Shell casing from bullets used to kill elephants in Bouba Ndjida. Photo courtesy of IFAW.

Christina M. Russo, Mongabay
Waking Times

Editor’s Note: This is an incredibly difficult story to look at, as it highlights in graphic detail how poachers are slaughtering the last remaining wild elephants on planet earth. While Americans and Europeans trouble themselves with entertainment, political news and the narratives set up for us by the mainstream media, the assault against nature continues, largely unspoken of.

It is a sign of intelligence and higher consciousness to have compassion for all living creatures, and this story needs to be told. We apologize in advance that many of these images are horribly graphic, and we encourage you to please visit Mongabay.com for more info and to support their unsung work. 

‘And also, they were alive when the poachers started to cut off their faces’—Celine Sissler-Bienvenu.

A new report released by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that poachers have killed a staggering 62 percent of Africa’s forest elephants in the last decade. The insatiable demand for elephant ivory hails mainly from China and Thailand, which is ironically hosting this year’s CITES (CoP16) meeting. The meeting will continue until March 13 2013.

The study is based on a survey of five elephant range states including Cameroon. Cameroon is the home of Bouba Ndjida National Park, where the dizzying massacre of 650 elephants occurred last year. The first and only NGO to enter the park during the massacre was the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The expedition was led by Celine Sissler-Bienvenu, France and Francophone Africa’s Director for IFAW. Sissler-Bienvenu had previously studied the park’s elephants as a wildlife student and wrote a moving tribute to the park’s elephants while she surveyed the slaughter. Freelance reporter Christina Russo conducted an interview with Sissler-Bienvenu at the anniversary of the slaughter, to discuss some of the final understandings of what happened in Bouba Ndjida—and the chances of a slaughter happening again.

Interview with Celine Sissler-Beinvenu, France and Francophone Africa’s Director for IFAW

Mongabay: We are now at the one-year anniversary of the slaughter of elephants in Cameroon?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes.

Mongabay: When was the beginning of the massacre?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: It began at the beginning of January 2012.

Mongabay:When do you suspect the poaching of the elephants stopped?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: At beginning of April 2012. The Cameroon soldiers [which were ultimately deployed to the park by the government] were on site at Bouba Ndjida until the end of April. So, we assume the poachers left in mid-April at the latest.

Mongabay: How many poachers do you think were complicit in the slaughter?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: The estimate is based on what local communities have told us. It was roughly between 50 and one hundred poachers. But they were pulling off into smaller groups of five or ten poachers. We also received information from a hunting guide about the numbers; he had been stopped by a group of 70 poachers. They kept him for a few hours and then released him.

Poached elephant on its knees with another lying dead behind it. Last year poachers killed an estimated 650 elephants in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjida National Park. Photo courtesy of IFAW.

Mongabay: This was a hunting guide familiar with the park?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. He has a hunting area around the park. In Cameroon, most of the protected areas are surrounded by hunting areas, which are managed by foreign guides. This was a French man, who came every season to the area.

Mongabay: Please tell me about the first clue you had that there was impending crisis in Bouba Ndjida?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: The first information came in early January; the news then was that poachers were headed to Cameroon. But also, we had heard rumors at the end of December that they were in Chad.

At the time, I was in Congo. By February, my contact on the ground in Bouba Ndjida said that he was hearing many shotguns and that elephants were being slaughtered. He also said he had contacted the authorities to let them know what was happening but there was no reaction by the authorities. That’s why he contacted me; he asked me if IFAW could do something.

Mongabay: This contact—he was in a safari lodge in the park?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. Exactly. It is a small lodge. Very, very small. Family sized.

Mongabay: He sent you photos of the elephants?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. When he asked me to do something, I asked that he go into the bush and take some photos so we can use them and show the evidence. He went with his team on the ground and at that time they located almost 200 carcasses already. And those were very close to easy access—these carcasses were right along the road. That is why he said the number would increase because some areas of the park—for example, in the north—were not very accessible. And that many elephants would ultimately be killed up in that area. And that was, in fact, the case.

Mongabay: Does this park have a main road that goes all the way through it?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: There are some roads, but during the rainy season you can’t drive on them. There is a road reaching the lodge and then you have different roads to visit the park…maybe two or three roads.

Mongabay: But these poachers were on horseback.

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes.

Mongabay: It has been widely reported that the janjaweed did this—but in fact, you believe it was a different group?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: It is Sudanese and Chadian poachers who slaughtered those elephants. Their clothes and Arab language were part of the evidence. Many assumed it was the janjaweed who did the poaching as in the previous years, but the tribal clan of Rizeigat, an affiliated group to the janjaweed, is actually more likely to have been the poachers.

Mongabay: What kinds of weapons were used to kill the elephants?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Military grade weapons such as AK47s. Also they had had Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPG) and a lot of ammunitions. Bags of ammunition.

Mongabay: What was the final number of elephants dead?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: We didn’t total the number by ourselves, but by talking with local communities that were in contact with poachers, it appeared the poachers were conducting a kind of census on the number of elephants they had killed. By mid March, the number was 650. After that, the Cameroon government put 600 soldiers into the park. The first round of soldiers they put in was 300; when we arrived on the ground and asked for a military response this is what they sent. And then between March and April the Cameroon government sent in another 300. They also sent in one helicopter and two planes to conduct aerial surveys.

Mongabay: To be sure, the poachers were absolutely indiscriminate?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. They killed all the members of the herd. They were following herds and killing all of them. Including the babies.

Mongabay: One thing you found as you surveyed the elephant slaughter, was that parts of their ears were cut off?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes, We noticed that on each of the elephants, except for the calves, they had a part of their ears cut in a circle form. We were informed this was a habit of the Sudanese mainly. That it was not a Cameroonian habit. It is like a trophy that the poachers wanted to get for them for each elephant killed.

Mongabay: According to IFAW, many if not most of the elephants were alive when their tusks were hacked off?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. Because some of the elephants had just one shot in the body. And also this was based on the position that they were in when they were found…some of them were on their knees—in a kneeling position. So they were still alive when the poachers cut their trunks. They suffocated. And also, they were alive when the poachers started to cut off their faces.

Mongabay: With a machete?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. And they were also using some kind of dagger because we saw some lacerations where the vital organs were. We think they were often finishing off the animal with a knife or dagger

We also noticed that those kinds of lacerations were on some calves, which was surprising. We think, in fact, it was a kind of training—a way for a poacher to be trained on killing elephants. Or we also think it may have been a tactic: to torture the younger elephants to get the adults to come around. So they can kill them all.

Trunk of slaughtered elephant. Photo by: © IFAW/A. Ndoumbe.

Mongabay: How long have you been working on wildlife issues?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: For 12 years.

Mongabay: Had you seen anything as brutal as this?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: No. Not at that scale. Because the poaching has really changed. The face of poaching has changed because before it was more subsistence poaching—except in the 80s. But it was not to feed the Asian market and not done that way. So now we clearly see a very organized way of poaching and it comes with a very strong determination. It is really organized—as would be military gangs. It is very, very well organized—and it does not give a chance to the animals to survive. It is very well planned.

Mongabay: What was the Cameroon’s government’s response to IFAW’s factual expedition into Bouba Ndjida?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: To be honest, the government was not really happy that we informed the media globally of what was happening in Bouba Ndjida and that we went on site to document this slaughter and their late reaction.

Mongabay: Did you have any security whilst in the park?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: No we did not. However, the assumption was that poachers would leave the park with the presence of hundreds soldiers. But the poachers were really determined and even with that military presence within the park, they continued to kill elephants very close to the lodge [where IFAW stayed]. We heard their shotguns, and a fight between the soldiers and the poachers, which left one soldier and one poacher dead. After that day of fighting between the soldiers and poachers, we had to leave as the risk became really high for our team.

Mongabay: Did the Cameroon government ever arrest anyone for the poaching?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: No. No one has been arrested. Beyond that, I question myself every day to know where is that ivory? Every week now there are big seizures in the world and so far we don’t know if this ivory is from Bouba Ndjida or not. I hope one day we will know. And to whom the ivory was sold.

Mongabay: Where do you think it went?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: It is out of Cameroon and probably went back to Sudan and now back outside of Sudan. What we know is that those gangs of poachers killed the elephants because they know they can make profit from the ivory and if they make profit to fund their wars or whatever, they know whom to sell the ivory to—and it seems very easy. Also, they were quite secured; these poachers did not have any problems doing this on such a big scale. We still have many questions about how they could do that for so long [in Bouba Ndjidja] at that level.

Mongabay: Can you clarify one point: do poachers enter Bouba Ndjida every year?

Elephants suffered a gruesome death. Photo by: © IFAW/A. Ndoumbe.

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Not in particular, but every year in dry season poachers would follow the Sudanese Axe—a “trail” that goes from Sudan to North Central Africa Republic (CAR), South Chad and to now Cameroon to kill the elephants. And those gangs of poachers are the ones who killed the elephants in Zakouma National Park in Chad in the early 2000s. But now Zakouma is more secure and Chad has taken the lead in Central Africa to protect elephants; the government has provided equipment and training to rangers. In fact, it is probably why the poachers decided to head to Cameroon. And we know that today there is a rumor that poachers are around again—they came back around in November (2012). They were in CAR in January—maybe a group of 150 or 200—and they were heading to Chad. And now from Chad there are rumors they are in Cameroon and back to Bouba Ndjida. But this year, the park has hundreds of soldiers on the ground, so we hope this will deter poachers from entering and killing the elephants.

The other problems is most of the elephants who lived in Bouba Ndjida have left the park because of the poaching pressure. They went to Chad in an area where it is not protected. We hope poachers won’t find them.

What is important here to say also is that more than half of the elephant population of Bouba Ndjida National Park has been killed. Which means it will take at least 50 years to come back to the level of population that previously existed. We don’t know how this will affect the surviving elephants, especially if they were young. We know some of them might develop behavioral problems after having watched other elephants being slaughtered.

Mongabay: You have spent a considerable time in Cameroon?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes, I did my studies in Cameroon. So I was used to working in protected areas watching elephants and the western lowland gorillas. I studied them in their habitat. I was probably seeing the ones who were slaughtered.

Mongabay: Do you plan to visit Bouba Ndjida this year?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: Yes. I will go on site in May to assess the anti-poaching support training that IFAW set up and which is about to start Mid-March till end of May.

Mongabay: CITES is taking place today as we speak. Has the events of Cameroon been taken seriously by CITES members?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: I hope. And that the lessons learned will be put in action. CITES needs to realize that elephants need more protection and that fighting poaching requires cooperation between all the governments of the elephant range states in Africa. But beyond the elephant range states, I think every country and government has a responsibility. Beyond the fact we are losing a species for ivory consumption in Asia—mainly China and Thailand—this slaughter demonstrated that the national security of the country was not in place. That’s really worrying because those poachers were very well armed and had to come from far away. They went right into another country. Cameroon demonstrated a very clear itinerary. So, that raises real questions of security. And, of course, wildlife trafficking is a transnational crime operated by organized crime, and if you really want to succeed in stopping it, you must employ all the enforcement agencies—otherwise we will lose the battle to save the elephants.

Mongabay: You are in France. What was the response to the Cameroon slaughter there?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: I think in Europe, people really looked at it as horrible. The ivory trade is banned in Europe and I think people didn’t believe that this kind of poaching could happen again. The public was horrified. On the government side, the EU plays a very influential role at CITES and has always been in favor of the one-off sale, and always discussing the possibility to resume the ivory trade. I think for the EU it has been an electro-shock, which showed that as it pertains to the one off sales, they made some mistakes. At CITES this year, the EU and other parties should not speak about elephants so much which is good. It also gives them a chance to speak about other threatened species.

Mongabay: Do you think China and Thailand are legitimately trying to stop the ivory trade in their countries?

