As I sit in the bedroom of my two-story tree house in San Maros La Laguna, dodging mosquito after mosquito, staring at huge clumps of daddy long legs on my walls, and spotting a stealthy scorpion slithering its tired body across the foot of my bed, I am grateful.
As I listen to the seemingly endless, amplified singing (more like torturous howling) from the Christian church down the street blasting through my paper thin, wooden windows, I am grateful.
As my kitten Shiva uses relentless meowing and constant tapping of my pen with her small head to desperately capture my attention, I am grateful.
As it sinks in that I won´t be able to see my family and friends for another year, take a hot shower, or go one night without wearing three layers, a hoodie, and winter gloves to bed, hoping that I might miraculously wake up just ONE time without some sort of bug bite, I am eternally grateful.
I just killed another mosquito and apologized to it as I gently brushed its lifeless body to the floor. ¨"All life is precious, no matter how small or deceptively insignificant," I think to myself. The other day I asked one of the long vines on my patio if it wouldn´t mind me moving it out of the way a few inches. ¨"Who are you?? And what have you done with Korken," I jokingly ask myself. I look in the mirror to make sure it´s still me, and sure enough, it is. But as I stare at the the long , curly-haired, big-eyed face smiling back at me, I realize that I´m not at all the same.
Tears begin filling my eyelids, yet I can´t tell whether they´re tears of joy or sadness. I haven´t seen my mother´s face in 4 months. My 30th birthday is a few short days away, and I have no plans. I shit in a dark hole everyday. I take the coldest showers of my life. I scoop ants out of my peanut butter and then help myself to two delicious spoonfuls. I don´t leave my house after 6 pm because it´s dark, take care of four cats, sleep at 9pm, and my excitement over raw, goat cheese can last weeks! My idea of ultimate pleasure is two scoops of pistachio ice cream every Saturday and I don´t even eat on Sundays because fasting is now so important to
me... this ´man in the mirror.´
I´m training to become a holistic healer, yoga instructor, and massage therapist. "Who are you?!!" I yell at the mysterious figure in the mirror. It looks back at me, its eyes filled with compassion, unconditional love, and understanding. The tears keep rolling down my face as I realize how much my life has changed... how much
I have changed. And suddenly it all becomes so clear to me, it all makes sense... these are tears of joy.
Amidst all the challenges, I am happy and following an unknown path most of us are too reluctant to take. "What if I hadn´t listened to that little voice in my heart in July," I thought. What if? I began hysterically laughing as it hit me that I had created all this myself. Through a simple thought and action, I had manifested all of it. And everyday I was recreating who I was, throwing away all my ideas of who I
thought I was and who I was yesterday. I can be anything. I am everything, yet nothing at the same time. My reflection laughed back at me, relieved that I finally understood.
I have been pretty quiet on this site the last two months, mostly because I was experiencing one revelation after another and feeling reluctant to share it with the world just yet. When your thought system is completely turned on its head, your first instinct is to tell the world about it. But each time I sat down to write, my intuition warned me that it was too premature--that it would come across as preaching, because I was too excited about it ( I hadn´t yet allowed it to all sink in). This was
my experience, and if I´ll learned anything these last 4 months, it´s that we all need to have our
own experiences to truly allow a shift in our perceptions. I´d love to be the bridge to that experience for you, if you so choose to cross it.
But rather than explaining each concept in laborious detail, I´d like to provide a simple introduction and then suggest more sources if you choose to further explore the topic. I don´t expect you to eat it up or even believe it. Like I said, you can either cross the Bridge of Curiosity and find out for yourself or you can turn and walk the other way. Many of these concepts you may have already heard of, but I will present them through my own experience. Consider this part 1 of this continuous dialogue. Without further ado...
We create our own reality. Every single thing we experience, every single person that comes into our lives, is of our own creation. Nothing is done to us. It all begins with a single thought, turns into words, and finally ends in action. But most of the time all it takes is a simple thought to manifest our experiences.
