An intro to astrology

This is a taboo subject for many people. My hope is to clear the way a little bit before I go too deep into the matter, which I will be doing in upcoming posts.  I am one of those people who can be quite judgmental about certain things. For instance, if someone quotes Bible verses to me when I am trying to solve a problem I immediately put that person in a certain category. I only do this because the information regarding the authenticity of the Bible is overwhelmingly on the side of, "that shit is made up." So if a person quotes the Bible this means the person does not understand that they are quoting something made up. I think that most people see astrology the same way, if I say something about astrology, I am immediately seen as someone quoting made up information.

When I was taking philosophy courses in college I saw this phenomenon happen many times. I was quite alarmed at being so quickly placed in the category of "doesn't know what he is talking about." I have studied this subject at great length. I am not like the person quoting out of the Bible without ever having really looked into the making of the Bible. While having discussions regarding the nature and meaning of life I would bring up astrology and I could see the change in their eyes regarding their opinion of my own intellect immediately. Astrology is just like religion in this sense; people already have their minds made up before the conversation begins. This makes it terribly difficult to communicate.

To be clear, it is the same phenomenon, but totally different subjects. It is well documented that the Bible is horse shit, but that is not the case with astrology. Astrology and religion share one thing in common and that is an absurd amount of people claiming they understand it when they really do not. Even though we all have our own opinions about these subjects, there is still a truth regarding them. Let's weigh those out a little shall we.

Are there spiritual people who know the meaning of life? I think that there are. Are there people who claim to know the meaning of life but do not? I think there are those types too. Now, because there are people who talk about spirituality and do not know what they are talking about, does this mean that all spirituality is bullshit? I do not think it does.

There are bad doctors, yes? Does this mean we should not listen to any information regarding medicine? There are bad scientists too; does this mean all science is wrong? I mean even Sir Isaac Newton has had many of his findings refuted, does that make all science bullshit? We still do not understand gravity fully, but yet we all believe in gravity, but suddenly because there are horrible astrologists, does that mean all astrology is bullshit?

Let’s be clear then about what I mean by astrology. Astrology is the study of the effects of massive objects in space that emit energy that has an effect on human consciousness. Daily horoscopes are not astrology. Those are like the evangelic preacher making a living off the donations of ignorant people. Neither of those have nothing to do with the reality of the situation.

I remember taking chemistry in college and we were made to buy a small, 35 pages maybe, explanation of science and the scientific method. In that small book it stated quite clearly that astrology is not a science. We are quickly running into yet another reason why public schools are such a harmful enterprise for children. They flat out teach lies. They flat out hide the truth. Science after all is the same as religion. Both are attempting to explain the meaning and nature of existence. And just like religion lies to uphold its previously believed doctrines, so does science.

I'll show you the contradiction that science creates in very simple terms.

Scientists can prove that electromagnetic waves, i.e. light, changes how one thinks and feels. Scientists can prove that electromagnetic waves can change DNA. Scientist can prove that the brain emits and receives electromagnetic waves. Scientist can prove that large masses emit their own energy, i.e. light. Scientist can prove that the earth has its own magnetic field and it also emits its own energy.

Scientists say that the universe is expanding because everything in the universe, that they can see anyways, is moving away from the Milky Way. They know this because the light appears differently when the object is moving away, than if it was approaching. Have you ever stood near the train tracks when a train is coming? Did you notice that when the train was approaching it sounds one way, but once it passes you and is moving away, the sound is different? Light is the same way. The wavelength of light and sound is different if they are moving away or approaching.

You see, this is why our consciousness changes whenever a planet goes into retrograde. When it is moving away from us, we feel/think one way, when it is moving towards us, we think/feel another way. It is that simple. Just because these differences are subtle and are not fully understood by scientists does not mean they do not exist.

The plain truth is; there is much more going on in reality than the typical public educated person could ever even dream of. Because simple physics is so obviously ignored, most live their lives not ever grasping the truth. For instance, if one completely rules out astrology because a science teacher said it was bullshit, then that individual is going to have a tough time ever discovering their true Self. The planets and stars are a major contributor to exactly who we are. We are made out of star stuff. The sun, a star, is the very thing that gives us life.

Scientifically, studying how the sun gives us life is astrology, but you will probably never hear a scientist call it that. Even the moon affects us every single day, and not just us, but everything living thing on the planet, just like sun, just like all the other planets and stars. Has this not been studied by scientists? So now you can see, when they want to study it, they call it something other than astrology, but it is still astrology. They are merely ignoring the affects those energies have on our consciousness. It is merely a trick of labeling and deceiving.

Just like the scientist who has spent all their life studying some one thing, like Darwin studied evolution. Like the spiritual being who studied the meaning of life all of their life; Buddha. There are astrologists who have spent most of their lives studying the effects of energy on human consciousness and through their hard work, just like the work of scientists and spiritual teachers one can use their information to navigate life.

I think the reason so many disregard astrology is because it is the most complicated of sciences. Being so complicated there is bound to be more than a few exceptions to the rule and this makes it all very difficult to grasp. This is what I find most interesting about the way in which science disregards astrology, ask any physicist about the rules of matter and they will have to tell you there are no rules; that is the first rule. So are astrologists correct 100% of the time? No. Does this mean it is completely bunk and invalid? No. It just means because science has so thoroughly ignored it, it is not yet understood fully. There are ancient cultures that had a much greater understanding of it than we do now and this is because it has been almost completely ignored.

