and the wounds of abuse to reciting the inaugural poem for Bill Clinton and inspiring millions to make something of their own dark nights. In all her public appearances, Angelou showed both the pain and the joy that shaped her mission in life. She carried her pain throughout her life and yet her joy seemed to increase with her impact on men and especially women around the world.

Angelou’s experience demonstrates in an intriguing way how a dark night might take away your ‘voice’ and then give it back with added power. The question is, how do you go from a dark night to having a positive impact on the world, thus giving your own life purpose?

The first step is to embrace the darkness, take it to heart, winnow out any subtle innuendos of resistance. Then find any images that are trapped in the thick dark mood or situation. Those images may hold the clue to your release and future service. Angelou lost her voice, a fascinating symptom and a strong image, and then became known worldwide for her voice. The cure lies in the illness, the hint at future activity within the symptom. If you tone down the dark elements because they are painful and discouraging, you may also hide the gifts that are there for you.

The Return of Aliveness: The Dark Night of the Soul

By Eckhart Tolle

The ‘dark night of the soul’ is a term that goes back a long time. Yes, I have also experienced it. It is a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life… an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness. The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression. Nothing makes sense anymore, there’s no purpose to anything. Sometimes it’s triggered by some external event—some disaster perhaps. The death of someone close to you could trigger it, especially premature death—for example, if your child dies. Or the meaning that you had given your life, your activities, your achievements, where you are going, what is considered important, and the meaning that you had given your life for some reason collapses.

It can happen if something happens that you can’t explain away anymore, some disaster, which seems to invalidate the meaning that your life had before. Really what has collapsed is the whole conceptual framework for your life. That results in a dark place.
There is the possibility that you emerge out of it into a transformed state of consciousness. Life has meaning again, but it’s no longer a conceptual meaning that you can necessarily explain. Quite often it’s from there that people awaken out of their conceptual sense of reality, which has collapsed.

They awaken into something deeper. A deeper sense of purpose or connectedness with a greater life that is not dependent on explanations or anything conceptual. It’s a kind of re-birth. The dark night of the soul is a kind of death. What dies is the egoic sense of self. Of course, death is always painful, but nothing real has actually died—only an illusory identity. Now, it is probably the case that some people who’ve gone through this transformation realize that they had to go through that in order to bring about a spiritual awakening. Often it is part of the awakening process, the death of the old self and the birth of the true self.

You arrive at a place of conceptual meaninglessness. Or one could say a state of ignorance—where things lose the meaning that you had given them, which was all conditioned and cultural and so on.

Then you can look upon the world without imposing a mind-made framework of meaning. It looks, of course, as if you no longer understand anything. That’s why it’s so scary when it happens to you, instead of you actually consciously embracing it. It can bring about the dark night of the soul. You now go around the Universe without any longer interpreting it compulsively, as an innocent presence. You look upon events, people, and so on with a deep sense of aliveness. You sense the aliveness through your own sense of aliveness, but you are not trying to fit your experience into a conceptual framework anymore.

Another important strategy is to avoid making the dark night too personal, too focused on yourself. Yes, you feel it intimately and alone. But it could still have more to do with the suffering of the world than with yourself. Maybe dark nights are generally less personal than they feel. At any one time, beings on the planet are suffering. The planet itself is suffering; it is going through a dark night constantly. If you live in a place where children are hungry and dying in wars and in domestic violence, you are within the realm of the world’s dark night. Listen to political leaders deny climate change and you worry about the future, not of the planet on which you live but the planetary being of which you are a living part. If you can stretch your moral imagination to perceive this suffering, then you will have the energy and focus to work toward a transformation.

Waking Up

By definition, visionary people imagine utopia, a word that means both ‘no-place’ and ‘good-place.’ It is an imagined state of the world in which people are free of their struggle, where at least the basic insecurities and inequalities have been dealt with. But oddly, it takes the pain and despair of a dark night to envision utopia.

Think about it, you wouldn’t be compelled to imagine a perfected life unless you were steeped in its imperfection. The emptiness of the dark night transforms into the no-place of a wonderful world. If you don’t feel the hopelessness of a dark night, you will probably float through life identifying unconsciously with the values and expectations of the culture. You won’t know that there is something wrong, something that calls for a response from you. Personally, you may not feel your being. You may eventually decide that you’re a nobody, for you become a somebody by identifying with the world outside you. Self-realization is not a private psychological achievement managed by a strong will and a hygienic attitude. A strong sense of self emerges when you own and activate the awareness that you are your world. A mystical sensibility and social action go together. Through an essential shift in imagination you realize that you are not the one suffering; the world is.

The real stunner is that when you begin to serve the world, your darkness changes. It doesn’t go away completely; nor should it. It continues to feed your vision of utopia and your frustration at the imperfection of it all. But your personal darkness converts into anger at injustice and then into compassionate vision and effective action. The darkness and the vision are two parts of one flowing movement.

Maybe it isn’t that your darkness eases but that your ego investment in it diminishes. It feels as though it goes away because you’ve been grasping it. There may be a degree of love for the darkness and a disdain for hope. You don’t want the challenge of being alive and engaging the world. It may be easier to sink into the pit. Some people resist participating in the transformation of the world because they glimpse the challenge in it. They will have to give up a long-held philosophy of easy, comfortable pragmatism and, maybe for the first time in their lives, feel the world’s suffering.

You see this pattern of waking up from pleasant unconsciousness to awareness of suffering in the story of the Buddha, and one of the key words Jesus uses in his teaching, not often pointed out by his followers, is ‘wake up.’ But waking up is also entering your dark night instead of remaining in the oblivion of avoidance. You do wake up to a joyful message, the meaning of the word ‘Gospel,’ but the dark night is always part of the picture, the other side of the coin.

The best source in classical spiritual literature for describing the paradox of darkness and vision is the Tao Te Ching, where on every page you are invited to live without polarization. Chapter 14 is a good example: “Above, it is not bright. Below, it is not dark.” ‘It’ is everything. Below, where you might expect darkness, it’s bright. Above, where you think you’d find light, it’s dark. Keep this paradox in mind and you will be neither a sentimental idealist nor a cynical pessimist. You will be part of the transformation of it all because it is happening in you.

from:    http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/a-dark-night-of-the-soul-and-the-discovery-of-meaning/

Cultural Cannabalism

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition

It’s delicate confronting these priests of the golden bull
They preach from the pulpit of the bottom line
Their minds rustle with million dollar bills
You say Silver burns a hole in your pocket
And Gold burns a hole in your soul
Well, uranium burns a hole in forever
It just gets out of control.
– Buffy Sainte-Marie, “The Priests of the Golden Bull”1

What if we told you that humanity is being driven to the brink of extinction by an illness? That all the poverty, the climate devastation, the perpetual war, and consumption fetishism we see all around us have roots in a mass psychological infection? What if we went on to say that this infection is not just highly communicable but also self-replicating, according to the laws of cultural evolution, and that it remains so clandestine in our psyches that most hosts will, as a condition of their infected state, vehemently deny that they are infected? What if we then told you that this ‘mind virus’ can be described as a form of cannibalism. Yes, cannibalism. Not necessarily in the literal flesh-eating sense but rather the idea of consuming others—human and non-human—as a means of securing personal wealth and supremacy.

