Photo: Bhaskar Banerji

I love the way you move

I love the way you fuck

I love the way your stomach rounds

I love the red bumps on your inner thighs

I love the way your arms tighten easily

I love that your stomach never will

I love that your big toe turns in slightly while the rest stand straight out

I love that your skin tans easily

I love that your face reddens even more easily

I love that your legs look long in the slightest of heels

…and short without

I love the way you snake your arms when you dance

I love that your eyes can pierce

I love that you often look away instead

I love how you get me out of bed every morning

especially when I remember a time that wasn’t so easy

I love that your face gives away exactly how you’re feeling

…even when I don’t want you too and don’t think you are

I love that you are my best friend

and accept me even when I don’t accept you

I love that you are with me no matter what happens in this life, who comes in and out of it, what I accomplish or fail

I love you

Photo: HowardLake

Have you ever wondered why there are so many causes, events, and fund-raising efforts going on for various diseases and disorders? Since I was a child, I have watched campaigns go on for these causes, and wondered why progress never seems to be made.

Even when I was younger and pretty unaware of health, I puzzled over these fund-raising events and wondered whether the efforts were doing anything to cure disease.

Increasing rates for conditions like obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are at the forefront of dialogue and efforts in health communities worldwide. According to the following sources, these conditions are either increasing or not improving:

* MedPage Today
* R&D Magazine
* American Heart Association
* American Diabetes Association

This New York Times article reports that cancer rates have been dropping since the 1990s from where they were in the 1970s, and the reason for the decline in diseases is attributed to prevention, early detection such as via mammograms and colonoscopies, and people abandoning poor lifestyle choices such as smoking. But do those activities really have a significant impact on health problems?

When we hear people talk about prevention, we don’t hear enough dedicated or serious discussions of how the food we eat or the products we use can affect our propensity to develop disease. Most of the topics center around eating lower-fat and lower-cholesterol foods, eating more vegetables and fruits, and more whole grains.

Very little of what people talk about in health communities takes into consideration the sources of our food, the quality of the food being eaten, and the fact that fats and cholesterol actually play a major role in the prevention of disease. And we certainly don’t hear much about how personal care, household, commercial, and other products might alter the ability of our bodies to ward off disease and illness.

Nutrient deficiencies and how it affects health

If what we eat and nutrient-depletion isn’t an issue as so many people claim (or, as it is often absent from conversations about health), consider the following information about Vitamins A, D, and K.

Photo: emrank

This recent article from AOL News reveals that sunscreen may actually be increasing cancer rates, rather than preventing them. This idea goes against conventional ideas about wearing sunscreen – something we’ve been told for decades is the most important defense against sunburns and skin damage that can lead to skin cancer.

The article focuses on the main suspect of the believed reason for increase in skin cancer – the products reviewed contain high levels of Vitamin A (used as an antioxidant). For years, doctors have warned patients about the risks of “overdosing” on various nutrients such as Vitamins A and D. And yet recently, we’ve been hearing media reports telling us that Vitamin D is vital to health. And it’s true. Vitamin D is critical to immune, bone, cardiovascular health.

Both Vitamin A and D are fat-soluble vitamins. That means in order for the body to properly absorb them, healthy animal fat must be present in the diet. Did you know that synthetic Vitamin D and naturally-occurring Vitamin D are not the same substance, and that when an individual takes too much synthetic Vitamin D, levels in the body can become toxic?

The same cannot be said about proper levels of naturally-occurring Vitamin D from the sun and from healthy foods such as fermented cod liver oil, dairy products, and meats and fats from healthy, grass-fed animals on pasture. The other critical component to health that is rarely mentioned is Vitamin K, which works synergistically with Vitamins A and D.

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, “Vitamins A and D tell cells to make certain proteins; after the cellular enzymes make these proteins, they are activated by vitamin K. This synergy explains reports of toxicity from taking vitamins A, D or K in isolation. All three of these nutrients must come together in the diet or the body will develop deficiencies in the missing activators.”