Celine Sissler-Bienvenu: When you see the price of ivory items in China, it is very high. It is wealthy people who can buy it. A poll IFAW conducted showed 70% of the people we polled didn’t realize ivory was coming from dead elephants. They thought tusks were falling naturally. The Chinese government tried to contend with the ivory issue but I am really convinced the main issue is the domestic market. As long as we have legal, domesticated ivory markets we will have poaching. If we close these domesticated markets, we have a chance. Otherwise, we won’t succeed because the demand is so high. I know there aren’t enough elephants alive on the planet to feed the Asian demand. China and Thailand have to really address this problem seriously.

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So-called new-age and spiritualistic believers think that new generations of children are more intelligent than past generations of children. Although it is important to finally start recognising that children are human and no less stupid than their so-called elders, I doubt very much that this is the case. But again and again articles pop up about so-called special children, most of the time called “indigo children”, “star seeds” and “crystal children”. As for instance in the article: “Leading scientists shocked by the achievements of Russian indigo-children,” that appeared on the website “The Voice of Russia” on January 17. (source)

The three invented life-boxes of a human life

The fact is that child humans like most adult humans have been forcibly squeezed into narrowed life-boxes, designed and defined by science, economics and politics since the start of the “Scientific Revolution” and the subsequent “Industrial Revolution”. As a consequence of especially the “Industrial Revolution” work or labour became only labour if it was done for third parties and was paid for by these third parties. The payment, working hours and labour circumstances usually based on their whim and will. Slavery, and child slavery, for instance, abounded in the first period of the “Industrial Revolution”. And still does. Just read Charles Dickens, who lived during the start of it. And just look how these days so-called menial jobs, like for instance the job of supplementing products on the shelves of supermarkets, are taken over more and more by younger and younger humans or “cheap” labourers. But not because of social and humanitarian reasons, but because of narrowed capitalistic economy reasons.

The latest whim by Australian capitalist Gina Rinehart for instance can be read on the website of the Daily Mail in the article: “World’s richest woman calls for Australians to take a pay cut – ‘because African workers are willing to earn just $2 a day’” (source). Last year already she made the news. On the website “Digital Journal” the following article appeared: “World’s richest woman says ‘jealous’ poor should work harder” in which can be read:

The Australian reported the mining magnate heiress, who has a fortune of $30.1 billion, wrote: “If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”

Her advice to those who aspire to great fortunes is to work hard and invest, while she goes on to suggest the Australian government should reduce the minimum wage and give tax breaks to the rich.

While her remarks have attracted global attention, her severest critics are home grown. Australian MP Bob Katter said she “left out the bit about daddy being a major cattle station owner and the biggest mining magnate in Australia. That helps as well. She says here that the minimum average wage of $600 a week should be cut. This is coming from the world’s richest woman.” (source)

On the basis of a capitalistic industrial economy three life-boxes were invented in which humans are put according to their age. The first life-box was created for child humans from birth to around 13 years of age. Only from that age onwards child humans are allowed to start labouring for third parties. The second life-box extends from 13 years of age up to 65 years of age and is the life-box of so-called labour for society, but more specifically for the power and the glory of the few. And the third life-box is the life-box for the elderly and old humans.

In a way these three life-boxes in first instance followed the natural lifespan of most humans, simply put: young, adult, old. But in many ways it started to restrict many humans to live their own individual human lifespans more and more. Each life-box has become more and more narrowed and specialised by way of more and more cultural, and especially capitalistic economical rules, regulations and laws, thought of by scientists, social workers, economists and politicians. Each life-box got and has its own set of rules and regulations of how to live and how to behave. Step by step a plan for the entire lifespan of a human being has been laid down. And every human being has to fit in that plan and to follow it. So, today the three invented life-boxes no longer follow the natural flow of the lifespan of individual humans. No, the natural lifespan of each individual human being has to follow the rules, regulations and the laws of the invented life-boxes, or else…

Normal and deviant

The entire life-box plan is called the normal life span of human beings. On this plan of rules, regulations and laws, the restricted life-boxes of the industrialized capitalistic economy forces humans to live together, work together and share together as so-called societies and anyone who disturbs the execution of this plan is called a deviant and is treated as such. Thinking, feeling and acting out of the box you’re supposed to be in is seen as deviant. Now, what does this sound like? It sounds very much like the so-called communist and socialist ideas, does it not? Don’t be fooled by capitalistic thinkers and believers, who are shouting about the dangers of communist and socialist thinkers and believers. The first are worse, yet both have proven to be only interested in the few. There really exists only one form of government. The oligarchy. That is the government based on the nature of the less conscious herd animal. And the oligarchists play all kinds of games to get what they want, to stay the leader of the herd.

Of course, in every so-called scientific society you have a few exceptions from the norm. On the one side of the normal distribution of a life-box you have humans who do not want to or can not follow their restricted life-box plan. They are called deviants, mentally or physically sick humans. And on the other side of the normal distribution of a life-box you also have just a few deviants, they are called child geniuses. You are normal when you follow the life-box plan: the child box – reduced to and specialised into schooling humans for labour for third parties, the adult box – labour for third parties, the elderly box – the “Hurry up and Die” box. This four word command is from Taro Aso, Japan’s 72 year-old deputy prime minister, who said that: “the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” to reduce the burden on a country tasked to pay for their medical expenses.” He later said these comments were misinterpreted, saying he was speaking of his own personal wishes for a timely death not those of all Japanese elderly people.” But: “Five years ago, he said the elderly were a ‘feeble’ group and, ‘Why should I have to pay taxes for people who just sit around and do nothing but eat and drink?’” (source).

Now, what was the intended reason for the invented third life-box of pensions and stopping work at 65? So, that humans at least have the idea there is an escape from their dull, laboring lives and at least might enjoy part of their lives by doing what they want to do themselves. Even if it is only eat and drink. But clearly some capitalist industrialist economists want to reduce the three life-boxes of a human lifespan to two. It makes life so much easier, according to the Aso’s of the world. Is this idea going to become the norm, therefore normal, or will it stay deviant?

“Indigo children” exist unacknowledged through the ages

The common idea that grew from this dividing a human life into square timezone boxes by so-called intelligent scientists, politicians, industrialists and economists was that child humans were not allowed to learn to think, feel and act as they wanted. They had to act, feel and think like children, or more specifically what so-called scientists and others think children should be like. Reductionist science has done a lot to accomplish this, with the help of so-called social workers. Of course, third parties do need knowledgeable labourers, so being educated at a school became mandatory in the first life-box. That is not a bad thing on its own. But the education has become narrowed to that, which benefits mostly the third parties. Schooling is oriented on the second life-box of the human lifespan, or specifically on labouring for third parties in that second life-box. Look at how today the main schooling of child humans is pushed for instance towards the hard sciences and technology. Almost literally denying the importance of all other sorts of work, like health care, social care, farming, distribution of products, household labour and so on. So, schooling in the first life-box is primarily oriented on learning: Do not think to the left, do not think to the right, and especially do not think of your own free will, but think what I tell you to think, because you will be working for me later on.

But every now and again some so-called prodigious child humans are acknowledged. Why? Partly because they can not always be covered up, and mostly because it has other practical reasons, like for instance pushing the rule that there are always only a few exceptions to the rule. That is why many humans get excited by child humans like Mozart. Because they are so, ohh so very special. Not!!! Look at the “List of child prodigies” on the English Wikipedia (source) and you see that so-called prodigious children or “indigo children” exist through the centuries. They are not limited to the last ten to twenty years, as so-called new-agers and spiritualistic believers want to believe themselves and want to make other humans believe too. The only difference between so-called prodigious children and other children is the fact that the first get the possibility to do things other children do not get nor are allowed. How many children get the chance to build a “nuclear reactor in dad’s shed” (source)? In that sense, every child human starving of hunger may be the child human that can create the device to safely travel at half or more of the light speed through space. And every child human forced to become a child soldier may be the child human that finds a cure for a cancer. Not acknowledging 90% of child humans as thinking, feeling and acting humans pushes the idea that only some children are special.

So, no, there is not necessarily a human evolution going on in which child humans of new generations are more intelligent than earlier generations. What the contribution of new-age and spiritualistic believers is, is that they have as parents and other adults started to listen to their children, their fellow humans, again. And that is extremely important. They have broken through and expanded again the narrowed down ideas we are forced to live in thanks to so-called intelligent scientists, politicians and others for the convenience of a happy few. The elite, who think they are the most important humans on the Earth, although in reality even in their own created narrow version of reality, life, society and civilisation they are really part of the deviants.

It may seem that more prodigious children are being born nowadays. But no, this most likely is not true, or only partly so. It mostly has to do with humans waking up and understanding that they have been forced into these three life-boxes and that they have been doing this too, to their own children. They start seeing their own children as human beings again, free from the restrictions, rules and laws of the capitalist industrialised economy life-boxes.

But although the so-called new-age and spiritualistic believers may have broken open the first and other invented life-boxes of the believers in the capitalist industrialised economy ruled and regulated lifespan of a human, they have not yet realised that they again are making the same mistake as the believers in this economy. It is for instance mentioned at the end of the Russian article “Leading scientists shocked by the achievements of Russian indigo-children”, that: “…the boy hopes that he will get a governmental grant. These grants – often called the ‘indigo-grants’ – are due to be realized in two years…” This is not out of the box thinking by so-called new-age and spiritualistic believers, this is really just a changing of the labels. Or better, making some children, especially their own, more equal than other children.

About the Author

Kees Deckers is a freelance writer, living in The Netherlands, who is interested in many subjects, but mainly in the subjects of “energy” and “globalisation on the basis of the principles of proportionality and equality, in which all human beings and nature develop themselves together on a planetary scale”. He has his own website: WorldWideFreeBeingWebsite, which can be found at: http://worldwidebeingfreewebsite.com/index.htm

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So, who runs the world? It’s a question that people have struggled with since people began to struggle. It’s certainly a question with many interpretations, and incites answers of many varied perspectives.

Often, it is relegated to the realm of “conspiracy theory,” in that, those who discuss this question or propose answers to it, are purveyors of a conspiratorial view of the world. However, it is my intention to discard the labels, which seek to disprove a position without actually proving anything to the contrary. One of these labels – “conspiracy theorist” – does just that: it’s very application to a particular perspective or viewpoint has the intention of “disproving without proof;” all that is needed is to simply apply the label.

What I intend to do is analyse the social structure of the transnational ruling class, the international elite, who together run the world. This is not a conspiratorial opinion piece, but is an examination of the socially constructed elite class of people; what is the nature of power, how does it get used, and who holds it?

A Historical Understanding of Power

In answering the question “Who Runs the World?” we must understand what positions within society hold the most power, and thus, the answer becomes clear. If we simply understand this as heads of state, the answer will be flawed and inaccurate. We must examine the globe as a whole, and the power structures of the global political economy.

The greatest position of power within the global capitalist system lies in the authority of money-creation: the central banking system. The central banking system, originating in 1694 in England, consists of an international network of central banks that are privately owned by wealthy shareholders and are granted governmental authority to print and issue a nation’s currency, and set interest rates, collecting revenue and making profit through the interest charged. Central banks give loans to both governments and industries, controlling both simultaneously. The ultimate centre of power in the central banking system is at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in Basle, Switzerland; which is the central bank to the world’s central banks, and is also a private bank owned by the world’s central banks.

As Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley wrote:

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.1

The central banks, and thus the central banking system as a whole, is a privately owned system in which the major shareholders are powerful international banking houses. These international banking houses emerged in tandem with the evolution of the central banking system. The central banking system first emerged in London, and expanded across Europe with time. With that expansion, the European banking houses also rose and expanded across the continent.