You may dismiss this line of thinking as New Age woo-woo or, worse, a lefty conspiracy theory. But this approach of viewing the transmission of ideas as a key determinant of the emergent reality is increasingly validated by various branches of science, including evolutionary theory, quantum physics, cognitive linguistics, and epigenetics.

The history of this infection is long, strange, and dark. But it leads to hope.

Viruses of the Mind

The New World fell not to a sword but to a meme.
~ Daniel Quinn2

One of the most well-accepted scientific theories that helps explain the power of idea-spreading is memetics.

Memes are to culture what genes are to biology: the base unit of evolution. The term was originally coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins writes, “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged . . . It is still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate which leaves the old gene panting far behind.” He goes on, “Examples of
memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain, via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”3

One of the high priests of rationalism, the scientific method, and atheism, is also the father of the meme of ‘memes.’ However, like all memes or ideas, there can be no ownership in a traditional sense, only the entanglement that quantum physics reminds us characterizes our intra-actions.4

Of course, similar notions of how ideas move between us have been around in Western traditions for centuries. Plato was the first to fully articulate this through his Theory of Forms, which argues that non-physical forms—i.e., Ideas—represent the perfect reality from which material reality is derived.

Modern articulations of the Theory of Forms can be seen in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s idea of the Noosphere (the sphere of human thought) and Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious, where structures of the unconscious are shared among beings of the same species. For Jung, the idea of the marauding cannibal would first be an archetype that manifests in the material world through the actions of those who channel or embody it.

For those who prefer their science more empirical, the growing field of epigenetics provides some intellectual concrete. Epigenetics studies changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than any physical alteration of the gene itself. In other words, how traits vary from generation to generation is not solely a question of material biology but is partly determined by environmental and contextual factors that affected our ancestors.5

The Wetiko Virus

We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and the winding streams with tangled growth as “wild.” Only to the White man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land infested by “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it “wild” for us.
~ Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle6

Many spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, Sufism (the mystical branch of Islam), Taoism, Gnosticism, as well as many Indigenous cultures, have long understood the mind-based nature of creation. These worldviews have at their core a recognition of the power of thought-forms to determine the course of physical events.

Various First Nations traditions of North America have specific and long established lore relating to cannibalism and a term for the thought-form that causes it: wetiko. We believe understanding this offers a powerful way of understanding the deepest roots of our current global polycrisis.

Wetiko is an Algonquin word for a cannibalistic spirit that is driven by greed, excess, and selfish consumption (in Ojibwa it is windigo, wintiko in Powhatan). It deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life-force of others (others in the broad sense, including animals and other forms of Gaian life) is a logical and morally upright way to live.

Wetiko short-circuits the individual’s ability to see itself as an enmeshed and interdependent part of a balanced environment and raises the self-serving ego to supremacy. It is this false separation of self from nature that makes this cannibalism, rather than simple murder. It allows—indeed commands—the infected entity to consume far more than it needs in a blind, murderous daze of self-aggrandizement. Author Paul Levy, in an attempt to find language accessible for Western audiences, describes it as ‘malignant egophrenia’—the ego unchained from reason and limits, acting with the malevolent logic of the cancer cell. We will use the term wetiko as it is the original, and reminds us of the wisdom to be found in Indigenous cultures, for those who have the ears to hear.

Wetiko can describe both the infection and the body infected; a person can be infected by wetiko or, in cases where the infection is very advanced, can personify the disease: ‘a wetiko.’ This holds true for cultures and systems; all can be described as being wetiko if they routinely manifest these traits.

In his now classic book Columbus and Other Cannibals, Native American historian Jack D. Forbes describes how there was a commonly-held belief among many Indigenous communities that the European colonialists were so chronically and uniformly infected with wetiko that it must be a defining characteristic of the culture from which they came. Examining the history of these cultures, Forbes laments, “Tragically, the history of the world for the past 2,000 years is, in great part, the story of the epidemiology of the wetiko disease.”7

We would presumably all agree that behavior of the European colonialists in North America can be described as cannibalistic. Their drive for conquest and material accumulation was a violent act of consumption. The engine of the invading culture suckedin lives and resources of millions of others and turned them into wealth and power for themselves. The figures are still disputed, but it is safe to place the numbers killed in the tens of millions, certainly one of the most brutal genocides in history. And the impact on non-human life was equally vast. Moreover, it was all done with a moral certainty that all destruction was justified in the name of ‘progress’ and ‘civilization.’

This framing belies the extent of the wetiko infection in the invader culture. So blinded were they by self-referential ambition that they could not see other life as being as important as their own. They could not see past ideological blinders to the intrinsic value of life or the interdependent nature of all things, despite this being the dominant perspective of the Indigenous populations they encountered. Their ability to see and know in ways different from their own was, it seems, amputated.

This is not an anti-European rant. This is the description of a disease whose vector was determined by deep patterns of history, including those that empowered Europeans to drive ‘global exploration’ as certain technologies emerged.

Founding Fathers. illustration | Native Americans

The wetiko meme has almost certainly existed in individuals since the dawn of humanity. It is, after all, a sickness that lives through and is born from the human psyche. But the origin of wetiko cultures is more identifiable.

Memes can spread at the speed of thought but they usually require generations to change the core characteristics of cultures. What we can say is that the fingerprints of wetiko-like beliefs can be traced at least as far back as the Neolithic revolution, when humans in the Fertile Crescent first learned to dominate their environment by what author Daniel Quinn calls ‘totalitarian agriculture’ — i.e., settled agricultural practices that produce more food than is strictly needed for the population, and that see the destruction of any living entity that gets in the way of that (over-)production—be it other humans, ‘pests’ or landscaping—as not only legitimate but moral.

This early form of wetiko-logic received an amplifying power of indescribable magnitude with the arrival of Christianity. “Let us make mankind . . . rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground,” said an authority no less than God in Genesis 1:26. After 8,000 years of totalitarian agriculture spreading slowly across the region, it is perhaps not surprising that the logic finds voice in the holy texts that emerged there. Regardless, it was driven across Europe at the point of Roman swords in the two hundred years after Christ’s death. It is no coincidence that, in order for Christianity to become dominant, the existing pagan belief-system, with its understanding of humanity’s place within rather than above nature, had to be all but annihilated.8

The point is that the epidemiology of wetiko has left clear indicators of its lineage. And although it cannot be pathologized along geographic or racial lines, the cultural strain we know today certainly has many of its deepest roots in Europe. It was, after all, European projects—from the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution, to colonialism, imperialism, and slavery—that developed the technology that opened up the channels that facilitated the spread of wetiko culture all around the world. In this way, we are all heirs and inheritors of wetiko colonialism.

We are all host carriers of wetiko now.