According to the Vitamin D Council, the United States is experiencing a major deficiency in Vitamin D. If you are deficient in Magnesium, Vitamin D deficiencies can become acute. In our country, 57 percent of medical inpatients suffer from this deficiency, and 58 million American children are also deficient in this nutrient.

Modern diets don’t come close to including these important combinations of real nutrients that fight disease and illness. If we are so grossly deficient in these nutrients, just stop and think how many other nutrients we might be lacking in our diets and the real impact this has on health.

Why fundraising for disease doesn’t pay off

What exactly are the goals of organizations trying to raise money for disease prevention and research? Let’s take a look at some of the organizations putting their efforts toward “curing disease”:

Cancer

Insane things Race for the Cure inspires people to do
Photo: NatalieMaynor

Susan G. Komen Foundation. Their efforts are far-reaching and massive. In many major cities, you will see ads for “Race for the Cure”. There are calls for donations everywhere. And where does the money go? Money to put toward more research and drug development, and procedures that are supposed to cure cancer. How exactly is this accomplishing the goal of finding a cure? Surely, if we keep throwing money at this problem, someday a cure will be found and people will no longer have to suffer from cancer, right?

This year, Susan G. Komen formed a partnership with KFC to sell chicken in their Buckets for the Cure campaign, with part of the proceeds from the buckets going toward cancer research (a total of 50 cents per bucket to cancer research). The basic concept is quite laughable, but millions and millions of people are buying into this cause. Their goal? Raise 8.5 million from the sales of fried chicken.

What a brilliant public relations move this is for KFC, who sells industrial food to billions of people. No doubt, they will get a lot of credit for this from the mainstream media, medical and health authorities, and other influential entities. KFC will sell more chicken and everyone will “feel good” knowing they are supporting cancer research. So when you buy buckets of chicken from KFC, your hard-earned money is going towards supporting a corporation selling toxic food-like substances to the masses under the guiles of supporting health. It’s really quite ironic, isn’t it?

It’s not too surprising that KFC is involved in a scheme like this, they are first and foremost a corporation with a primary purpose to make money. But it’s quite another matter entirely that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has allowed their name to be used in conjunction with such an effort to sell crap food under the auspice of raising money to cure a fatal disease.

Diabetes

Diabetes has a similar movement with The American Diabetes Foundation at the helm, and you will see organizations and fund-raising events going on annually in many regions to raise money to combat this disease.

Their website provides many statistics and numbers of people who get the disease. But the web site has absolutely nothing about prevention of the disease other than to donate money for research, and provides a link to another page, Stop Diabetes, where you can add your name to a list of people who want to stop this disease. People are working night and day to maintain this website and generate names, and request donations to stop a disease that is essentially caused by poor eating habits.

And are cures being found? Just how much money do we have to donate, fund-raise, and collect to find a cure for these diseases? I propose that these organizations and fund-raising efforts are not doing the job they are intended to perform – that the money being generated from these causes goes to fund more research for drugs, procedures and surgery to combat these health issues. What evidence are we actually seeing that this is working? Do people who receive drugs and surgery for cancer, multiple sclerosis, Diabetes, and other chronic and terminal illnesses really receive benefit and recover?

The results from an inquiry by the Department of Radiation Oncology, Northern Sydney Cancer Centre, Australia, into the contribution of chemotherapy to 5-year survival in 22 major adult malignancies, revealed a shocking statistic:

The overall contribution of curative and adjuvant cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adults was estimated to be 2.3% in Australia and 2.1% in the USA.” [Royal North Shore Hospital Clin Oncol (R Coll Radiol) 2005 Jun;17(4):294.]

Allergies and asthma

There are even organizations that raise money and awareness for asthma and allergies. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation has a web site with all types of resources and information on becoming an activist for these health issues.

