Much later in life, I found myself living (dying) in a suburban basement, like a hunchback shut-in, not leaving for months at a time because of embarrassment and chronic pain. It was really bad, and sad. I had no one to help me with my plight. I cried out for help to those closest to me, but my pleading was met with cold detachment and uncaring. There was a time when I was really worried and afraid that I was going to die, because I was so unhealthy. I could not even walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath. I was truly and frighteningly, unwell. I was on my own, and I was debilitated. I felt old and tired, and I could see the grave rapidly approaching. My body had become an entombment of fat covering the pain and loneliness of a broken heart and spirit. Hope and life seemed very distant.
I was raised in a culture of quietly "polite" judgments; a pressure-cooker of seething hatred, prejudice, violence and ignorance. Making matters worse, my self-esteem had been crushed through years of secreted childhood bullying and abuses, which would take me decades to overcome. What I remember the most about my childhood is constant fear — and "good food." The catfish and fried chicken were amazing! I was never really taught about healthy eating. To the contrary, my cultural inheritance was learning to "treat yourself" at "special occasions" by gorging on every horribly delicious food you can imagine. I don't want to get into the greasy, buttery, deep-fried, fatty, sugary, meaty, barbecued details here, but let's just say if gluttony really is the second deadly sin, then I knew a lot of people on their way to hell. With no knowledge of positive psychology, real foods or healthy lifestyles, time took its toll on me, and the invincibility of my youth diminished as my gut and waist-line expanded.
The emerging worldwide health pandemic has it's roots in the ways we produce and consume. Unhealthy relationship models between producers and consumers have tragic effects on society and the environment. What we are really suffering from is consumption illness. Consumption illness is most obvious with fast food and less obvious with entertainment, news, media and other addictive products of little real substance. We are consuming what is artificial and bad for us. We are in poor physical, mental and spiritual health because of what we consume; not only what we eat, but what we consume in the form of all products, and also with all of our senses such as our sight and hearing. We are addicted to trash, and we are rotting from the inside out. Our consuming predilections are often encouraged by irresponsible corporations who wish to realize a profit even if it hurts their customers. Selfish and irresponsible corporations are subsidizing their profits with our losses in the form of our anguish, pain, suffering and sometimes death. This is the definition of violence and abuse. The propaganda spear-point of corporate conquest is often the promise of convenient, consistent and cheap goods and services. Cheap food and goods are dangerous illusions that do not exist. What you don't pay at the checkout, you pay at the hospital. How we produce and consume is really about how we relate to the world, to other people and to ourselves. So becoming healthy has everything to do with developing a respectful relationship with yourself and environment. You have to encourage an appreciation and develop an appetite for what is beautiful, real and life sustaining, and turn away from the ugliness. You must take responsibility for your health and realize that your are a sensitive being and that ugly thoughts, foods, relationships, and energies can and will harm you. There is an undeniable mind-body connection. A healthy and pure body lends to a healthy and pure mind.
It is hard to see and experience the beauty in life when we are sick and feel terrible. People often write me and ask for my prayers for their family during a serious and often self-inflicted health crisis. What they don't understand is I have been praying for them for years by trying to inspire them to evolve their lifestyle. The best time to pray for your health is long before a crisis. The best prayer is a prayer of action. The best time to pray for your deliverance is today. The most sincere prayer for health is the daily prayer of respecting your body temple. You can't dig your own grave with a spoon for decades and then expect a miracle to pull you from the depths of that deep hole because you uttered one shallow last-minute plea for help. It's insincere. The truth is you have been praying for decades with your actions, and your unwholesome prayers are being answered. You really do get what you faithfully ask for with your actions. What are your actions asking for right now? Be careful what you ask for; you may get it. Quit abusing your body temple today. Pray for your deliverance tomorrow — by taking good care of yourself today. This message IS my prayer for you right now. I hope it will penetrate your heart and inspire you to make the changes that you need to make in your life.