Wetiko Capitalism: Removing the Veils of Context

I don’t know who discovered water, but I can tell you it wasn’t a fish.
~ Attributed to Marshall McCluhan

When Western anthropologists first started to study wetiko, they believed it to be only a disease of the individual and a literal form of flesh-eating cannibalism.9 On both counts, as discussed, their understanding was, if not wrong, certainly limited. They did, however, accurately isolate two traits that are relevant for thinking about cultures: (1) the initial act, even when driven by necessity, creates a residual, unnatural desire for more; and (2) the host carrier, which they called the ‘victim,’ ended up with an ‘icy heart’— i.e., their ability for empathy and compassion was amputated.

The reader can probably already sense from the two traits mentioned above the wetiko nature of modern capitalism. Its insatiable hunger for finite resources; its disregard for the pain of groups and cultures it consumes; its belief in consumption as savior; its overriding obsession with its own material growth; and its viral spread across the surface of the planet. It is wholly accurate to describe neoliberal capitalism as cannibalizing life on this planet. It is not the only truth—capitalism has also facilitated an explosion of human life and ingenuity—but when taken as a whole, capitalism is certainly eating through the life-force of this planet in service of its own growth.

Of course, capitalism is a human conception and so we can also say that we are phenomenal hosts of the wetiko mind virus. To understand what makes us such, it is useful to consider a couple of the traits that guide the evolution of human cultures.

We have decades of evidence from social science describing just what highly contextual beings we are. Almost all aspects of our behavior, including our moral judgments and limits, are significantly shaped in response to the cultural signifiers that surround us. The Good Samaritan studies, for example, show that even when people are primed with the idea of altruism, they will walk by others in need when they are in a rush or some other contextual variable changes.10 And the infamous Stanley Milgram experiments show how a large majority of people are capable of shocking another human to a point they know can cause death simply because an authority figure in a white lab coat insists they do so.11

We really are products of our environment, and so it should be taken as inevitable that those who live in a wetiko culture will manifest, to one degree or other, wetiko beliefs and behaviors.

Looking through the broader contextual lens, we must also account for the self-perpetuating nature of complex systems. Any living network that becomes sufficiently complex will become self-organizing, and from that point on will demonstrate an instinct to survive. In practical terms, this means that it will distribute its resources to support behavior that best mimics its own logic and ensures its survival.12

In other words, any system that is sufficiently infected by wetiko logic will reward cannibalistic behavior. Or, in Jack Forbes’ evocative language, “Those who squirm upwards [in a wetiko system] are, or become, wetiko, and they only perpetuate the system of corruption or oppression. Thus the communist leaders in the Soviet Union under Stalin were at least as vicious, deceitful and exploitative as their czarist predecessors. They obtained ‘power’ without changing their wetiko culture.”13

This ensures that the essential logic of cultures spreads down through generations as well as across them. And it explains why they self-organize resources to maintain a high degree of continuity in distributions of power, when those distributions efficiently serve their survival and growth. When this continuity is interrupted or broken, revolutions occur and the system is put under threat.

However, as the above quote suggests, the disruption must happen at the right level. Merely trading one wetiko for another at the top of an otherwise unchanged wetiko infrastructure (as in the case of Stalin replacing the czars or, more contemporarily, Obama replacing Bush) is largely pointless. At best, it might result in the softening of the cruelest edges of a wetiko machine. At worse, it does nothing except distract us from seeing the true infection.

The question, then, for anyone interested in excising the wetiko infection from a culture is, where is it? In one respect, because it is a psychic phenomenon that lives in potential in all of us, it is non-local. But this, though ultimately important to understand, is not the whole truth. It is also true that there is a conceptual place where the most powerful wetiko logic is held, and that, at least in theory, makes it vulnerable.

In the same way that a colony of bees will instinctively house its queen in the deepest chambers of the hive, so a complex adaptive system buries its most important operating logic furthest from the forces that can challenge them. This means two things: first, it means citing the logic in the deep rules that govern the whole. Not just this national economy or that, this government or that, but the mother system—the global operating system. And second, it means making these rules feel as intractable and inevitable as possible.

So what is this deep logic of the global operating system?

It comes in two parts. First, there is the ultimate purpose, which we might call the Prime Directive, which is to increase capital.

We often dress this up in a narrative that says capital generation is not the end but the means, the engine of progress. This makes the idea of dethroning it feel dangerous and even contrary to common sense. But the truth is, we have created a system that artificially treats money as sacred. At this point in capitalism’s history, life is controlled by, more than it controls, the forces of capital. The clue is really in the name. But if you need further proof, look no further than how we define and measure progress: GDP. More on that below.

Then, there is the logic for how we, the living components of this system, should behave, which we would summarize with the following epithet:

Selfishness is rational and rationality is everything; therefore selfishness is everything.14

This dictates that if we all prioritize ourselves and maximize our own material wealth, an invisible hand (ah, what a seductive meme!) will create an equilibrium state and life everywhere will be made better. We are pitted against each other in a form of distributed fascism where we cocoon ourselves in the immediate problems of our own circumstances and consume what we can. We then couch this behavior in the benign language of family matters, national interests, job creation, GDP growth, and other upstanding endeavors.

Put these two parts of the puzzle together and it’s easy to see why the banker who generates excess capital receives vast rewards and is labelled ‘productive’ and ‘successful,’ almost regardless of the damage s/he causes. Those who are less ‘successful’ at producing excess capital, meanwhile, are rewarded far less, regardless of the life-affirming good they may be doing. Nurses, mothers, teachers, journalists, activists, scientists—all receive far less reward because they are less efficient at obeying the Prime Directive and may even be countermanding the ‘self-interest’ operating principle. And as for those who are actually poor—well, they are effortlessly labelled not just as practical but also moral failures.

book cover | Paul Levy

This infection is so far advanced that the system now requires exponential capital growth. The World Bank tells us that we have to grow the global economy by at least 3 percent per year to avoid recession.15 Let’s think about what this means. Global GDP in 2014 (the last full year of data) was roughly USD $78 trillion.16 We grew that pie by 2.4% in 2015, which resulted in the commodification and subsequent consumption of roughly another $2 trillion in human labor and natural resources. That’s roughly the size of the entire global economy in 1970. It took us from the dawn of civilization to 1970 to reach $2 trillion in global GDP, and now we need that just in the differential so the entire house of cards doesn’t crumble. In order to achieve this rate of growth year-on-year, we are destroying our planet, ensuring mass species extinction, and displacing millions of our brothers and sisters (who we commonly refer to as ‘poor people’) from around the world.

So when people tell us that the market knows best, or technology will save us, or philanthrocapitalism will redistribute opportunities (pace Bill Gates), we have to understand that all of these seemingly common sense truisms are embedded in a broader operating system, a wetikonomy, with all that that means. And the more they are presented as ‘unchangeable,’ the more often we’re told, ‘there is no alternative,’ the more we should question. There is actually a beautiful irony in the fact that, when we know what we’re up against, such statements are our signposts for where to look.

