In a Trap

Once I read an Ethiopian story about Adam and Eve. It narrated as follows. Adam and Eve lived as light beings solely in spirit in a sacred way. They were all made out of sacred light. They lived in the Garden of Eden, where they didn’t need to eat, drink and digest, dress and so forth. All the material part of life we know was absent. Then one day some mischievous spiritual being caught them into a trap by sending them the idea to eat a fruit of a tree. They fell into this trap, took a bite and were banished from the Garden of Eden. After they were thrown out, they got their physical bodies or their light bodies somehow solidified. First, they were so hurt, because they had to eat that they wanted to die. Nevertheless, they were somehow encouraged or even forced to exist in that new material world, where they had to eat, digest and dress. They felt very ashamed of the newly acquired physical characteristics of their materialized existence. No matter how they tried to return to the Garden of Eden into purity of sacred light or perish in their materialized existence, they were forced to exist further on in their physical existence and even procreate.

Now look at where this banishment out of sacred light of existence has brought the humankind. Except for some breatharians and those who live by the sunlight, the majority of us are eating other beings’ children (fruits, seeds, etc.) or bodies of grown up beings. It looks like we have turned into Hansels and Gretchens where our minds are being kept in a trap, where given ideas feed our minds similar to the way the witch fed Hansel and Gretchen when they were kept in her cage. The settings (cage) are more technically equipped and comfortable nowadays, but the general idea is very similar. So, we believe what we are told, whether true or not.

Some years ago many people were using a particular diary product, advertised as a particularly good for bowels. Some years later a research proved that that diary product isn’t any better than any else. By then many people’s minds were kept in a trap of the advertised idea.

See, milk is healthy only as much as the cow is healthy and eating her natural chosen food. Some decades ago, I spent a month in high mountains as a herdsman’s assistant. Cows were grazing and running freely and eating only fresh grass, even if they went in search for it half the mountain top away. They would never even try the grass upon which some fertilizing agents were strewn. Their milk scented of flowering wild mountain flowers and grasses they ate and its thickness was consistent even if it was left in a container. We have been making cheese, sweet quark, and sweet cream, butter and sour milk and sour cream out of their fresh, unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk. It worked. We poured milk into a cup and left it stay for three days and got sour milk with some sour cream upon it. Now, if I buy a bottle of milk out of an automat its thickness will not remain consistent and I would not be able to make sour milk out of it.

There are worse cases of captivity then the upper example of advertisement. Maybe, if we can switch off the mind feeders for a while, then perhaps we would be able to hear what our own body is telling us or even our own thoughts.

Adversaries

Few days ago I passed by a nearby multinational market chain store and a happy father was waving with a package of potato chips to his toddler infant held in mother’s hand, saying cheerfuly, »Look, I brought this for you.« The kid was happily smiling back.

Yet, another day in the exactly the same store I saw a joyous young family with yet another toddler in mother’s arms, and again the father waving a package of potato chips to a smiling kid, saying: »This is the one you like, isn’t it.«

I asked myself then, »Are we really all enemies of sort to one another, from the conception on? « Some intentionally, and most of us unintentionally. I don’t mean this as an acusation. Enemies have the tendency to mislead and deceive in order to manipulate, exploit and use another being or beings. Lies are among adversaries’ greatest weapons.

Are we really giving one another only what advertisements tell us to give and don’t look outside that advertise box we are captivated, programmed and conditioned in? I mean chips aren’t considered a really healthy food, so consuming it from early childhood can’t be really beneficial. And the same is with many other things, events, issues …a list without end.

I looks like, no matter how long we are schooled, we seem to be are enemies to one another and unaware of it. Maybe we wouldn’t like it, if we would know how we poison and destroy ourselves and the world around us.