Photo: nicasaurusrex

There is an entire page devoted to information about new laws, petitions, and the latest news in activism for these issues. Guess what you won’t find there – any information about how the industrial food system or substances in the environment might be contributing to these issues. No prevention, no proactive measures are mentioned. There is, however, plenty of information and discussion about “treatments” and “management” programs for asthma and allergies.

The World Allergy Organization has a long list of important doctors, scientists, and university professors leading the board of directors. There are also forums, conferences, and regular meetings going on to discuss the topics of allergies. Basically, a lot of money, effort, and scientific research going to find a “cure”, but no mention of the real cause. I guess somehow the people running this organization assume that people can continue eating toxic food and being exposed to toxins in the environment, and the day a miracle cure is found, the world will be “saved”.

Check in next week to read Raine’s solution for really dealing with these diseases.

Article reprinted with permission.

Photo: moneydick

“You are poised at the starting line, one foot behind you, ready to sprint. In this life, you are on the fast track, and you must decide if you want to keep those around you who aren’t on the same track.”

I’ve heard variations of this before. Whether it’s been that I’m an old soul, or the fact that I’ve got some intense fire in my chart, or even that I’m fully enlightened and just don’t realize it (yes, I’ve been told this – god forbid), most intuitives/psychics/healers/whathaveyous tell me I’m here to get shit done, though maybe not in so many words.

Even at low points, with a lack of luster radiating (or not radiating?) from the inside out, they saw my chaotic and fiery purpose underneath.

Then why do I so often feel as if I’m not getting anywhere?

You may wonder why I decided to see a psychic yesterday, or why I bother seeing them at all. What can I say – I’m a sucker for hearing about myself. Actually, it’s deeper than that. I want to know myself better. Constantly. Can’t seem to get tired of knowing more about me, getting different points of view, connecting dots. Seeing how far I’ve come. Glimpsing how much further I need to go.

This time, the point was around work, money, family, relationships. Ok, that’s pretty much what it is every time (now that my health is better, which was what dominated these types of conversations several years ago). The first thing this particular intuitive visioned, without me asking any questions, was me at the starting line.

She followed up this image by using tarot cards to read my soul’s agenda (according to her, in the West we have a really hard time of letting go of the ego in order to get to our soul’s purpose, so she works from a place of getting the ego to work for the soul instead).

The answers never seem to correspond to what I think they will be. But they usually strike a cord that feels a bit like smacking your funny bone on the side of a table when you try and get up too quickly.

Reality. Or not.

“There are just going to be a lot of different things happening in your life. You’re not meant to stay in one place for long, but you are meant for the luxurious things in life. It’s your nature, yet you feel guilty about that.

Photo: frozenchipmunk

You feel guilt about constantly moving, you feel guilt about wanting the finer things in life. But that’s what your soul chose for you.”

Damn. Although I don’t consider myself drawn toward excessive luxury, I do like to be able to do pretty much anything I want without thinking about the (money) consequences. So although a Four Seasons Suite seems ridiculously overpriced and not worth the dough, I’m down to stay in a sweet bed and breakfast with tasty gluten and dairy-free options, for sure.

As for the moving, hearing this kind of makes me want to sigh. Loudly. And for a few minutes. I know this about myself, that I get antsy, that I need to see and experience new places after what some might consider a short period of time. But right now, the idea that I’m never gonna settle down in my entire life makes me feel friggin’ tired. My damn spirit is wearing me out.

I thought it was time for me to stay in one place. Build a community. Establish a relationship. Seems I’ve still gotta work on letting go of the last one.

Commitobia

“You shouldn’t say that you are a commitment-phobe. You’re not. You just don’t want anyone in your life that is gonna hold you back. Your fear is someone not letting you be you.”

And here I had just gotten to a point in my life where I felt I could admit I have commitment issues. Now I don’t?