It is not that we are against markets, technology, or philanthropy — they can all be wonderful, in the right context—but we are against how they are being used as alibis to excuse the insanity of the wetiko paradigm that they are inseparable from. We are reminded of Jack Forbes’ heavy words; “It is not logical to allow the wetikos to carry out their evil acts and then to accept their assessment of the nature of human life. For after all, the wetiko possess a bias created by their own evil lives, by their own amoral or immoral behavior. And too, if I am correct, they were, and are, also insane.”17

Seeing Wetiko: Antidote Logic

Launch your meme boldly and see if it will replicate—just like genes replicate, and infect, and move into the organism of society. And, believing as I do, that society operates on a kind of biological economy, then I believe these memes are the key to societal evolution. But unless the memes are released to play the game, there is no progress.
~ Terrence McKenna, Memes, Drugs and Community18

You might just be a black Bill Gates in the making.
~ Beyoncé, Formation19

A key lesson of meme theory is that when we are conscious of the memetic viruses we are less likely to adhere to them blindly. Conscious awareness is like sunlight through the cracks of a window.

Thus, one of the starting points for healing is the simple act of ‘seeing wetiko’ in ourselves, in others, and in our cultural infrastructure. And once we see, we can name, which is critical because words and language are a central battleground. To quote McKenna again:

The world is not made of quarks, electromagnetic wave packets, or the thoughts of God. The world is made of language.. Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has invested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.20

His last line is critical for exploring our own agency in the replication of wetiko. We are all entangled in the unfolding of reality that is happening both to and through us. In place of traditional certainties and linear cause-and-effect logic, we can recast ourselves “as spontaneously responsive, moving, embodied living beings—within a reality of continuously intermingling, flowing lines or strands of unfolding, agential activity, in which nothing (no thing) exists in separation from anything else, a reality within which we are immersed both as participant agencies and to which we also owe significant aspects of our own natures.”21

If wetiko exists, it is because it exists within us. It is also entangled with the broader superstructure, relationships, and choice architecture that we are confronted with within a neoliberal system on the brink of collapse.

Forbes reminds us that we cannot ‘fight’ wetiko in any traditional sense: “One of the tragic characteristics of the wetiko psychosis is that it spreads partly by resistance to it. That is, those who try to fight wetiko sometimes, in order to survive, adopt wetiko values.

Thus, when they ‘win,’ they lose.”22 A lot of reform-based initiatives, from the sharing economy to micro-lending have succumbed to the co-optation and retaliation of wetiko capitalism.

However, once we are in the mode of seeing wetiko, we can hack the cultural systems that perpetuate its logic. It is not difficult to figure out where to start. Following the money usually leads us to the core pillars of wetiko machinery. Those of us that are within these structures, from the corporate media to philanthropy to banking to the UN, have access to the heart of the wetiko monster.

For those of us on the outside, we can organize our lives in radically new ways to undermine wetiko structures. The simple act of gifting undermines the neoliberal logic of commodification and extraction. Using alternative currencies undermines the debt–based money system. De-schooling and alternative education models can help decolonize and de-wetikoize the mind. Helping to create alternative communities outside the capitalist system supports the infrastructure for transition. And direct activism such as debt resistance can weaken the wetiko virus, if done with the right intention and state of consciousness.

By contracting new relationships with others, with Nature, and with ourselves, we can build a new complex of entanglements and thought-forms that are fused with post-wetiko, post-capitalist values.

We have to simultaneously go within ourselves and the deep recesses of our own psyches while changing the structure of the system around us. Holding a structural perspective and an unapologetic critique of modern capitalism—i.e., holding a constellational worldview that sees all oppression as connected—serves our ability to see the alternatives, and indeed, all of us, as intricately connected.

Plato believed that ideas are the ‘eyes of the soul.’ Now that the veils obscuring wetiko are starting to be lifted, let us give birth to, and become, living antigens, embracing the polyculture of ideas that are challenging the monoculture of wetiko capitalism. Let us be pollinators of new memetic hives built on altruism, empathy, inter-connectedness, reverence, communality, and solidarity, defying the subject-object dualities of Cartesian/Newtonian/Enlightenment logic. Let us reclaim our birth right as sovereign entities, free of deluded beliefs in market systems, invisible hands, righteous greed, chosen ones, branded paraphernalia, techno utopianism and even the self-salvation of the New Age. Let us dance with thought-forms through a deeper understanding of ethics, knowing, and being,23 and the intimate awareness that our individual minds and bodies are a part of the collective battleground for the soul of humanity, and indeed, life on this planet. And let us re-embrace the ancient futures of our Indigenous ancestors that represent the only continuous line of living in symbiosis with Mother Nature. The dissolution of wetiko will be as much about remembering as it will be about creation.

from:    http://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/seeing-wetiko-on-capitalism-mind-viruses-and-antidotes-for-a-world-in-transition/?mc_cid=f8e3c8f947&mc_eid=9672eb134c

Science & Health Myths That Can Harm

FINALLY! Scientific American writer exposes the tribal cultist arrogance and dogmatic lunacy of science ‘skeptics’

Science skeptics(NaturalNews) Today I’m tipping my hat to John Horgan, a blogger who writes for Scientific American, for his extraordinary article entitled Dear “Skeptics,” Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More.

In his article, Horgan rightly points out that today’s so-called “science skeptics” are little more than dogmatic tribal cultists (my words, not Horgan’s) who celebrate “skeptical” thinking concerning their selected philosophical targets while vehemently denying anyone’s right to question their own beliefs on things like breast cancer screening, vaccine safety, global warming and genetically engineered foods.

As Horgan eloquently explains in his piece, real skeptics are skeptical of everything, not just selected topics that are targeted by the madness of status quo science crowds (i.e. the “cult of scientism”).

Real skepticism means questioning everything… especially the status quo

A real skeptic, in other words, would bring critical thinking to all of our science narratives and cultural beliefs, including those that cover the origin of the universe (cosmology), the origin of the human species, the nature of consciousness, the long history of indigenous botanical medicine, the cancer industry and mammography, homeopathy, antidepressant drugs, water filters, the existence of God and everything else imaginable. But far too many of today’s infamous “skeptics” (such as Richard Dawkins) are really just cultists who labor under the false banner of “science.” And they’re offensive to real critical thinkers, it turns out.

“I don’t hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists,” explains Horgan. “When people like this get together, they become tribal. They pat each other on the back and tell each other how smart they are compared to those outside the tribe. But belonging to a tribe often makes you dumber.”

I’ve seen this myself, on both ends of the medicine spectrum. I’ve seen insanely stupid pharmacology experts swear that statin drugs are such miraculous chemicals that they should be dripped into the public water supply. But I’ve also seen “raw foodies” at festivals swearing that their “water vortexer machines” could levitate water in defiance of the laws of gravity.

In both cases, my critical thinking alarms go haywire, and I shake my head in disbelief that so many people are so gullible, regardless of their level of academic education or technical mastery of certain subjects. A highly trained doctor with an IQ of 200 can be just as functionally stupid as a high school dropout, I’ve observed. In fact, when it comes to medicine and health, many so-called “experts” are so ignorant of reality that they almost seem cognitively retarded.

