Archive for the ‘Science’ Category

>     There are two stories headlining CNN’s homepage this afternoon that relate to drugs and depression. I am quite familiar with one of the stories and not surprised by the other. The first is a report by Michael Chernoff about Jordan Burnham, a seemingly well-rounded and high- performing high school senior in Pennsylvania who jumped nine stories from his family’s apartment in an attempted suicide. The other story is a report about recent findings by Harvard University that in 47 clinical trials, anti-depressants were no more effective than placebos, although those results were deliberately misreported by the drug companies performing them to physicians dispensing them to highlight the benefits of prescribing anti-depressants.
    I’m familiar with Jordan Burnham’s story because I live nearby and not too long ago spoke with the Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, Michael Vitez, who wrote extensively on Jordan’s story and who interviewed Jordan and his family as he was released from the hospital after 80 days of care and moved to a physical rehabilitation facility.
    These topics of depression, anti-depressants and attempted suicide are ones for which I have a particular sensitivity. I have personally experienced all of them in my lifetime.
    The Harvard report comes as no surprise to me. I have written before and expressed my feelings about the over-prescribed, and resulting, over-medicated Western world. What the Harvard report does is to give credibility to a fundamental truth which is that in most cases, the drugs are not needed.
    What is needed is not profitable to the pharmaceutical industry and others who have made trillions of dollars off of masking the root causes of so much of our illness and disease…both psychological as well as physiological.
    A truth is that we insist upon defying Nature, no to mention our own good sense, by trying to live at an impossible pace. We have thrown personal relationships and quality of life upon the sacrificial altar to paying homage to acquisition and, oftentimes, meaningless accomplishment.
    Having for the sake of having.
    Doing for the sake of doing.
    Trading inner guidance for other-based direction.
    Whether a flower, a fish, centipede or a human, it cannot be lacking in the fundamental and necessary conditions for growth without distorting and, ultimately,mutating the end product.
    In our case, humans are not designed to live at the rapid rate of speed at which advanced technology performs. But heaven knows, we keep trying. And what we sacrifice in our efforts is all that makes us uniquely and magnificently human.
    Such a sacrifice is painful.
    Hence, the dis-ease and the drugs.
    Dis-ease is the result of mis-alignment. It’s from being out of balance with our true nature. The easy way is to sedate or mask the symptoms, rather than deal with the root cause. Make no mistake about it, even medications that appear to cure dis-ease do not reach to the core of where that dis-ease first manifested. The “seed level” is in our thought forms which then move into our physical body. The real cure is the opposite path from medicating and sedating. The real cure is to get at those thoughts and patterns of thought that are in direct opposition to creating harmony within oneself and in relation to others.
    It’s a daunting task, I’ll give you that. And we’re far from fully understanding how it all works and even farther from mastering this approach so I’m not saying that if your child needs a transfusion you should help her or him change their thought forms and skip the transfusion.
    I am saying that the road to both understanding and mastering alternative ways to intentionally create illness, as opposed to creating dis-ease by default, necessarily leads us inward to an honest examination of our thoughts, our intentions and our priorities.
    Jordan Burnham survived the nine-story jump. Hopefully, as his body heals so will his trust and faith in himself. Hopefully, he will come to realize that all the accomplishments and all the accolades are not only meaningless but also detrimental if we are dong them for someone else’s vision of how life should be lived…rather than our own.
    As for the drug companies, they’re unlikely to voluntarily change as they are driven by greed. So, this change is up to us. We must turn down the quick and easy pills for the slower and more challenging route to self-awareness, integrity and congruence by living lives that truly reflect our inner selves rather than the conforming to the outer demands of others.
    I know we are on the cusp of making this change. I know it because dissatisfaction is everywhere. Not despair. Dissatisfaction. This is a very good sign.
    We have been asleep…a culturally drug-induced sleep. In the darkness of that sleep we have been co-opted. I see and hear more and more people awakening each day. Out of that darkness and into the light.