Then why did I lay in bed the other night, 30-some odd hours after seeing him for the first time in six weeks, finally fully feeling the hurt that he ended our relationship? A hurt that had been clouded, covered, and buried by the understanding of why it must be that way, that this was ever the only option, that I knew it would happen eventually.

A hurt that sprang from the old wound of believing my love was too much, that to finally fall into showing myself fully, wrapping him in the cocoon of me, is what pushed him away. That to be real, raw, and open was just too powerful to carry, and so had to be abandoned.

If I don’t have commitment issues, why did I finally see so clearly that I chose a situation where there was no other possible outcome than abandonment? That commitment was impossible, and only allowed for an ending that fed into my deep-seeded beliefs about myself?

“I want to know if we can be friends.”

She looked at me for a moment before she closed her eyes. “It’s still too emotionally charged. The attraction is too strong. You have a choice here, as we always do. You can walk down the path of temptation, staying connected to him. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you’ll have to face the emotional ups and downs. Or, you can choose to remove him from your life and open up that space for what you really want to show up.”

The obvious truth.

“One last thing about him. I’ve been wondering if we have some karma to work out in this life?”

She waited for the answer, and then smiled. “They’re kinda laughing. There’s not really a past life connection, it’s just like your spirits saw each other in this life and said, ‘hey, we could be buddies.’ You two acted as catalysts for each other, pushing the other forward. But you need an adventurous person to walk through this world with you.”

“I do see you coming back together again in this life, apart and together several times, it looks like. Maybe just when you need each other most.”

Teaching

Photo: Vincepal

There’s also always variations on teaching in the world of predicting Christine’s future – yesterday it was adjunct faculty at a community or private college (so as to not tie me down to one place and everything). Before, it’s been speaking at conferences or guiding classes at festivals.

“You have to be ok with changeability. It’s who you are.” I thought about how many times the word “shapeshifter” has come up in my life over the last several weeks. Months. Years. More and more.

Here’s the issue, woman: I need stay stay in one place to develop these teaching skills, to get my work done, to focus. I tried moving around and doing work, only to find myself constantly stressed and behind, burning through what little funds I had. And yet a week at home makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

“Learning is your love. You articulate what you learn really well, and can give that to others. But you need the smorgasbord, the good life, comfort, continuously burning off the old. Being content in your life is a lot broader than you like to believe it is.”

So, am I having to face that I’m really not the tree-hugging, earth-saving, socially-conscious, harkening back to yesteryear person that I think I am, or is she just full of shit?

I’m guessing the answer is somewhere in the middle.

LH article roundup for the week:

Can’t Knock Those Addictions? Science No Longer Backs You Up

Off with the limited brain-wiring, on with feeling the pain and moving on.

So it turns out “neurology is not destiny” – at least according to William Harryman. Oh, and a little ole’ study at Rockefeller University.

Lotsa big words later, it seems all those crazy folks who’ve been saying, “the only thing that holds you back is your mind” were right. Or wait…wrong? Well, whatever. The study basically determined that our brains are not, as we thought, fixed in their wiring early in life, but rather change based on experiences we have and/or participate in throughout our lives…(read more).

Dating Games: The Single Against the Married

Here we go again with the dating thing. This time, it’s single against married, and each of us isn’t having it.

I was going to write a comment in response to Christine’s article, but then I thought maybe my services would be better put to use if I wrote an entire post. So I emailed her to present my masterplan, then promptly forgot about it.

But the time delay worked out well because Christine’s friend, Vera (if that is her real name…which it is not), later responded herself in the comment area that the dating plan she was trying didn’t pan out so well for her. Which is what I was going to say anyway. So, in essence, it gives strength to this post…(read more).

Other links worth checking out:

The Healthy Skeptic: I have high cholesterol, and I don’t care

Still think saturated fat is bad for you? Still think eating eggs raises cholesterol? Still think high cholesterol causes heart disease?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you really need to watch these videos. (But hey, you might learn something even if you answered “no”.)