My experience as a food research scientist has taught me to distrust everything by default

As a food scientist and lab science director of CWC Labs where I conduct food analysis via ICP-MS, LC/MS-TOF and other instruments, I’ve become even more skeptical of the mainstream natural products industry over the last few years.

Take note of the massive scam of commercial almond milk sold in grocery stores. Such products contain almost no almonds at all. Instead, they’re thickened with carageenan and made to look milky white by the addition of an inorganic mineral compound called calcium carbonate — ground up rocks! This calcium carbonate, when consumed in large quantities, can cause extreme bone pain, kidney calcification and may even contribute to the calcification of arteries. Yet it’s added to a so-called “natural” health product that people are drinking in huge quantities while thinking they’re being smart about their health. Truth be told, you’d be far better off drinking raw, unpasteurized cow’s milk than commercial almond milk.

I’ve also seen so much pollution in “natural” products — including toxic heavy metals and alarming quantities of pesticides and herbicides in supposedly “clean” products — that I’ve reached the point where my own food manufacturing operation now rejects 80% of the raw material lots we test. (See my upcoming book Food Forensics for detailed ICP-MS analysis revealing the heavy metals concentrations in over 800 foods, supplements and spices.)

Similarly, I find myself rejecting 80% of the total B.S. science nonsense reported by the scientifically illiterate mainstream media… (and sometimes even the “science” media). I’ve literally seen seemingly credible reports in the mainstream media that claim the most ludicrous science nonsense, including claims that cars can be “powered” by air and that cell phones can be “powered” by water. The air powered cars stories always neglect to mention that the air must be pressurized by some other energy source; usually coal-generated electricity that’s used to power the compressors in the first place.

I’ve also seen the Associated Press falsely report that all mercury has been removed from all vaccines in America (blatantly false), and I’ve seen the obedient Monsanto-puppet media (i.e. Forbes.com, a propaganda rag steeped in utterly false journalism) report ridiculous claims such as asserting that glyphosate disintegrates quickly in the food supply. In truth, this cancer-causing weed killer survives food processing and human digestion, showing up in both urine and breast milk, fully intact in its original molecular form.

So why is there no skepticism among “skeptics” about the food chain persistence of pesticides? The false diagnosis hoax of mammography? The lunatic quack medicine diagnosis of “psychiatric disorders” that are treated with mind-bending psychiatric drugs? Or even the scientifically proven fact that some children are seriously harmed by certain vaccines, most notably HPV vaccines?

As Horgan writes in Scientific American:

“The Science Delusion” is common among Capital-S Skeptics. You don’t apply your skepticism equally. You are extremely critical of belief in God, ghosts, heaven, ESP, astrology, homeopathy and Bigfoot. You also attack disbelief in global warming, vaccines and genetically modified food… Meanwhile, you neglect what I call hard targets. These are dubious and even harmful claims promoted by major scientists and institutions. In the rest of this talk, I’ll give you examples of hard targets from physics, medicine and biology. I’ll wrap up with a rant about war, the hardest target of all.

Real scientists reject the cult of scientism

What Horgan is doing is, dare we say, exercising REAL scientific skepticism. He’s refusing to sign up for the “cult of scientism” that all the other closed-minded skeptics obediently follow as their dogmatic mental prison.

Horgan understands that legitimate science is a process, not a belief system. “Science” isn’t belief in vaccines, GMOs, chemotherapy and global warming. Those are conclusions, not processes. Real science is a process of discovery; and that process must be subjected to questioning and criticism, or it isn’t science at all.

Let me repeat that for emphasis: Real science is a PROCESS, not a set of conclusions. Any “scientific” belief system which rejects critical questioning isn’t based in real science at all. It’s just dogma.

This explains why the entire vaccine industry — as it is fraudulently promoted today — isn’t scientific at all. Vaccine propaganda is founded in a dogmatic belief system that demands absolute obedience to political vaccine narratives while rejecting even the slightest questions or criticisms about vaccine ingredients, vaccine safety, vaccine adverse events or vaccine efficacy.

For example, merely asking the question of why flu shots still contain over 50,000 ppb mercury — that’s over 25,000 times the EPA limit of mercury in drinking water — earns you widespread ridicule and condemnation. And yet the mercury is still being injected into children. Yet the entire vaccine propaganda establishment rejects even the hint of discussion of mercury in vaccines, pretending it doesn’t exist.

By the way, how do I know for sure that flu shots still contain over 50,000 ppb mercury? Because I tested flu shots myself via ICP-MS. How accuracy is my testing via ICP-MS? My lab was recently awarded a certificate of excellence for producing extremely accurate results in a blind water contamination proficiency test involving 323 laboratories.

The vaccine establishment, as Natural News readers well know, is practicing delusional thinking masquerading as science. It’s just as delusional as so-called “psychic surgeons” who claim to pull diseased liver parts out of a patient’s body (which later turn out to be chicken livers, go figure…). Any real skeptic, upon observing the quackery, propaganda and blatant deception of the vaccine industry, would have to conclude that the way vaccines are formulated, approved and promoted today makes a mockery of science.

More “science” B.S. is readily found in the fields of physics and medicine, too

Speaking on the subject of computing and AI systems, Horgan explains, “The Singularity is an apocalyptic cult, with science substituted for God. When high-status scientists promote flaky ideas like the Singularity and multiverse, they hurt science. They undermine its credibility on issues like global warming.”

Of course, Horgan may not yet understand that belief in man-made global warming as the primary cause for rising CO2 levels is also based on a politicized science cult. But that’s not even the point. I don’t expect other scientists to arrive at the same conclusions I’ve reached. What I do expect, however, is that scientists should honor the process of critical scientific thinking. If they honor the process, they will eventually reach the correct conclusions on subjects such as man-made global warming, vaccine safety problems, the total con job of statin drugs and so on.

On medicine, Horgan nails it. He gets the fact that today’s medical screening system is largely a fraud:

Over the past half-century, physicians and hospitals have introduced increasingly sophisticated, expensive tests. They assure us that early detection of disease will lead to better health.

But tests often do more harm than good. For every woman whose life is extended because a mammogram detected a tumor, up to 33 receive unnecessary treatment, including biopsies, surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. For men diagnosed with prostate cancer after a PSA test, the ratio is 47 to one. Similar data are emerging on colonoscopies and other tests.

He’s also right on the mark when it comes to psychiatric drugs and their fraudulent marketing:

Over the last few decades, American psychiatry has morphed into a marketing branch of Big Pharma. I started critiquing medications for mental illness more than 20 years ago, pointing out that antidepressants like Prozac are scarcely more effective than placebos.

In retrospect, my criticism was too mild. Psychiatric drugs help some people in the short term, but over time, in the aggregate, they make people sicker.

He also exposes the total fraud of so-called “gene discoveries” that ridiculously claim genes have been discovered for things like gay-ness or intelligence:

Another hard target that needs your attention is behavioral genetics, which seeks the genes that make us tick. I call it gene-whiz science, because the media and the public love it.

