Tag Archives: Societal Norms

Sprouts

Don’t Need It. Don’t Want It. Don’t Gotta Have It.

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I wish I could say it’s good to be back in the big, bad apple–my home for the past 18 years, but, in truth, re-entry into New York City after two months of surf, sand, and sun in a state of clear, connected consciousness for two and a half months has been a disturbing experience. There’s nothing like being away from all the madness to see it for what it is — a relentless assault of images — subliminal and overt — directing all receptive minds and resources toward a parade of unnecessary trends, products, and social directives. From this lucid vantage point, I see it as an obvious form of mind-control and group madness. Ask me next week and I might be sucked back in just enough to excuse it and accept it as I have historically done, so I didn’t want to wait to express this.

The world of merchandizing and image-mongering is extreme. For decades of living in LA and NYC, it had me in its clutches. I bought in, sold my soul, pursued and purchased as directed, like a marionette. Over the last ten years of deep cellular cleansing, my ability to see through the programming increased significantly, but today it is so clear that I simply can’t find the purpose in any of it or support it at all anymore. Life cannot grow through concrete. Dead indoor air, chlorinated water, processed food, greedy pursuits, and the like cannot support life.

I have spoken several times about the trajectory of mutation–but to reiterate, it grows into disfigured rogue form over time as the mutation grows more pronounced. Physical, psychological, mental and emotional imbalances begin with lesser symptoms and bit by bit, those symptoms grow more pronounced, more acute as their cause goes uncorrected. If corrections are not made to the trajectory and the organism fails to be restored, the future generations of both the cells within that organism and the generations of that organism’s offspring (remember we always look at an organism holographically, appreciating the micro- and macro-cosmic effects) will carry more dire mutations. This is how we read the Universal Laws of Life and can thereby predict the outcomes of all causes. In the case of our civilization’s life-deteriorating trajectories, we have received countless warning signs of where it is headed (too many warning signs to mention here, but think autism, schizophrenia, infertility, depression, Parkinson’s, etc.). So we can predict that the next generations are going to greater expressions of these symptoms. If you conjured up images of zombie-like monsters depicted in movies like 21 Days Later,Night of the Living Dead, and Shawn of the Dead, you would be spot-on.

Think that might be a stretch? It turns out that right on 23rd Street and Park Avenue, where my husband’s offices are, there are a number of people exhibiting zombie-like symptoms. My husband and his colleague were telling me about it last night. There are many of them–pharma-addicts, a.k.a. pharmaceutical junkies. Apparently, they freeze. That’s right. They actually freeze in place–anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours or more–while clutching a cup or making a gesture or just sitting or standing, often with their head dropped down. Pharmaceutical drugs, my friends. If this is what extra dosages do, do you think small “recommended” doses are safe? Is our way of life a highway to a world of human zombies? How about that expression on your ten-year-old’s face while watching TV programs and ads? Is truth not only stranger than fiction but on par with horror? Is life mimicking horror, or horror mimicking life?

(Note: as I’m reading this to Ana, she nods and tells me she has seen them too. Surely, this is not a stand-alone event. Perhaps it’s just the proximity to a big-name drugstore.) Apparently the dealers are pretty easy to spot. Are pharma-drug ringleaders modern-day drug dealers? What’s more, the squirrels are going the way of the snake pit too. Apparently, urban squirrels in many of the local parks are jumping on people with packaged foods and drinks. They too have become addicted to the intensely addictive substances in our foods and are insistent upon getting their fix!

Everyone knows New Yorkers are the trendsetters. If this is any indication of what’s to come and what’s brewing, is it really the trajectory we want to be on? And let’s face it, we’re in it together. Separation consciousness is an illusion. Life is a great web. Parts disconnected from the vines of life (carrying vitality from the great interconnected organism of planetary life) cannot live for long. They wither or mutate, or both. If these people become zombies, cleansers are affected too! Do you think their choices do not impact you? Do you think their refuse does not enter the water supply or that animals that become addicted to the substances they ingest from our garbage don’t make them dangerous to you? Small consolation, but at least it sounds like you’re safer carrying around apples than chips!