    If the awakened ones need a motto, might I suggest “Rise and Shine.”

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>     There is a Blackberry “blackout” today, the cause of which is yet unknown. I’m not a Blackberry user but I have friends who are and their professional and personal lives are tied to it’s function and their reliance upon it. So I think it’s a good opportunity to examine our dependence upon the technology of the 21st century and contemplate life should tomorrow it disappear…or at least became non-functioning, for whatever reason.
    I’m neither a Doomesday nor an Armageddon proponent so I’m not attributing an onerous source or ill intent to the possibility. The “how” of it isn’t my concern. What is my concern is how far we’ve strayed from what it takes to live life in the “slower lane” and just how prepared we’d be to step up and meet that challenge.
    A place we can go to get an idea about what it would be like is one of the many geographic areas that have suffered a natural disaster that interrupted basic services as well as life in general. People who have lived through such experiences have some idea of what it requires and the toll it takes.
    What I find so fascinating about those experiences is the camaraderie and general “pulling together” that is so often exhibited under extraordinarily devastating circumstances. More often than not, something deep within the best of us is touched and moved to heightened levels of empathy and compassion. Somewhere within our Souls we see “the other” as ourselves and seek to render aid and relieve suffering. Out of these moments are born meaning and joy beyond reason.
    This drive towards Oneness, I am certain, is what is at the core of each of us. I am also certain that the pace of the technology has so overridden our natural rhythms that it has become increasingly difficult, in many cases impossible, to slow down long enough to notice discomfort in those we interact with each day, including those closest to us. It may take a disaster of monumental proportions to get our attention, to bring us present, sufficient to open to the needs of those around us. Sadly,  disaster comes in many forms. Yes, it can be the hurricane, the tornado, or the tsumani, but it can also be the cancer, the auto accident or the attempted suicide…although this need not be the case.
    We can awaken voluntarily of our own accord and become conscious around the rate of speed at which we travel and what we’re likely missing along the way. We can respond to little hints, as opposed to tragic acts, to re-focus and re-prioritize our lives in such ways that we become the masters of the technology and therefore the rate of speed, rather than slaves to both.
    I noticed some time ago that when my computer is booting up and loading, some of the technical language built into the hard drive actually uses the words “master” and “slave.” There are no accidents. The words are there and were built into the creation of the technology because like everything else in Life…we get to choose.
    In this case, the choice is whether we continue to be enslaved to our own creations or whether we have the inner strength and outer courage to reverse these roles and take back control of the quality of our lives.
    The Blackberry blackout of today is tomorrow’s technological tsunami. Let’s take the hint and pass on the disaster.

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>     The now confirmed tragic and unintended overdose-caused death of actor Heath Ledger is an opportunity for us all to shine a bright light on the several issues his life, and death, present. On the surface, it’s about the proliferation and ease of obtaining both prescription and illegal drugs. However, just below the surface are lurking several deeper issues equally, if not more, in need of our attention.
    Yes, the drug issue is the most obvious. Ledger was in possession of a potentially fatal cocktail of legally prescribed sleeping pills, anti-anxiety meds and pain killers. The question first asked is “What physician, if in fact a single physician is involved, would have prescribed such a combination and allowed a patient in such “pain” (physical and/or emotional) to have unfettered access?”
    Yet the underlying issue around the prescribing of drugs is “Why are we as a culture so quick to medicate and suppress symptoms rather than treat root causes?” While I do not know if Ledger suffered any physical source of pain, it does appear from reports that he suffered from emotional pain and depression as witnessed by close friends. In this regard, he was no different than countless numbers of Americans who daily take drugs, legal and illegal, to mask their underlying problems.