Over the past several decades, geneticists have announced the discovery of “genes for” virtually every trait or disorder. We’ve had the God gene, gay gene, alcoholism gene, warrior gene, liberal gene, intelligence gene, schizophrenia gene, and on and on.

None of these linkages of single genes to complex traits or disorders has been confirmed. None!

Much of what you’re told today under the banner of “science” is complete bulls–t

Horgan has come to the same conclusion that I’ve reached through a different path: Much of what we are taught today under the banner of “science” is complete bunk. Some of it is sheer hucksterism, and a lot of it qualifies as criminal fraud.

Check out my recent video compilation The 12 biggest SCIENCE LIES you’ve been told by corporations, government and the corrupt media:

At the top of that list of science frauds is, of course, vaccines. As I’ve exhaustively documented here on Natural News, many popular vaccines (flu shots, measles, mumps) simply don’t work at all. Shockingly, outright admissions of a complete lack of scientific testing of the efficacy of such vaccines is admitted on their insert sheets. The Flulaval vaccine insert sheet, for example, admits there are “No controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in influenza” among people being injected with the vaccine.

Similarly, many vaccines are approved by the FDA’s only after the regulatory agency reviewed so-called “scientific” studies authored by the vaccine manufacturers themselves — studies that involved blood samples which were deliberately adulterated by vaccine manufacturers to product fraudulent results.

Yet despite these extraordinary admissions of lack of efficacy, vaccine research fraud and the known toxicity of vaccine ingredients (which still include formaldehyde, mercury, aluminum and MSG), the systematic rejection of such evidence by vaccine promoting “science skeptics” borders on the fringe of mental illness. These are not scientists at all… they are con artists and criminals — like Poul Thorsen, a fugitive from justice who was once a CDC researcher — pretending to be scientists.

As a real scientist, I’ve dared to ask 21 questions we’re never allowed to ask about vaccines. Such questions are based on reason and rationality. They include commonsense questions such as, “If measles vaccines confer measles immunity, then why do already-vaccinated children have anything to fear from a measles outbreak?”

It is notable that the entire vaccine establishment not only refuses to answer such questions; they consider the mere act of questioning vaccine dogma to be blasphemy. The demand for absolute obedience to the false narratives surrounding vaccines has reached such a fever pitch that anyone can now see it’s no longer based in science at all. It is a kind of religious fervor put on by deranged zealots who claim an intellectual monopoly over all things related to vaccines. This phenomenon is, in a very real way, a “scientific dictatorship” — an apt oxymoron to describe today’s juxtaposition of conformist demands and so-called “scientific evidence.”

Hint: If you aren’t allowed to ask questions about the evidence, it isn’t evidence at all. It’s dogma, plain and simple. Vaccine proponents, as they operate today, are faith-based dogmatists who don’t need any legitimate evidence because they BELIEVE in vaccines. Their belief is so strong that it outweighs all evidence contrary to their current beliefs. And in case you didn’t notice, what I’ve just described here is a cult, not a science.

Vaccine “science” is a massive con job

The other huge con job found in vaccines is described thusly: Vaccines only “work” on those who don’t need them. In other words, when vaccines do work, they do so by initiating an immune response to a weakened virus that’s introduced into the body. This response requires an active and complex immune system that’s functioning well… the same kind of immune system, in other words, that could ward off an infection of a live virus encountered in the wild.

Meanwhile, people who have suppressed immune systems and are therefore extremely vulnerable to infections in the wild also happen to have extremely poor (and sometimes completely nullified) responses to vaccines. They don’t build antibodies, in other words, so the vaccines don’t work for them (they are non-efficacious).

In order to make vaccines “work” better on those with weakened immune systems, vaccine manufacturers add adjuvant chemicals that are irritants which cause excessive inflammation in the hope of eliciting a stronger immune response. While this may help some people, it also carries a very real risk of causing inflammatory damage to the neurology of some children who receive these vaccines. The results, as borne out by the vaccine adverse events databases and Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, is a growing number of children who are maimed, neurological damaged, put into comas or even killed by vaccines.

The entire “skeptics” cult of modern medicine denies any of this is happening, and that’s one reason why the skeptics are increasingly seen as high-functioning idiots who are possibly vaccine damaged themselves. Zealotous hate-bloggers like Doctor David Gorski — a psychopathic, mentally ill vaccine promoter who also carries out cancer surgery on African-American victims in Detroit — now characterize the skeptics cult, a cabal of mentally deranged lunatics and gay sex fetish seekers like James Randi who was caught on tape soliciting sex from a young man.

Richard Dawkins, for his part, is also an anti-consciousness cultist who believes in the irrational dualism that no other humans on this planet are conscious beings other than himself. Everybody else, he claims, is an unconscious biological robot suffering under the illusion of self awareness.

Meet three real scientists we need to empower to ask more questions of the scientific establishment

What kind of people do we really need to see more of in the realm of scientific skepticism? People like Rupert Sheldrake, author of Science Set Free. Sheldrake’s work is transformative, as it challenges the underlying non-scientific assumptions of modern science.

We also need more people like Gilbert Welch, author of Less Medicine, More Health. This book challenges the seven false assumptions of modern medicine.

Another extraordinary scientist who deserves our support is Dr. David Lewis, author of Science for Sale: How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits. Dr. Lewis was maliciously attacked, discredited and ultimately thrown out of the government-funded scientific establishment for the simple reason that he questioned the safety of toxic biosludge — recycled human and industrial waste that’s sold as “organic fertilizer” to be spread on home gardens, childrens’ playgrounds and city parks. (I am currently investigating biosludge in my laboratory and will have some truly shocking, mind-blowing results to share with everyone this summer… you won’t believe what’s in this crap…)

Check out Dr. Lewis’s recent post entitled Inspector General dismantled scientific integrity at EPA.

The other thing we need, quite frankly, is independent scientists like myself who are conducting cutting edge, truly independent science, without any financial ties to governments, corporations or academia. My science lab, which has now passed our ISO 17025 accreditation audit, is free to pursue precisely the kind of scientific analysis of food and medicine that is blackballed or censored in the government-funded scientific community. Other scientists would lose their jobs if they pursued the kind of science I’m pursuing on a daily basis with absolute freedom.

Notably, this makes me a rare practitioner of real, independent science and a protector of the very kind of independent skepticism and scientific analysis that should be embraced by any system of knowledge that’s based on legitimate science. Yet the science I’m conducting is widely considered a threat to the scientific establishment, precisely because I’m willing to analyze vaccines for heavy metals and organic chemicals, for example. Such research is simply not allowed by the cult of scientism (the vaccine zealots) because they depend on widespread ignorance of vaccine composition to continue parlaying their fraudulent lies about vaccine safety.

I honor scientists who pursue a rigorous process of critical thinking… and I despise obedient status quo cultists

John Horgan might not yet be aware of the full story on vaccines, so he might disagree with me on such conclusions. But that’s not the point. I honor Horgan’s commitment to asking big questions. In fact, I honor those who vehemently disagree with me as long as they are following a process of authentic inquiry and open-minded skepticism.