At the time I was studying at the university, we were told never to drink alcohol at the time of conception, pregnancy or breastfeeding, because the embryo and later the child eats what mother eats. And the embryo/child feels what the mother feels because the embryo lives in the mother’s body and the newborn is very closely related. They are in fact so closely related that the embryo learns the sound of the mothers’ voice, and a newborn is capable of recognizing it. And the same is true with animals.

In fact, each of us resonates with his/hers own frequency. So, when a mother suffers, for example, the child picks up that frequency, and when she is happy, the kid picks up that one frequency.

But when our minds are tuned to the advertising, then we resonate with the ads frequency. Our minds get filled with their ideas of what to or what not to do. Some 20 years ago I read a book of a Dutch couple, who simply became so miserable that they finally had enough of being constantly told, »Do this, buy this, don’t do this, this is good for you«, and so forth. Part of their feeling of being miserable was that they were constantly chasing what they were told in the ads or on the TV or radio and were constantly underachieving, chasing what they were told to have or achieve in life. So, they switched off the TV and the radio, and soon there was silence around them and from that outer silence they figured they can reach some inner calmness and freedom of choice.

And on the other hand, I remember a book of an extremely successful French copywriter, who asked himself what he was doing only after a man killed himself watching his ad while he was driving.

So, are we all really each other’s enemies on this planet? Is the only mode of existence to be an enemy to others in order to survive?

Or am I maybe wrong? Perhaps, if each person stays out somewhere in the nature long enough to figure out how nature feels like, we’d come up with some other solutions.

Some decades ago I spent a month in the mountains without TV, shops, newspapers, etc. There was occasional ariplane to be heard, cow bells, wind, rain when it rained, and that was all of the daily sounds I have heard there. Before I made myself a meal I had to fetch wood, make a fire and even then it took about an hour and a half for a casserole to be cooked (vegetables were growing in the garden).  Every day I was truly tired of all the physical work, but it felt like a healthy tiredness (from all the fresh air and work), and I fell sound asleep when I laid down on my matress. Yet, I didn’t miss anything. When I returned to the town, I cycled to my job and couldn’t figure out at first what was bothering me so much. Later I figured it was noise of the city. Cities are very noisy, believe me.

 

Sugarkind*

Most of us don’t read the ingredients content’s on the food packages, and freshly baked bread most of the time doesn’t have it. So, we don’t know exactly what we eat.

Why am I tackling this topic at all, when it is hardly interesting? Well, I guess I’m some antiquity or something like this. Maybe I’m in the years when the world, the so called progress and human endeavors look awkward.

The thing is, that one day I went to a local store and wondered how come that I see so many obese people around me, while there were practically none in my youth. Okay, we were mostly walking to the school and spent afternoons playing outdoors or helping our parents and relatives, neighbors or friends.

So we were moving a lot and burned the so called calorie intake in no time.

But there is yet another thing that passes us unnoticed.

Here. I’m going to list you some of the daily commands from my childhood:

• Don’t overeat yourself.
• Don’t eat sweets for a breakfast.
• Don’t eat sweets before a regular meal.
• Don’t eat sweets – it makes holes in your teeth.
• Don’t eat too much before you go to sleep.
• Drink water, if you are thirsty, or bitter lukewarm yeast&chicory coffee on a hot summer day, or unsweetened tea.
• Eat an apple if you a hungry during meals.
• Chew the food thoroughly.
• Eat slowly. Don’t throw the food into yourself like into a sack.
• Looks like these words still resonate in me and compose my diet.

When I look around, it looks like now everything has to be sweet and fast. If we look the packages we bring into our dwellings more closely we might be surprised. I was.

But before that I read a sentence that raised my interest to look this topic more closely. The sentence goes  as follows: »At the beginning of the 20th century – before the widespread cultivation of sugar beets and imports of sugar from cane – intake per capita in Europe was below 5 kg per year rising to the 40-60 kg per year seen in Europe today.« (Health in All Policies, Prospects and Potentials, 2006, http://www.eu2006.fi )

Actually sugar is in many products, we wouldn’t expect it in. Sugar is a preservative, but we used it in preserving sweet food, like jams, jellies, stewed fruit, and cookies. Now, if you read the ingredients content’s you can find it in meat, bread and stewed sour vegetables – in many foods you won’t expect to find sugar.