    I have a good friend, a chiropractor, who has always said, “To heal you have to feel.” And it’s true. Whether it’s a broken leg or a broken heart…whether it’s Hyrodcodone for the broken leg or Prozac for the broken heart…at some point real healing cannot be accomplished by sedating or distracting the conscious mind from the painful reality of the growth process. As we experience pain, we learn from it. We learn what and how not to do as well as where and how not to go.
    I am reminded of Thomas Edison’s reply when asked how it felt to fail so many times before he succeeded at inventing the light bulb. “I never failed” he replied. “I discovered a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb.” Edison ultimately succeeded because he was willing to experience the pain of not succeeding. Edison learned by that pain how not to reach his goal, which gave him momentum and direction on how to reach it.
    We have become a nation unwilling to feel the pain. And so, in our desperation to hold true to that goal, we try and circumvent the natural process of how things evolve, and what evolution feels like, by trying to insulate and sedate ourselves. It’s a losing proposition. For it’s impossible to shut down one aspect of yourself without impacting all of the other aspects as well. We, like Heath Ledger, have moved into a quiet sleep from which it’s very easy to slip away.
    We are in denial about this pervasive problem. I was reading an ABC World News on-line article about Ledger’s autopsy findings and navigated over to the comments that people were posting. Almost all of them were raging against our denial of the magnitude of this problem and how children, in record numbers, are on drugs.
    Then there’s the fact that he was 28 with enormous success and a child out of wedlock with a woman he had met on the movie set of Brokeback Mountain, and, with whom he had recently split up. He was reported to be a doting father to their new daughter and yet a wild partier. So many issues here: The capacity to handle fame and fortune at age 28; bearing children out of wedlock; sex vs. love; the pressures to achieve money, fame, stardom, success, whatever.
    Such are the stuff of a national dialog that needs to commence and run deep. We need to get to the root causes of our weakest links and do something about strengthening them rather than anesthetizing them. Like Edison, we need to acknowledge out loud all the ways we have tried that have taught us how not to get to where we want to go so that together we can alter course.
    It’s too late for Heith Ledger, but not for the 1.5 million runaway children each year…or the 1 million high school age children who attempt suicides each year…or all the others of whatever age group who cannot seem to understand how we’ve created the world they inhabit…or who cannot seem to find an opening to a path leading to a better one.
    Death is only meaningless if we fail to find meaning in it. Heith Ledger has left us an opportunity that, if taken, can provide him a legacy far beyond any Oscar ever could have.
    Let’s give him that.

>     Over the weekend I had a conversation with some friends about politics in general and the upcoming election. One of the women voiced her concern about global warming and said she was driven by that issue in deciding for whom to vote. She seemed really concerned so I asked her if she was as worried as she looked and to my surprise she answered, “I am. It really scares me.” I was shocked by her reply because this is one person who has the most positive outlook on life you could imagine. She is genuinely, and generally, happy every day just to open her eyes and breathe. Everything after that is “gravy” to her.
    I suggested to her my take on global warming and asked her to give it some thought. I’ll share what I said with you, too.
    Whether we humans caused or contributed to the current state of things or, in the alternative, it’s a natural cycle that Earth partakes of…it really doesn’t matter. That’s not to say that I am callous about the subject of deteriorating environmental conditions or vanishing species. Both concern me deeply. It simply means that “order and chaos” are the heartbeat’s rhythms of Creation. When anything is in a state chaos what occurs is “correction” so as to move it back towards order…and so forth and so on. I see global warming as a necessary correction as we transit this particular heartbeat of chaos.
    It is not possible to separate we humans from the environment in which we live, whether it be “lesser” life forms, the Earth, or the Universe Itself. All of It is an integrated, interdependent self-organizing system that will seek to move Itself toward balance when too far astray from an optimal state of equilibrium.
    That’s what we’re in the middle of right now. Whether it’s the demise of the effectiveness of systems of governing and commerce, or radical weather patterns and cataclysmic events, they all originate from One principle and seek to achieve One end: movement from chaos back to order.