The dogmatic attitude of religion is still extremely prevalent in our culture even among those who do not believe in god. A perfect example of this is a married atheist. Or an atheist who believes humans are flawed in nature; that is a teaching of the church and has nothing to do with reality.

I don't know yet.

This big fish, little fish thing is freaking everywhere. It really is just like racism or sexism. The unaware outnumber the aware so greatly that the unaware actually start to think they are aware just because they are a little more aware than those around them. Being more aware than the person standing next to you does not mean that you are actually aware. This really is a serious issue because no one, that I have met anyways, is actually aware. I have only read books written by aware individuals and most of them are dead now.

As Carl Jung says in his book The Undiscovered Self, "Most people confuse "self-knowledge" with knowledge of their conscious ego personalities. Anyone who has ego-consciousness at all takes it for granted that he knows himself. But the ego knows only its own contents, not the unconscious and its contents. People measure their self-knowledge by what the average in their social environment knows of himself, but not by the real psychic facts which are for the most part hidden from them."

Can you see the dilemma here? Most people I know do not even become aware of their own ego!

In reality this means there are billions of unaware individuals, but they will tell you that they are aware because they are more aware than those around them, or at least they think they are. I think education is another great place to find this phenomenon. I have a friend that used to live in this town that I live in now and it has a horrible public school system. The people here are a special kind of ignorant. I say this because the people running the school are in the most denial about their own ego and education. Anyways, she moved to a place where they do not have a horrible public school system. Please keep in mind that in my opinion all public education is bad, but that is part of the point. Her child obviously improved in the better public school. Grades went up, social activity increased, etc.

Her child was smart compared to the kids in the old school. He would actually read books and around here that makes one a superstar nerd. Arriving at the new school though, it turned out, there are bigger fish. Obvious right? Suddenly he was not so smart. Her child naturally adapted to the new school. He became smarter at the new school in comparison to the old one, but remember he is still in a public school.  Maybe for you it is the college you went to, the job you have, the way you raise your child, or whatever it is you do that is better than those around you. 

You see it is just like the ego. Going to the better school is like becoming aware of one’s ego, so to speak, but the issue is the school is the ego. You see, it is very likely now, that this child will live its whole life thinking how great that new public school was, not realizing all the lies being consumed by simply going to a public school. The ego lies to us in this exact same way. From my perspective this is a perfect reflection. This child went to a better school, got better, and is now "educated." In his mind, he is a big fish when he comes back to this small town, but really he is still just a small fish. It should be obvious the negative connotation with thinking one is a big fish when one is not.

The proper perspective is, at any given moment millions of neurons are firing in your brain, and only a small fraction of those are conscious thought. This means that thought is just like all the other senses. My eyes see less than 1% of the light right in front of my face. My ears hear less than 1% of all the sound passing through my body. My sense of touch does not even begin to explain the physical matter that it comes into contact with. My thoughts are less than 1% of the totality of what is going on in my mind. It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. Critical to this is that just like sight is misleading, sound is misleading, and touch too, so is thought.

Many people get very defensive about this type of conversation. They have an emotional attachment to their public education, and we all have emotional attachment to our ego. Their ego cannot handle being labeled "uneducated." I dislike trying to make a list implying which learning experience is more important than another, we are all so different, and we are all in different places on the same journey so a list is useless. I do know this though, if one is ever going to become aware one must remove their emotional attachments to their own ideals. For instance, one will never become aware if they cannot even admit that their public education actually made them uneducated. Is it really that big of a deal? I find it quite easy to admit that I was born into this crazy society where I was taught a lot of lies, and because of that I have to relearn everything. The fact that as a child I was forced to go to public schools is no reflection on me, if anything it is a reflection on those who made me do it. If I were to maintain that my public education was actually an education, then that is a reflection on me. The only reason for the emotions at all is because the person is lying to his or her Self. This is how you see your ego. If you have an emotional response to your own thoughts, your ego is in play. If you have an emotional response to what someone else thinks, same thing. Emotions are a sense just like all the rest, incomplete more than not.

As I explained in my last post, living a lie is the cause of the worst suffering. One cannot ever become aware of their ego if they cannot even admit that their ego is wrong. Maybe that is the best way to say it. If you cannot admit that your whole life has been a lie, that in reality, you know next to nothing, you will always just be a small fish who thinks it’s big. Mystics call it humility; to me it is more like common sense. If my thinking is less than 1% of my totality, and all my life I thought my thinking was the totality….it’s probably time to admit that one doesn’t know much of anything.

Suffering

I personally believe it to be one of the big lies historically/culturally taught by Christianity.  There is this idea that if somehow one becomes "perfect" one will suffer no more.  It is an idea that implies if one is good enough somehow one will not have to suffer ever again.  They call it heaven. The concept of heaven is a lie in this context.  When one is in 'heaven' one is not disturbed by the physical world any longer, it does not mean one has gone to some other place physically.  In other words, heaven is a state of mind. It is a level of consciousness. One can go to heaven, be there for a minute, and come back to physical reality, and never go again their whole life.  Heaven is a state where suffering is no longer seen as suffering, although one will still be suffering. 