The French Revolution resulted with Napoleon coming to power, who granted the French bankers a central bank of France, which they privately controlled.2 It was also out of the French Revolution that one of the major banking houses of the world emerged, the Rothschilds. Emerging out of a European Jewish ghetto, the Rothschilds quickly rose to the forefront in banking, and established banking houses in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Vienna and Naples, allowing them to profit off of all sides in the Napoleonic wars.3

As Carroll Quigley wrote in his monumental Tragedy and Hope, “The merchant bankers of London had already at hand in 1810-1850 the Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and the London money market,” and that:

In time they brought into their financial network the provincial banking centres, organised as commercial banks and savings banks, as well as insurance companies, to form all of these into a single financial system on an international scale which manipulated the quantity and flow of money so that they were able to influence, if not control, governments on one side and industries on the other.4

At the same time, in the United States, we saw the emergence of a powerful group of bankers and industrialists, such as the Morgans, Astors, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies, and they created massive industrial monopolies and oligopolies throughout the 19^th century.5 These banking interests were very close to and allied with the powerful European banking houses.

The European, and particularly the British elites of the time, were beginning to organise their power in an effort to properly exert their influence internationally. At this time, European empires were engaging in the Scramble for Africa, in which nearly the entire continent of Africa, save Ethiopia, was colonised and carved up by European nations. One notable imperialist was Cecil Rhodes who made his fortune from diamond and gold mining in Africa with financial support from the Rothschilds,6 and “at that time [had] the biggest concentration of financial capital in the world.”7

Cecil Rhodes was also known for his radical views regarding America, particularly in that he would “talk with total seriousness of ‘the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire’.”8 Rhodes saw himself not simply as a moneymaker, but primarily as an “empire builder.”

As Carroll Quigley explained, in 1891 three British elites met with the intent to create a secret society. The three men were Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead, a prominent journalist of the day, and Reginald Baliol Brett, a “friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V.” Within this secret society, “real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a ‘Junta of Three.’ The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner.”9

The purpose of this secret society, which was later headed by Alfred Milner, was: “The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise… [with] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire.” [Emphasis added]10 Essentially, it outlined a British-led cosmopolitical world order, one global system of governance under British hegemony. Among key players within this group were the Rothschilds and other banking interests.11

After the 1907 banking panic in the US, instigated by JP Morgan, pressure was placed upon the American political establishment to create a “stable” banking system. In 1910, a secret meeting of financiers was held on Jekyll Island, where they planned for the “creation of a National Reserve Association with fifteen major regions, controlled by a board of commercial bankers but empowered by the federal government to act like a central bank – creating money and lending reserves to private banks.”12

It was largely Paul M. Warburg, a Wall Street investment banker, who “had come up with a design for a single central bank [in 1910]. He called it the United Reserve Bank. From this and his later service on the first Federal Reserve Board, Warburg has, with some justice, been called the father of the System.”13President Woodrow Wilson followed the plan almost exactly as outlined by the Wall Street financiers, and added to it the creation of a Federal Reserve Board in Washington, which the President would appoint.14

Thus, true power in the world order was held by international banking houses, which privately owned the global central banking system, allowing them to control the credit of nations, and finance and control governments and industry.

However, though the economic system was firmly in their control, allowing them to establish influence over finance, they needed to shape elite ideology accordingly. In effect, what was required was to socially construct a ruling class, internationally, which would serve their interests. To do this, these bankers set out to undertake a project of establishing think tanks to organise elites from politics, economics, academia, media, and the military into a generally cohesive and controllable ideology.

Constructing a Ruling Class: Rise of the Think Tanks

During World War I, a group of American scholars were tasked with briefing “Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world once the Kaiser and imperial Germany fell to defeat.” This group was called, “The Inquiry.” The group advised Wilson mostly through his trusted aide, Col. Edward M. House, who was Wilson’s “unofficial envoy to Europe during the period between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the intervention by the United States in 1917,” and was the prime driving force in the Wilson administration behind the establishment of the Federal Reserve System.15

“The Inquiry” laid the foundations for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most powerful think tank in the US and, “The scholars of the Inquiry helped draw the borders of post World War I central Europe.” On May 30, 1919, a group of scholars and diplomats from Britain and the US met at the Hotel Majestic, where they “proposed a permanent Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs, with one branch in London, the other in New York.” When the scholars returned from Paris, they were met with open arms by New York lawyers and financiers, and together they formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921. The “British diplomats returning from Paris had made great headway in founding their Royal Institute of International Affairs.” The Anglo-American Institute envisioned in Paris, with two branches and combined membership was not feasible, so both the British and American branches retained national membership, however, they would cooperate closely with one another.16 They were referred to, and still are, as “Sister Institutes.”17

The Milner Group, the secret society formed by Cecil Rhodes, “dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it.”18

There were other groups founded in many countries representing the same interests of the secret Milner Group, and they came to be known as the Round Table Groups, preeminent among them were the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, and parallel groups were set up in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.19

These were, in effect, the first international think tanks, which remain today, and are in their respective nations, among the top, if not the most prominent think tanks.

In 2008, a major study was done by the University of Philadelphia’s International Relations Program – the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program – which sought to analyse and examine the most powerful and influential think tanks in the world. While it is a useful resource to understanding the influence of think tanks, there is a flaw in its analysis. It failed to take into account the international origins of the Round Table Group think tanks, particularly the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States; Chatham House or the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London; the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, now renamed the Canadian International Council; and their respective sister organisations in India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. Further nations have since added to this group of related think tanks, including Germany, and a recently established European Council on Foreign Relations. The report, while putting focus on the international nature of think tanks, analysed these ones as separate institutions without being related or affiliated. This has, in effect, skewed the results of the study. However, it is still useful to examine.

The top think tanks in the United States include the Council on Foreign Relations, (which was put at number 2, however, should be placed at the number 1 spot), the Brookings Institution, (which was inaccurately given the position of number one), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, RAND Corporation, Heritage Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the American Enterprise Institute, among others.

The top think tanks in the world, outside of the United States, are Chatham House (sitting at number one), the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the UK, the German Council on Foreign Relations, the French Institute of International Relations, the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, the Fraser Institute in Canada, the European Council on Foreign Relations, the International Crisis Group in Belgium, and the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.20

In 1954, the Bilderberg Group was founded in the Netherlands. Every year since then the group holds a secretive meeting, drawing roughly 130 of the political-financial-military-academic-media elites from North America and Western Europe as “an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially.”21

Regular participants include the CEOs or Chairmen of some of the largest corporations in the world, oil companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, and Total SA, as well as various European monarchs, international bankers such as David Rockefeller, major politicians, presidents, prime ministers, and central bankers of the world.22 The Bilderberg Group acts as a “secretive global think-tank,” with an original intent “to link governments and economies in Europe and North America amid the Cold War.”23

In 1970, David Rockefeller became Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, while also being Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan. In 1970, an academic who joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 1965 wrote a book called Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era. The author, Zbigniew Brzezinski, called for the formation of “A Community of the Developed Nations,” consisting of Western Europe, the United States and Japan. Brzezinski wrote about how “the traditional sovereignty of nation states is becoming increasingly unglued as transnational forces such as multinational corporations, banks, and international organisations play a larger and larger role in shaping global politics.”

So, in 1972, David Rockefeller and Brzezinski “presented the idea of a trilateral grouping at the annual Bilderberg meeting.” In July of 1972, seventeen powerful people met at David Rockefeller’s estate in New York to plan for the creation of another grouping. Also at the meeting was Brzezinski, McGeorge Bundy, the President of the Ford Foundation, (brother of William Bundy, editor of Foreign Affairs) and Bayless Manning, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.24 In 1973, these people formed the Trilateral Commission, which acted as a sister organisation to Bilderberg, linking the elites of Western Europe, North America, and Japan into a transnational ruling class.

These think tanks have effectively socially constructed an ideologically cohesive ruling class in each nation and fostered the expansion of international ideological alignment among national elites, allowing for the development of a transnational ruling class sharing a dominant ideology.

These same interests, controlled by the international banking houses, had to socially construct society itself. To do this, they created a massive network of tax-exempt foundations and non-profit organisations, which shaped civil society according to their designs. Among the most prominent of these are the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The “Foundations” of Civil Society

These foundations shaped civil society by financing research projects and initiatives into major social projects, creating both a dominant world-view for the elite classes, as well as managing the other classes.

These foundations, since their establishment, played a large part in the funding and organising of the eugenics movement, which helped facilitate this racist, elitist ideology to having enormous growth and influence, ultimately culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. From then, the word “eugenics” had to be dropped from the ideology and philanthropy of elites, and was replaced with new forms of eugenics policies and concepts. Among them, genetics, population control and environmentalism.

These foundations also funded seemingly progressive and alternative media sources in an effort to control the opposition, and manage the resistance to their world order, essentially making it ineffective and misguided.

The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1912, and immediately began giving money to eugenics research organisations.25 Eugenics was a pseudo-scientific and social science movement that emerged in the late 19^th century, and gained significant traction in the first half of the 20^th century. One of the founding ideologues of eugenics, Sir Francis Galton, an anthropologist and cousin to Charles Darwin, wrote that eugenics “is the study of all agencies under social control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.”26 Ultimately, it was about the “sound” breeding of people and maintaining “purity” and “superiority” of the blood. It was an inherently racist ideology, which saw all non-white racial categories of people as inherently and naturally inferior, and sought to ground these racist theories in “science.”

The vast wealth and fortunes of the major industrialists and bankers in the United States flowed heavily into the eugenics organisations, promoting and expanding this racist and elitist ideology. Money from the Harriman railroad fortune, with millions given by the Rockefeller and Carnegie family fortunes were subsequently “devoted to sterilisation of several hundred thousands of American ‘defectives’ annually, as a matter of eugenics.”27

In the United States, 27 states passed eugenics based sterilisation laws of the “unfit,” which ultimately led to the sterilisation of over 60,000 people. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, the Carnegie and especially the Rockefeller Foundation, funded eugenics research in Germany, directly financing the Nazi scientists who perpetrated some of the greatest crimes of the Holocaust.28

Following the Holocaust, the word “eugenics” was highly discredited. Thus, these elites who wanted to continue with the implementation of their racist and elitist ideology desperately needed a new name for it. In 1939, the Eugenics Records Office became known as the Genetics Record Office.29 However, tens of thousands of Americans continued to be sterilised throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s, the majority of which were women.30

Edwin Black analysed how the pseudoscience of eugenics transformed into what we know as the science of genetics. In a 1943 edition of Eugenical News, an article titled “Eugenics After the War,” cited Charles Davenport, a major founder of eugenics, in his vision of “a new mankind of biological castes with master races in control and slave races serving them.”31

A 1946 article in Eugenical News stated that, “Population, genetics, [and] psychology, are the three sciences to which the eugenicist must look for the factual material on which to build an acceptable philosophy of eugenics and to develop and defend practical eugenics proposals.” As Black explained, “the incremental effort to transform eugenics into human genetics forged an entire worldwide infrastructure,” with the founding of the Institute for Human Genetics in Copenhagen in 1938, led by Tage Kemp, a Rockefeller Foundation eugenicist, and was financed with money from the Rockefeller Foundation.32

Today, much of civil society and major social projects are a product of these foundations, and align with various new forms of eugenics. The areas of population control and environmentalism are closely aligned and span a broad range of intellectual avenues. The major population control organisations emerged with funding from these various foundations, particularly the Rockefeller foundations and philanthropies.

These organisations, such as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, funded major civil society movements, such as the Civil Rights movement, in an effort to “create a wedge between social movement activists and their unpaid grassroots constituents, thereby facilitating professionalisation and institutionalisation within the movement,” ultimately facilitating a “narrowing and taming of the potential for broad dissent,” with an aim of limiting goals to “ameliorative rather than radical change.”33

Two major organisations in the development of the environmental movement were the Conservation Foundation and Resources for the Future, which were founded and funded with money from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and helped “launch an explicitly pro-corporate approach to resource conservation.”34 Even the World Wildlife Fund was founded in the early 1960s by the former president of the British Eugenics Society, and its first President was Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a founding member of the Bilderberg Group.

