The Flu and the Mind

This post brings together my thoughts about the flu vaccine, and my attitudes about our medical system in general, and the way we use and misuse our minds in this culture

I am grounded in a different paradigm than many of the people I discuss medical issues with. I introduce my paradigm in order for my thoughts to make sense. I believe it is valuable, and well worth your time to learn how I perceive health.

Our brain has two sides. One is a parallel processor. It gathers intuitive and creative information. It is non-linear. The right hemisphere.

The other is a serial processor. It gathers information in logical linear form. It organizes and creates priorities and plans. This is the left hemisphere.

Many spiritual traditions consider the center, the bridge between the two sides, to be the ‘seat’ of consciousness,. Healthy lives come from balancing the power and strengths of both sides.

I believe that our culture is heavily biased towards the left hemisphere. We exist out of balance. Particularly in ‘academic’ and ‘professional’ circles. So much of our shared thought process, taught in schools and reinforced through career paths, belittles intuition and falsely clings to logical reasoning that is often very shoddy. There are many reasons for this that I will pursue with you at another time. Suffice it to say that the current model seems to have replaced a model that was polarized and out of balance in the opposite way. People were TOO dependent on irrational medical ideas. Culture over-relied on faith and untested treatments. We have swung too far in the other direction. We need to recognize the flaws in the current model, and seek a more intellectually and spiritual mature balance.

I believe the rationalizations that support much of our health and medical practice are sick as a result of our imbalanced group mind. We get sick results. Endlessly growing hospitals and ‘healthcare’ bills. Why? because the entire process is out of balance. From the start. Thus we don’t get increasingly efficient and effective practices, we get increasingly complex treatments that do not generate a healthier society.

The Flu Vaccine

I have a deeply intuitive sense that much of our vaccination policy is not healthy. I do believe there is logic that explains my intuition. I have a great deal of difficulty distilling clear logic from within conversations that fundamentally devalue one entire half of our Brain. The right hemisphere is just as necessary for clear decision making and conclusions as the left. I feel like I have to fight tooth and nail just to say that.

The irony is, my QUESTIONS are entirely clear and rational.

1. What is the long term impact of flu vaccinations?

2. Are there potential contradictions with other vaccines?

3. With other medications?

4. Do the results differ based on genetics?

5. Long term, does the flu vaccine weaken the immune system?

6. Will the flu mutate in response to these vaccines to become hyper powerful?

7. Does it really make sense to vaccinate 300 million Americans to potentially save several hundred people?

8. How can we weigh the risks associated with this choice?

9. Can we even trust the authorities and media stories that drive us towards the current public policies?

I think these are clear, relevant questions. I rarely get any answers at all to these questions. I have never gotten satisfactory answers. I contiue to have an intuition that the flu vaccine is unnecessary, and potentially dangerous. I chose to disregard all attacks on my intuition as the products of sick, imbalanced minds that embrace false rationality without alignment with intuition.

The (almost) funny truth, is that from my perspective, many people consider themselves ‘scientific’ and rational’ and yet they are far from both. They (you?) are thinking with fundamentally imbalanced minds. As soon as I poke holes in the logic. I get a hyper paranoid emotional response that accuses me of being unscientific and threatening children’s lives. It feels like the theater of the absurd to me. It would be funny, if I wasn’t threatened with needles and drugs I don’t trust.

So here it is. I don’t actually trust the Washington Post either. The Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing active assertive arguments that we are in terrible danger from the flu, and we need to force vaccinations. My reaction to these forceful, imbalanced arguments is based mostly in intuition and feeling at first. I will not have these sensations disregarded. I believe the are half the equation, and that disregarding them is both dangerous and evolutionarily, immature.

The Post was recently bought by Jeff Bezos, who is now the richest man in the world. I have heard repeatedly that conditions at Amazon are hellish. One article recently said ‘When I worked there, not a day went by when I didn’t find someone crying at their desk’. I don’t trust how they make money. They are driving commodities towards the lowest prices possible on the backs of the cheapest labor they can possibly  find. And one man is absurdly rich and gets to play with spaceships. And the public media by buying one of our most trusted newspapers. I do believe this is very relevant. It is intuitive, at first. But when a source has rotten roots, I question the fruit.

And When Bezos bought the Post, the editorial policy changed, quickly. They are heavily biased. The irony is, I often agree with their bias. But when I don’t – like on this issue – it is a very challenging experience.

100 plus kids died of the flu this year. There are 300 million people in this country. So One million people need to get vaccinated, to protect 1. That’s the ratio. The CDC puts the flu and phenmonia together, which is quite misleading. My intial research indicates that phenmonia is a far more common cause of death than the flu by itself. But the children figures seem clear, and they are not convincing for me. 132 kids die of the flu Vaccinate 300 million Americans with a poorly researched, constnatly changing, potentially debilitating vaccine? I think not.

