Illness: Call to Transformation and Awakening
Robert Frost (1874-1963), the best known and most beloved American poet of the 20th century, won the Pulitzer Prize four times and was Poet Laureate of the US from 1958-1959. Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken is most famous for the lines: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.”
President Kennedy coined the term “the new frontier” in the 1960s to describe the technological challenge of being first on the moon. In the 21st century, the new frontier is consciousness. It is the cutting-edge of physics and is redefining individual experience where it is the challenge of waking up and choosing better options that often restore health and save lives.
We make choices every day about food and healthcare. People who make those choices unconsciously – following the crowd – are getting sick and dying in an epidemic of chronic diseases. However, a growing number of Americans are making more conscious choices that give them better options. They are not only changing their own lives, but are redefining the culture in an historic period of transition. They are creating a quiet, grassroots revolution as they take their power back and educate others. It is a shift in values that is turning life-threatening diseases into a transformational awakening.
Epidemic of Chronic Disease
USA Today reports, in the article Countries Spending the Most on Health Care: “Though the United States spends far more on health care than any other nation, life expectancy of the average American is only 78.8 years, lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average and the lowest among the top spending nations.”
Americans are suffering from an epidemic of serious illnesses that were rare just a generation ago. These include many types of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, etc. Many seniors now consider it normal to be on a cocktail of expensive drugs with multiple negative side effects and whose interaction has never been tested. A growing number of kids are plagued by cancer, autism, seizures, diabetes, learning disabilities, etc. They are subjected to an increasing number of vaccines and many are on prescribed drugs.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the media are not protecting citizens from the dangers of GMOs, aspartame, and high fructose corn syrup in foods, fluoride in water and toothpaste, or mercury in vaccines and dental amalgams. So, Americans are under a life-threatening attack with no one to protect them. They are on their own.
With so many (young and old) so sick, this is not an individual issue. It is a collective problem. The causes and solutions need to be identified to allow people to prevent and cure this escalating epidemic. Illness is a call to make changes in our thinking, values, and lifestyles. It demands that we be more conscious, more responsible – to learn to be our own advocates so we can take our health and our power back. The path each person chooses has major personal and national implications.
The Growing Health Divide
The “digital divide” was a concern earlier as some people got left behind in the computer revolution which had major consequences for their access to information, employment opportunities, sense of competence, and ability to function in the modern world.
However, there is now a health divide that is not generally recognized. People who are following the standard American diet (SAD) are getting sick and dying by the millions of easily preventable and curable chronic diseases. When they get sick, they go to Allopathic Doctors who often prescribe drugs and/or surgery – even when there are much better options. MDs may not know about less expensive, more effective holistic treatments because their education and training come from drug companies.
Allopathic Doctors have forgotten that Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, said “Let food be your medicine and medicine your food” because they learn little about nutrition in med school. MDs also ignore Hippocrates warning, “First do no harm”. Dr. Josh Axe points out in his article Conventional Medicine is the Leading Cause of Death that: “You may have thought cancer or heart disease takes the lives of more Americans than any other illness or event. But conventional medicine is actually the leading cause of death today!”
How Pharmaceuticals Came To Be The 4th Leading Cause Of Death is another article that sounds the alarm with: “Prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in America… There is zero effort on the part of Doctors, Pharmacists, the FDA or anyone else to minimize adverse effects of drugs. If an effort were being made, we would not be in the tragic situation that we’re in.”
The article New Study – Ibuprofen is Probably Causing Thousands of Deaths a Year warns: “A new study reveals that a commonly consumed painkiller, wrongly considered harmless by millions, is probably causing thousands of deaths from cardiac arrest each year.”
In Shocking Proof That Three Top Prescriptions Do Not Work, Dr. Alan Christianson points out: “Today, a full 61% of adults use as least one drug to treat a chronic health problem – that is a 15% rise from 2001. Even more startling is that 1 in 4 senior citizens gulp down at least five medications every single day… Medications do not work well for chronic diseases. I would argue that the dangers of these medications are even larger than it might seem because of the false sense of security they provide. Who will try harder to improve their health: someone who feels they need to, or someone who believes that a pill is protecting them? Many have the impression that radical, lifestyle change might be a nice idea, but pills are more powerful.”