While the environmental movement positions people as the major problem for the earth, relating humanity to a cancer, population control becomes a significant factor in proposing environmental solutions.

In May of 2009, a secret meeting of billionaire philanthropists took place in which they sought to coordinate how to “address” the world’s environmental, social, and industrial threats. Each billionaire at the meeting was given 15 minutes to discuss their “preferred” cause, and then they deliberated to create an “umbrella” cause to harness all their interests. The end result was that the umbrella cause for which the billionaires would aim to “give to” was population control, which “would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.” Among those present at the meeting were David Rockefeller, Jr., George Soros, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Bill Gates, and even Oprah Winfrey.35

Conclusion

At the top of the list of those who run the world, we have the major international banking houses, which control the global central banking system. From there, these dynastic banking families created an international network of think tanks, which socialised the ruling elites of each nation and the international community as a whole, into a cohesive transnational elite class. The foundations they established helped shape civil society both nationally and internationally, playing a major part in the funding – and thus coordinating and co-opting – of major social-political movements.

An excellent example of one member of the top of the hierarchy of the global elite is David Rockefeller, patriarch of the Rockefeller family. Long serving as Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan bank, he revolutionised the notion of building a truly global bank. He was also Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission, heavily involved in the family philanthropies, and sits atop a vast number of boards and foundations. Even Alan Greenspan, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that David Rockefeller and the CFR have, “in many respects, formulated the foreign policy of this country.”36

In another speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, then World Bank President James Wolfesohn, said in 2005, in honour of David Rockefeller’s 90^th birthday, that, “the person who had perhaps the greatest influence on my life professionally in this country, and I’m very happy to say personally there afterwards, is David Rockefeller.” He then said, “In fact, it’s fair to say that there has been no other single family influence greater than the Rockefeller’s in the whole issue of globalisation and in the whole issue of addressing the questions which, in some ways, are still before us today. And for that David, we’re deeply grateful to you and for your own contribution in carrying these forward in the way that you did.”37

David Rockefeller, himself, wrote, “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicised incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”38

About the Author

ANDREW G. MARSHALL is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization based out of Montreal, Canada (www.globalresearch.ca). He has written extensively on issues imperialism in the Middle East and Africa, the environment, Homeland Security, war, terrorism and the global economy. He is currently studying Global Political Economy and the History of the Middle East and Africa at Simon Fraser University (Canada).

Footnotes:

1. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, New York: Macmillan Company, 1966, 324

2. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 515; Robert Elgie and Helen Thompson, ed., The Politics of Central Banks, New York: Routledge, 1998, 97-98

3. Sylvia Nasar, ‘Masters of the Universe’, The New York Times: January 23, 2000; ‘The Family That Bankrolled Europe’, BBC News: July 9, 1999, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/389053.stm

4. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 51

5. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial: New York, 2003, 323

6. Carroll Quigley, op.cit., 130

7. Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York: Basic Books, 2004, 186

8. Ibid, 190

9. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, GSG & Associates, 1981, 3

10. Ibid, 33

11. Ibid, 34

12. William Greider, Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987, 276

13. John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1975, 121-122

14. William Greider, op.cit., 277

15. H.W. Brands, ‘He Is My Independent Self’, The Washington Post: June 11, 2006:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/08/AR2006060801104.html

16. CFR, ‘Continuing the Inquiry. History of CFR’: www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/inquiry.html

17. Chatham House, ‘CHATHAM HOUSE (The Royal Institute of International Affairs): Background’, Chatham House History: www.chathamhouse.org.uk/about/history/

18. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, op.cit., 5

19. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, op.cit., 132-133

20. James G. McGann, Ph.D., The Global “Go-To Think Tanks”: The Leading Public Policy Research Organizations In The World, The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program: University of Pennsylvania, International Relations Program, 2008, 26-28

21. CBC, ‘Informal forum or global conspiracy?’, CBC News Online: June 13, 2006:www.cbc.ca/news/background/bilderberg-group/

22. Holly Sklar, ed., Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, South End Press: 1980, 161-171

23. Glen McGregor, ‘Secretive power brokers meeting coming to Ottawa?’, Ottawa Citizen: May 24, 2006

24. Holly Sklar, ed., op.cit., 76-78

25. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race, New York: Thunders’s Mouth Press, 2004, 93

26. Ibid, 18

27. Ibid, 101-102

28. Edwin Black, ‘Eugenics and the Nazis – the California connection’, The San Francisco Chronicle: November 9, 2003

29. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak, op.cit., 396

30. Ibid, 398

31. Ibid, 416

32. Ibid, 418

33. Michael Barker, The Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection, Capitalism Nature Socialism: 19, (2), June 2008, 18

34. Ibid, 19-20

35. John Harlow, ‘Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation’, Times Online: May 24, 2009

36. CFR, Remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations Annual Corporate Conference, Transcripts: March 10, 2005:www.cfr.org/publication/7908/remarks_at_the_council_on_foreign_relations_annual_corporate_conference.html

37. CFR, Council on Foreign Relations Special Symposium in honor of David Rockefeller’s 90th Birthday, Transcript: May 23, 2005:www.cfr.org/publication/8133/council_on_foreign_relations_special_symposium_in_honor_of_david_rockefellers_90th_birthday.html

38. David Rockefeller, Memoirs, New York: Random House: 2002, 405

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 118 (Jan-Feb 2010).

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A year ago I never dreamed that I would be writing about two subjects, both of which are generally considered taboo. One of these is cancer. We avoid talking about cancer – “the Big C” – because it speaks of our fears of mortality and pain. When an office mate is rumored to have cancer, she is viewed differently. We avoid the topic, or speak in whispers about it. We wish it would go away.

For entirely different reasons, ayahuasca is talked about in muzzled tones. The Drug Enforcement Administration – the grand arbiter of all chemicals in America – is responsible for this taboo and has classified DMT, one of its constituents, as a Schedule I drug, thereby rendering it illegal and nearly unavailable for fascinating medical, psychological, neuroscientific, and spiritual research. Like cancer, we tend to talk about it in whispers, too.

Since I now enjoy the privileges of a recently retired person, and a friend of cancer and ayahuasca, I can speak freely about them both. I say “friend” because that is the way I now see the relationship I have with both.

My direct connection with cancer probably started with my birth sixty-eight years ago, which sent me into the world with a genetic structure determined, at least in part, by family members of previous generations on both sides who had died of metastacized colo-rectal cancer. If there is any validity to the genetic predilection theory, I was directly in line for a first hand experience with cells gone amok to form tumors.

Diagnosis 
And that is precisely what happened to me ten years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer of the colon. Since I felt great, I had doubts about the accuracy of the diagnosis, and requested to see the biopsy along with a pathologist. Sure enough, with the aid of a microscope, I saw with my own eyes the little cells, all bunched up like globs of red mud. How did that happen? I wondered.

Immediate surgery was the order of the day. I begged off in order to experiment with natural healing. The surgeon and I agreed on a four-month timetable, during which I followed a naturopathic regimen: micro-doses of various substances, vegetarian diet, visualization and plenty of rest and exercise. After this period, the second biopsy revealed no cancer cells. I was overjoyed; the surgeon seemed disappointed, and asked for another biopsy in two weeks, to which I agreed.

This time around he was able to dig up some more tissue with cancer cells, and convinced me that I should have the surgery. I did, and was told five years later that I had been “cured” through the wonders of surgery.

Relapse
All went well until September 1996, when a routine physical exam revealed that my CEA count – an indicator of carcinogenic activity – was up. Another blood test shortly thereafter showed the CEA count going up rapidly. Further exams were conducted, during which two suspicious looking dark shadows were seen on the right lobe of my liver. A biopsy was soon performed on the tissue taken from the shadowed area. The verdict from the pathologist: the Big C.

Having lost a grandfather and father to metastatic liver cancer, I was seriously concerned over this new development. What to do? A preliminary conference with one of the oncologists said that surgery might be a possibility, provided there were no other tumors in my vital organs or lymph glands. That meant further exams.

Prognosis 
While waiting for the results, I went to the University of Hawaii’s medical library for some research on liver cancer. I was referred to the “bible” of oncology, a two-volume tome titled Cancer: Principles and Practices of Oncology (1989), edited by Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. I turned to Section 3: “Treatment of Metastatic Cancer to the Liver,” by John E. Niederhuber and William D. Ensminger. The opening paragraph had the following encouraging words:

“The spread of malignant cells from a primary tumor to the liver and their growth therein carry a grave prognosis for the patient. While these meta-static liver tumors may be the first evidence of the progression of a patient’s cancer, and often – especially in colorectal cancer – are the only tumors detected, they almost always signal widespread dissemination of the malignancy. Despite improvements in early detection of liver metastases, new drug development, improved surgical techniques for resection, and innovative targeted therapies, most patients will not survive.” (p. 2201)

The remainder of the chapter was devoted to sustaining that dismal prognosis. In a word, the future looked pretty grim. Until, that is, I began to seek information on alternative therapies.

Seeking an alternative 
I turned first to Dr. Andrew Weil, who recommended the following: 1) have the tumor surgically removed, if possible; 2) start taking micro-doses of maitake mushroom extract; 3) read Michael Lerner’s book,Choices in Healing.

While waiting for my mail-order requests for the maitake and Lerner’s book, I had further meetings with surgeons, who were not exactly reassuring. I was told by one that my chances for survival were around 25-30%. Another put it at under 15%, if you factor in the risks of the surgical procedure itself. It appeared that they had read De Vito’s cancer bible, too. They also advised me that if surgery was possible, I should follow it up with a year of fairly heavy chemotherapy in order to kill off any remaining cancerous cells (along with the majority of healthy ones) that were undoubtedly floating around in my bloodstream.

When the Lerner book arrived in the mail, I sat down and read through its 621 fascinating pages as rapidly as possible. At the same time, I began taking the maitake mushroom extract, and to prepare myself both physically and mentally for the surgery and the follow- up. During this period I discovered other literature on alternative therapies, including Essiac, macrobiotic diets, reiki and coffee enemas, all of which offered as much or more hope than the oncologist’s bible did.

Surgery 
The surgeon (aptly named Dr. Payne) removed the right half of my liver on November 26, 1996. During the following five days I was attached to several catheters, one of which shot morphine directly into my spine. It was not until my discharge from the hospital that I realized how badly my body had been assaulted, not just by the surgeon’s knife, but by a mixture of drugs that are part of the arsenal of invasive surgery. The thought of further assault by chemotherapy was frightening.

Sometime during this period of painful recovery from the operation, I remembered having read something, somewhere about the healing properties of ayahuasca. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, since it seemed unlikely that I would be going to the Amazon, and wasn’t particularly interested in a psychedelic experience. Still, it lingered in the recesses of my mind, which was still reeling from the physical and psychic wounds of major surgery, the outcome of which was dubious.

Three weeks after the surgery, I went to my appointment with the oncologist who proposed beginning the chemotherapy treatment immediately. When I told him that I had decided against it, because I did not believe that further assault on my body would be beneficial, he seemed miffed, perhaps even insulted. When I told him of my plan to follow a program of alternative therapies, he snickered, but wished me well.

Santo Daime 
In early April I heard of a group doing ayahuasca on the Big Island of Hawai’i. I began to make inquiries, which led me to a young man who had been with the group for several experiences, or “works,” as they are called by the Santo Daime church of Brazil. We met at my house one evening, during which he talked non-stop for over three hours about the sacrament and its psychic and physical healing properties. I sat fascinated as I listened, and concluded that I must find a way to have this experience, to see for myself if the accounts I had read and heard were true. Could this really be a curative experience, or was it just another psychedelic trip?

A few weeks later I learned that there would be a “works” on the Big Island, and that I could join the group. I readily accepted, even though I was still in a weakened condition from the surgery. This was to be my introduction to ayahuasca.

