Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Vitamin Craze

By Namaste Staff Writer

When I was growing up, nobody took vitamins. Now, millions pop them every day and assume they are receiving a boost to their health.

But are vitamins all that they are cracked up to be?

I was in my early 30s before I started taking a multi—an expensive brand out of California that professed to draw all of its ingredients from natural organic sources.

These days, I don’t take vitamins.

Says Ron Garner, a health researcher, educator, author, and speaker with a BEd, MSc, and Diploma in Natural Health, “The body cannot utilize large doses of separate vitamins and minerals.”

If you begin taking vitamins after years of eating a poor diet, you may notice an improvement in health, as your body at last gets some of the nutrition it’s been lacking. But this boost in your feeling of wellbeing is usually short-lived. Before long, the body begins to object. “Synthetic or refined vitamins are toxic to the body,” Ron explains, “and it reacts to eliminate them.”

When I began taking vitamins, I noticed an improvement in my energy—for a while. Then it was back to status quo. I was dragging, often by mid morning, and certainly in the afternoon. I tried different brands, different doses. Always, the gain was only temporary.

Why was the gain not long-lasting? Ron emphasizes, “Supplements are not created equal! Nature’s vitamins heal. Synthetic vitamins stimulate, but do not heal.”

Ron’s approach flies in the face of popular wisdom. He states that “vitamins and minerals are meant to work together as a synergistic team. If high doses of a supplement are taken, a nutritional imbalance can be created in the body.”

Synergistic is the all-important word. For thousands of years, our bodies have thrived on foods that supply us with enzymes, vitamins, and minerals in a carefully crafted ratio. Upsetting that ratio isn’t smart.

You might think that if you take the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals your body needs, in the correct ratio, you are on solid ground. Not so. An isolated vitamin, even when chemists attempt to augment it with complementary substances, is not the same as vitamins set in the context of foods.

It’s fascinating to see studies of vitamins, such as beta carotene, not living up to the expectations we had of them in terms of fighting certain disease and degenerative processes. In fact, in the case of beta carotene, a study actually found that it may worsen some cancers. The reason is simple. Isolated vitamins aren’t what the body responds to best, especially if they are synthetic. The body needs to receive beta carotene in a synergistic arrangement for it to have a beneficial effect.

Everyone is going to tell you, of course, that their brand is manufactured by a method that makes the ingredients available to the body in the correct forms. Buyer, beware.

What I do these days is eat differently, and supplement only with products that are from whole foods. As Ron explains, “All fruits and vegetables, if grown in mineral-rich soil and ripe when picked, contain a wide and balanced range of vitamins and minerals. This is the natural way we are intended to obtain them.”

If you want foods that are rich in nutrition, there is a growing array of organic produce available today, coupled with produce that’s especially fresh because it’s sold through local farmers’ markets. Even if you can’t obtain organic or local produce, by reducing or eliminating canned and packaged foods, replacing them with vegetables and fruit, you will do yourself a world of good.

There’s much valuable information about supplements in Ron’s book Conscious Health—an entire chapter, in fact. You’ll discover how to supply your body with the balanced intake of foods it requires by using foods and supplements synergistically.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

"You Caused Me to Do This"

By Namaste Staff Writer

One of the professors gunned down at Virginia Tech was a Romanian Jew who survived the holocaust. Still teaching at 76 years of age, he barricaded the doors to protect his students. His life had been spared all those years ago, and now he gave it saving others.

A person who gives their life for others demonstrates in a dramatic way the irrevocable oneness of the human species. There is no greater evidence of how deeply interfused our lives truly are.

The young man who opened fire did not sense this oneness, or he would not have done what he did. Yet, he was a clean-living student, according to the man who sold him the handgun for $500. He was not downtrodden, victimized by poverty, or openly in a rage. On the contrary, he came from solid suburbia, living in a neighborhood and dwelling that would be an immigrant’s dream. He was an English student at a university that would be the envy of so many around the globe, who would love to study at such an institution.

It’s easy to see why the tragedy has been dubbed an “inexplicable rampage.” And yet, it is not inexplicable—not when you view it through the lens of Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process. The causes are not difficult to understand.

He was a loner, they say, who blamed the world around him for his sadness. Even when people greeted him, he often didn’t respond. Clearly, he was in far too much inner pain by this stage in his life. He was suffering from what Eckhart Tolle calls “the pain body” in his book A New Earth.