Fortunately, a growing number Americans are waking up and making better choices. Not only are they recovering very serious (even terminal) illnesses – they are also transforming their lives and the nation. In fact, holistic healthcare is becoming more mainstream than allopathic medicine.
The April 2016 article Alternative Medicine Finally Becoming More Mainstream reveals: “In the past few years, many doctors and conventional healthcare institutions in the United States have shown a new acceptance of treatments and philosophies that historically have not been part of mainstream medicine. In fact, now the term alternative medicine is out, and integrative medicine is in. They say the more natural approach can even lead to reversals and cures. They say the driver of this trend is overwhelming patient demand.”
This is where the digital divide and the health divide overlap. Before access to the internet, Americans had no choice but to trust that their doctors knew the best options. The information gap between someone with a medical degree and patients was too wide to challenge the knowledge or intent of the physician. The role of the patient was simply to be trusting and obedient to the medical authority who had the status of an all-knowing demi-god. Some joke that “MD” stands for “Medical Deity”!
Even in the age of information, many people who are internet savvy fail to use the internet to inform themselves of health options. So, they get left behind in the growing health divide. However, a growing number of computer-savvy Americans turn to the internet to get informed about healthcare options. With a simple search, they can find numerous articles, videos, and books on a wide range of topics.
Those patients are now often better informed than their doctors about less expensive, more effective holistic options. So, the knowledge gap and power differential have shifted dramatically. While the value of Allopathic Medicine for dealing with trauma is recognized, its effectiveness in preventing and curing chronic diseases is now increasingly seen as minimal.
As people choose the road less travelled in health, they are profoundly transforming their own lives and quietly revolutionizing Western medicine and Western culture. They are becoming authorities whose inspirational examples and successes carry great weight in guiding others.
Each One Teach One
In her book Honest Medicine: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases, Julia Schopick introduces the concept of “patient-evidence-based treatments”. MDs may dismiss these treatments as “anecdotal” because they are not backed by expensive placebo-controlled, double-blind studies which are the gold standard of medicine. However, even the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet admit drug-companies corrupt drug trials. Schopick explains why these remedies must now be taken seriously. David Brownstein, MD says: “Honest medicine should be required reading for all physicians and patients searching for safe and effective therapies.”
Honest medicine discusses four lifesaving remedies that have been treating – and in some cases curing – people for 25-90 years. Allopathic medicine may ignore these proven treatments because they are inexpensive and provide cures for many diseases – making expensive drugs and surgeries unnecessary. Honest medicine discusses low dose naltrexone, which has been used for over 200 diseases (e.g., Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s disease, HIV/AIDS and cancer since the 1980s). Schopick talks about the wonders of the Ketogenic Diet for paediatric epilepsy, the life-saving use of intravenous Alpha Lipoic Acid for “terminal” liver disease and some cancers. She also explains that Silverlon saved her husband’s life from a non-healing surgical wound.
Joseph Wouk, author of Google LDN explains in videos on his website that low dose naltrexone (LDN) stopped all symptoms of his multiple sclerosis in three months! Wouk now spends $10 a month on LDN instead of $1,500 to $3,000 a month on extremely dangerous, ineffective drugs. LDN is called a “wonder drug” and the best discovery since penicillin. However, it works like no other drug because LDN tricks the body into producing triple the amount of endorphins which super charges the immune system. LDN has been used successfully for the last 20 years, but is still not well known even among people interested in holistic remedies!
Chris Wark of www.chrisbeatcancer.com was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer at age 26. He was rushed into surgery and told that he needed 9-12 months of chemotherapy. However, Chris refused the chemotherapy and decided to radically change his diet. He says that he “overdosed on nutrition” with giant salads, lots of juicing, and tons of fruits and vegetables. After curing his cancer, he created his website to guide others. His site and YouTube channel include over 50 video interviews with people who have cured their cancers holistically. In her video interview with Chris, Carla Camarillo said that doctors admitted their approach would give her only a 2% chance of surviving 5 years. So, she chose a holistic approach instead that cured her Stage 4 breast cancer in under a year without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation! Carla’s site is at: www.cancerwarriorclub.com.