The group met in the late afternoon on an isolated knoll where a devotee of the Santo Daime had built a house, consisting of a large hexagonal room with three or four bedrooms off on the side. (I learned later that the hexagon is an important symbol within the Santo Daime.) About sixty people from all over Hawai’i had gathered for the event, most of whom had done it before. We were all dressed in white (as required), and when the time came to begin we took our seats in chairs that had been arranged in two semi-circles facing each other, men on one side and women on the other. I then began to realize, much to my disappointment, that I was in a very structured, group experience, not at all what I had anticipated from my limited reading on the way ayahuasca is traditionally used in the Amazon. Nevertheless, I entered the experience with hope, as well as apprehension. The residual pain from the surgery was a constant reminder of why I was there.

I will not describe the Santo Daime rituals that I observed during the two successive nights of the “works.” They have been described elsewhere. Rather, I will focus on my own experience, for which, as it turns out, I was unprepared. My only frame of reference was limited experiences with LSD, mushrooms and mescaline during the Sixties, none of which were associated with healing. I wanted to discover what it was about ayahuasca that led to the claims of its ability to heal and to teach.

First session 
After some preliminary church rituals, we lined up to take our first cup of the brew just after sundown. A second dose was given about two and a half hours later. Within twenty minutes I began to feel what seemed like a faintly familiar rippling effect coursing throughout my body. As I looked around the room, I noticed that others were doing the same, while shifting in their chairs and trying to sing the church versions of icaros in Portuguese. At this point, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision.

Then, all of a sudden, the plant grabbed hold of me, and led me through a long trip into another reality, one that I was totally unprepared for. When I attempt to describe the ayahuasca experience to others who know something of psychedelics, I tell them that things like LSD and mushrooms distort and give new shapes to the reality that you are familiar with; ayahuasca takes you to another reality that you’ve never seen nor imagined before.

As I closed my eyes, images – if they can be called such – began racing at an ever-increasing speed before me. Swirls of colors, shapes, forms, textures and sounds simply overpowered me to the point where I became immobile. Like many others before me, no doubt, I became somewhat frightened. What had I let myself in for? When I opened my eyes, the phantasmagoria of forms vanished, and I saw myself in the same room with the others, all dressed in white, most of whom were moving their lips to the songs being sung by the Brazilians from the Santo Daime. I closed my eyes again, and immediately the images returned with surging intensity. They seemed to be trying to enter the deepest recesses of my body and soul. I found myself thinking, hey, this isn’t much fun.

During this period of initial disorientation, I was able to regain my focus on what brought me here in the first place. I was a condemned man. The oncologists and their bible told me that my chances of survival were slim. I had come to ayahuasca for a second opinion.That is when I began to let go, and let the plant do its thing. That is when I began to get my first glimpse into the incredible, stunning world of ayahuasca. There was no going back now. There was nothing to do now but let it happen.

Ayahuasca visions 
As others have reported, I saw plants, serpents, birds and jaguar-like animals soaring, swirling, twisting and racing at almost lightning speed throughout my entire system, as though they were exploring a new habitat. At first, they didn’t pay any attention to me, even though I tried to stop them long enough to have a closer look. Before long, however, one of them would race up to me, pause momentarily, then rush off as though it had urgent business somewhere else. Then another would come up in my face, and do the same thing. There was no time for any communication between myself and the things that I was seeing. It was as though they wanted to take a complete inventory of who I was and what was going on inside me before they were ready to talk.

After a while (one loses track of time with ayahuasca) the figures began to slow down and fade somewhat in intensity. I was coming down, much against my will. My questions – whatever they were – had not yet been answered. At that moment, the Daime leader gave the signal to line up for the second dose of the brew. I took my place in the line. Needless to say, among the group of sixty people there had already been a lot of purging through vomiting; I was not yet among them.

As the second wave came over me, I felt much more relaxed and ready to talk to the animals if only they would talk to me. As though on cue, the racing figures began to stop by, look at me and smile before darting off into their world again. Then, all of a sudden, I saw a deep, black void. Nothing but darkness, which stayed in place for what seemed like minutes. All of the flashes, colors and forms disappeared while the blackness hovered over me. I sensed that it was death making its statement. It seemed to be saying, “Yes, I’m here too, part of the system; but I’m not so bad, so don’t be afraid.” In a short while, the darkness began to fade slowly as the kaleidoscopic frenzy returned until the brew and I both were exhausted, and I returned to my friend’s house for a long but fitful sleep.

Second session 
The group of sixty gathered again the following evening for a second “works,” which I entered with much less trepidation, hoping for another bit of insight from the plant. That proved to be a false hope, probably because the plant had nothing more to tell me. Nevertheless, during the second trip I again felt the presence of the plant racing throughout my body, peeking and poking into every nook and cranny in search of something to work on, to straighten out, to put back in order, to polish. There was a definite presence, with similar shapes, colors and sounds. But, unlike the first time, there was no message that I could discern. The plant was just busy doing its work.

Several months passed before my next experience with ayahuasca. In the interim, I had continued with my vegetarian diet and Chinese herbs. I was gradually regaining weight and strength, while the scars and soreness of the surgery were slowly healing. I wanted to visit with the plant again to see if it had anything new to tell me, and to determine whether my first experience was delusional.

Third session
By good fortune, I met a person who had studied ayahuasca in Peru, learning from the shamans. When I told him what I was seeking, he agreed to lead me and four others through a session. This time the set and setting were entirely different from that of the structured Santo Daime. After bathing in the blue ocean water, we drove up to the end of a mountain road, left our car, and hiked to an isolated spot, a small plateau deep in the Wai’anae mountains of O’ahu, engulfed in lush foliage with an unobstructed view of the Pacific ocean in two directions. It is called Pupukea Highlands. The setting itself was an invitation for spirits to enter. Our group was small, and all of us had learned respect for the plant and its powers. We shared a common set.

We arrived at our spot in time to arrange ourselves before the moonless nightfall. By candle light we practiced deep breathing and toning in preparation for taking the brew. In ceremonial fashion, including blowing tobacco smoke over the brew, we each took turns drinking. Soon after, our leader extinguished the candles, reminding us to “Remember, the plant knows what it’s doing.” The isolation, silence and darkness were awesome.

I positioned myself comfortably on the ground, my back against the trunk of a large paper-bark tree. I felt very calm and relaxed, closed my eyes and waited for the plant to go to work. Once again, after about fifteen minutes I began to notice the familiar rippling effect. This time, however, the rippling quickly turned into full-blown turbulence. The plant was loose, and was wildly racing around exploring its new environment. It felt as though a caged animal had been released inside me, and was having the time of its life.

As the images and shapes began to appear, they had an air of joy and exuberance. The serpents were smiling, the jaguars laughing, and the giant birds swooped down over me caressing me with their outstretched wings. A parade of persons, both known and unknown, streamed by, each of them smiling and reaching out to touch me and tell me by look that they loved me. As the serpents and plants twisted and flashed before me, they appeared to be smiling and reassuring me that they had looked everywhere inside me, and that everything was o.k. As the evening went on, this cycle kept repeating. Images would come directly towards me at breakneck speed, smiling and laughing, then veer off for another tour of my entire system. I heard myself chuckling softly under the starlit sky.

Where was the darkness that I had experienced before? Where was Mr. Death, I wondered? Then suddenly, as though the plant heard my question, I saw the void. Only this time it was clearly in the background. It seemed to be peeping through the montage of vibrant colors and forms, as though to say, “I’m still here, don’t worry. It’s not time for me yet.” And then it faded away. As evening turned into night and morning, I saw the images slowing down and gradually fading away, almost reluctantly it seemed. We sure had a good time together that night.

Fourth session
About one month after that memorable night, I revisited Pupukea Highlands for another session, this time with a different mix of six people. I was prepared for a repeat experience, another exciting exploration and reassurance from the plant. But, that was not to be.

This time it was raining, which restricted our space under a makeshift tent. Again, we followed the procedures of the previous time, breathing, toning and ceremonially ingesting the brew. I lay down and waited for the action to begin. This time the onset was much more gradual, and never reached the intensity of the previous trip. The images were there: birds, serpents, plants, people. But, they were much less energetic, almost blasé. They seemed to be telling me, “We’ve already been this route, and we told you what we found. Let’s try something new.” Since I had entered the experience with a fixed agenda, the plant reacted as though it were bound. I now look upon that as my fault for not trusting the plant to take the lead.

If ayahuasca could talk in words, I’m sure it would have told me during that first trip to Pupukea to, “Take this energy that I’m giving you, and run with it. Latch on to one of the animals and go for the ride. There is nothing preventing you from soaring to new heights of consciousness and life.” That was the message that I got that first night in the Pupukea highlands.

Return to the doctor
Approximately two weeks after that session, I went for my scheduled visit with the oncologist. He greeted me warmly, and told me the results of my blood test the week before, which showed that my CEA count – the cancer activity indicator was not just normal. It was below normal! When he asked me what I had been doing to bring that about, I asked him if he had ever heard of ayahuasca. His reply was what one would expect from a physician trained in western allopathic medicine. I got as far as explaining that it is a medicinal plant used for centuries in the Amazon by shamans and healers, at which point he raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and was no doubt thinking to himself, “Where did this nut come from anyway?” He ended the office visit with the pronouncement, “You’re one of the lucky few.”

Lucky? Perhaps so. But to dismiss my recovery against the odds as nothing but luck is to ignore centuries of experience by people who have learned to live with plants and understand them when they talk. From my experience thus far, I have learned to respect and listen to the plant, as well as those who know how to interact in the plant world. With more experience, I hope to learn some of that language myself. I will continue to treat my body and my spirit with ayahuasca, and work to teach others to respect it. As a former professor, the teaching part should come easily. In my current role as drug policy reformer, I will do all that I can to free this plant from the strictures that the DEA has so capriciously and arrogantly placed on it. I hope that people who read this article will join me in this effort.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of WakingTimes or its staff.

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For a normal human being who understands the value of having clean air and water to consume, clean soil to grow food in, and of living in a habitat that can support life, it is frustrating to watch one environmental calamity occur, after another without ever seeing a mainstream, non-politicized conversation about the condition of our natural world. It seems that merely expressing concern over the direction the environment is going is enough to solicit a number of stigmatized labels, such as hippie, liberal, terrorist, downer, debbie-downer, slacker, tree-hugger, climate changer, Al Gore, global warmer, Agenda 21′er, and so on. There is an extreme cultural bias against environmentalism, from many angles. Environmentalism is not a public priority.

What is at the root of this indifference toward the quality of our natural world? We certainly are a society that is highly preoccupied with security, but, for some reason, when it comes to securing a healthy environment, most of us look the other way, or put these concerns well below others.

THE CONVERSATION

The public conversation on any popular issue in America today is led by a handful of media companies who provide ‘news’ and ‘debate’ on the selected topics of each day. In this way, a narrow and focused message is syndicated across America, and we hear the same news and information repeated, often verbatim, by local, state, and national media. The model of a consolidated media, working for profit, bringing us an endless narrative, is very effective at setting societal priorities, at supporting hidden agendas, and at coloring the truth on any issue.

Lying by omission is one of the most effective ways of hiding the truth. By simply not mentioning an issue, then, effectively, a lie is told that the issue is irrelevant. The total picture of the truth is manipulated in this way by our mainline media, making it unlikely for consumers of media to connect the dots amongst environmental issues, linking their long term fall out to developments in policy and disaster clean up.

By effectively omitting critical issues from the ongoing public conversation, this most important subject is rendered unimportant, or the illusion is created that the environment is under responsible stewardship by the proper authorities. The media plays a significant role in shaping how this nation reacts to environmental catastrophes, and time and again the tactic of lying by omission is used against us to obfuscate the truth about what is happening to our natural world.

WHO STANDS TO GAIN?