The current Dalai Lama has said, "Hardship, in forcing us to exercise greater patience and forbearance in daily life, actually makes us stronger and more robust. From the daily experience of hardship comes a greater capacity to accept difficulties without losing our sense of inner calm. Of course, I do not advocate seeking out hardship as a way of life, but merely wish to suggest that, if you relate to it constructively, it can bring greater inner strength and fortitude." Using this as a point of reference, suffering causes us to grow up, and eventually we grow up enough that even though we may still suffer, we embrace it, enjoy it even, and this is heaven. It is a play on words. Heaven cannot be conveyed, only experienced.

Suffering is to the soul what lifting weights are to the body, what reading a book is to the mind.  Avoiding suffering is to avoid growing up.   All of these people making decisions so that they will be safe are living a lie, they are keeping themselves from growing spiritually.  Safety in those terms is death spiritually speaking.  They are still alive, breathing, but they are not living.  As I have said before, perception is everything.  

Remember that these terms are metaphors for psyche experience. Remember that God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth, are all synonymous. They are the same thing being looked at from a different angle. 

"To pay attention to the unconscious does mean to deliberately make oneself miserable in order that the autonomous psyche will be able to function more freely" and according to Edinger, who is about as studied on Carl Jung as one can be, who wrote that what you just read, says the most important sentence Jung ever wrote was, "the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego." It can't be put any simpler than that, any experience of God, Self, the unconscious, Christ, Truth will be a defeat to the ego. What is defeat? Suffering.

Using the story of Christ here seems somewhat appropriate.  Looking at it from this perspective, Christ's ability to affect others went hand in hand with his willingness to suffer.  The same could be said of Buddha; he was willing to pay the price in order to understand the meaning of life.  I've not personally met anyone in life willing to do what the Buddha did to acquire this knowledge. Imagine what it takes to want to do something so much so that you will pray half your life to make sure it happens.  That makes for loneliness for sure.  The Dalai Lama supposedly prays over six hours a day. According to any human I've ever met, that would amount to suffering, according to their ego.

Choosing to become sensitive to the environment creates a great deal of spiritual suffering, but what is really going on is that one is learning how to suffer and it not be suffering.  Every human being ever born on this planet can do what any great mystic has done, and more, but one must be willing to pay the price.  That is the only difference between you and Christ or Buddha; they were willing to suffer first in order to know the truth.

Back to reality shall we.  What does this mean in our lives? Obviously many of us are a long way from being able to heal others just by thinking it, or at least we think we are, so how do we bridge the gap?  Perspective is how.  One must change the way in which they perceive. 

Living a lie is one of the more painful forms of suffering because the person trapped in the lie typically must go through something serious in order to see the truth.  As Carl Jung once said, "There is no coming into consciousness without pain."  I am sure we have all seen this phenomenon.  A great many people avoid an issue until it piles up so high it falls on top of them. I have suffered a great deal in life because of lies.  Being stuck in this state is very painful and it is also a sure way of knowing that an individual has not recognized and understood their own ego.  The majority of the people on earth are locked into this state.

Please recognize the difference between suffering because of ones perception and actually suffering just from being alive.  There is a difference between actually being abused and being the source of ones own abuse.  A child has no choice, an adult does.  To be clear, a child's suffering is the absolute worst kind. Unfortunately, or so it seems, those who suffered the most as children tend to become the most aware adults.  Society however is against such individuals. Which causes even more suffering. 

Suffering, in this context though, is actually a 'healing' process.  Please understand, that the spiritual people, those few aware individuals, do not consider terms such as good or bad.  The person of a higher consciousness sees all existence as one thing, the person confused by their own ego sees things as good or bad, mine or yours, here or there, etc. The ego has preferences, likes and dislikes. The Universe does not. For instance, the death of a loved one is something all humans face at some point in life.  Christ had loved ones and they died too, but he, did not see it as suffering.  Learning to be lonely and not suffer is a terribly difficult thing to do.  Suffering is suffering, in the experience of it, it heals and teaches ones soul to grow, and once the lesson is learned it is suffering no more. So many lessons to learn.

Suffering is the lesson to be learned, just like a complex math problem, one must wrap their mind all the way around it for it to be known and truly understood.  It is an experience to be had that causes one to become a better person.  If we walked around all day in a state of contentment and happiness there would be no spiritual growth.  Think about it, whenever you have been content in life, did you really change and grow any at all?  Now compare that time of contentment with a time of great turmoil.  A lot of people resist change, because change is always hand in hand with suffering.  Again this is a play on words. It could be said that this culture has tricked people into experiencing change as suffering. These people are willfully choosing to remain ignorant.   To live on the edge seems dangerous indeed to one who resides safely in habit.  

Eventually one learns that safety is a lie. There is no such thing. It's just a word monkeys made up. It does not exist in the Universe.

The truth though, is that there are things in life which must be learned which cannot be learned in any other way than through sheer suffering.  For this reason if one lives a lie suffering is inevitable. 

 

I was in a relationship once for all the wrong reasons.  Most people I talk to agree with me, our twenties are a nightmare compared to our thirties, and most agree that they too have had one of 'those' relationships.  As I like to say, growing up is a bitch.  It wouldn't matter who looked at the relationship I had back then, they would know it was a complete mess.  It was even obvious to me and I was living it.  I was trapped in a relationship with a woman because I was trapped by fear.  I did not know who I was; she did not know who she was.  I was scared to be alone.   I was scared no one would ever want to be with me.  I knew my life was a wreck, I knew I wasn't "me" and I knew if I didn't do something soon my life was going to be over; I was no longer going to be me if I didn't do something immediately. 