    When a balance is once more obtained, do not think it will stay that way. It is the natural course of energy to move, to change. Within the order that will soon manifest will be the seeds of future chaos. This is as it should be. This is Life.
    What I told the woman who is so frightened of the thought of global warming was not to think about it…well, at least not to think about it with fear. Thoughts are things, too. And powerful energy they are. So if any of us must dwell upon global warming, let’s see it as one of many symptoms of changing times and better to think about how we can best adapt to, as well as contribute to, the emerging order.

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>     As a former lawyer (recovering lawyer as I like to say) I’ve heard my share of lawyer jokes and references to Shakespeare’s famous predisposition to “first kill all the lawyers.” Having known the profession from the “inside out” I understand the basis for such sentiments…although murder seems an extreme remedy. Part of the problem is certainly too many lawyers and too much self-oversight…the chicken guarding the hen house syndrome.
    Today, it appears that if Shakespeare could arise and view our current health care situation, he might just suggest killing all the doctors…or at least the excessive number of specialists.
    In the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Shannon Brownlee writes that “over the next eight years medical schools will be aiming to increase enrollment by 30%” yet what they are producing is more and more specialists and fewer and fewer primary care physicians. In fact, “between 1997 and 2005 the number of U.S. medical school graduates entering family-practice residencies fell by 50%.”
    In practical terms more doctors means worse care, a fact Brownlee documents. Why? Because, according to the author, 1) more and duplicative tests and procedures entail more risk and, 2) multiple specialists for a single patient multiplies the potential for miscommunication and confusion. Duplicate tests, drugs that interact poorly with existing medications, and the assumption that one of the other physicians will attend to a critical aspect of the patient’s care are all undesirable and dangerous outcomes of this highly specialized approach. Brownlee poses some possible solutions, one of which is to simply “turn the spigot off” and stop soliciting and graduating more doctors.
    Then there is the more spiritually-based “personal responsibility” solution.
    Let’s put our energies into wellness instead of sickness.
    It all begins with each of us and how we choose to live our lives. No matter which way you cut it, you cannot eat preservative-infused, high sodium, high fat fast food (or even slow food) and expect to remain healthy. You cannot create a life that is so stress-laden in the quest to acquire more and more “things” and expect to remain healthy. You cannot use and abuse and pollute the Earth with total disregard for the real impact of such behavior and expect to live in a nourishing environment.
    A refusal to see the connection between how we live and how healthy we live is the source of our dis-ease. After all, it’s called dis-ease. If I or anyone else has to explain the component parts of that word to you then the challenge is bigger than I anticipate.
    Generally we go to doctor after-the-fact…meaning that we’ve ignored the warning signs (overt and covert) and have pushed our psyches, our bodies and, yes, our Souls past the break point. As the pace of life escalates exponentially with the runaway technological boom, perhaps it make perfect sense that we need more doctors…or so we’re led to believe.
    I think not.
    More dis-ease and more ill-ness ought to be indicators that WE are somehow out of alignment with Nature and all things life affirming. It is up to each of us to turn inward and examine the quality of our thoughts, our actions, and the life we choose to live.
    Government hasn’t solved much. Lawyers even less. And now the doctors aren’t all that much help either, it turns out. Seems to me we are inclined to look anywhere other than where help is readily available.
    In case you somehow missed where that is, it’s in your hands.
    I guess that’s why they say, “Physician, heal thyself.”
 
   
    
    
    

>    The cholla cactus, indigenous to Southern Arizona, has a bud that when ingested slows the absorption rate of glucose into the bloodstream. One
tablespoon of buds from the cholla cactus has as much calcium as eight ounces of
milk. The buds are rich in soluble fiber that help regulate blood sugar. >The Native American Pima and
Tohono O’odham tribes, also indigenous to the region, suffer from disproportionately high rates of obesity and diabetes due to externally imposed lifestyle changes that occurred around 1940. Now, members of the two tribes are returning to their roots, so to speak, and beginning to use the cactus, Mother Earth’s gift, to treat their health challenges.