Dr. Izabella Wentz is the author of Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Lifestyle Interventions for Finding and Treating the Root Cause. In her recent 9-episode online series The Thyroid Secret, Dr. Wentz discussed her recovery from eight years of a severe thyroid disease. She interviewed over 100 doctors who are helping people with thyroid diseases recover with naturopathic medicine (aka functional medicine – “medicine that works”). She also interviewed dozens of patients who profoundly changed their lives to recover from devastating thyroid problems. Dr. Wentz points out that recovery requires not just a change in nutrition and medicine, but a very profound mental, and emotional awakening.
Shona Banda wrote Live Free or Die: Reclaim your Life… Reclaim your Country! when she had to decide between using hemp oil (illegal in her state) or die of the Crohn’s disease for which allopathic medicine had offered her no hope. Shona chose to live. Her title echoes Patrick Henry’s proclamation “Give me liberty or give me death!” during the political crisis of the Revolutionary War, but her words apply to an equally life-threatening health crisis now – and a time of growing personal revolution.
These are just a few examples of people transforming their life-threatening illnesses and creating books and/or websites in an impassioned dedication to spread the word and help others. The concept of “Each one teach one” is transforming the understanding of who is an “authority” as it shows the contrast between formal education and direct experiential knowledge. A growing number of people are choosing the road less travelled in healthcare – and that is making all the difference personally and nationally. They refuse to be helpless, hopeless, powerless victims. Instead, they turned their illnesses into a life-changing transformation and have become health advocates in a campaign to inform and save others.
In choosing the road less travelled, they are following the ancient tradition of the hero’s journey. They are wounded healers whose example is an inspiration and proof that the path they choose is worth following. They transform themselves from helpless victims to empowered leaders.
Hero’s Journey: Wounded Healer
In his classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell outlined the hero’s journey, a universal motif of transformation. The hero faces a life-threatening challenge which requires a profound transformation to survive. Upon his triumphant return, he carries the gift of wisdom gained through experience which he can share to guide others. In traditional healing traditions around the world, healers gain their wisdom not through going to school but through deep experiential knowledge. The wounded heroes of today are the traditional healers of the Western world.
In Return of the Bird Tribes, Ken Carey points out: “It seems that humans have been so long trained for subservience that they now feel insecure under their own initiative! The challenge before us is to reawaken ourselves and then to join with others to show through our example the beauty and power of the new way. We are called to organize in this time, not around leaders, ideologies or belief system, but around love: love for God, love for one another, and love for our sacred world. The new frontier is consciousness. This blessed world needs you and me to become all that she can be. We have an opportunity to bring to her a great gift: the gift of ourselves. Awakened. Whole.”
The significance of these personal transformations and changes in values cannot be overstated – on a personal, global, and historic level.
Caduceus and Chakras
These transformations are re-establishing the connection between the Caduceus (shown above) and the ancient CHAKRA system. Most Americans have never heard of the CHAKRA-s because it is never mentioned by their educational system, Western religions, or the media. Paradoxically, this ancient East Indian wisdom is encoded in the Caduceus – the symbol Western medicine. The Caduceus encodes the rising of consciousness from the base through the seven CHAKRA-s exploding in enlightenment.
The CHAKRA-s represent seven levels of consciousness for individuals and cultures. The first three CHAKRA-s are ego-driven, concerned with power, position, acquisition, competition. They are driven by a belief that there is not enough for everyone and a desire to “look out for #1” by any means necessary. That leads to constant competition and war. It is an unsustainable level of consciousness because it is like an all-consuming cancer on the Earth that ultimately devours, pollutes, and destroys everything. At this level of consciousness, people have an unquestioned faith in “authorities”.
As consciousness rises, people begin to follow their heart (4th CHAKRA), to speak their truths (5th CHAKRA – throat), and to trust their intuition (6th CHAKRA – pineal gland). This gives them the courage to face their challenges with new insight. They walk the road less travelled and establish a new heart-centred consciousness for the whole culture.