I had been living a lie, more than a few actually, for so long that the consequences had built up to such a state that I was in complete despair.  I would literally lie in bed and pray that somehow I would not wake up.  I was too much of a coward to take my own life, so I was asking God to do it for me. At any time in the journey of my life I could have realized the truth, but because I refused, massive suffering ensued.  I was locked in a toxic relationship with a woman, who had no respect for me, and I had none for her, but because of our fears we refused to do the right thing.  It was a living nightmare.  I had lost everything.  I was just lying in bed praying for it to all go away.

We fought every day.  Love hate, as they say.  The truth is, the opposite of love is fake love, that is, love that pretends to be love but is not.  I believed then, the same lie I had always believed.  It was a fundamental lie.  I believed I was not worthy of love, and so was acting it out in my relationships.  I believed that all I would ever know were screwed up women who would always cheat.  I believed I was flawed in some way and could not be fixed.  I believed I was broken.  I just wanted it to go away. 

It did go away.  Really quickly too.  We were separated within a couple of weeks after spending five years together in misery.  You see, up to that point in my life I had never really prayed with my whole being, to make it right.  Up until then my ego was always engaged with some personal desire, always afraid.  Prior to that point, I didn't even know what to pray for.  Up to that point, I had not ever really been ready to do absolutely whatever it took regardless of whatever price that might be asked of me.  That was the secret ingredient.  I had never been truly ready to take responsibility for my Self.  I did die in that room praying to God. The voice in my head said clear as day, "God will do nothing for you that you can do for yourself." It took losing it all, living a waking nightmare, some of the worst suffering of my life, reducing me to a pile of weeping helplessness, to realize that I am all that I need.  I grew up; instantly.

Because of the lie, because I believed that I deserved to be treated like crap by a woman, that is exactly what I got.  My belief was based on a lie and at the time it was literally killing me.

If you had asked me a couple weeks before that experience if I was a grown-up I would have said that of course I was.  Everyone and their dog was giving me relationship advice, life advice, telling me this or that, and none of it mattered, it was something I had to experience.  I lost all my friends because of this relationship.  Yet, I ‘thought’ I was a grown up.  The ego is such a terrible thing to taste. 

Looking back on it now, all that suffering saved my life.  I am not suggesting that I could not have avoided this traumatic event in my life; I am saying that living a lie creates the worst suffering.  Which incidentally creates the most growing up. Because I chose to live a lie, because I listened to my ego instead of the truth, I suffered tremendously.   The minute I admitted the truth the suffering ceased immediately.

After that I spent five years single. Five years to myself. I decided to get my thinking in order before tackling my feelings. Once I felt secure in myself I decided to get back into the thick of things.  I realized because of bad choices I didn't get the full range of experience out of my twenties, so I had to make up for it in my thirties.  Going to college was a very similar experience.  I didn't go to college to learn crap out of a text book, but for the social experience of growing up in America that I did not get when I was younger.  I wanted to fit in, and in order to do that I had to have similar experiences.  I trained up so to speak before going back to riding the edge.  I got my head right.  The edge is that place where every step you take could be off the edge of a cliff.  The edge is where one lives when pursuing true Self.  No time to think, just be!

I let myself fall in love again.  Or maybe it is better to say, that I allowed myself to be in proximity to someone who is a great deal like me.  The difference between 'love' and 'in love' is quite radical, and it is also quite dangerous to one who is idealistic.  Allowing oneself to be in love is very dangerous because of the consequences of it not being returned.  The energy is overwhelming. An idealist can hardly bear to not be loved.  But can you see in order to become spiritually strong enough to be in love and not care about the consequences requires one to actually do it.  No amount of dreaming enables one to run a marathon, or climb a mountain. I can fantasize all I want about writing a book, but if I never write, the book will never happen.  One does not sit down to write, and the first 40,000 words be a bestselling book either.  So many people think the next person they meet is going to be the one, not realizing they still have a great deal of training to do.  One can fantasize about love all one wants, but if you never go through the experiences of love, you will never know love.

If one is not willing to sacrifice greatly for love, one will never know love.  I finally learned that in order to truly learn what love is, I must allow it to happen, fearlessly.  This is growing up.  Doesn't matter that I was in my thirties, wouldn't matter if I was in my sixties.  Ever since I was a child I just wanted to know what real love is, not what my parents say, or church says, or what my wife says, but what is love really?  In my life, because I had already suffered so much as a child it seems quite easy for me to make decisions that others balk at because of the suffering involved.  If one has already suffered tremendously, what is a little more? Most people call you crazy or stupid if you do something that you know is going to cause suffering.  These people miss the main point of life, they are living a lie; safety is an illusion.  So many people will tell you to avoid the thing that will set you free because they are too afraid to face it themselves. 

The main point is that it takes suffering to learn life lessons and that it is only our perception that this suffering is negative, and that is what makes it suffering.  Like I said, it's a play on words. When I fell in love again in my thirties, after years of not having felt that feeling; I cried more that year than any year of my life.  I let it all go.  Everyone around me was labeling me this or that, telling me I was making a mistake, etc.  The truth was, I was growing up, and doing it quite rapidly.  I was willing to do what I knew I needed to do, despite what others said, and despite whatever seeming suffering may ensue.   I had already suffered so much because of my relationship with my ex-wife and I was tired of living with it.  I suffered horribly for so many years of my life, afraid of the hurt, afraid to let myself feel that love again.

