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December, 2005 Hello <
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IN THIS ISSUE: 1) WHO ARE YOU? 2) THE POWER OF NOW 3) HEALING IN THE NATURAL WORLD
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1) WHO ARE YOU? "Please… tell me who you are and what you want. And if you think those are simple questions, keep in mind that most people live their entire lives without arriving at an answer." -- Gary Zukav How deeply can you answer this question? Please realize that you are the only one who can answer it. No one else can tell you who you are. You must discover this for yourself. And the challenge of knowing ourselves is no easy task. We hope this question excites rather than intimidates you. There’s so much more to you than you know at present! Isn’t this intriguing? Perhaps it’s time to go exploring…. "Mysterious and intimidating to contemplate, the human brain is the most complex thing there is and the most difficult task it can undertake is to understand itself." -- David Noonan "I don’t think God cares where we were graduated or what we did for a living. God wants to know who we are. Discovering this is the work of the soul – it is our true life’s work." -- Bernie Siegel
2) THE POWER OF NOW by Eckhart Tolle
The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction, there isn’t really much else you need to learn or understand. Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity. You have already understood the basic mechanics of the unconscious state: identification with the mind, which creates a false self, the ego, as a substitute for your true self rooted in Being. As Jesus said, you become as a “…branch cut off from the vine.” The ego’s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened, and thus lives in a state of fear and want. Once you know how the basic dysfunction operates, there is no need to explore all its countless manifestations, no need to make it into a complex, personal problem. The ego, of course, loves that. It is always seeking something to which it can attach, in order to uphold and strengthen its illusory sense of self, and it will readily attach itself to your problems. This is why, for so many people, a large part of their sense of self is intimately connected with their problems. Once this has happened, the last thing people want is to become free of their problems; that would mean the loss of self. There can be a great deal of unconscious ego investment in pain and suffering. Once you recognize the root of unconsciousness as identification with the mind, which of course includes the emotions, you step out of it. You become present. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled. The mind, in itself, is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life. End the delusion of time It seems almost impossible to dis-identify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly? Here is the key: end the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops, unless you choose to use it. To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honour and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfilment, in whatever form. Both are illusions. You may be thinking: “Without a sense of time, how would we function in this world? There would be no goals to strive toward. I wouldn’t even know who I am, because my past makes me who I am today. I think time is something very precious, and we need to learn to use it wisely rather than waste it.” Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time, but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focussed on time, past and future, the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is. Why is it the most precious thing? Firstly, because it is the only thing. It’s all there is. The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be. Secondly, the Now is the only point that can take you beyond the limited confines of the mind. It is your only point of access into the timeless and formless realm of Being. Adapted from The Power of Now, copyright 1999 by Eckhart Tolle. Reprinted with permission.
3) HEALING IN THE NATURAL WORLD
Growing up in southern England and Wales, we always lived close to the woods, streams, and hills of the nearby countryside. The towns were built to be dense and tight, so it was relatively easy to walk out of the buildings and away from traffic into a land of kingfishers, beech trees, and marsh marigolds. It was “smart growth” before anyone had invented the term. Today, I live in a clearing with a small, organic nursery in a recovering, second-growth forest, just north of Victoria. On a typical winter day, we see ravens, tree frogs, a Cooper’s hawk, hummingbirds, blue jays, and woodpeckers, as well as worms, spiders, and a host of smaller birds. And, of course, the forest. In the August 6 issue of New Scientist, Joan Maloof, a biology professor at Salisbury University in Maryland, describes how the Japanese have a word to describe the particular air of a forest. They call it shinrin-yoku: “wood-air bathing.” Maloof writes: “Japanese researchers have discovered that when diabetic patients walk through the forest, their blood sugar drops to healthier levels. Entire symposiums have been held on the benefits of wood-air bathing and walking.” I’m able to enjoy shinrin-yoku all the time, but for those who live in concrete canyons, amidst a soundscape of car alarms and sirens, instead of the croak of frogs and the wind, it has become a distant experience. In Emily White’s article Greening the Blues, published in the October issue of The Ecologist, White writes about depression and the aspiration of drug companies and their medical colleagues to turn it into a clinical illness that should be treated with drugs. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2020, depression will be second only to heart disease as a cause of disability. White notes that during her career, she was transferred from a downtown Toronto law firm to a government office in Iqaluit, Baffin Island, in the Arctic. Although she took along her stash of SSRIs to treat her depression, with 24 hours of daylight, she started hiking the tundra, taking photos, and exploring the surrounding world. Her anxiety decreased, her mood improved, and she found herself becoming interested in things. According to White, it wasn’t that she was getting more exercise: “It was that the landscape around me was so vibrant and solid that I began to feel that way as well.” In her article, she offers some intriguing evidence for one’s capacity to heal in a natural environment. In work with autistic children and people with organic brain diseases, when animals are introduced the subjects have an improved attention span, laugh and talk more, and demonstrate less aggression. When people are shown photos of natural settings, their blood pressure drops, their heart rates fall, their muscles relax, and they report feeling less stressed and anxious. In hospitals, when post-operative patients are given a room with a view of trees, they need fewer painkillers, develop fewer complications, and check themselves out sooner than patients in rooms with an urban view. In a long-term study of the type of wall art typically destroyed by psychiatric patients, while abstract images were often attacked, not once in 15 years had a patient destroyed a picture of a natural scene. Now, let’s return to Joan Maloof’s work. As a biologist, she has delved into the science of all of this, and notes that researchers in the Sierra Nevada of northern California have found that the air in the forested mountains contains 120 chemical compounds. Some of these compounds derive from bacteria and fungi in the soil, but most come from the trees, which release them from pockets between their leaf cells. They also produce edible monoterpenes (MT), fragrances, which have been shown to both prevent and cure cancer. When we inhale them, they become part of our bodies, and the forest becomes part of us. Having evolved along with nature for five million years or so, our bodies and souls are part of nature. There is something within us that longs for the forest and the stream. Until this last, tiny micro-slice of time, we have always lived in close proximity to the animals, Our cities, suburbs, colleges, and schools should offer many more green spaces, trees, and urban farms. The first remedy for depression should be a zoology lift, not Zoloft. When we attack nature, by clearcutting forests or paving farmland, we attack ourselves. There is a reason why our health care budget is spinning out of control: we are cutting ourselves off from nature’s drugs, which are natural and free, and handing the responsibility for our health over to the drug companies, which produce anything but free products. Guy Dauncey is author of the award-winning book Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. He is editor of EcoNews, and president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org). He lives in Victoria.
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Thank You for Reading.
I AM WISHING YOU A HAPPY AND JOYFUL HOLIDAY SEASON!
Namaste
Livia
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******************************************** This newsletter is for educational purposes only. It is your right to educate yourself in health and medical knowledge, to seek helpful information and make use of it for your own benefit, and for that of your family. You are the one responsible for your health. You must educate yourself in order to make decisions in all health matters. My views and advices are not intended to be a substitute for conventional medicine, but simply a help you to make educated changes in order to help your body heal itself. If you have a medical condition or concern you should consult your physician. ******************************************** |