    The Native tribes of Southern Arizona are not alone, although they may be an extreme example of what we do to our bodies and our health when we stray too far from Nature. Obesity, for example, is not confined to the Native tribes of Southern Arizona. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has found that between 16-33% of adolescents are obese and, all told, there are an estimated 40 million obese Americans.
    The causes of diabetes and obesity in the general population are not much different than those experienced by the Pima and O’odham. A diet of rich, refined foods high in fat and low in fiber plus a sedentary lifestyle brought on by technological advances are, literally, a deadly combination. To date, our response to this has been to medicate the symptoms with even sometimes deadlier prescription drugs rather than address the “root causes.”
    One could hypothesize, with a little humor, that the best treatment for root causes is roots! That is, after all, the wisdom that the Native Americans of Southern Arizona are about to access. It’s a wise approach that should be acknowledged worldwide.
    Nature, in the form of Earth and all Her bounty, likely provides us gratuitously with cures for what ails us. The only condition seems to be that we live in harmony with Earth…recognizing our interdependence with all things Natural. Given our abysmal record in this regard, it’s no wonder we have strayed so far, become so stressed, and, oh yes, gotten obese, diabetic and cancer riddled along the way.
    The Earth’s rain forest, with only 250,000 of it’s plant life cataloged and an estimated 1,000,000 yet to be completed, has provided us with 1 in 4 of the medicines used worldwide. Tropical forest regions alone have provided over 2000 plants with anti-cancer properties.
    What I find so amazing, and compassionate, is that Earth continues to hold and relinquish to us the cure for what ails us, despite the fact that we have created the dis-eases…and continue, daily, to heap pollutants upon Her surface and contaminate Her air and water with abandon.
    The Native Americans of Southern Arizona are now embarking upon remembering what was once common knowledge and common practice to their culture. Earth is our ally and benefactor. If we treat her with the respect She deserves, She will in turn sustain us in a healthy and life-supporting manner.
    I’d say a good step in that direction might be to forgo the Big Mac and episode of “24” and instead…fry up a little cholla, olive oil and garlic then go outside for a walk…and if you see someone desecrating the Earth, offer to share your cholla.

      >  Today’s the day we move our clocks back one hour for the change from Daylight Savings Time to Eastern Standard Time. Well, this year it’s the day. In previous years, it was traditionally the last weekend of October. However, in an effort to conserve energy, the federal government made the decision a year or two ago to move the setback to the first weekend in November.
    Which makes me ask two questions: “What is time” and “How important is it anyway?”
    Time and I have always had a somewhat different relationship. Because my intuitive sense was highly developed as early as childhood, I often “knew” or dreamed events “before” they seemingly happened. When asked how I was able to do that, my intuitive answer was “I get the information from a place in which there is no Time.” I don’t know where or how I came up with that response, but it seemed logical enough to me. If I had prior knowledge of an event that had not yet occurred, that information must exist somewhere outside of Time as we understand it.
    We all have a tendency to live either in our memories or in our projections for the future. Few of us master the art of living in the Present…the Now. The beauty of the Now is that when you are in it, there is no Time. Actually, it’s more accurate to say there is no need for Time in the Now. Living in the Now requires only that you be fully engaged in the moment. When that moment is complete, you simply move on to being fully engaged in the next moment, which then becomes the Now…and so on.
    It is interesting that we use the phrase “spend time” as if it were currency possessing an inherent value. What we are really saying is that we comprehend the preciousness of the time we spend in our bodies here on Earth. Yet, tacitly acknowledging that preciousness, we pretty much devalue or ignore the greatest power that we have, which is how we choose to be and what we choose to do in the Present.