If you really love someone you do not care what they do.  Being possessive of other people is just an immature reaction, like the three year old who doesn't wish to share a toy, since in the child's mind it really believes the toy is theirs. The lesson for me in life has been to believe in myself despite what other people do.  I'm sure this is everyone's lesson.  If I love someone, then I love them.  I walked away from that person that I was 'in love' with because I finally learned a truth about myself.  They were hurting me, so I had to walk away. 

We are only 'in love' with those who are just like us without us knowing it.  Being in love is the opposite of the shadow projection.  Realizing the projection immediately ends the sensation of being in love; on to the next lesson.  If you ever meet someone and are instantly in love, that person has qualities exactly like you do, but you just don't see it yet in your self.  Once you do, you won't be in love with that person anymore, you will simply love them.  The person I fell in love with had the same spirit as me, the same type of soul so to speak.  This is why you should always allow yourself to fall in love, even though you will suffer for it; you will learn more about yourself than in any other way I know of. 

Eventually though, we stop falling in love with people, or maybe it is better to say, we are in love with everyone.  This sounds alarming to the romantic, but in reality, once one knows themselves, they know only true love.  Being in love is for growing up, real love is for grown-ups.  To be honest it felt really good to go through all that drama even though I was in my thirties.  I do not see how I could have learned those lessons any other way.  Because I am so wild I am not sure I would have survived that experience in my twenties.  Maybe in my life, that is why it went down in my thirties.  Without those experiences though I cannot be growing up, I would just be stuck for the rest of my life at an immature stage.

The woman who I lived a nightmare with she would tell you too, how that time in our life was a great purging.  Even though her experiences of it are quite different, it purged her of some of her lies, purged her of some of her pain, the same as it did me.  There is a great deal of pain involved with coming to terms with the worst of what one believes; the worst of one's self.  That suffering cleaned us a bit, it saved our lives, and it was some of the darkest times of our lives.  Everyone says it was horrible, it certainly seemed so, but how can what saved us be horrible?  It is only our ego that gives things such labels as good or bad, horrible or wonderful. 

This has much to do with the people I know who had childhoods similar to mine. They like me, are quite bitter, and upset. They like me rail at the culture. We want to know why this happened to us. I tell them, look how those others are asleep at the wheel. That suffering you went through is the precise reason you are aware of these things. If that suffering had not happened to you more than likely you'd be sitting around watching TV, eating bullshit, wasting your life with stupid opinions. You'd be telling yourself lies to that you could avoid it. That suffering gave the experiences required for knowing. We know the darkness of this culture, while the rest are blind. It is a terrible burden for sure, but nothing in life is worth having that does not require suffering.  One of my favorite analogies goes like this; if it is good for you, you will have to work first, and then get your reward. If it is bad for you, your reward will come first; and then you have to pay. Childhood suffering is doing work first, while having an easy childhood is getting the reward first. It is incredibly difficult to see this though; a painful pill to swallow.  

Re: It's just a soda?

If you think that I can be a smart ass now, you should have known me when I was younger. If you were unfortunate enough to know me when I was younger then you know exactly what I am talking about. Growing up in angst can give a person a bitter tongue. There was a time in my life, not too long ago, when I would talk openly to people about drinking soda, right to their face. One of my favorite openings was, "I see you drinking that Pepsi; how does it feel to pay Pepsi to kill you?" After saying this I would usually get this perplexed or incredulous look, as if they were saying, "Did this guy really just say that to me?" I would just be standing there grinning at them, and then explain to them how drinking soda was directly harming their body and mind. That crap is not meant to be inside of a human being. It is poison. It is no different than smoking cigarettes. Of course, I have used many other methods in an effort to get those around me to quit drinking soda, but I have always preferred to be direct.

It is difficult for most, or maybe it is better to say that most just don't want to think about it on a personal level, so they never really go there. It can be terribly painful for most people to admit the truth about themselves. Most don't want to realize that they really don't like themselves much. If they were truly stop and really think about it, if they did truly care about themselves, wouldn't they make sure to not harm themselves? It is a nice and easy linear line after all, if drinking soda is bad for you, and you drink soda, then you are intentionally harming yourself, from this it follows, that you cannot truly care about yourself and harm yourself at the same time, it doesn't work that way. There is no duality regarding love. One or the other has to be untrue, and no matter how much energy you spend trying to justify it, soda really is horrible for your body and mind.

I have found this to be an excellent way to judge how much a person truly cares about their self. By measuring how many harmful things they do to themselves that directly affects their personal well being. The fewer harmful things a person has going on in their life, the more that individual cares about themselves. It is a direct correlation. I know this to be true because I can clearly see it in myself. This is not a judgment; it is simply a matter of awareness. It could be true to say, it is looking at one's Self with no judgment. This is why it is so painful for some to look at themselves truly; they have an emotional bond with the judgment. This means one must be able to admit supposedly negative things about themselves, such as, "maybe I do not care about myself as much as I would like to think I do, or I really wouldn't put this crap in my body."

Most of the people I have encountered, would say something like "Oh, it's not really hurting me that badly," or "It's just one can of soda, I don't drink them that much." This was always funny to me, because it's out right denial; I would see most of these people drinking soda every day, sometimes two or three a day. My personal favorites are the ones who complain about their body weight while actually drinking a soda. And don't even kid yourself; diet soda is just as horrible for you. There is not a single thing in a diet soda that your body wants or needs; it's still nothing but poison that kills you slowly.