“You caused me to do this,” Cho Seung-hui wrote in his suicide note.

Well, he did it—he was responsible. He pulled the trigger, not once or twice, but over and over and over.

And also, so did we. For in some measure he was right. We too are responsible. Let me explain.

President Bush’s comments stressed that “people from all over this country” are thinking about the bereaved. University president Charles Steger commented that the “entire nation and people from many other nations are coming together to grieve” over what happened. Not only was the basketball stadium packed, but the crowd spilled over into the football stadium. At such times, we naturally rally around each other.

What we see in this is a fundamental sense of our inherent oneness. We come together because we are together. It is our basic state, even though much of the time we ignore it. We are one—one life, the expression of one universal love.

But to the degree that we fail to make this a realized love, a felt love, individuals such as the 23-year-old South Korean feel isolated—and the pain can simply overwhelm them. There is some suggetion he was on medication for depression. He had also been recommended to counseling because of the disturbed nature of his writing in English class. What a tragedy that we don’t rally around each other each and every day, so that the difficulties we go through don’t spiral out of control.

Most of us carry a great deal of pain, though we keep it hidden most of the time—not only from others, but from ourselves. We stay busy. We keep the television on, the music going. We don’t allow the pain to surface.

But how much better to resolve our pain. How much better to become so centered in ourselves, so present in each moment, that we have no need of denial or avoidance. On the contrary, we are thrilled to feel each second of our lives.

Michael Brown’s The Presence Process enables just such a resolution of pain. His book, coupled with his CDs, are wonderful healing tools that free us from pain so that we can live joyously, connectedly, lovingly.

In light of what happened at Virginia Tech, consider not only embarking on The Presence Process for yourself, but also sharing it with those around you. Introduce them to Michael’s groundbreaking work. This is a process the whole planet needs desperately to experience.

Michael Brown – The Presence Process CDs

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

Namaste Staff Writer

There was a time in my life when I would have reacted to the tragedy at Virginia Tech as many are reacting—with anger. As one student expressed, “I’m beyond upset. I’m enraged.”

It’s easy in hindsight to blame authorities for not locking down the campus. They made a judgment call, and apparently got it wrong: the incident was well beyond a domestic dispute. Telling students to proceed to classes as usual, but cautiously, appears now like a poor decision—yet, it would have seemed like a sane decision had it turned out to be an isolated domestic incident.

A great deal of anger is bound to pour out in the days and weeks ahead. But it will solve nothing. New regulations will be written for how to respond in such situations. More security will be added to campuses perhaps. But the reality is that, no matter what precautions are taken, we live in a world in which we are vulnerable to each other—and if one of us loses it, mayhem can result.

What I feel instead of anger is an incredible sorrow. I didn’t know a single person who was involved. Yet, I knew every one of them. We all did.

We knew the individuals who were killed. We know the wounded. We know their parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. We know them far more deeply than most of us can begin to imagine.

And that is why the only fitting response is to feel the grief that comes with losing people who are, in a very real sense, a part of us.

We think of ourselves as isolated individuals, connected to family and friends in many cases, but really having little or nothing to do with the people who suffered this carnage. Similarly, we think of ourselves as quite separate from the people who die at the hands of suicide bombers in Iraq, Pakistan, Casablanca—the list these days seems almost endless.

We are not separate. Neither are we isolated. We are all part of one life, one universal heartbeat at the center of the cosmos, one love that binds each and every one of us together with ties far closer than kith and kin.

So today, there is only one fitting response: tears, grief, deep sadness.

Tears for the loss of each student or faculty member. Tears for those who have lost them. But also, tears for the administration, who made the best decision they were at that moment capable of, and tears for the police and ambulance workers who had to confront the aftermath. I have been present at a shooting; it is not an image that leaves your mind or heart in a hurry.

Among a group of friends last night, the comment was passed that the executions were probably carried out by a “crazy” man. I’ve seen the same comments in the press. There will always be crazy people, we tell ourselves. It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not one of us—not someone even remotely like us—who could do such a thing, just one isolated “nut.”

But he, too, was one of us. He was as much a part of us as our own heartbeat. Somewhere in the world, it’s likely there are family and friends who are so bewildered by what he did, they don’t even know where to begin with their grief. In their eyes, he was their college student—just as I have a son who is a college student.