And guess what, now children eat their cereals in milk for breakfast, and a cup of it contains so much sugar as 6 doughnuts, was told on The Doctor’s TV several years ago (sorry, I can’t find the archived file to state the exact time when the show was aired).

This is one side of this scenario. The other is that people producing sugarcane are mostly so poor they can’t afford themselves much more than to eat one raw sugarcane stalk a day. So on one side we have people getting obese and sick from the excessive intake of a product of a processed plant that is actually a medicinal plant. And on the other side we have starving people who survive by the day consuming that very stalk of that plant.

For the doubters: medicinal properties of sugar cane (http://lifestyle.iloveindia.com/lounge/benefits-of-sugarcane-1882.html), and the same seems true also for the sugar beet http://herbs-treatandtaste.blogspot.com/2012/03/sugar-beet-source-of-sugar-in-cool.html

*In accordance with the saying ‘you are what you eat’; the humankind seems to have turned into sugarkind.

Toothpaste

A decade ago I read a book written by Waris Dirie, where she describes how they brushed their teeth in the desert with a tooth stick made out of Neem tree (Salvadora persica). Until then I didn’t pay much attention to the toothpaste, except that I wanted as much herbs in there as possible. Later I found out that in Europe people brushed their teeth with mastic tree (Pistacia Lentiscus or Pistacia Therebintus) tooth sticks or with sticks made of Hazelnut bush. Oil made of mastic gum or leaves helps to keep the teeth in place and prevents paradontosis and kills the bacteria Heliobacter Pylori – as some of the studies state.  While in India people used the Neem tree (Salvadora persica).

http://www.google.si/books?hl=sl&lr=&id=y3_vZIUVVj8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=sugarcane+medicinal+properties&ots=nqBme2M_1h&sig=Z0N0BB4nN_CVMZDRL1y844-zAso&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sugarcane%20medicinal%20properties&f=false

Well, they certainly didn’t have problems with bacteria loaded toothbrushes – we should disinfect them in alcohol solution, I guess.

Just recently I stumbled upon an explanation that Chinese traditional medicine considers teeth as the endpoints of the meridians.

Here is a Meridian Tooth Chart:  http://www.meridiantoothchart.com/tooth_charts.html

What I did notice though is that after using very natural toothpaste (bought or self-made) for some years it also had a healing and soothing effect on my intestines. Actually it worked like daily medicine for my alimentary canal, while the ordinary toothpastes work just the opposite.

Together with the explanation of teeth in TCM I also found an interesting German Tooth gel with 35 various etheric oils to activate each meridian of the teeth. I haven’t tried it, so don’t consider this as an advertisement. It is maybe worth considering this thing called daily mouth hygiene – do we help our intestines with it?

A Free Gardening Plot for the Poorest Members of the Community

About half a century ago, I lived in a country with the inflation reaching thousand percent and over. Apart from running out of money right in the middle of the month and being unable to get to our jobs except by foot or by bicycle, it was fun. We were all millionaires. Money wasn’t anything serious anymore. The situation resembled the situation in »Gone with the Wind« where money was used for stuffing the holes in the walls. We played children’s roulette with it instead. Then, overnight, our country lost 80% of its market, the 30% allowed profit margin, and only domestic market remained.

During high inflation times our self-sustenance with the food produced in our own country was 80-90%. People owned small farms, where some of the owners farmed after their full time jobs. Other people rented the land from private farmers and some from the state. House owners usually had gardens, where fruits, vegetables and even poultry or other small animals were kept. Yet others rented small gardening plots in the town’s vicinity, where they grew vegetables and fruits. Growing own food wasn’t disgraceful then.

