The Gift of Life: Part One

For most of my life I have had a constant feeling that I experience everyday life in a way that is unique and unknown to most people. I knew it when I was a young child, spending the majority of my time in nature, seeking its safety and wonder, listening to the trees, organizing my large collection of crystals and gemstones that were a magical gift from my grandma...and I was always surrounded with a plethora of various pets and wildlife. I felt that I could connect with animals (and plants) more than the others in my circle of friends and family (except maybe my little sister. I'm quite sure that she has these skills, and now her 8 year old son does, too).  I think my gift of animal communication was shattered when I had a severe horseback riding "accident" at age 14. I lost my lust and confidence for animal communication and felt like I had failed my horse. I "outgrew" my animal phase. 

At age 7, I was singled out with a handful of other students, tested, and labeled as "gifted and talented".  By who's standards? For the remainder of my grade school years, our group met weekly to hone our "gifts and talents". I never really thought much about it though. It seemed normal enough at the time. We all looked forward to an annual convention of the G&T called Odyssey of the Mind. From early elementary and onward, we did things like build balsa wood bridges to see who could engineer the strongest one. We also wrote, acted in, and directed our own plays -soundtracks included. We practiced brainstorming, had philosophical discussions and polished up on our problem-solving skills. It was a non-stop mind challenge.

Outside of school, I grew up in a household that was quite violent and very tense. There was lots of shouting, which I always ran and hid from, and even sometimes when it was really intense, there was throwing and smashing of various objects. There were often forceful physical assaults, which I was never once involved in, only a witness to on numerous occasions. 

I have always had a photographic memory. It is a curse and a blessing. I can remember things from at least 25 years ago in fine detail. The good, the bad and the ugly. It was extremely useful in school when it came time to take exams. I would have a flash of the exact paragraph in a textbook where the answer to a question was. I have pretty much everything from the last 32 years of life stored in my visual memory. On a regular basis now, random moments in history pop up in my consciousness. Things that I didn't even consciously know that I saw or experienced at the time. What people were wearing, the music in the background and what the weather was like on any given day. 

As a child with extremely high sensitivity to other people's (and animals') energy, I struggled with all of this. A LOT. I learned the habit of emotional eating from my parents. So I became the chubby kid. My big brother teased me relentlessly and had cruel nicknames for me until I was a teenager, when I finally joined sports teams, ate healthier and slimmed down to normal-ish. I also cried often as a kid. Pretty much daily. I was often very sad and so afraid for myself, my family and our pets. 

I was always the overachiever in the family, much to my two siblings' dismay. I was a straight-A Honor Roll student most of my 12 years of school and was always striving to prove myself to the world. Somehow though, nothing any of us did was ever good enough for our father. Why weren't the A-minuses A-pluses?? He had (and still clings to) extremely high hopes for me. He told me repeatedly that I would make a great doctor or lawyer someday.  I knew he was wrong. Those things were not in my destiny. At least not this time around. 

Finally one day in grade 11, at age 16, I couldn't cope with the violence and pressure at home and at school ANY. MORE. My body, mind and spirit started to crumble. I developed severe anxiety, including a debilitating fear of traveling in enclosed vehicles with other people (cars, buses, airplanes, subways, etc) regardless of who they were. 

When IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) was a brand new discovery back then, I was labeled with that, too. I felt just awful! I quit attending high school a few weeks before grade 11 final exams, and I insisted on homeschooling myself for grade 12. It took a boatload of convincing but I did it, with the help of a very supportive tutor and his wife, who became my second family for that year. 

My closest friends had no idea what was happening because I was really embarrassed and very confused at the time. I spent nearly the entire year of grade 12 holed up reading and writing and spending tons of time in nature. I was constantly asking myself "what is the meaning of all of this?!". I knew that my life just had to be about more than this ugliness that I had experienced so much of for those early years of life.

My search began for the answers to some really tough questions:  "Why am I here? What can I do to make my world a better place? Is this the reality that everyone experiences? Is life this scary for other kids? How did I end up in this family? Am I going nuts? Will I wake up and realize that this was all a bad dream?" 

To be continued...(it was too long to fit into one blog post.)

You DID sign up for this! And continue to sign up for it. (Part TWO)

This is a second piece to my last post about "collective consent". There are so many aspects of our culture that seem SO backward and corrupt to me. Every day I observe people and situations that make me at least shake my head, sometimes they give me a queazy feeling in my stomach, and at worst, they drive me to write about it. Why do we all continue to follow along like a flock of helpless, mindless sheeple? 

I think it's about darn time that we speak up and say a big bold NO to the leaders of our world and the corporations that are mutually supporting each other to control our thoughts and actions every single day.  At least be the black sheep!  I'm one. I have been one as long as I can remember. Go against the [GMO] grain. Don't be afraid to raise a few eyebrows! Make people do a double take. Be the topic of conversation (But be normal enough so people actually listen to what you have to say and don't run for the hills when they see you).