Sure, you may be cleansing, but what is your teenager sneaking from the local drugstore? Do you think there are no pharma-junkie dealers in your neck of the woods? Can you be sure they or their clients won’t freeze while going 65 mph on the highway? We are all connected. Awareness followed by conscious change is the only way out. There is a great southern African philosophy called Ubuntu that essentially states, “I am who I am because of who we all are.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu offered this definition: A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Are we losing our Ubuntu? Are we choosing greed and dead things over connection and living things?

Going through piles of mail, I came across several catalogs. One popular brand screamed from the cover: “You Need It. You Want It. You’ve Gotta Have It!” As I tossed it into the recycling bin, I thought, No, I don’t need it. I don’t want it and I don’t gotta have it.

The lyrics of this great Elton John song, “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” nicely echoes my sentiments about my long-beloved city:

Until you’ve seen this trash can dream come true
You stand at the edge while people run you through
And I thank the lord there’s people out there like you
I thank the lord there’s people out there like you

Subways no way for a good man to go down
Rich man can ride and the hobo he can drown
And I thank the lord for the people I have found
I thank the lord for the people I have found

While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
Turn around and say good morning to the night
For unless they see the sky
But they can’t and that is why
They know not if it’s dark outside or light

And Happy New Year to all my Jewish friends!

Love,
Natalia

P.S. I thank the Lord that there are people out there like you.

Perspectives

Till All Success Be Nobleness

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I discovered this work in a moment in my life when I was at a serious crossroads. As many of you may have read in my personal story in the Detox Community, I struggled a lot with being in a body and in a world of untruth (though I didn’t understand it quite this way at that time). So much so that I either had to discover a life-changing breakthrough or leave this world behind. It’s often a rock-bottom moment that catalyzes the greatest change. Only when life-depleting patterns wear us down do we become hungry and open enough to receive something completely new and life-saving.

Well, the other day, for the first time in perhaps months, I switched on the television. I was thinking I would jump on my trampoline and stretch to some daytime television for laughs. I was immediately reminded of why I keep that devise switched off. All the programs—every talk show, drama, movie, and commercial—were produced not only to reach the lowest common denominator, but also to program the consciousness of the viewer!

How is it that millions of people can sit around allowing their minds to be programmed by the subliminal messages in the ads and shows? How does anyone believe that a fat-free, 80-calorie yogurt is going to make them thin? How does anyone not see that the actress promoting denture grips only needs dentures because she has been eating steak and other unfit foods for decades? While one commercial sells and glamorizes the consumption of inhuman substances, the next one celebrates the innovation of a drug, denture cream, or incontinence product. Why don’t people make the connection? If I let the whole thing get to me, I would go out of my tree!

Instead, I switch it off. But all the while, millions of people go on watching. I think it’s good to check in on what the masses are doing now and then—to come down from my clean-celled mountaintop experience and be reminded that my purpose here is to be of service. The trouble is that when I take a look at all the norms of society, I come face to face with the disturbing causes and effects that I know will follow.

All the lies—from which I only escaped by the skin of my teeth, years ago—are still out there, clutching people so tightly that they can barely breathe. What force is driving the rampant ignorance and over-consumption? The answer: the greed and power of corporations and their minions. But for such programmed thinking to take root at all, people must blindly accept and follow whatever the machinery of our mainstream culture feeds them. This is an important point because it means that the programmers could just as easily be disempowered, if only people woke up and rejected their programs! I believe that if we expose the folly and offer people a new way to care for their bodies, they will be pleasantly astonished and thus more open to revolutionizing other areas of their lives.

Even if we are unable to see the causes and the effects of our actions, we are still subject to them. It brings me great happiness to see more and more people learning to see through the lies, but what of the millions upon millions of those who remain in the dark? They keep handing more power to those who are enslaving them! This is not a conspiracy theory, but a tragic truth of the modern age. Living in disharmony with the laws of life cause all the pain and disease in our world. Brand marketing and pharma-government “health care” are power- and money-driven enterprises that have little to do with what is true or good for us. Don’t be fooled by their consumer-messaging strategy. All you have to do is step out from the ranks of the living dead to recognize this. The trouble is that most people surrendered their own clear-eyed authority to the mental and behavioral programming long ago.