Being love-filled and beautiful is almost unconquerable. Love absorbs the hard blows of rigid fists; love surrounds, softens and tires violence and force. If you are confronted, bullied or intimidated while expressing your voice of reason, remember this protective strategy — be beautiful. Being love-filled and beautiful is one of the most powerful defenses that one can employ. Imagine that you are a beautiful and unique flower growing in life's garden. Most people will not intentionally step on a beautiful flower. If you are walking through the garden and you see the beautiful flowers, you will walk around them to avoid destroying their delicate beauty. Even most "mean people" and "bad people," otherwise known as people in pain and crisis, try to avoid the destruction of beauty by their own hand. They recognize beauty and secretly wish more of their own beauty was dominant. And even when the rare soul who enjoys trampling and crushing the beautiful flowers comes along, they quickly discover that there are many gardeners who tend life's garden, and these gardeners do not like people stepping on the beautiful flowers. A beautiful person is protected like a beautiful flower in a garden, which many gardeners tend. You do not have to do anything to defend yourself in life; just be beautiful and life will defend you.
The path to transcendence is unrecognized by many because it appears ordinary. As sensory experience junkies, we have been blinded to the majesty in the common; like never seeing the stars above the city lights. But out on the quiet country roads, like the untrodden corridors of your meditative self, there is clarity to see the brilliant stars of your own luminous perfection. Like the unseen stars, your joy and perfection have been there all along — awaiting your recognition.
Achieving mindfulness during your daily activities will reveal great rewards, even in the most mundane of tasks. Mindfulness is that space where you are in touch with life-experience, and you are brightly aware. Do not allow precious moments to pass-by full of unnoticed experiences. When you are unaware and lack mindfulness, you feel empty because life's experiences are passing you by, leaving you hungry. Experiences are meant to fill you. When people do not partake of natural, common and essential experience through mindfulness, they often seek to fill their hunger artificially by chasing empty and destructive experiences. The world is full of alluring, flashy and thrilling experiences, which are illusionary traps — they are paths to nowhere. Once you transcend the illusions you will discover that — you — are the most thrilling experience you will ever have. You are the greatest undiscovered adventure of your lifetime.
Let truth, beauty and love be your guide. Truth is found in the exaltation and protection of beauty. Beauty is like a pristine peak on the landscape of life; yet un-savaged by man's gruesome defilements. Simple truth is ever-awaiting under the patina of common falsehoods. And how can you know something as subjective as truth? You can know something is a lie when it has no love in it. Hence, truth is the spirit of all that is good and worthy through loving. Love has perfect eyes for beauty. Love can see the limitless beauty within self and within others. Love is open to all possibility. Every great master knew love as their only master. Love exalts because it is exalted. When you become love you become divine because love is divine. The self-realized spirit is merely a spirit emancipated from fear, judgement and knowing. When you feel lost turn towards love. Become a seeker of beauty in all things. Each moment has an unrealized dimension of beauty that only your perspective can liberate. When we become seekers of truth and beauty, we are creating truth and beauty. Your perspectives change your realities. Your vision determines your destination.
Understand the negative, but do not amplify the negative. Be aware of negativity but do not let it infect your creative spirit. We each project to others a reflection of the world that includes our choices of perception. Look upon the world with loving eyes and the reflection everyone sees will contain love. When we choose to engage reality as the best each moment can be, we are shaping more positive experiences for others. When we process our pain, and pass on only the lessons to others, our quiet suffering uplifts everyone. Become an extension of the light in the lives of others. By choosing positivity, you become a contender for the human spirit, giving hope to those in need. The incredibly powerful and enriching lifestyle of seeking beauty is a humble service of love and healing. Tremendously meaningful healing for yourself begins with how you choose to see the world. A more wonderful life and a more beautiful world is one thought away.
You will find beauty in every person and experience, but only if beauty has first been cultivated within. The supreme hallmark of reality is balance. Balance and fullness exist in the polarity of all things. How we choose to perceive affects how we partake of reality; narrowly or completely. When you engage in cynicism, pessimism and mean sarcasm you are amplifying imbalance and negativity in your life. It is not fair or realistic to be negative all the time. Dominant negativity cheats reality of its mutual positives. Your complete intelligence is designed to experience the fullness of life, not a narrow omission of its best possibilities. The world we create in our minds shapes the ultimate reality where we live. Perception meets you at the intersection of your beliefs and reality. Hopeful visions touch possibilities that only exist in the gaze of the faithful. So remember. If you want to live a new way, you have to start thinking that way. Your thoughts precede the lifestyle, not the other way around.