There was a time in my life when I drank a lot of soda. My favorite was Mountain Dew, the 'breakfast of champions' as I used to call it. First thing in the morning I would always drink a can of Mountain Dew. My favorite was the cans because for whatever reason the stuff tasted better to me out of a can. So I speak from personal experience when I speak about the nastiness of soda. I woke up one day and realized I could do so much better than I had been doing. I woke up and realized that I was harming myself, and had been doing so for a long time.

How can we measure the negative impact of drinking soda on our lives? I mean, how do I gauge the change in my mental and physical health due to the fact that I quit drinking soda? I like to think that on a scale of 1 to 10, after giving up soda, it was a two point jump. It might be a little different for you, but I would say that it was at least a two point jump, possibly three. It really does make a difference and I really do feel that much better after giving it up. If I were to drink a soda right now it wouldn’t take fifteen minutes and I would be feeling sick and miserable. I did not need a scientist to tell me this is true, or to tell me how much weight I would gain or lose, or how much my blood sugar would go up or down, or any other tidbit from a ‘scientific study’ that they might have figured out. The problem with all of this is, our bodies adjust over time, so we don't notice how much the soda brings us down if we are always drinking soda. I use the word we here to speak for our culture and society. It does help to read about the negative effects of drinking soda though, if one needs help convincing themselves to give it up.

Now let's adjust the scale a bit. Change the measuring stick so to speak. Remember I am only one individual, so let's add it up. Let's take any given year that I was drinking soda, and then compare that year to a year that I was not drinking soda. Collectively how much better will I have felt in a year that I did not drink soda, compared to a year that I did drink soda? In that one year, the fact that it is a whole two points better on any given day without soda versus with soda; how much of my 'feeling better' was lost to cans of Mountain Dew? How much money was I giving to that soda company every year to make me feel bad? How do I add this up in order to truly get a sense of it?

I am only one individual. So let's take it one step further. Can we add this up, this loss of 'feeling better,' in the millions who drink soda? How do you add up all of that lost energy, and the total effect of that negative impact on our society?

In 2011 PepsiCo had a gross profit margin of 58.3%, with a gross profit of 35.2 @%#$@*! BILLION!

In 2011 Coca Cola had a gross profit margin of 67.3%, with a gross profit of 25.64 @%#$@*! BILLION!

All hail the almighty GDP. Bow down and worship. From this perspective it seems greed, selfishness, and in this case, self loathing rules the world.

Can you see it? This IS the measure. This is a direct measure of how much 'not caring about oneself' is actually going on in the world. And these are just two companies in a single industry! You see it is not Pepsi that is the problem, it is the fact that so many people are unaware of what they are actually doing, or they simply do not care about themselves enough to not drink soda, or a combination of both, but really either way it is in ignorance.

What about children? I do not even want to get started on this. It really is pretty simple to just tell them "No, you cannot have a soda, that stuff is bad for you." As if, at the end of your life, you would say, "You know, I am really glad I drank all that soda, and I am even happier that I let children drink it." Could it be that you would be much more likely to say, "Wow, I am glad I quit drinking soda, I felt so much better after having done that, so much so, that it improved the quality of my life forever after?"

Add it up.

What about the affect of this 'soda industry' on our environment? All the cans and bottles, trucks, semi's, fuel, soda machines, refrigeration, the electric usage, all the destruction of land for farming sugar, all the fresh water ruined and polluted, I can go on and on. I would not even know where to begin because I would be able to write a book about how this one industry has ruined Nature. For what purpose, so that we can kill ourselves slowly too? It does not matter how you justify it, in reality you are harming yourself and others by purchasing and ingesting these products. It is like a double whammy! Not only are the people worse off for drinking soda, but it is also ruining the environment. I cannot think about this too deeply because I start to feel sick; the hippie in me starts freaking out. All hail the almighty GDP. The land of where they do anything for a buck, even kill the people they sell their products to.

Please do not drink soda, and please encourage others not to drink it, at the very least your loved ones. It is a fact that it harms you mentally and physically. Everyone would be better for it, and the earth will be better for it, literally. Shun those you care about for drinking soda, don't be rude, and don’t be mean, just kindly point out to them that they are killing themselves and their environment by drinking soda. Don't expect them to just throw the thing away and never drink a soda again. Change is hard for us, it takes time, and it also takes persistence.

The only way to put them out of business is to stop purchasing their products. If you are one of those who justifies buying soda because, “you don’t drink it that much.” Please consider that your life will be just fine without it, and it does matter even if you only do it once a week; it really does add up.

We are NOT helpless to change the world, because it begins with us. Surely you have a mirror in your house.

The only way to improve the world is to improve oneself, and then after having done so, to pass that along to those around you. What more can be asked of one?

Our friend the dandelion.

Remember that perspective is everything?  If we change our perspective the whole universe seems to change quite literally.  We are all aware of those times when it has happened and we really didn't feel like we had a choice, like someone dyeing, or falling in love. Those are the times when the universe forces us to change.   The death of a loved one is an almost immediate depression, which changes how we see everything in the universe, just like falling in love changes everything. 