Self-government is what we should be able to achieve as a society. Not anarchy, but SELF-GOVERNMENT. Self-government works when we have such a strong moral compass and are so in touch with the truth (not dogma, not religion) of clean living that any larger body of government is not only superfluous, but an insult. But when I look around, I see our country adrift in highly dangerous waters, far from the grounding wisdom of self-government.

I have loved this country with all my heart, but once again, I now find myself at a personal crossroads where I know there must be a breakthrough or else certain disaster. Key liberties are sifting through our fingers like sand because too large a portion of the population has been hypnotized, turned into marionettes in the greedy hands of power and consumerism. The powerful few are ruining the country for the rest of us. In this world of duality, of light and dark, light must regain its rightful percentage of power in order to survive. But darkness is snuffing out so much of our human potential and breeding scary new paths to destruction. Just for example, consider the irradiation of all non-organic greens because of a spinach scare a few years ago, or the swine flu (more on this later).

Yet, most Americans seem content as long as Walmart and Dunkin’ Donuts remain open. It is actually pretty impressive: In the last fifty years, the power-driven few, the so-called tastemakers, have managed to render more than 95 percent of Americans brain-dead while still showing a pulse and holding down a job and family.

I’ve held my tongue long enough. It’s time to get more vocal, to seize the chance to wake everyone up. I believe in the highest good of humankind and the beauty that we all have the potential to manifest. But we cannot manifest goodness and beauty until we detonate the old, destructive blueprint that has imprisoned the masses and replace it with a life-generating one. No one can achieve this alone. It takes a world of intrepid individuals who share a vision and take the initiative to build on it.

There is work to be done. We can still get excited about fitting into cute clothes and swapping cleansing recipes in the short term, but we must also work to cleanse the world of all the lies, programs, and agendas that hold our futures and our children’s futures in jeopardy. We need to expand our consciousness beyond the limits of self-identity and assume our places in the human community. It all starts with the desire to see and learn the universal laws of life. As more and more of us do this, we will lift the consciousness of those around us. Eventually, we as a people of higher consciousness will be able to dissolve the programs that have for too long robbed us of our personal liberties.

From the overcrowded arteries of New York City to the sleepy byways of small towns across America, we have communally surrendered mass quantities of our personal liberties over to sales agendas of all kinds. We have surrendered our power to think for and govern ourselves. And the more we buy into the lies, the more we surrender.

Now, to top it all off, the government wants to make flu and swine flu vaccinations mandatory. The first step is to scare us with propaganda, to make us sufficiently frightened for our lives, and then present the miraculous vaccine that will save us. Now, if you know how disease originates and the conditions viruses require in order to thrive, you would not be frightened at all by this hype, much less permit the vaccine to be pumped into your bloodstream (with who knows what ingredients controlling DNA codes and triggering cellular dissonance). But just like the millions of people who get the flu shot, run/walk for cancer, and take cold suppressants and vitamin supplements, those who do not understand how the body works will line right up and even thank the government for its generosity.

This time, schools will be the site of mass inoculations. They say swine flu has a particular penchant for the under-25 set. In fact, a school in Montgomery, NJ, held a mock practice inoculation last week—that’s right, to give the kids a certain sense of comfort and courage in preparation for the event. As each child went through the mock drill, they were rewarded with a gift and praised for being “good germ fighters.”

Of course this is all in the name of protecting children—to the tune of a $20,000 grant from the New Jersey Health Officers Association in cooperation with the state Department of Health. But the parents—regardless of socio-economic standing—seem oblivious of what’s going on. The majority of the students in my children’s classes are fed “school lunch”—that revolting, toxic sludge that gets mixed up with lard, sugar, and salt and is served with a spork. Parents are so uneducated about health that they will follow the government down any misguided path. Instead of questioning the government’s vaccination requirement, the majority of parents appreciate it! Most parents will continue blindly accepting whatever the government and the food industry offer until something terrible enough happens to wake them up. Sadly, this comes at the expense of our children’s blood chemistry!