Self-Yatra

~Yatra is a journey.

This is a community that shares positive resources, thoughts, words, & ideas to inspire us to start our self yatra and bring us closer to our highest potential.

I Am What I Desire.

Photo: suchitra prints

One of my co-editors at Matador, Carlo Alcos, took a particular disliking to a piece I wrote a couple of months ago called, Dating in 2010: Is it All Four-Man Plans and Online Shenanigans? Well, maybe dislike is a strong word, but it certainly triggered him. So we decided to hash-it-out, mano a mano, in the classy, mature way – on a blog for everyone to see (and comment on…hint hint).

Thing is, Carlo and I are generally nice, subdued people, so our conversation may not involve as many sucker-punches as you would have liked to see. For that, I apologize.

Carlo

I was going to write a comment in response to Christine’s article, but then I thought maybe my services would be better put to use if I wrote an entire post. So I emailed her to present my masterplan, then promptly forgot about it.

But the time delay worked out well because Christine’s friend, Vera (if that is her real name…which it is not), later responded herself in the comment area that the dating plan she was trying didn’t pan out so well for her. Which is what I was going to say anyway. So, in essence, it gives strength to this post.

Before I begin, I thought you’d might be interested in a bit about me. I am in no way a “dating expert”, psychologist, psychiatrist, sociologist, or any other type of professional who’s spent the better part of their lives studying relationships. But I am human. And I’m a guy. In fact, I’m a married guy. For over three years. So I think that qualifies me to at least be in the discussion. In fact, I’ve counseled many girl friends in the past on dating issues, mostly ending with the sentence, “maybe you’re just dating the wrong type of guy.”

When I first read about the four-man plan here I got really defensive for some reason. I can’t explain that reaction, but I felt I needed to respond. The gist of this plan is that a woman dates four men at the same time, with the idea that the men will be more competitive.

What I came to hate during my twenties was the “game.” And this is a game. I’ll admit I haven’t read the book, so I’m not going to sit here and attack this plan because I don’t know enough about it. (Although on the website it does say you “keep track of how you feel about each of them with the help of some visual graphs” which pretty much sounds like a gameplan.) And yeah, back then, I played it. Because that’s what you were supposed to do. Or, that’s what you were told you were supposed to do.

The whole “don’t call for 3 days, don’t let on how interested you are, play it cool” thing. It’s fucking ridiculous when you think about it. Why shouldn’t we be encouraged to express our thoughts and feelings? If everyone were just open wouldn’t that make things a lot easier? If you are the kind of person that likes to express yourself, and you’re with someone who gets freaked out because you tell him/her you like them, or you call them “too soon”, is that the kind of person you want to be with long term?

Christine

Photo: nattu

When it comes to dating, the thing about creds is, who really has them? In the immortal (ha) words of Carrie Bradshaw, “I’ve been dating a hundred years. I haven’t a clue” (yeah, I went there). Each experience is original in some way, though we certainly bring our very own colorful patterns to each dating dilemma.

I’m a horrible dater, as I alluded to (or insisted loudly) in my article. Never been good at it. Laid in bed the other night thinking about how I just can’t seem to be casual in my life about, well, anything really. But certainly not love and romance. A guy I dated a few years ago once said to me, “You’re too damn intense.” A version of that statement has been repeated to me many times before and since. Yep. I’m an all or nothing girl. What can I say?

Oh, I fight against it all the time. Although I would never have the energy to participate in the four-man plan, I get it. It’s friggin’ tough out there. As a woman, you can’t be too available – men like the chase (I think this is also often true on the flip-side, hence the whole “girls don’t like nice guys” issue).

If you say straight up in the beginning, “Hey, I like you. I’m feeling a connection here,” that often makes the other person friggin’ high-tail it in the other direction. The most honest I was able to be with my feelings early on was when I started seeing a man in an open marriage – and we both agreed we felt comfortable to not play the “game” partly because nothing long-term was at stake.