Every morning I wake up and literally ´create´my day. It´s actually very simple, once you get a hang of it. I focus on peace, pleasure, gratitude, forgiveness, and love. Of course, just like anyone else, I experience fear, judgment, and desire. But I´ve trained my mind to detach from these thoughts before they can have any hand in my creation. They are merely bumps in the road now, rather than the 50-mile, treacherous dark road they used to be. I seldom encounter conflict and live a very relaxed, peaceful life. 'How can I do this?!' You may be asking. For me, there are 3 very simple steps, which are not so simple when you first try them.
1) See the love and beauty in the seemingly detestable. Train yourself to see the 'good' in everyone around you and in every situation. This is where the concept 'we are one' comes in. By judging or attacking your brother, you are attacking & judging yourself. By not giving to another, you are denying yourself.
2) Forgive everyone and everything, especially yourself. But I´m not talking only about past transgressions. I´m mostly talking about forgiving something or someone in the very moment the transgression takes place. This is sort of like shifting your perception in the moment. For example, I had just bought a delicious bottle of grape juice this morning and as I was walking to the dock to get on the boat, a small boy asked me for a sip of my juice. Without thinking, I handed him the bottle, and he placed his mouth over the opening and took three big gulps. He handed the bottle back to me and graciously thanked me. But he also had 4 friends who quickly ran over and asked for sips of my grape juice. I couldn´t say no, so I handed them the bottle. While they were passing it from one boy to the other, a little voice told me to let it go, to give it to them. Instead of perceiving the grape juice being taken from me, I instead chose to see it as a wonderful gift from me to these boys. You see, I was actually gaining more energy & love from the giving of it, as opposed to the drinking of it. I forgave them for wanting my grape juice, rather than feeling like they need to go and buy their own.
3) Live in the present. Forget what happened yesterday or even a minute ago. The worst thing we can do to ourselves is worry about the past or the future. The past is over and we have the power to create the future, and by worrying you are only creating exactly that situation in your future and losing out on the magnificence the present has to offer. When I start worrying or feeling bad about a past experience, I simply find something in the present that can steal my attention away, like my cats, a tree, people walking around, the smell in the air, what it feels like to touch a certain fabric or plant, etc. If you are trying to sleep and worrying, then the best thing to do is focus on your breath, just like in meditation. Count each inhale and exhale and try to take deep breaths. Soon you will be fast asleep or relaxed enough that you can detach yourself from these thoughts.
If you want to learn more about these concepts I suggest these two books. 'A Return to Love' by Marianne Williamson and 'The Power of Now´ by Eckhart Tolle. And if you want to go even beyond these concepts, there is a great book called 'Conversations with God' by Neale Donald Walsch, which will blow your mind!
So going back to creating your own reality... I had a friend here who seemed to have a new obstacle everyday. Someone was always wronging her, or asking too much of her, or not being honest and open with her. These constant negative thoughts of judgment and fear kept her in a very low vibration, which created so much conflict in her life and allowed her to experience the world exactly the way she saw it. She not only thought these thoughts but she constantly talked about them, as well, which made it even more difficult for her to create any peace in her life.
Two weeks ago a man attacked her on a dark street and beat her up pretty badly. She didn´t leave her house for several days, and when she finally did ALL she talked about was the attack and focused solely on her victim hood. I wish I could have told her that it was in fact SHE who attacked herself in a subconscious attempt to bring some clarity into her life. But I don´t think she was ready to hear that or, frankly, even wanted to. Every person that comes into our life has a purpose, carries a lesson for us. There are no coincidences. Once we can embrace this concept, we can transform our lives.
Now I´m going to get a bit radical for most people´s tastes. But I´ve been asked to present this material nonetheless. It is very near and dear to my heart.
Here´s a thought that might upset some of you. Your diseases, disorders, sicknesses, and ailments are a physical result of your mental and emotional imbalances. In other words, we create our own dis-eases through our thoughts and feelings-- from a simple cold to cancer, depression, or HIV. You can heal yourself completely without pills, without dangerous treatments like chemotherapy, without suffering. Through proper nutrition and by finding the mental/emotional root of your ailments, you can completely cure yourself.