Over the course of the last century our society has been heavily influenced to value a consumer oriented way of life over traditional ways of living. Our economy is driven by consumption, and the mainline media reinforces our dependence on and desire for this lifestyle by continuously reiterating the enjoyment and value to be had in acquiring more things. If the public were to lose interest in this lifestyle, this economy would collapse entirely.

As the primary sales agent of our consumeristic cultural paradigm, the media absolutely must refrain from demonstrating how our consumer based lifestyle lays waste to the earth, jeopardizing health and wellness for all. Our mainline media must do their best to camouflage this crisis in order to keep itself alive, in order to keep it’s coiffeurs filled, and in order to keep all those involved employed. A catch-22 of Biblical proportions.

For this, the prevailing manner of reporting on the environment issues has become to ignore all stories about the environment except the ones too big not to mention, then to brush those off the radar with haste. Once an environmental story is gone from the front page it is rarely ever mentioned again, even though the effects of environmental catastrophes are felt much later than the actual event.

WHAT DOTS?

The point of omitting environmental issues from the discussion is to inhibit people from connecting the dots on how the pattern of serious environmental destruction is directly related to the way of life being touted by the media. If people connect the dots, they may see how participation in the economy and this way of life is participation in ecocide, and thus, suicide. Upon realizing this, they may go further to make the connection that life is more important than the quest for wealth and materialism, and change their personal behavior to support the things which support life, rather than supporting the things which extract, pollute, and rape this wonderful earth.

If too many people change their behavior, then this economic system will collapse.

At present there are a number of extremely critical environmental issues that are going largely unaddressed by our policy makers and so-called leaders. As a service to the conversation about the quality of our world and the quality of our health, here is a list of the top 20 environmental issues routinely omitted by the mainstream media.

1. Fukushima
2. The Gulf of Mexico Core Exit Oil Spill
3. Tar Sands Athabasca
4. Appalachian Mountain Top Removal
5. Depleted Uranium
6. Nuclear Energy and Spent Nuclear Fuel
7. Pipeline Spills
8. Fracking
9. Air Pollution
10. Genetic Modification of Plants and Animals
11. Soil Depletion and Erosion From Mass Agriculture
12. Electro-Magenetic Pollution
13. Widespread Pollution of the Oceans
14. Sea-life Die Off and the Collapse of Ocean Fish Colonies
15. Rainforest Destruction for Industrial Agriculture and Oil Exploration
16. Water Pollution
17. Widespread Overuse of Pesticides and Herbicides
18. Trash and Landfills
19. Animal Poaching and Species Extinction
20. Geo-Engineering and Chemtrails
21. Overpopulation
22. Please Add Anything Not On This List to the Comments Section Below

Perhaps seeing all this in one place will help support the overall picture of where our lives are going if we continue to sideline and ridicule any meaningful public discussion about how our lifestyles support the destruction of the natural world. Without pigeon holing concerned people into labels like, commie, collectivist, dirt worshipper, liberal, eco-terrorist, or whatever. against our long term interests of having a planet that can sustain and and is worth living on.

CONCLUSION

Connecting the dots on these issues raises the question of how these issues are inter-connected. The continuous thread that runs through each of these calamities is an industrial hubris that seeks, first and foremost, ever-increasing profit. This is supported by governments, both corrupt and manipulated by economic hitmen. Behind this lies the arrogant human assumption that human beings are somehow separate from the earth and it’s creatures, and somehow in control of the natural forces of the world.

Whether you want to call it global warming, climate change, industrial accidents, unfortunate events, mismanagement, or what have you, the fact remains that our natural world is becoming increasingly toxic and the future for our children looks rather dim without a mass awakening and acceptance of this issue as a top social priority. As the natural world continues to degrade, it will eventually become impossible for the media and industry to hide the extent of the damage that is being done, no matter what illusions we are spoonfed.

Simple, common-sense environmentalism shouldn’t be reserved for political hacks like Al Gore or globalist supporters of Agenda 21. You shouldn’t have to be a carbon credit trader to be concerned about the radiation leak at Fukushima, and you don’t have to be a Rothschild to understand that oil in the backyard isn’t good for the family dog.

As individuals it is up to each of us to re-think our dependance on consumer culture and reinvent how we relate to the natural world. For inspiration on this, please view this thought-provoking talk by Sebastião Salgado.

About the Author

Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and an avid student of Yoga and life.

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A most powerful force is kindness. It seems to have a life of its own. It´s like a manifested organism multiplying on the inside and the outside. Highly contagious.

There are levels to the value of it of course.

Some manifested kindness is not kindness. It´s selfish. It comes with a condition. I once came across this Tibetan doctor who would treat her patients for free. Asked why, she would say: It will get me a good karma for the next life!.

Really. Don’t think the universe sees through that? Cosmic Certified Selfishness. C´mon.

Any act of kindness that comes with a condition is ego-build up.

Any act of kindness that comes without condition is ego take down.

This autumn I accidentally stumbled in to some very kind people who taught me the value of kindness. It amazed me. It came without any conditions. Just a reach out and doors opened.

That is really valuable, the door opener effect. Every person on this planet is plugged into a neural network and when networks open up, the climb uphill becomes somehow easier. It transcends into a beautiful journey with a gentle breeze supporting you.

Be a door opener, it’s a loving quantum leap.

So I try to go with the currency of kindness and manifest it as good as I can. Not easy, but I think I´m getting the hang of it. A lot of Matrix programming to the concept of kindness has to be transcended. The goody-goody do right. What if people abuse it and such?

They can`t because I noticed I didn’t care if they did and then: nobody did.

Before I sound like a Southern Baptist Holy Roller who just met the Lord I also discovered that I had to call on my dark passenger from time to time. The shadow. The ego. And manifest rage and anger.

I found out that I still needed it. My son got expelled from a field trip with his school for being a veggie. Yes-he did. And I went “Samuel Jackson Pulp Fiction” mode and took the building down. Good learning for psychopath teachers I think. Couldn’t have done it without my dark side.

There is highly intoxicated new age rubbish about taking the ego down. Ego equals: No good.
There is on the other hand the more esoteric approach to the ego. Still needed. Still powerful.

I heard Gerald Celente say: “When Jesus The Prince of Peace confronted the money lenders outside the temple he went raging”. Very cool. Social indignation? His dark passenger? Again I´m not into religion, I´m into celestial.

The currency of the new dawn is kindness.

It’s a choice one has to take. By doing that it becomes a habit. But you got to do it for the right reason and that will be: For no reason!

Other than being kind, helping, nourishing and such and dodging the programming of “They take every good thing and destroy it“ – matrix mantra.

By manifesting kindness we will attract kindness. Its a universal dynamic like being evil on a conscious level. It´s really all about choice. Everything is.

Kindness is in a massive build up taking down the matrix.

Some countries actually tax kindness. They call it “Friendly Favors “. Among so called “ordinary citizens”. So they must be very scared of it. They know it will crack the matrix.

That’s a very good reason to go: Kindness Currency.

Deposits in the souls of the heart people. I love them. They are very kind and expect nothing in return.

Naive, think? That’s the matrix talking.

Gentle, loving, giving celestial manifesting beings. Yes we are if we want to be.

The currency of kindness will provide for us – when we provide for it.

About the Author

Soren Dreier is the author of Zen-Haven, an excellent blog with mind-blowing perspectives on the modern world.

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Human beings are curious creatures in that they have a most unusual capacity for free will, yet, are so easily manipulated, controlled, and subjugated by other people. Quite a paradox.

The deciding factor between which of these two inherent states one occupies, mental freedom or mental slavery, often has to do with how fully one is able, or chooses, to see through the illusions governing day-to-day life in these interesting times. This is a process commonly called ‘awakening.’ It can be painful and all the while, deeply rewarding.

For example, one may come to understand that our monetary system is engineered to enrich a certain group, while forever condemning a larger group to debt slavery. One may realize that our military is engaged in conflicts for reasons other than directly protecting the American people from harm. One might wonder why the wickedly addictive and deadly drugs, tobacco and alcohol, can be bought legally on every corner, while possession of the natural herb Cannabis can come with time served. Or why our food system largely fails to deliver nourishment. This list goes on; our world begs for review.

An awakening of this kind is often triggered by a commonly experienced, but, chance sequence of events. One has…

• received or come into contact with some initiation into information outside of the mainstream
• made a conscious effort to take in and understand this information, rather than avoiding it, pretending it does not exist
• taken willfull action in using this information as the basis for making fundamental changes in how they live life and relate to society

If one accepts, or buys into, the worldview offered to us by our institutions of government and the media, the dissonance between what one wants to be true and what one senses to be true becomes so great, that one has to subjugate the senses in order to believe in the drama and phoniness written into every level of society. Life makes sense, but has no meaning. The stage is set for great personal and spiritual crisis.

However, if the popular worldview is rejected in favor of critical thinking and intentional disregard for propaganda and for-profit media, then one is faced with the challenge of applying their substantial inherent will power and intention in opposition to this juggernaut of collective self-deception. One finds no choice but to repurpose their personal lives to offer balance to a precariously out of balance world. In this case, few things in life will make sense, yet, life takes on a newly intense and richly beautiful meaning. Something blossoms within, free will is rediscovered, security loses value, and the unknown becomes sacred. A transformation, an improvement, the stoking of an old fire. A life renewed.

Once this veil is pierced, and our illusion-based cultural programming becomes obvious, one faces a great challenge of personal responsibility. How much can one willfully alter their personal trajectory to live a more meaningful and peaceful life? How can one set an example, illuminating an ancient path in these darkening times? The matrix has us, so what are we willing to do about it?

For those who come through this process and grow to understand the world in this way (there are many, and the number is rapidly growing), going back to any former confidence in a popular paradigm is simply not an option. Pursuing personal individuation and psychological excellence becomes the only choice, and the exercise of will power and self-development is the path. Deliberate freedom from cultural programming is the only thing can satisfy the newly awoken spirit. The matrix loses.

Free will is discovered in the inner discovery that the popular outer life is not what it seems. It is then cultivated into something that provides continuous inspiration, re-kindling passion for life in the culture of death.

In this clash between the indomitable natural human will to be free and a cultural program that desensitizes us to our own exploitation, the superior person employs free will in their personal emancipation. No matter how outrageous the world is made to seem, solace and freedom is still to be found for them, along the path of truth.

About the Author

Daikan Basho is a traveling guru of life.  A Yogi, philosopher and eternal student of the martial arts, he searches tirelessly for self-perfection and excellence. Through the physical arts and written word he intends to move the people he comes in contact with toward the realization of a happier, more fulfilled life. Daikan is a contributing writer to WakingTimes.com.

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Rural Spin

Long, flowing, thick locks used to be much more common than we see today. Some practices that promoted long hair, like washing hair once a week, are not things we’re likely to return to anytime soon. But we can look to the past and bring forth the best of natural hair care practices to make the most of what we have. Try these 10 hair care tips to minimize breakage, maximize growth, and maintain it once you get it:

1) Brush your hair 100 times a night

There’s a reason for the old wives tale to brush your hair 100 times a night; it’s very beneficial to hair health. Brushing your hair with a good quality brush from root to tip distributes your hair’s natural oils down the hair shaft and makes hair shinier, more manageable, and less prone to breakage. In fact you might be able to eliminate some hair-care products if you devoted time to brush the 100 strokes as recommended. Be sure you start your brushing at the bottom of your hair, and gradually work your way up; this will allow you to gently remove and tangles until you’re just smoothly brushing from root to tip.

2) Use a boar bristle brush

Don’t use just any brush for your 100 strokes…use a boar-bristle brush. Boar bristle brushes are more expensive than synthetic brushes, but they are densely packed on the brush and last for years. This dense construction is the secret to their being able to remove dirt, dust, and debris from hair and move your natural oils along the hair shaft, essentially giving the hair a bit of cleaning without the shampoo (you’ll want to clean your boar bristle brush regularly because of this). Boar bristle brushes have tough but flexible bristles that are wonderful for taming and smoothing even curly hair. And don’t worry, they won’t rip your hair out as long as you start at the bottom and slowly move your way up until you can stroke smoothly from root to tip.