And, we were sharing within the communities – what one had in abundance he/she would offer to the neighbor and receive something useful in return. People regularly went to help their relatives who were farming and received food in return. In afternoons many went to help their friends or relatives to build or repair their houses.

Some 25 years later those gardening plot groups were banished, because their shags were disrupting the views of the town officials. This happened while hypermarkets were built.  So, at present we have about 2,5 square meters shopping space per person (above EU average) and some 10-20% of self-sustenance with the domestic food production, declining expertise in agricultural knowledge among the young generations, an increasing expertise among the poor in chasing discounted food offered by the continuous marketing actions and no limits to the profit margins. Supermarkets offer a separate box with discounted vegetables and fruits nearing their expiration date and a cart to place a purchased item for the poor. A gloomy sight!

Then in 2005, when I visited my relatives in the USA, I observed how people used their credit cards. The situation looked so familiar, I was sure it won’t last long before the whole system crashes. I didn’t need to wait more than three years. The entropic system crumbled like a house of cards and spread all over the planet.

However, it looks like poor people can support themselves during recession when they can grow food on their own or rented gardening plots. The more natural the food production, the better it is as we can read in Food and Permaculture, where David Blume states that “permacultural farming yields 8 times more than what USDA claims possible” and 22% CEC (Cation Exchange Capacity) for the soil (the divide line between dead and alive soil is 5% CEC).

I presume that every municipality owns some (surrounding) land. So, my suggestion is that every municipality on the planet offers a free of charge gardening plot in the town’s vicinity to its poorest members. Maybe they can even offer some flat roofs, if they can hold the weight of the soil and vegetables. It wouldn’t be such entirely new idea, some states and communities have provided themselves with gardening before as we can see in the documentary series Around the World in 80 Gardens by Colin Jones and other similar documentaries.

There should be no rent for the poorest; the only condition should be that they learn how to grow organically produced vegetables and fruits.  And maybe they can dig a well for the watering. There are more benefits to this than just food supply. Usually it is more satisfactory to produce own food than to beg for it at one of the charity institutions. It usually has more dignity in it and people don’t lose their connectedness to the land so quickly. Their children might pick up some agricultural knowledge while helping to garden as well. And in due time they might become not only experts in gardening, but also experts in avoiding food adds for they will learn that the most delicious food comes from the soil and not from the store shelves. In this way the poor might not live in such scarcity and the agricultural knowledge won’t be lost either.

Barefoot round about

The pleasurable side of uncomfortableness

 Not so long ago we were walking and running about barefoot. This was a medical recommendation for being flat-footed and also a pleasurable occupation. Right after coming home from school we took off our shoes and felt the earth and its various forms, and sometimes its inhabitants with our feet: soil, sand, mud, pebbles, puddles, dew, conifer needles, grass, moss … Now it looks like we have forgotten our barefoot enthusiasm from childhood. Yet, there is something in barefooted touch with the earth, pebbles, dew. It is agreeable, beneficent; it grounds us and also heals us.

How uncommon, the scientists who studied cancer patients, found out, that a short-term stress improves their health, like parachute jumping[1]. It is similar with barefoot running on dewy grass or walking on sun-heated stones, walking on sharp pebbles barefoot or with very thin soles – it presents our body with a short-term stress.

Barefoot walk or running usually forces you to first touch the ground with your fingers instead of the soles like we usually do while walking or running with the shoes on.

Walking and running barefoot on dewy grass

Years ago I wake up with such fog in my head that didn’t clear away until ten in the morning after some cups of strong bitter coffee or tea. So I started running barefoot first thing in the early morning every day during months without letter R. This morning jog didn’t take more than five minutes. I woke up instantly. The fog in my head cleared away without any coffee or tea; I didn’t even need a glass of water with freshly pressed lemon juice to wake up.