Go back to when you first got this dis-ease and ask yourself what was happening in your life at the time. Who did you have conflict with? Were you stressed out? Were you taking care of yourself? What was your mental/emotional state like? Which negative thoughts and emotions were you having about yourself, about your life, about those closest to you? Perhaps you are still harboring these emotions and memories of the past. They are the keys to your freedom. By healing them, you will in turn heal your body.
There´s an incredible book by Caroline Myss called 'Anatomy of the Spirit', which beautifully explains all of this in much more detail. Another amazing book that I recommend on this subject is ´Darkside of the Light Chasers' by Debbie Ford, which I will mention again later.
After reading these two books and seeing people with debilitating diseases, like cancer and AIDS, cure themselves with my own eyes, I am inspired and passionate about helping others find that truth and healing.
Modern, western medicine helps to suppress the symptoms of disease, while natural medicine actually cures the cause. Right now, there are actually a handful of cures for cancer and HIV floating around all over the world. They are extremely low-costing treatments that certain people are paying a lot of money to keep them from reaching the eyes and ears of the general public. This comes as no surprise when you see that cancer and AIDS are the biggest contributors to pharmaceutical and medical profit in the U.S. and many other countries. Finding a cure would be a devastating blow to the financial surplus of these institutions.
Look up vitamin B17 or MMS to see what I mean. B17 can be found in apricot kernels. Yes, you can cure cancer by chewing on apricot kernels. Think about what that idea would do to companies that make billions, if not trillions, of dollars every year on cancer ´treatment´. MMS has been banned in Canada without any proper reason other than ´research´shows it can be extremely harmful to us. I´ve used it in Guatemala a number of times to kill parasites in my body and have yet to feel any negative side effects. It´s time to educate ourselves and stop believing everything our leaders and government tell us is true. Let us think for ourselves and base our truth off our own experiences and not solely the experience of others.
For years we´ve been told that milk does a body good, that margarine is 10x better for you than butter, that processed foods, such as bleached flour, refined sugar, and chemically grown fruits and vegetables, won´t harm us. But here is the ugly truth-- milk (pasteurized and homogenized, not raw) actually wreaks havoc on our digestive systems and offers minimal nutritional value (we can´t even really absorb the calcium that is supposedly so important for our bones). Margarine and other processed vegetable oils are many times worse for our bodies than butter, and processed flour and sugar are about the worst things you can eat, because they offer no nutritional value and have lost all of their digestive enzymes, which means organs, like your enzyme-producing pancreas, over time become so overworked that they eventually lose their value and lead to diseases like cancer.
Why is heart disease and cancer the leading causes of death in the U.S. and pretty much no where else in the world? Why are a huge % of children under 12 contracting diabetes at such a young age? Why is the FDA not telling the American people that these foods are terrible for us and our children? Simple. The FDA is run by people who used to work for the dairy and food processing industries, the biggest and most profitable institutions in the US, and not surprisingly the most powerful. University research that supports the eating of homogenized milk and processed foods is directly funded by these institutions, and most of our politicians and media are, as well. 'FDA aproved' is not a promised stamp of good quality but rather a meaningless formality that pretends to protect us and feed the pockets of those who can care less about the state of health in the world.
I´m not trying to focus on the problem here, believe me. But it´s important that we understand all this if a solution is to be found. But please, don´t take my word for it. Do your own research. There are plenty of people out there talking about this to deaf ears. Buddha once said, 'Most of humanity have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception, they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them.' This goes back to thinking for ourselves. Unfortunately, most of us would rather have someone else do the thinking and just simply tell us what to do.
If you are indeed a ´thinker for yourselfer' I highly suggest the books of Daniel Reed, most notably 'The Tao of Health, Sex, and Longevity.´ We can´t blame the government or the FDA or even these greedy institutions for our problems. We are free to make our own choices and educate ourselves. Did you know that while the European Union (EU) continues to ban or require labeling on foods that are subjected to irradiation and genetic modification, the US still thinks a ban is not necessary? This is because people in EU are likely to go and burn the crops of a farmer who genetically modifies his crops. They won´t tolerate it! We need that same kind of passion and love for our health if we hope to change things in the US. The first step is knowledge and the second step is spreading the knowledge. Nobody is forcing us to buy these products and feed them to ourselves and family.