Although the CHAKRA-s are not taught here, the fact that they are encoded in the symbol for Western medicine tells us that true healing must be based on the evolution of consciousness. True healing of the body must involve the heart, the mind, and the spirit. The two snakes of the Caduceus show the rising male and female energies which, when they meet in the crown CHAKRA, explode into enlightenment. This is a symbol that we need both our rational left side of the brain and intuitive right side of the brain to be fully conscious.
Prevention: Taking Responsibility Early
The examples above are of people taking responsibility for their health to address life-threatening illnesses. Prevention is taking responsibility for your health before you get sick. Teaching people to prevent illnesses is one of the principles of naturopathic medicine. As the saying goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”!
People who eat the standard American diet (SAD) are dying early in epic numbers of preventable and curable diseases. Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT and Dr. Nancy Swanson have documented the close link between GMO foods and the epidemic of diseases. In his video House Call: Why You Should Never Eat High Fructose Corn Syrup, Dr. Mark Hyman says that if we take just high fructose corn syrup out of our food supply, it will make the biggest difference in our health. High fructose corn syrup (or simply labelled “fructose” in the USA) contains mercury and is found in sodas, juices, chips, candy bars, applesauce, breakfast bars, ice cream, and lots of other products!
The article Why Aspartame is Far Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup and the 2004 documentary Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World show how destructive aspartame is. In the video No Safe Dose of Aspartame, Dr. Betty Martini says aspartame is linked to many chronic illnesses including multiple sclerosis. Aspartame is used in over 10,000 products including diet sodas, NutraSweet, and Equal sweeteners.
Dr. Joseph Mercola’s explains in his video Change the Game by Taking Control of Your Health: “My motto is ‘Take Control of Your Health’, and my goal is to teach you how to get off the merry-go-round of drugs. Drugs can also be lethal, and even when properly prescribed and administered, they kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. My message is: there are safer, less expensive alternatives that can truly address the root cause of your disease. Invariably, reclaiming health and treating disease involves addressing your diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors, most of which cost little or nothing.”
Eating organic foods allows people to avoid GMOs, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, monosodium glutamate, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, etc. The article Grown Restaurant Opens in Central Florida Walmart says that Grown, the organic fast-food restaurant founded by former NBA and Miami Heat star Ray Allen and his wife Shannon in 2016, opened a second location in a Walmart in Orlando this year (2017). Shannon points out: “Operating Grown inside of Walmart makes us accessible to every family, regardless of their mean income. This is a game changer.”
John Robbins’ Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth started the food revolution in 1987. He continued to promote conscious food choices with his book The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World.
Fortunately, as more people are waking up, organic foods are now the fastest growing segment of the food industry and holistic medicine is becoming more mainstream than allopathic medicine! This shift in consciousness is changing both individual lives and the culture!
A New Earth
Chief Oren Lyons is a member of the Executive Committee of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival. In his report to the United Nations, Chief Lyons said that the Global Forum had summarized their deliberations with four words: “Values Change for Survival” – unless we change our values, we won’t survive.
Eckhart Tolle points out in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose: “Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.” Tolle says: “A significant portion of the Earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: evolve or die.” He adds: “A new heaven is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and a new Earth is its reflection in the physical realm.”
Oprah Winfrey teamed up with Tolle in 2008 to create an unprecedented 10-week online course to teach the principles in A New Earth to hundreds of thousands of viewers around the world. Tolle’s 2010 book The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment has 4.6 stars with over 4,800 reviews on Amazon. Tolle says humanity is on the verge of creating a new world by a personal transformation. He points out: “Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego.” He says, “A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now, and you are it!”
Many people with life-threatening illnesses are discovering that they must change their thinking and lifestyles to survive. However, these are also the changes the culture must make. So, just as illness is leading to the transformation of individuals who choose the road less travelled, the illness epidemic is leading to the awakening and transformation of the culture.
The book 21st Century Superhuman: Quantum Lifestyle: A Powerful Guide to Healthy Lifestyle and Quantum Well-Being explains: “We have entered what the ancients called The Shift of the Ages – the greatest evolutionary leap in human history… We are on the cutting edge of a new paradigm.” The book explains that this shift in consciousness is part of the shift from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.
yogaesoteric
October 31, 2017