What is interesting is that the same phenomenon can occur even though the universe stays exactly the same.  For instance, being on a spiritual path, one eventually has to come to terms with the fact that religious gods have nothing to do with reality.  So when one realizes this, and it is generally a mind blowing experience, one also realizes nothing has really changed, there are the same number of people, the same number of atoms, nothing in the universe actually changed.  Well, nothing in the external universe changed anyways.  The change that occurs within is actually what changes the universe!

There are so many people who like to say that this is an insignificant change, this inner change, but please consider that the people who make this claim of insignificance really do not know what they are talking about.  They are generally miserable people who are depressed and live in fear.  Think about it, that claim is always made in ignorance, because if one knows the truth about one's Self, one would want nothing else but to become that Self.  When one understands how a small change ripples out into the universe forever, one realizes it is suddenly not small at all. 

It does not take a spiritual awakening, falling in love, or someone having to die in order to change the universe.  It only requires input of new information and a change in worldview or Self view.  Personally, such change can be difficult to bring about, but that difficulty is inner turmoil.  New information can be anything new coming to the mind from within or from without; dreams, experiences, thoughts, intuitions, conversations etc. 

In order to be the most aware one can be, one must always see things for how they are, free of projections.  Remember that perspective is everything!

Please check out our friend the dandelion before moving on, if you do not trust the information on this website I am sure Google has lots of others you can refer to.  They are all going to be similar.    http://www.leaflady.org/health_benefits_of_dandelions.htm

We are Americans.  We live in a culture where people pay a company named Monsanto, to produce a chemical called Round-up, to kill what we call a weed.  The problem is, this weed, happens to be one of the most nutritious foods we can eat.  We have a health crisis of which the government, through corporations, is attempting to seize control of one of the most profitable institutions yet; healthcare.  The problem is we do not have a health crisis, we do not have a health care problem; we have a mass ignorance problem.  We have millions of people walking around claiming they are educated and yet kill nutritious food with chemicals while at the same time paying a doctor for chemicals to treat illness that would never had occurred if people ate healthy food.  This is not educated behavior; this is ignorance of the highest degree. 

In the community where I live, where I seem like a big fish, the looks I receive for picking dandelion greens are quite hilarious.  People literally look at me as if I am crazy, weird, or just plain lost my mind.  Imagine how funny this is to me, because it is them who have lost their minds.  They have lost their minds so much they spend thousands of dollars to pay a doctor for their ailments while paying another company to kill the cure which grows right in their lawns.  They really have lost their minds!

We have a serious issue in this country.  The masses are completely ignorant to what is going on.  Their perspective has been so twisted that they see the cure as a weed, and the thing that is actually killing them, they see as a cure.  What is even worse is that one does not need any farming know how whatsoever to grow dandelions.  They are prolific and grow all on their own.  One simply has to pick them, wash them, and add them to a salad. 

The idea that we can all go off as individuals and do whatever we wish is a lie.  Our individual actions have an effect on every one.  Changing one small thing about our worldview, changes the universe.  We are not individual beings, but a collection of beings.  Just like our bodies are made up of trillions of individual cells, America is made up of millions of people.  If a person had as many sick cells as America has sick people, what kind of person do you think America would be?  Because so many Americans have health issues, America has a serious health issue.  If all of my neighbors are actively destroying their health, it most certainly affects me, even if I never see them.  The fact that I do not see my neighbors affects me. 

For me this is a perfect expression of a proper perspective.   A beautiful plant that heals and prevents disease is considered a weed and chemicals are manufactured to destroy it.  This is America.  Instead of living in harmony with nature, we are destroying it.  We have a serious problem as Americans.  Those of us who wish to live a good life cannot because there are so many who do not.

Aren't I a big fish?

Before getting started with being the big fish it would seem best to clarify on another concept first; ethnocentric.   The Encarta Dictionary gives the following definition: a belief in or assumption of the superiority of the social or cultural group that a person belongs to.  For example, being racist or sexist is being ethnocentric.  Whenever people come together in groups because of a common ideal or feature it is best to realize they are being ethnocentric.  All things in degrees though, for instance boy scouts vs. KKK, they are not equal in many respects but will still have ethnocentricity running through the groups.  It is not fair to say that because the boy scouts are not being racist that they are not being ethnocentric. 

Racists are more like a chimp though than a human; they are just an animal at that point.  Chimps are not really thinking about what they are doing, they are not thinking about the affects of their actions on others, they are simply reacting in an instinctual way.   Being instinctual causes humans to act more like animals than conscious beings.  A racist does not have much consciousness, else the person wouldn't be racist.  The far extremes would be to compare the modern concept of a cave person with Buddha or Christ.  The cave person has a very low consciousness where great spiritual people have a very high level of consciousness.  Overcoming this phenomenon of ethnocentricity then, is simply a matter of awareness and a matter of growing up.  Realizing that all life is sacred is part of the spiritual journey. 

From an anthropologic view, this concept makes sense because one has a much greater chance of survival if one is being ethnocentric.  It is quite possible that it is more complicated than just laying its roots on survival, but it really doesn't matter because awareness of it, removes the behavior.   When one realizes they are being ethnocentric, one can stop doing it immediately.  If one continues to see it in themselves it will go away completely.  This same thing holds true for the Big Fish, Little Pond phenomenon. 