I think most of us wish we could be honest with our feelings right away, but the thing about feelings is sometimes they grow at different rates. I know that for me, there have been a few guys that I’ve dated who I didn’t really have feelings for when I first met them. It took time and persistence on their part to make me see how great they were. And really, most of the men I’ve dated for longer periods of time didn’t necessarily look at me romantically in the beginning – as our friendship grew, they became interested (and I know you guys out there reading this are calling bullshit, but I think it’s mostly true. I could always sense the shift).

I think it is a pretty normal human condition to hold your cards close to your chest. And if you’ve been hurt, or played by guys time and again, it feels like you have to play to win in this crazy game.

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for nine years. It’s so f’n hard to be a straight woman dating there. Whether you chalk it up to the amount of gay guys (although my gay guy friends seemed to have to play even more games), the higher ratio of (gorgeous) women to men, or the fact that it is a transient area with total commitment phobs, I understand thinking, “Hmm, I’m getting rejected left and right here. I need a new strategy.”

And so even though the Four-Man Plan ultimately didn’t work for my friend – and I didn’t really think it would over time – the experience might have been worth it within itself. Sometimes, it’s about resetting your own boundaries.

Check in next week to see the married and the singleton continue to duke it out.

Photo: KushiInstitute

So it turns out “neurology is not destiny” – at least according to William Harryman. Oh, and a little ole’ study at Rockefeller University.

Lotsa big words later, it seems all those crazy folks who’ve been saying, “the only thing that holds you back is your mind” were right. Or wait…wrong? Well, whatever. The study basically determined that our brains are not, as we thought, fixed in their wiring early in life, but rather change based on experiences we have and/or participate in throughout our lives.

So much for the but, but…can’t…old dogs…new tricks… Saying you’re too old to learn how to breakdance with a walker or blaming your parents for your Wendy’s frosties-and-fries addiction so you don’t get a green thing in your diet doesn’t cut it anymore. We always, always, always have the ability to change. Get better. Evolve, people.

Ok, it’s not quite that simple. Yeah, there are addictions. Those old neurons fire up when we get reprimanded by the boss, making us head straight out the door for a cuddly, loving ciggie that we oh-so-easily gave up five years ago. We get dumped, or a friend forgets to call us back for eight months, or we don’t hear back from any of the 750 painstakingly-applied for jobs. Bam! Time for a drink/hit off the bong/weekend drug-and-prostitute filled extravaganza in the Hamptoms. You know how it goes.

These addictions are seriously hard to overcome when the going gets rough (and it always will at some point). Why do you think spirituality sells? Partly because it gives a sorta answer: sit with the pain, and then surrender to [insert spiritual guru/god here]. They seem to give a bit of a way out.

The Pleasure of Pain

But what that does is make people think there is a “way out.” Sure, sitting in the pain sounds all good and mature, until you actually have to do it. Then you start to let all those excruciating emotions roll through you without satiating the burning desire to immediately rip your heart out and stomp it til the beating stops. Or rip someone else’s heart out, whatever.

Sitting in the pain hurts. And while I’m not sure that this happens so much if you are really sitting in the pain, the possibility of getting sucked down into that which you think is the pain can be a bit uh, stunting. As Danielle Laporte recently wrote on her blog:

Personally, I haven’t run from my pain. I compensated for it. I spent so much time accommodating it, “working with it”, paying attention to it –- NOT avoiding it, that I neglected my very agency and power: my joy. Unbridled, unabashedly sweet, essential joyousness.

Sometimes we can forget about our joy, and the power we have to achieve it. We can attach to our pain in the name of feeling it, not really letting it work its way through our system in order for it to compost into something actually worth holding onto.