What I despise is science cultists, dogmatic science propagandists and the worship of the “high priests” of science such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who can only be described as a “sciency” sleight-of-mind huckster who has more in common with stage illusionist David Copperfield than, say, Richard Feynman.

Tyson, like Dawkins, is a cultist. He has zero intellectual integrity and has sold out to the tribal dogmatists who spin tall tales of irrational mysticism that currently pass for “accepted science.”

For my part, I don’t claim to have all the answers — no human mind can possibly dare to claim a full understanding of the mysteries of nature (or the mind of God, for that matter). But as a real scientist, I’m willing to skeptically explore the evidence on just about anything. I don’t reject entire fields of scientific inquiry merely because they are taboo. It doesn’t mean I’m a sucker for silly claims, just that I’m intelligent and humble enough to realize that nature is far more mysterious than any human mind can possibly grasp. And we have much more to learn… many more scientific discoveries to make in the years ahead.

For example, psychic phenomena are often called “paranormal.” But what if they are so commonplace that they’re actually normal? Why can’t we study things like pets somehow anticipating the random arrivals of their owners many minutes in advance? Or mothers having a seemingly intuitive emotional connection to their children even when separated by distance? Why can’t we study dream premonition? Consciousness after biological death? Or even the possibility that the brain is a “quantum antenna” that can receive information transmitted from other conscious sources, transmitted by a quantum entanglement mechanism that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance?”

If we are true scientists, we must at least BE CURIOUS about the nature of the universe and the apparent consciousness we seem to experience inside that universe. The minute we lose curiosity and decide we have all the answers, we cease being scientists at all. At that point, we just become mentally incapacitated dogmatic fools… like Dawkins and Randi, two people whom history will judge as being not just unwise hucksters, but even for slowing the progress of human knowledge into realms of understanding that are viciously attacked by “skeptics” today.

I often wonder just how many people have died needlessly due to the malicious “skepticism” of info-terrorist David Gorski or the Quackwatch propagandist Stephen Barrett. How many cases of cancer could have been prevented or reversed by natural and complementary medicine? How many studies might have been conducted in the pursuit of natural cures if not for the vicious, aggressive assaults on scientific curiosity being waged by “cult of scientism” intellectual bigots?

We’ll never know the answer to that question, but at least a few people like John Horgan are willing to start asking some legitimate questions about the false assumptions of “skeptics.” Have no doubt that Horgan himself will be maliciously slandered, attacked, defamed, censored and lied about for daring to ask such questions. The one thing today’s bulls–t scientific establishment cannot tolerate is actual skepticism. It threatens the cultist beliefs of the faithful “scientism” worshippers, you see…

Snowden Docs Becoming Available

The Intercept is opening up access to the Snowden archive

Starting today, the site will begin publishing internal NSA newsletters.

Nearly three years after Edward Snowden first exposed the NSA’s PRISM electronic data mining program, and his trusted journalist partners are finally ready to bring even more of those documents out into the open. Today, The Intercept announced two initiatives to further that goal: First, the site is releasing a cache of internal NSA documents that it believes will point other journalists towards noteworthy stories. And second, The Intercept will partner with other national and international media outlets to allow access to the sensitive documents in its possession.

For the first initiative, the site is publishing 166 documents from SIDtoday, the NSA’s internal newsletter that covered everything from “serious, detailed reports on top secret NSA surveillance programs to breezy, trivial meanderings of analysts’ trips and vacations,” according to The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald. Although they can occasionally seem trivial, Greenwald notes that the newsletters have been the source of “significant revelations in the past.” Moving forward, the site will periodically release new batches of SIDtoday newsletters with summaries of the content found in each, as they did with this story on the NSA’s involvement in Guantánamo interrogations.

While the second part of The Intercept’s announcement is less visible, the site says they have now navigated the tricky legal and security issues involved in allowing additional access to a wider range of publications of journalists. “We now feel comfortable that we can do so consistent with the responsibility demanded by these materials and our agreement with our source,” Greenwald writes. In addition to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Guardian — all of which published the original batch of leaks — The Intercept claims it has already shared the documents with more than a dozen media outlets around the globe, thus ensuring local journalists can cover the stories that affect them directly.

from:    http://www.engadget.com/2016/05/16/the-intercept-is-opening-up-access-to-the-snowden-archive/#comments

Owning Your Power Now

How To Heal Past Life Programming

May 16, 2016 

How To Heal Past Life Programming

by Michelle Walling, CHLC
Staff writer, In5D.com

Have you ever been told that you were part of the cause for the fall in Atlantis? Do you feel that you may have played the role of the dark in a past life? If you are are one if these people, you may have negative past-life experiences that need to be healed. Coupled with today’s mind control programming and deep encoded past life experiences, the result is fear of falling into traps that will cause the same pattern of repeating mistakes.

Programming is carried in DNA

We are in the final stages of clearing and hidden guilt is one of the most prevalent energies that we have left to overcome. It keeps you from being able to forgive and love yourself wholly. Programming in today’s society is designed to make you feel like you are never good enough and that you cannot make decisions on your own. Programming in past lives is also encoded in your DNA and is coming forth at this time to be cleared. Gifted psychics can actually tune into your field to tap into these pictures and energies. Recognition and letting go through transmutation are the keys of clearing past life encoding.

Mind control and free will

The first thing to review is whether actions in a past life were a result of your own free will or out of out of power, control, or greed. Many were mind controlled at the time of Atlantis to do things that were not in the best interest of humanity. Mind control actually began back at the beginning of the Adam Kadmon version of the human body. At the time, the creators of man were using genetically modified as slaves to mine precious metals from the Earth. Many of the things that humans did in past lives were not of their own free will. When the laws of the Universe are broken, how can a person hold themselves accountable for their actions?

Others were mind controlled to believe that they were responsible for the demise of a civilization when they actually had nothing to do with it. They were given programming with sound and visualization including pictures of things that would make their soul carry this illusion with it from lifetime to lifetime. This would insure that they would be able to keep the human from processing the guilt involved, which allowed for control, especially in this lifetime. To complicate matters, some empaths are simply picking up on the collective guilt consciousness of humanity and were not even present on the planet at the time these atrocities were committed.

For the people who actually did contribute to the fall of civilizations, most of them were doing so by mind control. Since we are all connected humanity carries the guilt of “sin” within human consciousness. The ankh was extraterrestrial technology that could be used in mind control by amplifying sound and geometric codes into the body. It was like a microphone that amplified sound and energy. The ankh could be used in healing but it also was used in domination and control. Televisions carry this same mind control vibration through extremely low frequency waves amplified through the speakers.

How to transmute fear energies

Some people carry guilt and remorse for actions in past lives and don’t even realize what is causing the emotion in this lifetime. It is not necessary to remember everything about a past life in order to heal it. Our bodies serve as clues to problems buried deep inside by reacting to things which bring up emotions of fear. Every time a fear emotion arises it brings an opportunity to clear it. No matter what the reason may appear to be, it is most likely from a deep seated fear from another time. It may not even be yours, as many people came here to help heal others. Fear emotions include anger, jealousy, hatred, sadness, and guilt.