    Last night, as I was spending the extra hour of the clock setback to watch a DVD of the former “Friends” sitcom, I noticed a photo of our daughter next to the TV. Today she is 14, but in that photo she was 4 years old. When I got into bed I remarked to my husband that I could hardly believe the tiny little toddler was now this blossoming young woman. His reply was “Yes, it really does go by in the blink of an eye.”
    Well, it does. So knowing that, it makes infinitely more sense to spend it wisely than squander it recklessly.
    I watch virtually no television and I’m on the computer almost exclusively for business. But when I think about the value of living in the Now, I wonder how many of us would take the opportunity, if offered, on the last day of our lives to exchange all the Time we spent watching TV or at the computer for the chance to live that much more time in our bodies? To have all those “Nows” back to spend more wisely.
    In Judaism, the observance of the Sabbath is a key component to spiritual life. If you’ve ever done it, it’s rather remarkable. The premise is that the Sabbath is a piece of Eternity…a stepping out of Time, and therefore a removal of oneself, away from all things material. To gloriously dwell for “24 hours” in the Now. It’s an indescribable feeling. Colors are brighter, sound is clearer, everything is more alive. Rather than the deadening of our senses that we experience when interacting with technology, to the contrary, our senses are heightened…as is an appreciation for what is inherently priceless in the moment of Now.
    Today, Daylight Savings Time begins. Perhaps it’s wise to think not about saving Time but instead investing it more wisely by releasing both past and future, and fully engaging the power of Now.

>    As a writer, I am taken with words. Always have been. As a mystic, I never miss an opportunity to find meaning in the many synchronicities of life. So it’s no wonder that when I passed a storefront on my way home last evening and the neon sign had some of it’s lights out, I had all at once my wordplay, my mystical occurrence, and my blog for today.
    The store I passed sells products and furniture for people with back aliments. It’s called “Healthy Back”…but the last three letters of the first word had the lights blown out so it read Heal *** Back. As I stared at it, what I realized immediately was how the word “healthy” is really two words…”heal” and “thy” so with just a little spacing and punctuation it would read “Heal Thy Back” store.
    There it was. Healthy is all about heal(ing) thy(self)…or yourself. But you get the point, whichever way you read it. Now this makes perfect sense in light of everything else I believe in and write about routinely in my blog.
    We are all responsible for our thoughts. Our thoughts are the foundation we lay for the things we create both within our minds and by our actions. As sentient beings, we feel everything we think whether or not we are aware that we do. So, when we have thoughts that are negative about ourselves, others or the world…those thoughts generate feelings within our physical bodies. Both the thoughts, and the feelings they generate, vibrate at a certain frequency. When the thoughts are negative, they vibrate at a frequency that is incompatible with the basic life force frequency, which is positive energy that fosters wellness and growth. An incompatible vibratory rate interferes with and has a negative impact upon the optimal functioning of the physical body that houses and transmits that energy. The physical body, unable to integrate the incompatible energy, manifests a less than optimal state of being…commonly known as illness or dis-ease.
    Want to feel better? Think better thoughts.
    In most cases, what ALL disease needs at it’s inception is a quick dose of positive thought with a little joy and gratitude thrown in to ward off the harmful effects of negative thinking (which is usually followed by, and reinforced with, negative acts).
    Most of the drugs that are touted by the pharmaceutical companies making obscene amounts of money off of our fears and our refusal to take responsibility for our own states of health are unnecessary. At best, they address only the symptom, not the root cause.  Without changing the pattern inherent in the root cause, the symptom may be relieved but the negativity, the illness, the dis-ease cannot be affected. To treat the root cause, it is necessary to understand and have faith in the connection of our minds to our physical, emotional and spiritual bodies. (I’d throw in etheric bodies as well, but I’d likely lose all of the readers I haven’t lost up until now so I’ll save that one for another day).
    We humans are so much more than what we see and are capable of so much more than we are given credit for by either the marketers of all those things and products we “have to have”in order to be happy and healthy…or by ourselves.
