Odds & Ends

I have had a lot of time on my hands lately so I've been doing a lot of looking into things and, apart from becoming completely cynical and near-paranoid (in a good way!), I have come to understand some new, "alternative" perspectives on the world. Some not so alternative. I'm going to share with you some of the things I've seen:

Zeitgeist: the underground movie everyone is talking about, which questions our entire grid for understanding our reality, including religion, politics, wars, media, and everything in between. It's a film I don't agree fully with, but we can't ever agree fully on anything anyway. Prepare to have your faith tested, and your eyes opened. Highly recommended!

Freedom to Fascism: Aaron Russo's film which questions the legality of the income tax and attacked the growing authoritarianism in American life.

The Century of the Self: a 4-part documentary which aired on BBC in the UK. "This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." This documentary is VERY GOOD! It offers quite a different, less-sinister (or more sinister?) view on the "ruling elite", and is very well done.

Biblical Nutrition 101: this free e-book is quite cheesy, and if you don't mind the sales pitch, you'll be presented with a great case for a diet change. I found this after I had already made my diet changes and had begun working towards a mostly raw vegan diet. It'll make you think for sure!

Red Pill Reich: the blog of a nurse who, in her words, is "shattering the myth of modern medicine". The most recent post on the site is from mid-2008 and it says she's faced some unnamed pressures to cease posting, but she has left all the valuable information up. She discusses the pharmaceutical industry (origins and practices), the medical establishment, perscription drugs, the effort to "manage" disease rather than cure it, the toxicity of vaccines, the fluoridation of tap water (btw, check this video out) and so on. This site is a must for anyone living in North America.

Positivity Blog: I've noticed that the information I've been feeding on has been a little unbalanced and has become a little too weighty at times. There is a need for me to not think so much and to find some hope and encouragement. Enter the PositivityBlog.com; take a look, I think it explains itself.

TED: Wow, what a great site! A collection of talks by some of the greatest minds alive today. This is like doing sudoku; they really get you thinking!

I may have put my blog on some watchlist by mentioning some of these things, but oh well. Enjoy!!

Subject of Psychology

As Christians, it is the journey we are on to become whole and perfect beings. It is to correct our engrained nature to reflect the divine "nature" if you can call it that. Let's call the divine "nature" good. Our mission is to become this 'good' that God is, because we are children of 'good' and are alive in the body of the 'good' Christ.

Often this begins with guilt as we learn about the divine "nature" and a feeling of condemnation as our own nature dictates an image of an angry God. As we mature (and if we mature), we come to see that God is not angry with us at all, and this unconditional love that we suddenly realize then begins to set our minds free.

Our behavior changes as well, as we grow. We become conscious of our actions because we see an alternate way of being in Christ, who we are learning more and more about. The frustration for someone making their own attempts to change their behavior is that they find it extremely difficult, and may even be aware enough to realize that whatever progress they've made easily takes on another manifestation (eg. overcoming a habit of lying becomes pride about overcoming it). We discover that it is not the surface manifestations that need to change, but the actual heart of these actions, the cell from which they come. Doing anything else is trying to cure the disease by stopping its symptoms. Futile.

So it then becomes a matter of our psychology, as this is all a trip of "renewing the mind"; the mind is the epicentre of our actions, the container of the information through which we make decisions, and the dictator of our every reaction. And it is these actions and deeds of our bodies that set us apart from God, that make us ungodly. I've never heard of a "sin" of the spirit.

It becomes a question of whether we are a subject of our psychology, or a subject of Christ, a subject of the beast or of the spirit. It is about changing the information that is in the mind so that we automatically make different decisions and have different reactions. This information is understanding the love of God, and seeing futility in the things we currently do (ie. gaining wisdom). This information is regarding our own endlessness and magnitude as children of God, which can change our perspective dramatically. It is a new truth, a higher truth, and it changes everything about our actions the more we know of it.

Bless This Food to My Body's Use

A common phrase amongst prayers at the dinner table, I suddenly found it funny the other day, with all my recent study of food, that we would say this prior to consuming some of the garbage we consume. Granted, a lot of our consumption is mindless and based on ignorance, but the habit of asking for a blessing on toxic intake begins to sound ludacris to the one who suddenly discovers what is actually being consumed.

I've gone "extreme" and have begun to eat only organic food, recording all instances of inorganic feedings so that I can limit them and find replacements for them. I decreased dairy intake to nearly nil, stopped consuming refined sugar, I rarely eat red meat, and am trying to replace all meat consumption altogether. Though organic is not fail-safe, it is far safer to ingest than any mainstream equivalent. Significantly reduced are pesticide residues, food formed out of chemically-infused soil, hormones, steroids, and on and on.

We are fools to ask for the miracles we ask for when we want nutrients and energy from a cheeseburger, or any of the other nutrient-starved items we take in. The verse about Jerusalem being charged to pray for protection and "strengthen your gate" comes to mind. Pray for health and the good work of your food, but also EAT GOOD FOOD!

Humans are the only creature to consume the baby's milk of - I hate to say it - "other animals". We keep these hiefers producing by impregnating them like clockwork, and toggle their hormonal nature to keep it coming. Strange we do this. Humans are the only creature to change the chemical balance and nutrition structure of their food before eating it, and by that I am referring to cooking/heating. I heard that an old technique for pig farmers to fatten up their animals was to cook the potatoes before feeding them; feed them raw potatoes, and they stay lean.

Humans choose all kinds of things, in all their infinite wisdom, that do nothing but satisfy the senses, and I hate to keep drumming this beat, but that line the coffers of some corporation. Consumption is based on making money, and as usual, the money motivator has destroyed it.

With so much disease, discomfort, and all the rest, it would seem logical that the first change recommended to us would be the riddance of all nutrient-starved food, and the replacement with a more "organic" diet (ie. organically grown fruit and veg consumed raw where possible, limited animal product intake). But since the healthcare profession is largely dollar-based as well, we hear the recommendation for pharmaceuticals, because these line someone's coffer... a proper diet does not pay commission.

I think that with the science behind the consumption of foods, and how these particles we put into our bodies actually become part of our material makeup, we would do ourselves a much better service by saying something like "this becomes me" just prior to eating. This could develop in us a distaste for anything void of health, and would be us "strengthening our gate". Then the natural "miracle" of digestion and utilization can take place, and we can pray correctly: bless this food to my body's use.