These are not good numbers to convince me towards mandated universal action. How many car accidents kill people per year? 40,000 plus. Who is proposing we stop getting in vehicles? What about gun deaths? 38,000. Or opiate addiction? 60,000 plusAS@?! More than doubled in three years. Last year 70 people died in this county  alone, of opiate overdoses. The companies that make those drugs are making a killing, and people are dying in droves, and what is our response? Kentucky just started taxing opiates, so they’ll get their budget invested in continuing business as usual.

I don’t trust the pharma companies. I don’t trust the Newspapers. I don’t trust mainstream medicine. I believe my attitudes are grounded in both intuition and logic. I believe I exist, I live and think in far greater balance than most of the people who make these decisions. I genuinely believe we are living in Pre-copernican astronomy, where tons of people believe the planets and sun, orbit the Earth.

Copernicus and Medicine Ever hear of epicycles? When astronomers thought all the planets orbited the Earth, the carefully plotted all the planetary movements they could see. By the middle ages,they had – extremely accurate measurements about the planetary cycles. They could predict planetary movements and locations in the sky, very accurately.

They simply had their core paradigm wrong. As a result, they thought Mars and Jupiter moved around the Earth in these complex flower-like patterns, constantly looping back on themselves in what they called ‘epicycles’. When Galileo and Copernicus defied orthodoxy with the truth, voila! clear circles (elipses). And they had to fight against death threats to present the truth.

This is the world we are in. I don’t believe the mainstream medical paradigm. I don’t believe our chemistry is the center of gravity of our health. Thus I don’t trust answers to our problems that are strictly centered in our chemistry – alone.

My intuition says there are clear circles here. That all this vast medical knowledge is like the accurate measurements about planetary orbits. They’ve got accurate figures, the information and experience is certainly relevant, their interpretations are just centered all wrong. They derive complex and INNACCURATE conclusions about what is wrong, and what to do about it.

Notice, I’m not polarizing. I’m not saying ‘I’m right and they’re all wrong’. I’m not saying chemistry is irrelevant. I’m just suggesting that it is only one part of our health, and often not the primary cause of illness. Yet we still treat health like it orbits our chemistry, just like early astronomers falsely thought the Sun and planets orbited the Earth.

What is the center of health? The Spirit. Indeed, that is what this website, and my life’s work are all about. It isn’t a casual assertion. I genuinely believe. I interpret and know how to work with, spiritual energy in a manner that can have a drammatic affect on health and well being. Please explore the site to learn more.

Lots and lots and lots of people make money the way things are. They make MORE money if we have to go back. They have almost no incentive to change things – as an industry – because their finances would crumble. Do individual doctors transcend this? For sure. But they have to fight against the pressure ‘if I am cautious, and have this guy come back, I’ll make another grand…’ Do they acurately calculate a wide ranges of symtoms, and do they know how to cut and splice and dramatically affect the body. Absolutely. Are they able to prove that all these conditions are CAUSED on the physical plane? Not at all. Indeed, most doctors don’t even believe spiritual energy exists. Their worldview, and their pocketbook inducwe them to keep going as things are. Tough process to fully transcend.

I can tell you, briefly, that a spiritual interpretation of reality and health is, often, vastly simpler than a chemical one. It is quite rational, and includes rules and patterns and processes that can be understood and influenced by our consciousness. It simply isn’t JUST about math. It is both a science and an art. It is well worth learning to understand how our spirits interact with our humanity. Conclusion At the end of the day, we have practical choices. I trust the polio, and mmr vaccines. They are heavily tested, and haven’t needed much change in decades. I do not trust the flu vaccine. They’re effectiveness rate is pathetic. The vast majority of people who get the flu simply have to stay at home for a week – which most Americans need to do anyway. And the perils of long term failure – WHICH THEY CANNOT TEST FOR (becuase the flu mutates every year), are too extreme.

I’m sick of being guilt tripped by essentially irrational, fear based exaggerations. I’m terrified that these choices will be legally mandated. And I’m sick of fighting with my friends about it. It hurts my heart.

I believe that most folks would get much healthier if you listened to your heart, than if you take a poorly tested, ineffective, potentially dangerous, cash cow for the pharma industry that might get legally mandated on our children.

So here goes. This is what I really think  about the Flu.

Years ago I lived in Costa Rica and watched ants tear through the cottage I was living in. Giant waves of them covering the floor. Streams of them moving between buildings. My partner and I freaked out, and tried to wash them out with buckets of water. The landowners laughed.