So, will we make a breakthrough in this moment when the world has set up all these misguided causes that are leading to tragic effects? Will we wake up and change ourselves and our society, or will we just sit and watch the consequences tumble like an avalanche around us until we are snuffed out? There’s no time to snooze, my friends. We must take full responsibility for recognizing what is going on and act accordingly.

I have always been a patriot. My family lineage dates back to the Revolutionary War, and I have romanticized this country as much as anyone. But in expanding my consciousness, I have come to recognize the limitations of thinking as isolated groups or nationalities. We are an evolving, interconnected humanity. In that light, I urge you to contemplate these great lyrics as I do now—not as a citizen of one country or another, but as a citizen of life.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea! 

—From “America the Beautiful,” words by Katharine Lee Bates, melody by Samuel Ward

Perspectives

The Necessity of Winter

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Landing back in the harshness of winter and the even harsher reality of the U.S. recession was nothing short of a brutal reentry after three weeks of being blissfully cocooned in South Africa. Instead of going on about our joyful days in Cape Town and the surrounding area, I’ll post a few new pics on the photo page so you can see for yourself. I’d rather take this opportunity to dive right into the state of confusion and suffering in the here and now—a very harsh reality for a lot of people.

Along with most of you, I know a number of people who have lost their jobs and many more who have lost their nest eggs and fortunes (both modest and whopping). I even received the shocking news that one friend took his own life over the holidays. The only way that I can make sense of it and ensure that he and others in similar despair do not die in vain is to point out that they are reflecting the dire consequences of our social values.

The extreme panic that would lead one to deploy death as his or her only option betrays much about the social structures we’ve been idealizing. It reveals what our group values really are, and what really motivates our choices. Yes, it is high time that the walls of over-consumption and selfishness come crumbing down! While it’s never comfortable to experience enormous shifts as we now are, the chaos, fear, confusion, panic, and suffering are all part of a necessary crumbling of social and corporate structures that no longer serve our greatest good.

Change is a funny thing. People often say they want to be healthier, happier, spend more time with their family, be more creative, etc., but unless the old structures that prohibit our attainment of these goals are dismantled, we will be blocked from living these ideals. So, if we want change, we need to allow change to happen within and around us. We can’t put a new dress on top of our old sweats and then go to a fancy dinner. We can’t grow our adult teeth without first losing our baby teeth. We can’t live on our own without first moving out of our parents’ place. Change requires and begets change. We must leave some things behind forever, and never look back.

Our country has overwhelmingly supported our new president’s message of change. Change is what we wished for, and now here change comes. But in order for the new structures of hope and healing to arise, there has to be some demolition. If well directed and not feared, intelligent change can give rise to improved systems.

I encourage you to make friends with this changing world and remember that the tearing away of the old structures that supported over-consumption and selfishness will make way for more mature, mutually supportive structures. Change is the great law of life—after we build this new structure, an even better one should emerge after that—never stopping to stagnate, as stagnation is the seat of deterioration.

Pain persists when we try to shove new structures into old ones, insisting that they will fit, instead of adjusting to the natural evolutionary growth. In his time, Christ warned against resisting change by pointing out that one would never put new wine into old wineskins.

The same holds true for how to feed and care for our bodies. As we learn that the old ways of consuming food and drink are not life-supporting, let’s stop trying to shove the principles of our evolved detox lifestyle into our old lifestyle box. Trying to make this new knowledge conform to the deteriorating (albeit widely accepted) nutritional structures will only wear us down. Let’s not put our new wine into old bottles. Through this phase, however long it may last, let’s remember that the falling away of the old is as much a part of the lifecycle as leaves falling off trees in autumn. As we allow the old to fall away, we can expect a new and more beautiful paradigm to replace it.

It is appropriate that we heed this message of change in the midst of a brutal Northeastern winter because, like winter, this painful stage is deceptively beneficial. Beneath the ice-cold struggles, the seeds of revival are taking root. We will see the fruits of this season in seasons to come. We may not have a harmonious new world in place this April—it could take many months and even years for the seedlings of our deepest desires for a more life-generating society to spring their tender leaves. But, it will happen.

Yes, winter will eventually turn to spring, and when it does, it will be the most marvelous spring we’ve ever experienced. We will live with more harmony, intelligence, and beauty in this magnificent garden that we call Earth.