Jesin albuquerque, someone who commented on Laporte’s article, captured this sentiment well:

During the past two years, I lost two close friends, two family members, and my cat-companion of 20 years. I had some grieving to do and I did it. Then, just a few days ago, I woke up one morning feeling strange. After some consideration, I realized that for the first time in a long time, I was not overwhelmed with grief. So what did I do? Tried to get it back. It had become an old friend and a safe haven.

Sometimes, we work just as hard to hold onto the bad stuff as much as the good. Sometimes, we’re scared of the fact that like those researchers determined, our brains aren’t fixed in their wiring. And neither are our lives. Which means we gotta take responsibility for them.

Oooh, more responsibility?

Oh, the Fine Line

I still believe many of us run away from pain (we also run away from true joy in order to experience easier pleasures). But when we start to work with our pain, we might just begin to over-identify with it, partly because we friggin’ ignored it for so long.

That’s why I think talk therapy is good for a while. Get at those wounds of why you act the way you do. Love yourself up. Then get out there and do something about it, instead of getting stuck in the wheel of “well, I acted this way because of my Dad’s inability to show his affection” for an hour week after week (’cause you know your therapist is bored after six years, anyway). Everybody’s got their stuff – it’s not about what happened, it’s what they do with it.

Like anything else – and any other emotion – feeling pain, then letting it go (or transforming it) is a balancing act. Sometimes you gotta wallow. Sometimes you gotta kick yourself in the rear and implement some changes.

Luckily, we know the brain’s got some endless possibilities in store. Re-wire away.

Finally, a way for women to “gain hold” in the fight against rape. South African Dr. Sonnet Ehlers has developed a female condom with “teeth” on the inside that attach to a man’s penis during penetration. Here’s the process:

The woman inserts the latex condom like a tampon…once it lodges, only a doctor can remove it — a procedure Ehlers hopes will be done with authorities on standby to make an arrest. “It hurts, he cannot pee and walk when it’s on,” she said. “If he tries to remove it, it will clasp even tighter… however, it doesn’t break the skin, and there’s no danger of fluid exposure.”

What do the critics have to say about it? It will “make women vulnerable to more violence from men trapped by the device.” It’s a “form of enslavement,” reminding women of their “vulnerability.”

Victoria Kajja, a fellow for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Uganda says:

“It not only presents the victim with a false sense of security, but psychological trauma,” she added. “It also does not help with the psychological problems that manifest after assaults.”

Yeah, ok, I can agree with that. I obviously believe that the basic acceptance of rape in many African countries (and really, all over the world) needs to be altered dramatically. But just because I want that to be so doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen any time soon. And while we continue to work to shift accepted norms that are barbaric, violent, and cause life-long psychological trauma, giving women another defensive strategy is not enslavement in my book. When it’s life or death, I say give women a way to tear into a penis the way it tore into her.

Critics who have accused Dr. Ehlers of developing a medieval device to fight rape? Umm, castration for committing rape may be medieval. A condom that sticks it to a dick is not.

So, they say living in the US is better than living in Nigeria…

Thanks to Kate Sedgwick for pointing this one out.

Photo: Shyald

It is often as I’m telling a story, something about life and the bigger picture, that I approach the subject with a bit of trepidation. Almost apologizing, mumbling just a bit, I admit the reason that I agree with some general observation is because I believe there is more than just this life.

Of course, it matters who I’m talking to. Tribe members can often be noted from afar, and they nod their heads quickly in agreement. Others are just as obvious, and of course, those are the ones with whom I tend to end up in these types of conversations. Their pupils constrict as they attempt to hide their judgment, or they go ahead and more openly question my assuredness of lives before and after this one.

It doesn’t necessarily matter that I only truly started believing in past lives about six years ago, though I often throw this fact in the conversation for good measure. That before then, I’m sure my eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly at those who off-handedly mentioned a wound left over from a sword to the gut during the fall of the Roman empire, or a burning at the stake during Salem witch-hunting times. That I can still stand outside of myself sometimes, understanding that if the day a person was born and the moment they die is all they believe they’ve got, the world looks a hell of a lot different.