Walking on the mowed grass

Freshly mowed grass has a pleasant, sweet scent.   It pricks considerably, but it is manageable if you slither. In this way you also massage your feet and provide your brain with aromatherapy only fresh hay can give (provided no phytopharmaceuticals have been used on the grass).

Similarly, yet different, it is to walk barefoot in the forest. The grass is also soft, but it doesn’t make your feet sink. In the forest, except if it very dry, the ground sinks a bit and softens your landing and helps you to maintain you balance training. Moss is the best, and fir needles also – they are smooth and sometimes prick a bit. The paths are usually damp a bit.

Walking on the pebbles

Actually we are not aware of what we lost since we walk shod on asphalted pavements and roads. Not so long ago, when we still walked on rocky roads or rocky sidewalks, our walk upon it also massaged our feet. Back then barefoot walk upon pebbles was recommended only because of flat feet. But that practice had also some other side effects: the warm pebbles massaged our acupressure points on the feet we didn’t hear about yet and also warmed up our feet. Even though we haven’t heard anything about reflexology and acupressure, we provided ourselves with a similar treatment just by the way – every afternoon actually. It seems like the more we walk shod on asphalt the sooner we should learn the before mentioned techniques.

People older than me had to walk barefoot also into the mountains – shoes were only to attend mass. It is harder; hence the pebbles often have sharper edges. And the grassy terrain beside the paths can be quite steep. We can help ourselves with thinner soles. Long ago I maneuvered my way down the mountains in borrowed, totally outworn mountain shoes through a total downpour on the narrow mountain path. I was soaking wet. The soles were so thin, I felt almost every pebble.   My usual long step was out of use then, because the worn out rubber sole didn’t cling to the wet slippery pebbles. So I had to shorten my every step and thereby multiplied the number of pressings on the ground. After reaching the final destination I sat wet to my skin into my car parked, in the mountain village. The vapor was steaming out of me so heavily, a dense fog formed in the car. I would expect me to tremble from cold; hence there wasn’t warm outside. But no, quite to the contrary, I was warm, because my feet have been massaged as it has not ever been before. I didn’t even get sick – in spite of soaking for some hours in the rain. Of course, you don’t need to try this in the rainy weather, and besides, your physical fitness has to be excellent, to try such an ordeal.

Walking or running barefoot on warm soil or fine sand

It is something incredibly pleasant. Warm soil is a very fine dust that softly wraps your fingers when your feet slightly sink into the dusted soil. It touches your skin very slightly; its touch resembles gentle breeze that envelopes your feet.

It similar with the fine sand, only its touch is a bit rougher. Warm fine sand is very pleasant also when your feet sink into it and your feet is wrapped with warm fine sand. It helps you to train to maintain your balance and the sole muscles.

Walking or running barefoot on the snow

Barefoot walking or running is only for the brave and for a short time. Surely, old people, who were forced to walk barefoot due to lack and poverty, could tell more about it.

Barefoot walking on the asphalt

You can walk or run also on asphalt – it is rough, grained and hard to walk upon. It can be unpleasantly hot. It’s not really healthy treatment for your feet, but it does force you to step down with the front part of your feet.

The terrain should be carefully chosen: you should not carry out these barefoot endeavors where the phytopharmaceuticals are used or where some other contamination can be expected. You should not do this not even where such means have been used in the nearby past or in the close vicinity, because the aerosols for the spraying or dusting spread into the air and also land on the nearby places, whether they are full of greenery or not. Barefoot touch with the Earth is a healing one if the ground is not contaminated.

Watching the documentary film Dirt!, directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow (2009), can be an inspiration (or reading the book Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, written by Bryant Logan).

As already mentioned barefoot walking or running makes you touch the ground with the front part of your feet and fingers, what also strengthens the muscles of the feet arches, calves and the pelvic sinews, and it also causes less vibrations up the spine and lessens the pressure on the joints. You can find some instructions about it on the web site of dr Dan Lieberman. http://barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/5BarefootRunning&TrainingTips.html