    I told you at the outset how much I love words. I can always find a hidden meaning in them to widen the vista of what life is about.  If you take the word humans (as in “we humans” in the above paragraph) and move the letters around…humans becomes “shuman.” Now shuman is not a word that has meaning…but if YOU take out the letter “U” and double the “A” you get “shaman.” 
    Now there’s a word with a whole lot of meaning.
    A shaman was (and is) the healer, the medicine man or woman found within many cultures past and present, who healed through innate knowledge, using the gifts of nature.
    So, it’s just a matter of “U” getting out of your own way…putting the ego and the logical mind aside…to access the deeper knowledge of how disease originates and what we as individual shamans can do about it. We are all physicians of the highest order and more than capable of healing ourselves.
    Sorry, Merck.
    
        

>This week, surgeons and immunologists from Duke University Medical School published their “discovery” in the Journal of Theoretical Biology that the appendix, long thought to be a useless organ, plays a vital role in the overall functioning and balance of the human anatomy. It seems the much discounted organ is a virtual breeding ground and manufacturing plant for the good bacteria and flora so vital for the proper functioning of our digestive systems. 
    I don’t know why we continue to think that Creator, in It’s literally infinite wisdom, somehow gets it wrong…or superfluous…rather than accepting the fact that what we do not yet know about the brilliance and complexity of All That Is results not from Creator’s negligence but rather from our own limited view… at any given point in time.
    The culprit behind this ongoing ruse we play upon ourselves is ego. Ego causes us to think we know everything, and that what we do not know, or understand, must be the fault or lack of another. I see it daily in our daughter. She’s 14, and whenever she does or does not do something, the fault always lies with something or someone else outside of herself. If she is rushing too fast and drops a dish and breaks it, the reason is “The stupid dish dropped” rather than “I dropped the dish.” Or if asked a question for which she does not know the answer, the reply is “You didn’t ask me the right question” rather than “I don’t know.”
    Well, a 14-year-old is supposed to be self centered, self-absorbed and always right. That’s the developmental stage they’re passing through. And it’s never their fault because they’re finding their way in a complex world and developing a healthy and independent sense of self. So at 14, it’s still okay to think you know it all.
    The problem arises when we, as adults, fail to outgrow that stage. When the development of a healthy and independent self is surpassed by the unrestrained development of a malignant ego which causes us to think 1) that we are the center of the Universe and 2) whatever we don’t understand about that Universe is irrelevant. It’s this perspective that leads us to repeatedly and wantonly ignore the independent rights and sacred space of anything on the planet that we deem to be insignificant or immaterial to OUR existence. If it’s purpose or meaning for existence isn’t readily knowable and useful to us, then it’s okay to conclude that it must be expendable or inherently lacking in value.
    The appendix is just the latest example. We do it with “lesser” life forms, the environment and Mother Earth all the time. We use and abuse all that we’ve been gifted out of ignorance and our resistance to accepting the perfection and unity of All That Is.
    Everything and Everyone in our world is an integral part of an incomprehensible creative effort. But it’s only incomprehensible to us. That Which Created All That Is comprehends All That Is. The fact that at any given point in time we may not comprehend it is our limitation. The sooner we step up and acknowledge this fact, and behave accordingly, the sooner we are likely to live in harmony with All That Is.
    When I was a child I would bump into inanimate objects, like a table or chair and because I had trouble pronouncing the word “excuse” would say out loud “coobie chair” or “coobie table.” I did this for several years until the adults around me “corrected” me and I stopped.
    It’s many years later and my interests and studies have taken me full circle. There was no need for correction, after all. Everything and Everyone is made up of the same basic elements…simply vibrating at different rates of speed. The chair, the table, the spotted owl, the Muslim, the Sahara…all were deliberately created with a specific purpose. And when we fail to understand or respect the uniqueness of all, and thereby neglect or abuse our gifts, we need to say “coobie.”
    Coobie, appendix.