3) Don’t brush your hair when it’s wet

Wet hair is weaker than dry hair, so don’t ever brush or use a fine-toothed comb on your hair when it is wet. After washing and towel drying your hair, only use a wide-toothed comb to detangle it if you must.

4) Police your commercial shampoo

Many people don’t realize the lax federal regulations regarding beauty products, including shampoos, beyond a mandatory listing of ingredients. It’s up to you to decide if the listed ingredients are safe for you. Many shampoos you buy at the store contain toxic ingredients, and don’t be fooled if the word “natural” appears on the bottle. The word “natural” is not regulated, and anyone can use the word no matter what the product contains. Artificial and drying scents, artificial colors and harmful detergents can damage hair, necessitating the purchase of additional “product” to fix that damage. Ingredients like sodium laurel sulfate, parabens, and benzyl benzoate (and similar) are just a few of the common shampoo ingredients that have been linked to cancer, skin irritation, and even birth defects.

But you’re probably not a chemist, so what to do? Look for ingredients you can pronounce and know what they are. And luckily there are online resources that rate the safety of products for us, like the GoodGuide, which allows shoppers to discover products that are healthy, safe, green, and even socially responsible. The GoodGuide covers everything from shampoo, food, electronics and even cars. Head to the GoodGuide and type “shampoo” into search and you’ll see a list of commercial shampoos and their ratings.

Baking soda, white vinegar (you can also use apple cider vinegar) and essential oils are an alternative to commercial and toxic shampoos.

5) Avoid commercial shampoo

If you want to be super safe, don’t use commercial shampoos; some avoid using shampoo and instead wash their hair with baking soda and vinegar–see my article “Tips and Tricks to Go Shampoo Free” for more info on this method. But be aware, local water chemistry and individual hair make up plays a part in this method, and experimentation is necessary to determine what quantities of each are the right mix for your hair.

If this sounds daunting, you can make or buy your own shampoo bar or use liquid castile soap. Bars of shampoo soap generally do not contain the toxins found in commercial shampoos (but check the label) and do just as good a job (or better) of cleaning hair. Liquid castile soap is conditioning and mimics the method of washing hair with liquid shampoo products because it can come in liquid form as well as bar.

6) Deep condition once a week

A deep hot oil condition improves hair manageability and shine while decreasing breakage; it’s easy and can be incorporated in with household tasks. Simply take about 1/4 cup of a favorite oil (olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil, etc) and heat it until it is warm to the touch but not too hot to handle with your hands. Once it is warm, saturate your hair with it, from root to tip, using your fingers. Don’t be shy about it, you’ll be washing it out later. Place all your hair on the top of your head, wrap your head in plastic wrap or don a shower cap, and then wrap your whole head in a towel. The plastic and towel will trap the heat around your head, and allow the oils to penetrate the hair shaft. Ideally you want to leave it sit for a few hours, but even 30 minutes will help. When the time is up, wash as usual. You may need to wash twice to remove all the oil (if you’re using baking soda/vinegar to wash your hair, add some liquid castile soap to the baking soda mix to remove the oil–this will help greatly).

A protein mask provided by eggs or other ingredients will help decrease frizz.

7) Add protein for frizzy hair

If your hair is especially frizzy, substitute the hot oil treatment with a protein mask once a week. Mix the yolk of two eggs with a bit of warm water (not hot, you don’t want to cook the eggs). Using your fingers, massage this into your scalp and hair shaft. Wrap your head in plastic wrap or a shower cap, and then wrap your head in a towel. Leave this sit in your hair for an hour, then rinse in warm to cool water (again, you don’t want to cook the egg). You can also use a mix of bananas and avocados for this, or mayonnaise, which is just egg and oil.

8) Use leave-in hair oil

Just a few drops are all you need (using more will just make your hair oily needlessly) to impart shine and decrease frizz. There are hair oils on the market (argan oil is very popular now), but you can easily make your own with olive oil and, if you wish, some essential oil. Just place two or three drops of the oil in the palm of your hand, rub your hands together, then smooth over your hair, paying attention to the ends.

9) Treat dandruff naturally

Unfortunately, there is no cure for dandruff, which is a skin disorder also known as seborrheic dermatitis. But you can treat dandruff to manage the symptoms. If you want to avoid the chemicals found in over-the-counter dandruff shampoos, there are other things you can try.

Tea tree oil has been shown to treat dandruff. Add about 20 drops of tea tree oil to your bottle of hair cleanser, or keep a bottle of tea tree oil in the shower and use two drops or so every time you wash your hair. Alternatively, you can also add about 20 drops of tea tree oil to 1/4 cup of olive oil, rub this into your scalp, wrap your head and sleep on it. Wash normally in the morning. You can use this as a “jump start” treatment for your dandruff.

Apple cider vinegar is another safe option that has been shown to assist with dandruff. Rub apple cider vinegar into your scalp (dilute with about 50% water if you have sensitive skin), wrap your head in plastic or a shower cap, then in a towel. Leave this sit for about an hour, then wash. Do this once a week or so to keep dandruff under control.

If these options don’t work, you could choose an old fashioned bar of tar soap. Tar soap has been used as an effective dandruff treatment for hundreds of years and is still recommended by dermatologists for some skin disorders like scabies and ring worm. Tar soap is also recommended for treating lice. But it is, in fact, made from coal; it can smell bad and it can also stain light hair a darker color. Used in low doses, scientific studies have shown that tar soap is safe for treating true medical conditions but it can cause skin irritation in some, and I personally would only use it as a last resort.

10) Eat for your hair

Your hair is a barometer of health–if your hair is dull and lifeless it could mean that your body is as well. In the past people ate food that was as close to the earth as possible and we should, too. Nutrition from the full color spectrum ensures that you are getting the vitamins and minerals necessary for healthy hair. A balanced diet, including healthy oils for essential fatty acids, is important for hair health and shine. Make sure you are eating on a regular basis foods such as salmon, walnuts, and yogurt, sweet potatoes, spinach, blueberries, and more daily to get levels of protein, zinc, vitamins, and minerals needed for happy locks.

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Imagine waking up at exactly the same moment night after night for years and seeing the same time appear on the alarm clock beside your bed. For those who experience this strange occurrence, their first thoughts might be that it was random chance, or simply the product of an overactive imagination. But is it? Is there perhaps a hidden message that is encoded within these mysterious events?

It is most assuredly not their imagination causing them to awaken at exactly 11:11pm each night, or to see “11:11” appear on digital readouts, watch faces, billboards, signs, and even calculators. The time prompt phenomenon is real and it is happening to people all over the world.

The significance of “11:11” may be linked to the coming enigmatic year of 2012, when some scholars believe that the exact moment of transformation predicted in the Mayan Calendar, and prophesied by the Hopi, the Hindu and even the Bible itself, will occur at 11:11am GMT. This theory further suggests that our “junk DNA,” the approximately 97% of our non-coding DNA, will somehow be responsible for triggering this spiritually awakened state of consciousness.

Regardless of one’s belief in the numerous theories surrounding 2012, those who find this mysterious number sequence appearing over and over again, often for years at a time, the significance seems elusive.

Some believe the time prompts, which do not always have to occur at 11:11, may be a type of “wake up call” from a source of higher intelligence. Perhaps these entities are eager to alert our attention to both personal and collective changes we are soon to deal with. Others report experiencing paranormal or spiritual events during these time prompts. Some have even claimed to see their guardian angels, or encounter aliens and ghosts! Others still report nothing but an annoyance that a particular series of numbers seems to haunt and taunt them as they go about their daily lives.

“I wake up every night at the same time, sometimes 11:11pm, sometimes 1:11am, 2:22am, 3:33am,” a geophysicist told us. When asked if anything unusual occurred, he said no, but that the very circumstances intrigued him. Was the brain triggering this nightly occurrence, or was there an outside, external source causing the influence?

Others report the exact same circumstances, even down to looking at clocks throughout the day and noticing the time to be 11:11a.m., 1:11p.m., and on and on. Each time they looked, they became “aware” of the synchronistic pattern, but did not really understand what was behind it. Is it sheer coincidence? Is the brain itself acting as an inner alarm clock, or prompt?

One woman told us: “I have this problem and it really IS becoming a problem… I don’t even wear a watch anymore, I’m always looking at the clock at 11:11am/pm and 1:11am/pm. I’ll even wake up just to look at the clock at 1:11am… It’s getting worse, too. Last night I woke up at 1:11am, 2:22am, and 3:33am!”

Another individual named Cinde, had much to say about these prompts.

First of all, I try very hard NOT to follow man’s time.  To me, clocks and the structure of time were created by man to control man, and I simply do not want to be controlled by anyone.  I do have to follow it for work, however.  The rest of the time, I try to simply go by natural time.  No clock required.

I work 2nd shift.  So I’m up pretty late.  And because of this stupid phenomenon, I don’t sleep well at night.  I tend to wake up at 11:11pm (on my night’s off), followed by 1:11am.  Sometimes, but not always, it will continue with 2:22, 3:33, etc.  But that is rare.

As a result of not sleeping well, I tend to snooze in the mornings, relaxing, cat napping, and watching TV until I FEEL it’s time to get up.  When do I get this “feeling”?  11:11am.  I’ll get up, do what I have to do, and hang around until it’s time to get ready for work.  I have an alarm set for 1:30, since I have to leave by 2.  But it never fails, I will look at the clock early, and it’s usually 1:11.

On one online message board, one person reported: “Everyday of my life it seems I see, 1:11, 2:11, 3:11, 4:11, 5:11, 6:11, 7:11, 8:11, 9:11, 10:11, 11:11, 12:11, I was born on 4/11/89, I’ve been seeing 11:11 for quite sum time now and I know there is no way it can be a coincidence (sic), I have so many unusual 11:11 stories…”

One of the more intriguing reports: “One of my sightings that really stands out is walking past 2 boys wearing bright red football shirts as I turned round to look back at them (don’t know why I did) they both had number 11 on their backs!”

11  11

Over at AngelScribe.com, readers post their stories of encounters with invisible angels at such times as 11:11, 2:22, and on.

“Last night as I pulled into my driveway, I looked down at my mileage and it read 11,111.1! Weird! Than (sic) I woke up this morning at 2:22am! This is just getting too weird! Those Angels are working their magic!”

“In the summer of 1978 I began seeing 1111. I also see 111, 222, 333, etc. Sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night at exactly 1:11. These numbers have appeared on boxes, license plates, house numbers, friends addresses, phone numbers, totals at the grocery store.”

“I woke up at 11:11 last night! I had only been asleep a short time! This morning I was outside with my granddaughter and she said she wanted to go in! Weird, she never wants to go in! LOL… so we went in and sat in the rocking chair and turned a video on… I noticed that the time on the VCR and cable box was 11:11! I love the little reminders… makes my day go so much better!”

It seems that the more people we had an opportunity to speak with while writing our book, the more we came to realise that these stories all seem to share common, recurring traits. Is there a scientifically objective reason why the time prompt phenomenon seems so incredibly common? From a statistical standpoint, it would seem patently obvious that there was some type of connective correlation. But what? And equally as important, why?

Perhaps, the truth combines elements of all these explanations.

But it’s not just the number 11 that is showing up in people’s lives – often accompanied by unusual events or profound insights. Sometimes it’s 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 or any combination of digits that sparks a pattern and shakes us out of our complacent view of the world as random and chaotic.

Throughout the history of human experience, mysterious numbers and strange sequences appear. Even in nature we find numbers, often grouped into sequences and patterns that seem to form an underlying structure to all of reality – both the seen and unseen.

Two of the most stunning examples are the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci Spiral, both of which imply a higher order of measurement behind what many of us take for granted, like the proportion of our own bodies, or the layout of petals on a flower.