Everywhere we look we see humans in ethnocentric groups.  We call many of them by stereotypical names.  Athletes, gays, intellectuals, politicians, lawyers, moms, dads, gangs, the list is almost endless.   Recently being at a college gave me a lot of opportunity to see a wide spectrum of ethnocentric groups.  The academic elites are definitely an ethnocentric group, and in the college scene they sit at the top of the pecking order.  They have their ideals and one must have them too to fit in with the group.  If one strays from their idea of the norm then that person is simply removed from the group.  Pecking order is established in these groups and it is also used among the different groups themselves.  The academic elites are higher on the pecking order than those of the community college academic group.  You see, I can't even use the word elite for the community college professors because they work at a community college.  This happens even though they have the same level of education as those at the "real" colleges.  Ethnocentricity is freaking everywhere.  Oh how us humans love our ego. 

Yesterday I wrote about this Big Fish, Little Pond concept found in the book Connected by Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD and James H. Fowler, Ph D.   If you missed it make sure to read it. 

Aren't I a big fish?  Well, I caught myself thinking I was a big fish.  The other day I was riding my bike over to my girl friend’s parent’s house where I have a garden going.  Call it what you will, I think I live a better life than most because I ride a bike instead of paying for gas when I only have to travel here in town.  I don't like buying gas because it ultimately makes someone really rich, and those people getting really rich off of selling gas are not what I think of as good people.  I don't like giving my money to bad people.  If you really think about it this issue causes a lot of harm in the world.  Those rich oil people are not thinking of the consequences of their actions.  I am also burning calories when I ride my bike; I am literally working out as I travel across town trying to keep up with cars.  When I look around in the community in which I live, I think this makes me a big fish because hardly anyone else is doing this.  Everyone drives their car even if they are only traveling a quarter of a mile.   People around here really make a big deal out of someone walking, almost like it is suffering to walk.  Greedy people are getting extremely rich because people don't want to take care of themselves.

Aren't I an even bigger fish?  While riding my bike to go water my garden my ego appeared right before my eyes.  I was thinking to myself, "I am doing so much better than so many other people in this community simply because I am growing my own food."  I was patting myself on the back for having a garden.  Every day I find out more and more information about all the harmful things like chemicals, pesticides, and genetic modifications in the food; it is crazy what has happened to the food chain.  In the community that I live in I am literally surrounded by farm land but cannot purchase anything at the store that is actually good for me because it has been grown right.  Upon acquiring this information I immediately went to work getting a garden going.  Hardly anyone else is doing this and it bothers me a great deal. 

I laughed at myself though.  How foolish am I?  I should be able to run to that house and not need a bike, with ease at that.  Human beings are the only land mammal capable of endurance.  We humans can run down all other mammals, even the big ones, if we are in a group.  We can run down horses, deer, whatever; I am not a big fish; I am in a little pond.  It might not even be a pond, it could be a puddle for all I know.  Oh the ego.  Personal illusion is tricky business since it is belief that drives everything we do. 

I should have been gardening all my adult life.  I should already know just about all there is to know about gardening.  I am 37 years old.  Here I am, in my head thinking I am a big fish because I doing something different than almost everyone else, and really I am little more than a noob at gardening.  I am not a big fish at all, I really am just swimming in a small pond; I hope.  I felt like a big fish simply because there are so many small fish in proximity.  The ego is amazing at creating illusion.

Maybe for you, it is not gardening or riding a bike.  Maybe for you it is the way you raise your children, or the job you have, or the way you do your job, that engages your ego.  The trick is to see it in one’s Self.

Because my ego creates this illusion, it keeps me from being in a state of love.  My illusion is that I am a bigger fish, but reality is, "how am I going to get everyone else growing their own food too?"   When my ego is engaged I am basically being ethnocentric.  My ego is dividing people into categories of good and bad.  "Those people there don't grow their food, something must wrong with them."  There is no love in this statement.  From this ego state my whole perception is negative.  It is a subtle realization that changes everything; literally.   When one realizes this phenomenon, and then multiplies it out through the masses, it suddenly becomes an overwhelming problem.  The human ego, by creating illusions, is destroying the planet. 

To be fair to myself I do spread the knowledge.  I do work at and think about helping other people take better care of themselves.  Who can make a solid argument that a person isn't much better off eating real food and exercising every day?  If a person chooses to do otherwise that is their choice.  It is not hard to go find someone else to help.  But damn, in comparison to how I should be living, as an evolved human being, I must also be aware that I have a lot of growing up to do.  Projecting negativity only gets back more negativity, regardless of how subtle it is.  The way to live the good life has been known for thousands of years, they just don't teach it in schools or churches.  We must learn it on our own. 

The ego is hard to see, it is slippery so to speak, and it sucks at seeing reality.  Reality though is always right before our eyes.  It is a matter of seeing through the self created illusions and the lies taught by society and culture.  Overcoming ones ego is maturing.  In early life the ego dominates all of us, and it conquers some people all of their lives.  All of the great spiritual teachers were really just mature adults who understood reality.  They are the Big Fish.  The person being ethnocentric, or the person thinking they are a big fish when really they are not, is simply on a different level of the maturity process; a small fish.  We are in a struggle with our selves to unlock the unconscious mind.  This is why some mystics, scientists, and spiritual teachers call the spiritual process a matter of raising ones consciousness.  That is what spirituality is.  I personally look at it like I need to mature, I need to become more aware, and most importantly I need to be me.  We all do.  We all must do it all our lives.  To know the Way is to know one's Self.