Chris Harper Multicultural Studies of Healing Blog/ Journal I am currently visiting my family in Newark, De, the center of the University of Delawares campus and only 20 minutes from the large city of Wilmington. This area makes me think alot about how the food production is america needs total re-working for the general health of the nation. In Vermont we are all so lucky to have access to local foods and organics at large. In Newark there are two health food stores hidden behind the mess of fast food and grocery stores. We cause endless problems for ourselves because of our food choices. The first 3 causes of death are inextricably linked to diet: heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Here, there is almost no local produce and everything in the store travels halfway across the country before it gets here. The natural food has its half-isle and is almost twice as expensive . There are some farmers markets right over the border in Md. and PA., but the cities are a different story. There is no choice there. People have to eat to live and they have to take what they can get. 80-90% of the corn grown in the US is for feed. That is a lot of land and the price of feeding cows grain is about a 90% energy loss in the end. If we used this land to cultivate vegetables and kept our cows on grass, we would have endless amounts of food. It would be cheaper, better, and healthier. We, as a culture must cut our rate of beef and dairy consumption, as they are the number one nutritional health threats and environmental threats. On top of that, the use of pesticides and growth hormones puts chemicals into our body that are not meant to be there. I was thinking.... nobody seems to have a cure to cancer or even a solid reason it exists. I believe the consumption of growth hormones and other chemicals is a catalyst for cancer. I may be using the wrong reasoning, but cancer is the unregulated growth of cells and we are eating growth hormones off our plate everyday as average americans. Other countries wont accept our meat because of what we do to it, for good reason! If anyone gets the chance I suggest they read a book by John Robbins called The Food Revolution. Its scary, but necessary that people realize what has happend to our food production in the last 200 years. He has a quote in there from the head of a meat processing plant. " It is okay and generally healthy for people to eat beef and chicken and dairy in their daily lives..... unless it comes from the grocery store." Buy organic, local, and watch out for those grocery stores! Food is an industry and the only thing that will change it is putting your very dollars into good means. As long as there is money flow into something in the western world, it will not die.
I believe is is essential for a healer to be in good health and mental states before helping others. In our culture, where computers and gadgets run alot of the show, we can get away with it. But when you get into energy therapies and other alternatives having to do with the mind such as reiki, there is a much more personal relationship going on, one that is based on energy between people. Either side of the party could be responsible for transferring energy that need not be. If the person is sick, the healer must be strong enough to not absorb the energy at their cost, and if the healer is unhealthy, they can transfer that energy residue as well. So..... I tend to be one of those people who are always striving towards the future, always planning ahead and measuring potentials of everything around. It has taken me a long time to work with keeping my consciouness grounded in the now. If you are always looking ahead, you can never see what is here now, only potentials that do not exist yet. From there most of the time you proceed toward making your gathered potentials live up to their potential and when you get to what you thought would be the resolving product, it is less than what you dreamt it to be. You realize all the time and energy you spent because of focusing on the future, a time when the grass will be greener. With keeping tight to your future plans, you have no way to receive guiding intuition that would possibly change everything in a moment, in THIS moment. One step at a time. Germinate, grow, flower, decay. Life. Be nonattached to the outcome and bask in the being of now. I have been taught this lesson over and over again and am still working with it. What I am truly beginning to realize is all the things that these books have been talking to me about for years. There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. Love what you do, when you are doing it. You bring yourself to and from every situation that appears. You are responsible. In a sense, you have some control through choice. Isnt that beautiful? Every moment is a moment on the journey, one that never ends. Life is of moments, why give away your moments while dreaming of what moments might happen later. This one moment right now is for you right now, perfectly flowed into and will soon be gone. Gotta ask, whats here for me now? Any thoughts? Ihave used art as my personal therapy since highschool. Each piece is a meditation, anchoring you to line, color, and form. Watch it grow. One line leads to another, one color leads to the next, just like life itself. Pick something to focus on and just go with it. What