Simply acknowledge these emotions and allow them to run their course. Blocking them will cause problems in the physical body, which is another way the body serves us with an alert system. Crying is the most prevalent way these emotions can be transmuted. Women have an easier time with crying than men do, as programming has intended than men do not show their emotions. Thus some men resort to yelling within anger or on the opposite end of the spectrum praying in solitude with heartfelt intention. However, there is another way from a higher perspective that is available.

By vibrating your body to a higher frequency, anything that is not truth will fall away. None of these illusions are carried in your heart center. You can always find respite and solace inside of yourself. Everyone carries the pureness of the light of our Creator, and expanding this light within your body is like having a cool flame purify thoughts and negative programming.

Atonement

It is imperative to let go of all preconceived notions of who you were in a past life because in our limited scope of vision we tend to place judgment on these lives. Someone who played a dark role for humanity is no less important that someone who carried the light. From a higher perspective, all had a part to play in the grand drama. All are derived from the one Creator and will return to the one Creator.

Now is the time for atonement (at-one-ment). This involves hearing the call that we are all ready to move on to the next level of experience; out of the denseness. As we bring in more of our soul particles into our bodies in order to raise our vibration, those particles must be cleared of any negative programming as well. This negative programming is from past lives that are actually all occurring within your monad’s experience at the same time outside of time and space in the now.

Coming into your power

Your emotional body is the clearing house and is part of an elaborate plan that was forgotten with incarnation. The clever use of the body and mind rather than falling victim to the emotion is what is termed “coming into your power”. It is important to give gratitude to your body for allowing it to be the vehicle through which you clear energies from your monad and propel your consciousness to a higher level in this incarnation.

The absolute truth of past lives requires viewing things from a heart perspective rather that a mind perspective. The bigger picture is in the heart and in this space you have a knowing of who you truly are and why things happened. Forgiving yourself  whether you have good reason or not will open the door to your heart. Forgiving another also helps in forgiving yourself as we are all connected.

Loving yourself for the divine being that you are will open space within your heart for more of you light to shine through. This is the basis for unconditional love, which will transform the world.

Why do others ignore the truth?

Many times we tend to judge those around us for not waking up to what is happening in the world. We fear that they will not be moving with us into a new reality. One mistake we can make is to think that all other people think like we do and need to be at a certain level. This causes unnecessary frustration that is self imposed.

The body was designed to work through emotions whether we are conscious of it or not. We have no idea what other people carry from another lifetime to be cleared. We also have no idea if another person is simply here to clear energies for other people. Furthermore we also have no idea of whether they are doing exactly what their higher selves planned to do by not waking up at this time.

Everyone will get to where they need to be when they need to be there, even if they missed a few chances here and there. They will catch up if they chose to move forward in this lifetime. The outside world is the biggest tool of distraction.

Lead by example

It is time to stop the focus on those around us in order to finalize the work on ourselves. The energy vibration of the planet now supports change. Heal yourself and make yourself whole within this physical body. When others see the change in us they will be curious as to what we are doing. We will have broken the spell and we can show them how.

Lead by example within the power of knowledge of what has happened to humanity by de-programming yourself first. You cannot put the oxygen mask on another person if you are unconscious. When you have rated your love for yourself as an eleven on a scale from one to ten, you will certainly serve as an example and will in turn help all of humanity do the same.

 

from:    http://in5d.com/how-to-heal-past-life-programming/

Benefits of Manuka Honey

This Type of RAW HONEY Kills Every Kind of Bacteria Scientists Could Throw At It (Even the Super-Bugs!)

by NICK MEYER

special manuka honeyThe health benefits of raw, unprocessed honey are well known, but in Australia, scientists recently made a startling discovery – that one particular, obscure type of honey is capable of killing just about everything scientists throw at it, including some of the worst bacteria known to man.

The findings were published in the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (June 2009 edition)and could hold special significance at a time when many of the world’s top antibiotics are failing, especially against resistant “superbugs.”

The honey in question is known as manuka honey, which is produced in New Zealand and also goes by the name of jelly bush honey.

The honey has become so popular in the past few years that shortages have been reported and fake products have been sold, leading New Zealand manuka producers to seek trademark protection (similar to French champagne or Scottish whiskey for example). It’s easy to see why now that the secret is out about this honey’s incredible health benefits.

 

Manuka honey has a darker pigment than most traditional honey

 

Manuka honey has a darker pigment than most traditional honey

Manuka Honey Kills MRSA, Other Superbugs 

Manuka honey is created by bees foraging on the nectar of Leptospermum Scoparium, the New Zealand manuka bush, as well as tea trees native only to Australia and New Zealand.

In the aforementioned studies, Australian researchers found that the honey killed every bacteria or pathogen it was tested on, according to a report by The AustralianThe honey can be applied topically to help fight against infections of the skin, cuts and insect bites, or taken internally.

The most exciting difference with the manuka honey that was tested is that none of superbugs killed by the honey were able to build up immunity, a common problem with today’s antibiotics.

“New antibiotics tend to have short shelf lives, as the bacteria they attack quickly become resistant,” said Dr. Dee Carter of the University of Sydney’s School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences. “Many large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned antibiotic production because of the difficulty of recovering costs. Developing effective alternatives could therefore save many lives.”

According to Dr. Carter the manuka honey contains a compound called methyglyoxal, that combines with other unknown compounds to cause “multi-system failure” that destroys the bacteria.

Where to Find Manuka Honey 

Manuka honey is now sold in health food stores and online, although the supply levels have fluctuated in recent years and fake honey scams have been documented. When looking for manuka honey it is best to look for one that is UMF certified.

The term UMF stands for Unique Manuka Factor, which is the phytochemical property derived from the manuka bushes that gives it its unique properties. This term is regulated by the Unique Manuka Factor Honey Association of New Zealand and a handful of certified manuka products can be found on Amazon.com.

The brand Comvita manuka honey is available on Amazon and is UMF certified. One particular customer on Amazon said that it this type of honey helped to erase their MRSA:

I had done a fair amount of research when a friend of ours got MRSA, and then, unfortunately, I got it too., said user JoshuaOne9 on Amazon. Thankfully, I had already done the research so I knew exactly what to do. As soon as I saw the red bump (thinking the first day that it was a mosquito bite) I scratched it, but the second day I realized that it had to be something else. My husband immediately knew what it was since we had been dealing with our friend’s case of MRSA. I got my hands on this Manuka honey and put on the area of skin that was affected and then it is very important that you cover it with a bandaid. Within hours I felt relief and within a few days it was completely gone…

While further research needs to be done, it’s safe to say that manuka honey shows plenty of promise in defeating one of the biggest health challenges faced by humanity in the 21st century, and this research should not be taken lightly.

This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to treat, diagnose or prevent disease. Consult a licensed naturopathic doctor before making any major changes to your diet or lifestyle.

Source: althealthworks.com
Images: Wikimedia Commons

from:     http://www.realfarmacy.com/obscure-honey/