Media

When I was a kid, I despised the news channels on the TV and radio.  I didn't have a clue what they were reporting about, but I remember seeing awful images and hearing the words "bombing" "gunfire" "injured civilians" "casualties" "war" "drugs" "borders" "tragedy" "child abduction" "rape" "attacks" "gangs" and many others that stir up feelings of sadness.  I didn't understand why on earth adults wanted to see and hear that stuff.  I still don't understand.  I'm quick to leave the room or change the radio station when news comes on.  Newspapers and magazines tend to be slightly more tactful about their presentations. However, in my humble opinion, all mainstream big media raises a major red flag for me. 

I believe that we are fed the side of the story that makes most of the population either: (a) feel afraid for themselves and their families, (b) angry at someone which creates a target ( such as making a poor poor POOR judgement about a whole race of people or an entire region of the globe) or (c) sympathetic enough to agree with what they just saw/heard/read. Often it's enough to sway "we the people" into supporting whatever ridiculous attack or war on this or that or the other scheme that they have dreamt up to gain more power and control. 

For this reason alone, I do not believe in television, radio or printed news from any mainstream source. Simply put: We are not receiving all of the necessary information that we would need in order to create an intelligent and educated opinion on anything. Period. Exclamation point. 

Do your homework. Question everything. Especially if the news told you that it's true!

(PS. Pleeeeease do NOT believe everything that Facebook tells you. After all, Facebook is a collaboration of sheeple spreading sheeple fears. There is some good stuff on there too. Use your intuition to separate the two.)

Technology

 Oh wow, BIG topic. I had to take a really deep iBreath before I typed this on my iPhone.  That wasn't a typo. I was just testing to see if anyone thought that the concept of a device to tell us when and how to breathe would be crossing a line of insulting our innate human intelligence.  When is enough going to be enough?  

Ask yourself if your life is any easier now that you have all these gadgets? Remember when all you had was a phone attached to your wall, an address book, actual social gatherings, and to keep life flowing smoothly....a wall calendar with puppies or cool cars on it and you couldn't wait to get to the next page because it was your birthday month!? How the heck did we get anything done back then? Our calendars didn't beep, vibrate, flash or interrupt us in the middle of an important conversation to tell us to take the dog for a walk.  I actually laughed out loud when I just imagined calendars doing all that. 

I heard a real live duck quacking in a pond the other day and briefly thought that maybe the last person enjoying that bit of nature left their iPhone in the weeds. (?!?!?)  Enough about the iRevolution. I'm just getting flustered. 

Let's talk about the new fancy technologically advanced cars! So smart! They warn you when vehicles ahead of you are stopping (some even warn you two cars ahead!) so you don't really have to keep your eyes on the road, beep madly when there is something behind you in reverse so that you don't have to use your mirrors, and give you a thumbs up when it's safe to change lanes in rush hour traffic, so you don't have to strain yourself with a brutal shoulder check. Might as well put your dog in the driver's seat so you can text away or scroll through Facebook on your iThing. Or better yet, just reveal the iDrive already. I'm sure it's coming and does everything for you so you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. Oh, wait a minute. That's called a taxi.

What else can I examine? 3D televisions? (I prefer real life.) I won't even go there. My point is, be present. LIVE each moment...and going along with today's theme, iThink for yourself.

Did YOU sign up for this? (Part UNO)

I am finding that my posts are alternating between uplifting and concerning. This topic is concerning to me and also really huge (so i am splitting it up into multiple posts). Once again, inspired by a chapter in a book, I write today to encourage you to question everything. And by everything, I mean every. Single. Thing.

The concept that sparked my writing is that of a "tribal consciousness" or "collective consent". In other words, I'm going to examine some of the many facets of our society's "normal" practices (that most of us seem to be ok with, otherwise we would be changing things, right?) and explain why I think we are all being mislead in a huge way.  I don't have all the answers...I ask you to come to your own conclusions:

Water

We all need it. It's not optional. How do you like yours? Tap? Spring? Reverse osmosis? Vitamin enhanced? Fruity? Perhaps with a bit of fizz? When did something that falls freely from the sky start belonging to the world's governments and big corporations? How is it even possible for some places to deem it illegal to catch your own rainwater? How did our environment get so filthy that we have to treat our water like its toxic waste and run it through a series of contraptions in order to drink it or bathe in it? Gulp. 

Food

Also not optional, except for a handful of folks (called Breatharians. What? You don't know one? Geez.) who have apparently surpassed the need for food. Once upon a time, people around the globe grew their own food. Mhmmmm, pretty much everyone. Most of them hunted for something too. So that would mean if you were lazy, you would likely starve. These days most of us would call producing food "dirty work". We have much more glamorous goals to achieve, so we mindlessly roam through the mega "food" stores, piling carts full of processed packaged stuff labeled as edible.