There are many other topics I want to cover, but this last one has been my biggest teacher the last 4 months. The easiest way we can bring more love, peace, and joy into our lives is by taking note of how we judge others. You might be thinking, ´How do these two things have any kind of connection?´ Here´s the big shocker courtesy of Debbie Ford (´Dark side of the Light Chasers´)- ´What we see/judge in others is simply a reflection of how we see ourselves.' Here´s an example.
I have this girl who comes and cleans my house. She´s a nice girl but lacks any common sense! She uses my hand towel to clean the floors, dumps the dirty water down my kitchen sink and clogs it, demands that I pay her before she even works, is dishonest, and does a half-assed job at best. These were my judgments of her.
I returned home one night a few weeks ago, to find both my clean hand towels, wet and dirty on the floor, my sink clogged yet again (no water was going down at all), and she left me a note asking me for money that I had already given her. This pissed me off so badly, I can´t even tell you. I was irate! And it takes a lot to make me irate. I spent the rest of the night thinking about how I could fire the girl that was hired by the lady I was subletting from. Obviously that wasn´t an option, and every attempt at unclogging my sink miserably failed.
I got no sleep that night and decided to write her a nasty letter ( in my broken Spanish) telling her off. 'Why can´t I find a god damn plunger in this fuckin´city?!! I screamed to myself. I couldn´t possibly understand how I had brought this into my life. So I used Ms. Ford´s advice and wrote down all of my judgments about this evil, Guatemalan maid. She´s dishonest, stupid, irrational, does a half-assed job, doesn´t listen to me, is demanding, and sucks at her job. If we are each other´s mirrors and are supposed to get our own judgments about ourselves reflected back to us by others, then I was at a loss for words. 'I am none of those things!' I scowled in anger. I don´t see myself that way at all.
And then one-by-one I started remembering a time when someone called me dishonest, stupid, and irrational. Or when I thought that about myself. I have made it a point to never be those things, because someone once made me feel bad about it, or I scolded myself with those exact adjectives. Of course I could be dishonest, do a half-assed job, or be demanding. These were all judgments that I had about myself subconsciously that I strive so hard to
not be. And now it was all being reflected back at me.
So I admitted to it. I could be all these things and have been many times in my life. I forgave her and myself and accepted this dark side of me. Not only accepted it, I embraced the shit out of it because I knew it was the only way to heal this part of me. ´Thank you, cleaning girl!´ I thought. And I kid you not, at that very instant a thought popped into my head. ´Why not try using the top of a glass jar to imitate the use of a plunger?´ That's the stupidest idea EVER! It will never work, I thought. But I was desperate at this point, so I went downstairs and gave it a try. In less than a minute, my sink was unclogged and I had the cheesiest, most ridiculous smile on my face. By embracing, accepting, and loving the shadow side of me, I no longer needed the mirror.
And now my cleaning lady, Ester, leaves me flowers and bananas, doesn´t use my hand towels to clean the floor, and never clogs my sink. She´s actually a very smart, humble, and lovely person. Who would have thought?!
By Day 4, I had intense diarrea, a pounding headache, and every time I tried to move my body, I ended up right back on my bed because moving became rather unpleasant. I was forced to slow down and do nothing most of the day & night and really had no idea what time it was. My mind kept attacking me and begging me to let us out of the room. And most of the time I had to find the humor in the whole situtaion to overcome my mind's onslaught of negative thoughts and somehow keep my peace & sanity.
And then it hit me. I had forgotten this inner power somehow. I had spent so many years of my life trusting and only relying on my senses that I forgot that there is a great big world beyond them. A world that we can create. A world that is just as real as the one we think is the real world. I began to ask myself, 'What is truly real?' And I had found my answer one day during lunch with Happy, Sneezy, Doc, and the rest of those adorable little men. I yelled in great delight to Grumpy, 'I decide what is REAL. I have total control over my reality!' And for the first time, Grumpy smiled at me and nodded his head.