A lot more depressing, really.

Sure, I get the scientific, it’s-just-as-crazy-as-saying-a-big-man-in-the-sky-made-this-all-in-seven-days perspective. I can see how people see a body is buried in the ground and eaten up by the insects that live there (though the whole quantum idea of energy never dying, only changing form chucks a wrench in the system). Guess if you don’t believe in the soul, or energy, simply being fodder for the bacteria makes the most sense.

But I guess my question is, why believe in just one life/one death?

The Science of Life and Death

I searched around the web a bit for “scientific evidence” of past lives, and surprisingly came across more than a few booksand articles pointing toward “proof” of reincarnation.

Photo: Alejandra Mavroski

Even a website dedicated to “small-caps stocks, options, and high-growth opportunities” offered up an article on the work of Dr. Weiss, a Yale-trained psychotherapist, who kinda fell into research about past lives. The author of the article, Jonathan Kolber, wrote:

I personally had an experience in college that seemed to fit the bill…most interesting to me, the images explained some anomalies in my life and the information gained changed my perspective on some things. Since childhood, I had harbored hostile attitudes towards France, a country with which I had no apparent connection whatsoever. I regarded the French as irrational and prone to mob rule. I also had a phobia of being in crowds.

After seemingly “remembering” a life as an insignificant member of the nobility in France, apparently born in 1756, all of my irrational attitudes disappeared. And for the first time in my life, I was able to enjoy vacationing in Quebec and listening to the French language spoken.

He goes on to discuss possibilities around spontaneous healing, which Dr. Weiss has seen occur time and time again (though by no means every single time). I was reminded of my own experience of seeing an intuitive, psychic, whathaveyou, and her telling me a story that felt like a massive punch in the gut. My friends who have to stretch far in the direction of suspending disbelief did their best to be supportive when I told them my lifelong (well, at least since I was a teenager) fear of being raped came not from an experience in this lifetime, but from being assaulted and left to die last time around. I apparently was around 23 when it happened.

In this life, at 23, I began an intense battle with candida overgrowth, which is often thought to be emotionally linked with sexual abuse or repression. Although it was by no means spontaneous healing, hearing what had happened to the body my soul last inhabited felt like skidding to a stop in the fight.

Why Not?

I can’t help but wonder whether or not it’s true, doesn’t it just feel better to think this one life isn’t all there is?

Photo: h.koppdelaney

That each of us have our ups and downs in order to get to a more evolved place? That those who seem to have so much in this life, and those who seem to have so little, will have their karma switched next time around?

That it’s not all for nought?

Interestingly, just as I was writing this piece, I came across a Huffington Post article by spiritual writer and psychologist Mariana Caplan. Titled 10 Spiritual Transmitted Diseases, she points out our often unconscious ways of spiritually bypassing the hard work we have to do throughout life to continue to grow. One STP struck me in particular:

Spiritual Pride: Spiritual pride arises when the practitioner, through years of labored effort, has actually attained a certain level of wisdom and uses that attainment to justify shutting down to further experience. A feeling of “spiritual superiority” is another symptom of this spiritually transmitted disease. It manifests as a subtle feeling that “I am better, more wise and above others because I am spiritual.”

So I can’t help but wonder, is my belief in more than just this life not only a way of surviving the hardships I face (and watch others handle in even larger quantities), but am I employing spiritual pride at the same time? I certainly can feel superior to those who think this is it, and feel sorry for the depression I can’t help but believe they harbor somewhere deep inside. Partly, this stems from my own past experiences of having a lack of something-to-believe-in. But is it also steeped in feeling better about myself, and my purpose, because I now do have something to believe in?

Maybe more importantly, how does this effect my interactions with the “others” who don’t believe the way I do?

This video is totally worth watching all the way through:

Let us do what we were put on this Earth to do.

Feature photo: Amy Loves Yah