  At your next meal, quiz yourself to see if you know where any of your food was grown or how far it travelled to arrive in your fridge. As Joel Salatin joked, but was actually frighteningly serious, some kids on his farm tour asked to see the salsa tree. Yikes.  If you don't live in an agricultural area of the globe, you are really missing out on seeing where many of your staple foods are coming from. The next time you eat anything containing conventional (and verrrrry likely GMO) wheat, corn, or canola oil (or a myriad of other cheap, scary fillers), consider this series of images.

It starts in the expansive fields where the crops (and surrounding homes and schools etc) get a routine shower of poisonous chemicals several times a season...

Then it all gets sprayed one last time to ensure that it all ripens perfectly just in time to harvest...

It all eventually ends up in your kitchen...And...in a frighteningly huge percentage of anything that comes in a package, box, can or bag...or a restaurant. 

I have watched the spraying on a very regular basis while riding my bike around rural Alberta. Even got sprayed once while riding. It burned my skin. I was told to smarten up and not bike around crop sprayers. Also, every minute counts in farming, so we don't stop spraying when a human is nearby.   Gag. Choke. Head shake. Huh??!

Education

I have a hard time even calling it that. It really seems more like "fill your brain, limit your creativity, think...but only inside the box, this is how it is, leave out the actual life skills portion (like taxes or budgeting or healthy eating or proper communication skills), oh and sit still and stop talking for 12 years-ucation."  

Then...if you are wealthy, a superstar athlete OR want to pay back mega debt for the next few decades, university is totally for you! What? You're not going?! You'll never make it in the real world!!! Might as well just give up now. Or work your butt off at ____ and give away a huge slice (wait, no. You keep a slice and we will take the loaf) of your hard earned money to the government. Oh, don't you worry. They are going to use it to help make your life better. Ahahaha *snort* Oh, gosh. That's funny. 

Well then. I think that's enough for everyone to question for one day. 

Ps. I plan to elaborate on all of these topics in the near future. Stay tuned for Part 2...

More Power...but not the kind you think.

Last night, reading by headlamp, I could hardly put down a new-to-me book that a friend recently recommended. It's called Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss, PH.D... and it's amazing. In a nutshell, it is about recognizing emotional and spiritual patterns in ourselves and learning how to correct them to avoid/heal illness and disease.
First thing this morning, I did a quick exercise inspired by the first few chapters. She talked about how we each give up personal power over a lifetime of everyday experiences, and how each of us can learn to regain our personal power to boost health and wellness. Here's what I came up with:

Things that Self-Empower Me
Exercise
Creativity
Nature
Reading books
Helping others with love
Staying informed
Growing my food
Learning new things
Listening to my intuition
Doing what feels right
Healthy cooking & eating
Honesty and clear communication
Surrounding myself with loving people

Conversely, here are the things that I find DEPLETE my Personal Power:
Fearfulness (this is a broad topic, amazing the subtle things we all fear)
Believing and/or sharing false information
Exposing myself to negative energy (people and situations)
Not respecting my body (ie. consuming foods that are not supporting my wellness)
Not speaking up about injustices or fallacies in our world
Undervaluing myself

This exercise was similar to the "Things That I LOVE" exercise, but also made me reflect on the things that I allow myself and others to do or say that are depleting my Personal Power.  I am certainly intrigued by my lists and hope to dig a little deeper to discover more.  I hope that this will be useful to some of you also.

It's SO interesting what humans will say and do to each other to steal each others personal power. Children learn this at a very young age through observation of the adults in their lives.  In Gary Zukav's life-changing book, Spiritual Partnership, he likens all human relationships as being like two weights on an old-fashioned scale.  We should all be working to keep the scales balanced, which means we don't see ourselves as "above" anyone else, and at the same time we don't undervalue ourselves and see others as "above" us. I also recall a passage in another book that was referring to the auras, or energy fields, around any two people interacting, and that there is a visual vacuum-like effect when one person is stealing power from another.  In the ideal human interaction, each person will be expanding the personal power of the other so that no one walks away drained or inferior.  Think about that the next time you speak to a stranger on the phone, stand at the checkout counter or have a flare up of road rage. Turn your thoughts around and give a little. It won't hurt you, and it could mean a whole lot to someone else.

"We all share a type of physical body that becomes ill or heals for the same reasons. We also share emotional and psychological crises common to the human experience. Everyone fears abandonment, loss and betrayal; anger is as toxic within a Jewish body as it is within a Christian or Hindu body; and we are all drawn to LOVE. When it comes to the health of our spirits and our bodies, we have NO differences." - Caroline Myss, PH.D.