The Golden Ratio, also known as the Divine Ratio, the Golden Ration and Golden Mean, is an irrational number of approximately 1.618033988749. This ratio is found throughout the natural, scientific and man-made worlds as the highest expression of balance, symmetry and aesthetics. This fundamental formula can be described as “the ratio whereby the ratio of the whole to the larger section equals the ratio of the larger section to the smaller section.”

Referred to as “phi,” this ratio is present in many sacred icons such as the measurements of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the structure of a five-pointed star, a Pentagram (a sacred object to followers of Plato and Pythagoras) and even in the outline of the Acropolis near Athens, Greece (which takes the shape of a Golden Rectangle.) Most notably, as represented by Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man, the golden ratio is present in the structure of the human body, with outstretched arms and legs showing the Golden Ratio at work.

Sacred geometry is the realm of the divine nature of numbers, suggesting that the great churches, temples and megalithic structures and monuments that mark the earth follow a pattern based upon heavenly properties and resonances.

Harmonics and music actually form the foundation of many of the accepted mathematical laws. Even within the field of sacred geometry, the basics of musical theory provide a structure from which the divine and the human find common ground. One such example is the famous Rosslyn Chapel with its remarkable display of sacred geometry and the use of symbol, harmonics and numbers to convey a sense of otherworldliness, and a divine connection.

Rosslyn Chapel is a 15^th century chapel designed by William Sinclair of the St. Clair family of Scottish nobles descended from the Norman knights, and some claim, linked to the Knights Templar. Originally known as the Collegiate Chapel of St. Matthew, Rosslyn has gained notoriety from the recent best-selling book and movie The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which served to further inextricably link it to the legend of the Holy Grail. Many historians and esotericists even insist the Grail legend itself ends at Rosslyn, where ensconced deep within its walls may lie a secret that only music itself can unlock.

Father Richard Augustine Hay was the principle authority of the Chapel and St. Clair Family. He wrote that Rosslyn was unlike any other house of God’s service, and that it was a “most curious work, that which it might be done with greater glory and splendour.” Sir William is said to have engaged the services of the best masons and workmen available in Europe at the time to build this magnificent structure. Hay and other Rosslyn researchers suggest that the west wall of the Chapel was intended by design to be a model of Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall. In addition, in 2005, mystical symbols carved into the stone ceiling were reportedly discovered which appear to be a musical score hidden in 213 cubes in the ceiling. The cubes, when combined, formed a series of patterns that resulted in a one-hour musical accompaniment for 13 medieval prayers!

Many scholars insist that these musical tones and corresponding patterns on the ceiling cubes are far more than mere coincidence, and that one day we may be able to unlock a medieval secret by repeatedly playing the proper frequencies. While some have attempted, so far the musical mystery remains just that.

Even the Universe itself can be described in both harmonic and mathematical terms. In fact, some scientists and mathematicians believe that our Universe is comprised of six discrete numbers, and that these numbers are so precisely tuned as to suggest the presence of a higher intelligence at work. Call it the “Universal Symphony” if you will.

In his book Just Six Numbers, Sir Martin Rees, the Royal Society Research Professor at Cambridge University and Astronomer Royal, makes a bold case for explaining how these six fundamental numbers can explain the entirety of the physical cosmos. These numbers, “constant values that describe and define everything from the way atoms are held together to the amount of matter in our universe,” were somehow imprinted during the Big Bang itself and began a process of cosmic evolution that allowed for the creation of stars and galaxies, as well as all of the necessary energy states that govern matter and force as we know it.

The six fundamental numbers that shape the Universe, and helped make it in the first place, are:

Nu – “N” a critically huge number with the value of

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a ratio of the strength of electrical forces holding atoms together, divided by the force of gravity (which is 10 to the 37^th power) between them. If this number were smaller, even by a few zeros, it has been posited that the Universe’s lifespan would be too short for biological evolution to occur. As Rees states, a short-lived universe would mean that no creatures could ever grow larger than insects, with no time for biological evolution to unfold. Thus, a buggy world indeed.

Epsilon – 0.007 – Another ratio, this time the proportion of energy released when hydrogen fuses into helium. This number defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all of the atoms on Earth were made. The value of epsilon controls the power from the Sun and how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table. Carbon and oxygen are common, and gold and uranium are rare, because of what happens in the stars. Were this number 0.006, or 0.008, Rees states that we could not possibly exist, again suggesting that the minutest tweaks would have resulted in a universe far different than this one.

Omega – The cosmic number 1 or omega measures the amount of material in our Universe – galaxies, diffuse gas, and ‘dark matter’. Omega refers to the relative importance of gravity and expansion energy in the Universe. According to Rees, a universe with too high of an Omega level would have collapsed long ago; too low, no galaxies would have formed. The inflationary theory of the Big Bang says omega should be one, but astronomers have yet to measure its exact value. Some scientists point to the finely-tuned initial speed of expansion as a hint of Creative Intelligence.

Lambda – the force of cosmic antigravity that was discovered in 1998. This is an extremely small number and appears to control the expansion of the Universe; however, it has no effect on scales of less than a billion light years. If Lambda were any larger, its effect would have stopped galaxies and stars from forming and cosmic evolution would have been “stifled before it could even begin.”

Q = 1/100,000 – The basic seeds for all cosmic structures such as stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies, all of which were imprinted in the Big Bang itself. The fabric – or texture – of our Universe depends on a number that represents the ratio of two fundamental energies. If Q were smaller, the Universe would be inert and without structure; if Q were much larger, the Universe would be a violent place where no stars or suns could exist, dominated by giant black holes.

Delta – 3 – the number of spatial dimensions in our world. Rees argues that life can only exist in three dimensions, not two or four. At least in our Universe, but not necessarily in others. This number it seems has been known for hundreds of years, but is now being viewed in a whole new way, especially in light of superstring theory, which posits that the most fundamental underlying structure are vibrating superstrings that operate in a potentially 10-dimensional “arena.”

“Mathematical laws underpin the fabric of our universe – not just atoms, but galaxies, stars and people,” Rees writes. The goal of theorists, Rees continues, is to one day “encapsulate the essence of the physical laws in a unified set of equations.”

These six numbers allow for the absolute “rightness” of the universe that we live in, a rightness that in turn allowed for all the perfect chemical and physical combinations, events and interactions to lead to the creation of stars, galaxies and planets.

English astronomer James Jeans said, “The universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.” The laws that govern motion, gravitation, force and matter are all, at their foundation, mathematical laws that give order to nature and form the bedrock of all physical reality. The word “astronomy” itself means “law of the stars,” and those laws have their basis in mathematics.

While many consider the mix of science and spirituality to be tantamount to oil and water combining, there are some spiritually leaning scientists who look to this fine-tuning of our Universe as an indication of an intelligent force behind all of creation. Is it beyond the realm of possibility that God may be a number? Though no scholar has yet come up with the perfect divine equation, it is still quite evident that the mark of a master Mathematician with deep respect for numbers is behind what we perceive as our reality.

The “God numeral,” according to physicist Scott Funkhouser, could be an unimaginably big number, say 10^122, or 10 times itself 122 times. This number seems to show up in some very critical cosmic instances, appearing first in the late 1990s when scientists began researching the presence of dark energy. This energy is believed to be behind the accelerating rate of expansion we see in our universe. This same number, albeit with a give or take of a factor of ten, appears in other important ratios, such as the ratio of mass of the observable Universe to that of the smallest “quantum” of mass, which is 6×10^121. In the current Universe, one of the measurements of entropy that determines the many ways in which particles can be spatially arranged is 2.5×10^122.

On a more microcosmic level, our personal lives mirror this same fundamental truth. We live according to numbers. Whether we ascribe to the beliefs of astrology, which tells us about our character traits through the positioning of stars at the times of our births, or we are the result of DNA and its own numeric structural forms, numbers own us. Regardless, we seek to find meaning and understanding in them when they appear over and over again in our lives. There are those who even believe that numbers have the power to shape our lives, our relationships, and our destinies.

Numerology consists of a number of systems, traditions or beliefs that posit a mystical or esoteric relationship between numbers and physical objects. Numerology and numerological divination were popular among early mathematicians such as Pythagoras, but are now regarded as pseudo mathematics by most modern scientists.

According to accepted scientific tenets, it would not be entirely accurate to call numerology a science. Rather, it can best be described as a belief system founded on the concept that the “number behind a name” can literally dictate a person’s destiny, future, and fortune. Like astrology, numerology is based upon the idea that everything, even the names we were given by our parents at birth, has a profound meaning and purpose in the realisation and unfoldment of our individual paths. From the jobs we choose to the places we live, to the mates we give our hearts to, people throughout the centuries have studied their astrological and numerological charts and signs in hopes of gleaning prescient information and patterns which might enable them to make better informed life choices.

The human brain is hard-wired to seek and find patterns wherever it can, in order to understand a complex situation or arrangement. This phenomenon, known as “matrixing,” or more commonly “pareidolia,” is a universal human response. The term pareidolia, according to Wikipedia, describes a “psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hidden messages on records played in reverse.”

Many studies support the brain’s ability to not only construct patterns based upon evident information, but additionally, to assign a time upon them. To wake up once at “11:11” would mean little… but if the brain makes a neural connection after waking up twice at that specific time, that connection would then become an embedded time code that will continue to manifest, becoming a learned response.

If indeed the brain can tell time, and if the brain engages in the matrixing of meaning in an attempt to discern a pattern, how can we then know whether a time prompt is just a time prompt, a sheer coincidental event dictated by the Law of Truly Large Numbers or something more miraculous? Remember, according to that law, when there is a large enough sample of people or subjects, pretty much anything can happen.

Perhaps we will find out on a numerologically significant date, when our collective “junk DNA” may be triggered, sending us to a new level of conscious awareness. Maybe we will find out individually, as the meaning behind the math sinks in through our experience as we find ourselves guided by a higher source along our path.

Either way, one thing is certain – we will know what the sages and scholars knew before us.

It all comes down to numbers.

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.
– Euclid

About the Authors

Marie Jones & Larry Flaxman are the authors of 11:11 The Time Prompt Phenomenon: The Meaning Behind Mysterious Signs, Sequences and Synchronicities and The Resonance Key: Exploring the Links Between Vibration, Consciousness and the Zero Point Grid. They can be reached via their website at www.paraexplorers.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 112 (January-February 2009)

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Getting to know our pain…
I’ve noticed that those who face experiences of the darkest, most challenging times often end up shining the brightest light of all. It’s quite paradoxical in a way. It’s usually the people who go right into the heart of their darkness, who find something deeper; something beyond it all. They begin to find the strength of an ever present benevolence, like a light at the end of the tunnel.

At times I meet the most beautiful souls who are undergoing what could be considered “hell”. I don’t want to talk them out of it. I don’t want to take the pain away. But I care. I care deeply. My soul is stirred to help find a strength that will take them to the heart of the suffering. Not to dwell in it. No, no, not at all! But to look it straight in the eyes and find the light beyond it.

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that it’s heart may stand in the sun,
so must you know your pain.”

Kahlil Gibran

As the light is found at the heart of the experience, fear begins to lose its grip. Fear is like a parasite that sucks the life force out of its host. Yet, the only thing that feeds it is perpetuation of fear. If we find the courage to confront it (or ‘feel the fear and do it anyway‘ as Susan Jeffers says) our identification with the fear ends. It stops defining our experience of this world.

The key is not wishing for something else and denying what we are experiencing. It is important to trust that everything has been sent to help us remember who we truly are.

Profound self honesty is fundamental in our journey of spiritual evolution. Without it, none of this is possible.

So let’s always journey to the heart of things where the sacred waters of our evolution into higher consciousness awaits…

“Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source
from which we drink
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for
something else”

- David Whyte “Well of Grief”

In Love and Light
Trinity

This article originally appeared at Openhandweb.org, a project to elevate the consciousness of human beings and provide healing to those in need.

This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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