I cannot imagine the feelings of the mother of the man who committed these murders, or the father, if they are alive. I cannot begin to fathom how his siblings must feel, if he has siblings. The pain of knowing someone you brought into the world, or grew up with, did such a terrible thing must be excruciating beyond all description.

Tears are the only fitting response. Tears, and compassion. If anger, range, fury are what you are feeling, instead of venting the anger, allow yourself to be “with” it. No denial, no venting—just bringing stillness to it, and allowing it to be.

When we bring stillness to our strong emotions, quieting ourselves instead of becoming vocal, we move from emoting to deep feeling. The two are not the same. When we stop screaming with rage, we find that behind the anger is a well of sadness. Tears begin to flow. Compassion replaces rage.

If an administrative official made a wrong call yesterday, how must he or she feel today? Can we allow ourselves to go there—to feel what such people must be feeling? For to go there, be with them, be alongside them and in our heart hold their hand, is the only fitting response for a species who are all expressions of the single one heart of the universe that is the source of all life, all love, all caring.

On the morning of Nine Eleven, Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now and A New Earth, recorded an interview called Even the Sun Will Die. If you have not heard it, you can order it from this website. In this interview, Eckhart calls us to awareness of how craziness is not an isolated state of a minority, but a feature of the human race at its present level of development. In some measure, we are all part of the craziness of our planet. We are all responsible for the tragedy that sweeps the globe day after day.

Anger solves nothing. What is needed is awareness. Tragedies on this scale happen all over the world each day, but we ignore most of them because they don’t seem to touch our lives. Yet, they are happening not to them, but to us.

When we see our oneness—when we feel the oneness in our bones, instead of merely as a concept in our head—we become responsible for each other. We become responsible to love, to care, to share, to include, to reach out.

In a caring world, people don’t grow up isolated in their rage, frozen in their anger, stewing in their resentment. That only happens to people in a world where all of us are somewhat crazy, which is what enables us not to notice, not to care, not to reach out and include.

In a caring world, even when there is brain damage, there is deep love and inclusion. People who are damaged are surrounded by love, protected by compassion, nourished by the goodness of all among whom they live.

Individuals only lose it when they have disconnected at some level. They lose it when they don’t feel part of the fabric of humanity. Our world has many such people today. That’s one of the symptoms of the craziness that haunts us all. Such “crazy” individuals become the identified patient, the scapegoat even, for an insanity in which we all participate—the insanity of being disconnected from the oneness that is our very being.

Oneness is the truth of our being. Connectedness is the essence of our humanity. When these are not experienced, tragedy is the result.

I long for the day when, from the earliest days in school, the bullying, taunting, and isolation that are rife today in our educational system are replaced by deep feelings of inclusion, oneness, connectedness.

I long for each and every child who enters our world to be introduced to the universal Presence that is the core of each of us. I long for a sense of our oneness as expressions of this Presence, and therefore our greatness as individuals and as a species, to become the heart and soul of our school curriculum.

In the meantime, we all have a part in bringing about what Eckhart Tolle calls the New Earth. We help foster awareness of our oneness, and the love that flows from knowing we are one, when we take responsibility for ourselves becoming conscious. To assist this process is the sole reason Namaste Publishing exists.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Terror of the Tender

Namaste Staff Writer

When Dan Brown was asked by ABC, “Why do you think your book has touched such nerve?” he responded, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Brown has hit the nail on the head in this comment.

In his bestseller The DaVinci Code, Brown weaves into a murder mystery a legend dating back centuries that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a daughter named Sarah whose descendants are still alive today.

In the last century, gospels the church thought it had expunged back in the time of the emperor Constantine have come to light. The DaVinci Code quotes the Gospel of Philip, in which Jesus is the “companion”––the word can mean spouse, or partner––of Mary Magdalene. “Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth,” says this gospel. Where in the biblical gospels do you hear about Jesus making out?

Were they married? The DaVinci Code imagines them so. But listen to what the gospel says next: “The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’” If they were married, what would be so shocking about this? It does however sound like Jesus, in this Gospel at least, was romantically involved with Mary.