“They are just moving through. they do this every several months. They eat all the crumbs. They take out all the dead bugs. They leave your house clean. Just get out of their way”

My intuition says this is what the flu does. It clears us out. We need it. It scours our system, burns and eats its way through us, and leaves us clear and clean and fresh. This could be studied. It could be proved logically, I just don’t know how to, yet. Yet if we work to abort this process, we are essentially fighting for the right to leave rotting food and dead bugs throughout our body. It isn’t healthy. Far better to work to be healthy and strong in proactive ways, and to support our immune systems in doing a good job of fighting it off directly.

Life is an imperfect system. Some people do die. Yet lots of those deaths are seniors who actually have taken the vaccine. The number of children who die is much smaller. Is it worth running the risks of all the unanswered questions about the flu, and the untestability of the vaccines? I do not believe so.

So lets use our logical mind, and get our priorities straight. We are not tackling these  three causes of unnatural death rationally, at all. Indeed the leading cause of preventable death is heart disease, with over half a million deaths. My right brain teaches me to feel my heart. To honor the feelings I get, and to allow them to – help me – make clear good choices in how to live. I genuinely believe that NOT listenting to your heart is deadly, and we can barely discuss it in public without getting mocked and invalidating the rest of my perspective. All of these causes of death are driven by profit driven companies that do not want us to change our policies. They sell heart medicine. They sell guns, and cars and opiates. A balanced society. A truly and fully rational society, would tackle these problems way before we take extreme risks with drugs we don’t really understand well.

In Memorial

I was recently asked to guide a memorial service. It was a rather stunning request to me. I honestly thought they’d change their minds.

They didn’t. I did it.

I’ve been leading events for quite a long time. Some have been full of people. Many have gone well, according to many involved. I’ve been the priest at a wedding. I’ve helped organize protests. Guided prayers barefoot in the snow, in the woods at night. I’ve never done anything like this before.

This man, Michael, loved the trees and the waterways. He spent his life learning sacred and spiritual arts of many cultures. He was a living challenges to expand our sense of family to include the whole World. So we talked about the Earth and the many cultures Michael honored and learned from. He found harmony within himself not in spite of the diversity of his experience, but because of it.

His wife at his death is from Pakistan. It was deeply important to him that we wrestle with our cultural willingness to exclude Islam from global unity. Somehow we continue to war with Islamic countries. Michael believed this stems from a deep drive to keep someone as an enemy. As a way to avoid ourselves. As a way to project our inner pain.

Then we talked about the surrender that comes with the death of a beloved. Many people carry stuck energy, the remnants of unpleasant relationships that they learned to struggle through, without ever fully healing them. When someone dies this can be all the more challenging. The sense of regret and anguish fester in extremely unhealthy ways. So we meditated to remind people of the worst feelings they shared with Michael. To presence the anger and whatever sadness and regret remained. Then we imagined a sacred fire in the middle of the room, and offered these feelings into it.

As if we were driving, and trusting the exhaust system without describing its mechanics, We did not mention chakras. We continued in this manner, using exercises that are based in vibrational harmony. We focused into more tangible questions. How did he challenge and enable you to become your best self? What does his spirit wish for you as he departs? How can you live a richer deeper life through his inspiration? The heat of the fire became this source, as we drew this strength from the same fire that transmuted the pain.

Michael was wealthy, as one of his dear friends described him, in the things that truly matter. Such an inspiring force was full of contradictions and tangled memories. When someone believes that death is an absolute end, such memories can truly become detrimental to life. So we talked about life beyond death, and how deeply Michael trusted in his own transcendence. I asked them to trust this, inspired through his faith.

Then we talked about the Heart. Our hearts love, that is what hearts do. The physical Heart feeds blood to cancer. It doesn’t discern. The shadow of this is that cancer must be cut out through other means. The gift of this, is that our hearts will continue to support the full range of our feelings, offering us the opportunity to heal and transform with them. The temptation is to avoid pain, and yet when we turn of difficult feelings, we sever our ability to feel entirely. Better to engage them, feel, find support and keep feeling. The only way out is through.

Then I had them stand, as I smiled. Michael’s family and friends were broad. Many of them struggled with his environmental and spiritual activism. So I asked them ‘what is the insult commonly hurled at environmentalists?’

‘Treehugger!’ Many responded. So I had them engage in tree pose. Feel the lifeforce of a living plant, with roots reaching into the Earth. Let these roots teach you to feel spiritual roots. Breathe and believe in them. Empower them and draw life from within the Earth we share.

“Thank you Michael. Thank you for inspiring us to believe in the Earth, and the gifts of many cultures. Thank you for being brave, willing to speak out the challenges and disagreements that so many people avoid. Thank you for loving the gifts of the Earth. Cherishing hot drinks, good music and baseball.

Thank you. Thank you for your life Michael. Thank you for challenging us to be present and honest. Authentic and real. Thank you for challenging us to take risks and learn from sources that we may fear as too distant to what we are. Thank you for loving life in its simple and profound pleasures. Thank you for creating community wherever you went. Thank you for your life.”