I really liked to do is make them for other people. Its amazing to see how each person brings out different colors and forms and actually ends up looking like it matches their energy. You cant worry about the outcome though, no planning allowed. No intellect or reason to guide the pen, just feeling, intuition, and holding your minds eye on your friend. The vibrations on the paper are very vibrant and speak volumes about how you feel, which can get you in trouble if you harbor any negative subconscious feelings about the person. Also, the piece should be given with absolute love and no expectations. Try it out, free your inner artist, it is therapy for you and others! With America as the melting pot of culture for the world, it is often very hard to determine or see ones purpose or place in the world. One thing we have here in America is the right and ability to believe what we want. Many cultures rely on their ways for SURVIVAL, and attachment to their ways and beliefs keep them alive and connected with the community(much more communal than our society because they all share the same base set of belifs and inherit THE WAY from their elders) We have so much info running into our minds everday, getting glimpses of several cultures, but not being able to be a part of any one particularly. All the colors run together and create a GRAY . So the questions are : who am i, why did i get here, and what is my purpose. To be fully well, you need to have stories to tell yourself to CREATE meaning, and try to paint that picture vibrant. These are all things that americans do not have answered for them in the same way as individuals in traditional cultures. In america, you create your own story for yourself, most of the time separate from the people around you. They influence you, but you are not told by an elder the way, just their particular ways that may differ greatly from their next door neighbor. Endless possibities that can rattle your mind for a lifetime if you look at those questions too hard, which is what i tend to do. On page 49 of Coyote Healing there is an piece that talks about creating a sense of meaning in life to prevent being "swallowed into nothingness" What Ive come up with is be in good company, utilize passions and talents for the benefit of others and your own nurturence. Past that is blank for me, just a realm of possibilty that no one knows the truth to. The Dalai Lama himself said something to the extent of: I could sit here my entire life under a tree and just breathe and live on grains of rice, studying these practices and reducing my karma to prevent rebirth, but there is absolutely no knowing whether I will be reborn or not, I AM JUST LIVING MY WAY, the way that works for me. His way of living works for him, that is ,the reality he has created for himself. Our society as of now suffers from our perceived disconnectedness from ourselves;the whole. The components of our society that we feed with our everyday lives fuels this perception. Capitalism is a firm basis for the notion of survival of the fittest or everyone for themselves. We each live separate lives with a few close ones, have our own house, car, space, land that is under our individual ownership, and even ultra-specialized jobs that leaves us to make money to utilize other persons trades. We do not work together, though we will for money. Communal living is opposite of capitalism. Nobody is capitlalizing on one another, but rather seeing what the group has, and working together to make the best of it. No one is left behind and no one gets too far ahead. This style of living is such more condusive to seeing that we all are interconnected and serve a purpose for eachother. It is much easier to see the point that: WE NEED THESE OTHER PEOPLE! Our society is of competition and class battles cause people to discriminate who they perceive they are from the whole of what is really going on. And it is very frustrating, isnt it? We have no way to change things on a mass scale because of the way of life our western world has adopted. We, and I,and you utilize systems of separation everday in our western world. It is absolutely necessary for inquiry into how we got to this state for any possibility of transformation. We need to acknowledge what is wrong to change it.... a very similar concept to healing; first step is facing the illness. Awareness is not bliss.... This form of mantra repetition is very effective for clearing the mind and the cultivation of concentration. When we leave our fleeting thoughts, our desires, and inside chatter for practicing peace, we remember who we are, what we have, and can more clearly get a sense of why we are here and how we can more effectively use the talents and skills that were given to us individually by the creator. When you are not thinking on impulse, you get to see what is here clearly, making it easy to maintain a healthy sense of self and direction. Spiritual ecstacy is based in the now and this form of meditation can be a very grounding experience, allowing you to see where you are and what you have to do, plan it out, and execute from one step to the next effectively. It is very satisfying to live with a purpose, and clearing my mind and facing my (even if only perceived) purpose everyday helps get through daily life one day at a time. 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