The DaVinci Code has caused quite a stir. The reason for the stir is nothing new, however. The idea Jesus was intimate with a woman was threatening as far back as 1900 years ago. In the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, suppressed until discovered in Cairo in 1896, Peter demands, “Did the Saviour really speak with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Levi, another disciples, retorts, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made her worthy who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.”

A woman from the south of France, where it’s claimed Mary Magdalene and her daughter Sarah fled for refuge after the crucifixion, when interviewed by ABC’s Primetime yelled, “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” Millions just don’t want Jesus to be really human––certainly not sexual.

Why such resistance to the idea Jesus was involved with a woman? What’s the big deal?

Let me refer once gain to Dan Brown’s statement, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Legends often speak not to historical fact, but to psychological realities. Whatever the historical reality, which remains shrouded in antiquity, it’s my belief that Mary represents the suppressed feminine aspect of our humanity. The legend of Jesus and Mary having a child together says to me that the truth about ourselves that each of them represents lives on, regardless of the repressed’s repeated attempts to squelch our sexuality.

In centuries past, there was such a systematic discrediting of the sensuality Mary Magdalene represents that she started out as preeminent witness to the resurrection and by the fifth century was declared a whore. But of course, what you suppress ultimately bites you in the butt. So the Magdalene springs to life in the twenty-first century on network television! Repressed people despise her, yet they can’t shake her.

It’s not the biological aspect of sex in itself that’s so scary in all this, though. Our real terror is of what sex symbolizes. Males have within them a female aspect––it’s the tender part of us. Our putting down of females is rooted in a terror of the tender.

Male dominance of women is male resistance to the reflection of our own tenderness in the female. When we control and denigrate women, we are saying don’t let a woman have sufficient intimate impact on me to really touch me and awaken the tender side of me.

We need to connect the words hateful and hurtful, and realize that we are terrified of being shown the pain of being disconnected from our tenderness––which is why something like five million women were burned at the stake in the middle ages as witches, and gay bashing is alive and well today. When we can’t accept the tender in ourselves, we lash out at symbols of our tenderness .

Yet The DaVinci Code suggests that it is in the full embracing of our humanity that the divine Presence that undergirds our humanity is revealed. Women claiming their strength, and men claiming their tenderness—this is what our world needs today more than ever.

We are talking about the sexes finally “showing up” as whole men and whole women, loving everything about themselves, embracing their humanity in all of its aspects.

If you would like to be free of your reticence about showing up as a strong woman, or showing up as a tender man, you’ll want a copy of Michel Brown’s book The Presence Process. It’s all about how you can reclaim the fullness of your being and live in the richness of your humanity.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

FEMA - A Wakeup Call

By Namaste Staff Writer

Helping out in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, both of which struck the Gulf Coast in late 2005, I watched the waste of public money happen. People who didn’t need help and had plenty of financial resources of their own received in some cases thousands of dollars, while others who needed help were left destitute.

FEMA awarded something like a billion dollars in improper payments to individuals, while spending almost another billion on 25,000 trailers that were unusable because they were not appropriate for flood zones. They also doled out $1.8 billion for hotel rooms and cruise ship cabins, providing temporary housing that cost more than permanent housing in apartments would have cost.

The French Quarter may be back in business after the biggest disaster in United States history, but more than a year and a half later, tens of thousands are housed in trailers, as homes stand empty, uninhabitable as a result of the flood waters—a testimony to the inefficiency of our response to this catastrophe.

Now we’re told that tons of food under the care of FEMA have had to be thrown out. Something like six million meals stockpiled in case of another disaster in 2006 spoiled because of inadequately equipped storage facilities. That’s more than $40 million on the garbage heap.

It does no good to scapegoat FEMA or other government agencies, however. Inefficiency and wastage of this kind are rife in not just government agencies but all kinds of organizations. If it isn’t FEMA that’s under fire, it’s the cost of tools or equipment bought by the military—or the millions skimmed off a charity, aid to overseas nations, or a corporate pension scheme.

We live in a society that is so often trying to bolt the door after the horse has escaped. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could avoid many of our problems in the first place?

The fact is, we could, if our focus shifted from judgment and blame to awakening people’s awareness and raising their consciousness.

Our world could be a very different place, in which there is little wastage, minimal inefficiency, and therefore a whole lot more of the needed resources for everyone on our planet. It’s not rocket science. It’s simply a matter of consciousness. When you become aware, problems are mostly quite easy to solve. As Michael Brown, a Namaste author, likes to say, Presence knows no order of difficulty.