Sexual Etiquette

Almost 20 years ago I was driving through Western Massachusetts and stopped at a garage sale in a rural town.

There it was, a giant brightly painted yellow street light. It had a plug to turn on seven of the eight lights in a normal Outlet. The 8th was set to flash on and off. That’s right, eight lights. Four directions. Four Red. Four green.

The man selling it had personally had the job of taking down these lights, when New York City realized that it was stupid to have just red and green lights. After evaluating the number of crashes, they realized that people needed a warning zone between go and stop. they actively added the yellow lights and took all the old lights down.

I believe we are living in a similar archaic era, of sexual interactions. We have poorly defined and even more poorly defended boundaries surrounding healthy sexual sharing, and assault. We don’t have a yellow zone. American culture has not taught us to be aware of signs for caution. Such signs are often viewed as resistance to push through, like you see the yellow light and slammed on the gas.

Now, it’s time to take down the old understandings. We need to establish new foundations for healthy sexual interactions. To be aware of each other. To be prepared to stop. To be able to stop, even though it’s not a red light, yet.

With Intimacy, these lights don’t work in one constant cycle. With intimacy, a yellow light may step in on a green light – and may switch back to green. In fact, its totally normal in any intimate dance to step in, and then step back and breathe, and then step in close again. Or not. Or on a step back, one or the other partner may realize that something doesn’t feel right. Yes, they’d said yes. Yes they did want it. Yes, they have the absolute right to change their minds and hearts and bodies, and pull away. Without a nasty reaction. With compassion.

Can you stop? Can you switch gears and offer support for a change in course?

The etiquette is simple. You have to be able to stop. When signs and signals are yellow, activate restraint within, and be able to switch direction if need be. Why? It doesn’t fucking matter why. That is the first step. Because the light is yellow, that is why. Its basic intimacy. Its fundamental to sharing many forms of deep love and passion. It is the foundation of great loving beautiful, screaming with pleasure who gives a fuck if the neighbors can hear you, sex. It is the foundation of rhythmic mystical, love making that dances into the edge of too much to bear and then backs off and rides a gentle wave and circles in for the depths again and again. And again.

To create the trust, that the person you are sharing time with, cares more about you, than about fucking you. Then they get to want to fuck you from a place of deep shared trust. This is something many people do without naming it. This is something many people don’t do without being aware it is even possible. This is something we need to talk about and keep talking till shit changes for good.

So, here’s the deal. Its not a deal. You do this. You learn yellow. You are not learning to coast through yellow’s, or slam on the gas to get through before red appears. You are learning how to drive well. You are learning to be both powerful and restrained. You are going to get fined if you break the rules. You are going to keep getting fined until you get it right.

In respect. You will get less respect if you don’t learn this etiquette. It will cost you, increasingly if you fail to learn.

Commit to this. Start doing it. You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to stop fighting against the changes. Out of fear. Out of vain attempts to hide from your shithole past, or stand up for a ‘bro’ so you can preserve your right to act in similar ways.

You agree to stop your shit, and start your life.

Once you shift intentions, you get a range of freedom. You get respect for learning and helping things change.

If you don’t do this? Well look, do this. I’m telling you that these lessons lead to better love. The love leads to better sex. If that doesn’t get through to you, good luck. Bye. Because the flipside is that you now, already, face the judgement of your peers in a whole new way. You will be tried in the court of public opinion. Regardless of how it goes, you have to be afraid of that now. You have to second guess life from a place of fear, fear of shame, until you learn to second guess yourself from a place of caution and restraint.

Stop defending assholes. Stop going to simple ‘score’ with women who may well want a boyfriend. You want to fuck and leave? Say so. Post it on match.com. Be honest and upfront and negotiate it clearly. Start holding equal responsibility for sexual caution. Even be the one who says no sometimes when it ‘doesn’t feel right’.

And then think about your past. Find people to talk with, who you respect, who won’t give you a free past and also love you enough to help you grow. You don’t have to live in guilt. You have to purge bullshit stories from your mind, that cover up ‘dates’ that may have left a woman out there lonely and broken. Ask. Ask yourself. Ask your friends. Be honest and ask for help.

Temember you do this work, and you learn how to tune in. You learn how to follow her through connecting that passes in and out of caution. You’ll soon discover that you want this too, if you didn’t know it already, you are about to learn – as you become more sensitive to a lover’s needs, you will become more sensitive to your own.

.In this traffic sign language, yellow may change back to green go, or red passion screamed with more yeses than you can number. You have to be able to dance with the changes without resentment, to get far enough into the trust to make love with your body. Till then, the way you talk and interact IS the way you make love. Learn.

B

Thus the etiquette of this is