Three book from Namaste Publishing especially home in on the absolute practicality of living consciously, instead of being driven by unconscious or external forces.

Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth examines the need of each and every one of us to become part of a planet-wide evolution in consciousness, and shows how this will transform both our individual lives our lives collectively as a species.

Eckhart goes beyond the insights of his earlier book The Power of Now, in an easy-to-read, moving book that invites us to envision the world as it could be—as, indeed, it must be if we are to survive. It is an extremely hopeful book, pointing to a rising consciousness that can transform the planet. It is also available in CD format, read by Eckhart.

Michael Brown’s The Presence Process is a practical, everyday guide to becoming a person who functions consciously. When we are conscious, we make responsible decisions, instead of making decisions reactively as we’ve seen with FEMA. How much grief we spare ourselves when we take the step of becoming conscious. Our choices then direct our lives down paths that are fulfilling, loving, and benign.

In Conscious Health, Ron Garner takes a sweeping look at how so much of our modern world is engineered to make us sick—from the food and water we put in our mouths, to the pricey protocols we use as we attempt to undo the damage we do to ourselves out of ignorance. This is one of the most helpful and practical books Namaste has published and has the potential to change your life.

Criticizing, blaming, castigating—we’re good at these. But humans have been indulging in judgment from time immemorial, only to repeat the saga of failure in one generation after another. Blaring headlines, unmasking the latest travesty, ultimately do nothing to bring about change. Awakening consciousness is the path to change.

There is something to be learned from FEMA’s inefficiency—the need for all of us, at every level of society, to begin functioning consciously instead of as cogs in a wheel.

It is impossible to become conscious as an individual and fail to have an impact on our fellow humans. As each of us faces up to how unaware we are much of the time, becoming increasingly awake in all that we do, we raise the consciousness of the whole planet.

It is time for us to take a global leap into conscious living.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Firing of A Shock Jock

By Namaste Staff Writer

The termination of Don Imus’ four-decade run on CBS Radio came in response to an outcry from a broad range of listeners. The outcry is evidence of the growing consciousness in our 21st century civilization, and a hopeful sign.

At the same time, it’s also likely that Imus is serving as a scapegoat for a society that in countless ways puts people down, derogating them instead of honoring their divinity.

I live five minutes from one of America’s great universities. Because college kids are around me all the time, the kind of language Imus used on his radio show is something I hear constantly. Imus’ reference to the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” is the language of too many of our young people today, even in high school.

We are a culture that tolerates shock, at the expense of human beings who ought to be honored. We justify it under the banner of “freedom.” But there is nothing freedom-like about language and behavior that demean any human. It is especially appalling when it is directed at the black, female sector of society, which for too long has had to suffer real oppression.

The fact is, as a people we are often guilty of dishonoring one another. What we deny and will not face in ourselves, we project onto others. This simply isn’t honest.

The derogation of women in countless sexist ways in our society stems from a widespread inability in males to embrace their own tenderness. We are afraid to feel. Consequently, our hatred of our tenderness gets projected onto the female of the species.

Imus just happened to go a bit too far in public, becoming a candidate for a scapegoat for what we will not face up to as a civilization—our flight from our own loving, kind, gentle, tender essence. For whether we know it or not, a universal Presence resides in all of us as the heart of our true being, and love is the primary attribute of this divine Presence.

In The Presence Process, Michael Brown encourages people to “show up” in their lives. It is to be hoped that the outcry at Imus’ racial and sexist slur comes not from self-righteous moral judgment, but from a growing awareness of the value and dignity of every single human being—indeed, from a treasuring of the female and black skin, both of which are aspects of the divine diversity that creates all of us in love.

CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves spoke of “the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society.” Instead of a piranha-like flesh feeding on Imus, scapegoating him for our society’s derogation of people, it behooves us each to examine our own language. Do the words we say to each other on a daily basis encourage the flowering of our human greatness? Do we listen to the kind of rap on the radio that puts women down, often with violent language?

If you’d like to engage in a little self-examination, which is the only helpful response to the CBS firing of the “shock jock,” you’ll find the tools to do it in The Presence Process. You may just be surprised how little self-respect and self-love most of us show ourselves, and therefore fail to show to our fellow humans.